Monday, January 29, 2007

How long have you been a slow-witted sportswriter?

This may be common knowledge, so I'll try not to belabor it. But I think we'll hear it enough times to be warranted.

We'll surely hear The Media grouse about each other & Media Day. With the game in Miami, we may not be hear too many writers complain that the city, hotel, freebies aren't up to their standards. This has been a huge story for them the last few years, how poorly they've been treated.

As we know, Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy are black and that will be a big deal, or at least the writers will make a big deal about not making a big deal of it. This means we'll hear the Doug Williams Media Day story for sure. There's never a shortage of writers who re-write the Doug Williams story as the nadir of journalism, in an effort to separate themselves from their brethren.

Remember when that idiot asked Doug Williams how long he's been a black quarterback? That's who gives us guys a bad name. Some dumbass will probably ask how long Tony and Lovie have been black coaches! Ha!

As many know, Doug Williams was never asked how long he's been a black quarterback. A reporter named Butch John of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger said something to the effect of "Obviously you've been black and a quarterback your whole life. At what point in your life did race become an issue?", Doug Williams misheard him and repeated back the joke question, largely as a send-up of the endless string of questions about being black.

All present had a good laugh. Ever since, chili-stained writers have re-written it annually as their prime example of what a waste of life the OTHER media people are.

So it's not particularly amusing and it never happened. Great anecdote! That makes it the football equivalent of the "Al Gore invented the internet" joke. To some, neither will ever get old, apparently.

For the record, the dumbest Media Day question I know of was asked of Raiders QB Jim Plunkett, son of blind parents: "Lemme get this straight, Jim. Is it blind mother, deaf father or the other way around?"

Though I've seen it mentioned as a dumb question, I like the one where the writer asked a St. Louis defensive lineman: "Is Ram a noun or a verb?"

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