HOLLANDER: Can you hear it, C.J.? Middle-aged men in collared staff shirts are screaming, purple-faced, at young, desperate, overweight men who are wheezing and vomiting in the summer heat. One well-proportioned man slips his hands neatly through the backside and against the testicles of one of the overweight men. Feverishly, the upright man barks his commands: “Blue 17. Red 25. Hut. Hut-hut-hut.”
These sounds are not emanating from some S&M biker retreat in Sturgis, S.D., but from NFL training camps all over this country. It’s a different kind of man-on-man action that has made football America’s most popular professional sport.
Take nothing for granted in the 2006 NFL. Here are my 10 questions that could change everything in the league for the next 10 years:
(1) Will Reggie Bush burst upon this league and lead New Orleans’s first successful post-Katrina comeback? (2) How long before Tennessee gives Vince Young the ball and lets him run with it? (3) What the #@! is up with Matt Leinart? First he dumps his football agent for a Hollywood agent (consequently dropping way down in the draft) then he dumps his college sweetheart to get busy with heartless jock-slut Paris Hilton. That boy better remember to dance with what brung him or he’s fast on his way to a starring role in a VH-1 NFL Quarterbacks Surreal Life special with Art Shlichter and Todd Marinovich. (4) Who’s not looking forward to the September 8th Donovan McNabb-Terrell Owens reunion in Philly? (5) Is Nick Saban turning the hallowed Dolphins franchise into the NFL’s version of a fascist state or a return to dynastic glory? (6) Is Ben Rothelisbeger still shell-shocked? (7) Will Condoleezza Rice take over as NFL commissioner, and if not, who will? (8) How much further down can Detroit go before Matt Millen is shown the door? (9) Will a re-invented, 269 lb. Kyle Turley revolutionize body types for NFL lineman? (10)What crazy talk will come from Randy Moss
this year?
As for our local boys, the Giants are getting to know each other again up in Albany. I think they will be less interesting than some may predict. I mean, what will be left of Michael Strahan after Jean Strahan finishes with him? And, don’t count on LaVaar Arrington having a rebirth in New York. I love Jeremy Shockey, but Tom Coughlin doesn’t know how to get him the ball. Tikki’s tank might not be empty but I think his patience with Coughlin is wearing thin. Most of all, I’m not buying Eli. There’s something strange about this guy – not in a good way.
The Jets opened camp in their brand new facility out in Florham Park, N.J. Though, team President L. Jay Cross and elitist owner Woody Johnson seem more interested in building a corporate theme park than making a winning football team. Ramsey vs. Pennington: they’re both inadequate. Sorry Chad. Biggest off-season mistake: letting go of potential Hall of Fame center Kevin Mawae. That was dumb. Curtis Martin sure is a thing of beauty but how much does he really have left?
One thing I can tell you for certain:
I’m legally changing my name to D’Brickashaw.
SULLIVAN: Now you have gone and done it. You went and degraded
this column with per-
haps your most egregious word usage. There is no coming back from having the words Paris Hilton slip into a sports column. For that alone you should be shipped to whatever sports hell ESPN sent baseball announcer Harold Reynolds to.
Then you bring Condi Rice in as a football commissioner? Earth to Dave! Earth to Dave! She is in the Middle East dealing with lunatics, fanatics and the possible start of World War III.
And to answer the question: I am “not” ready for some football. My God, man, we are in the middle of a July heat wave! I am just recovering from my Knicks hangover and the Brown-Starbury-Thomas-Dolan-Selltheknicks.com cluster bomb that is still going on in the tainted walls of Madison Square Garden.
Now we have the baseball crises of New York about to tear this fair city apart. We have finally gotten the Yankees basket case, A-Rod, to a good therapist and he seems to be taking to a new form of inversion therapy. That saved an EDP from running down the Grand Concourse on a hot Bronx night.
The Mets also have a big problem. Willie Randolph is attending local Black Israelites meetings and calling for the destruction of the white devil because Buck O’Neil was not admitted as one of the 17 Negro League Hall of Famers. Randolph claims he will bench David Wright to even the score.
Randolph has a point. Once again the white man speaks with forked tongue by denying O’Neil this honor. The man is a walking baseball legend and ambassador and he is 94. They say they need more time. Yeah like when he is six feet under.
This is no time for football. I will get to that sport in its season. Eli, Tiki, Chad, and Curtis will have to wait. This is a city in a sports crisis, man.
HOLLANDER: What really bothers me is that new music they’re using on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer. I can’t tell anymore when the program starts or ends or when they’re rolling to a new segment. And that Ed Schuyler guy – the one who protects Bloomberg – I think he’s got to be one of the nastiest figures in New York City political history. What else? Oh yeah, Splenda: I like it but I’m not sure I trust it.
Well you said you didn’t want to talk football. Sorry, buddy. NFL training camp in July is a sports writer’s rite of passage. Now drop and give me twenty – milquetoast!
SULLIVAN: Okay, I will discuss New York football but being a sports writer you almost have to have ADD (Attention Deficit Disorder) to keep up with all the story lines.
The Giants are up in Albany preparing for a playoff run. I think they will get there but I will not discuss it beyond the present. With parity it is difficult to keep winning in the NFL. The Giants need Eli to become more than a Manning - they need to win which is something no Manning has yet to do. I am curious to see how Strahan and his “alternate”lifestyle and liposuction plays out across the NFL tundra. He is not getting any younger and those personal barbs will hurt.
The Jets are out in sweltering New Jersey with a chubby new coach and a quarterback controversy which will keep the Jet beat writers busy through August. Patrick Ramsey will be the Jets QB on opening day. Pennington has no arm left. He’ll do fine as a back up. Now leave me alone while I try to do an intervention with Willie Randolph and David Wright. I have to get this Met ship righted before the dog days of August tear this team apart.
