That’s what the ‘analyst’ just said after a penalty flag was thrown for unnecessary roughness following a helmet-to-helmet hit on Thursday Night Football. The ‘analyst’ — part asshole, part cyst — was referring to the flag, not the hit. The hit? Old-time football, motherfucker. The flag? Pussification. This ain’t soccer, wimp. First they turn perfectly timed blows to the head into personal fouls, then they force socialized medicine down our throats. Fuck that Euroshit.

Me, I like socialized medicine. Love it. A society that allows huge corporations to regulate and market medical care while preaching ‘family values’ and jailing drug addicts instead of Wall Street buccaneers is naturally going to love the sort of sport that specializes in brain damage. Never mind the mounting number of concussions and the mountain of fresh evidence of their hideous effects. We like our gladiators fearless, and if they die young and demented, we’re fine with that. That’s a price we’re more than willing to let them pay for our entertainment.

Some of my favorite conversations have been with fathers of young sons who think it’s a good thing for 9- and 10-year-olds to play tackle football in full gear. They’re not worried about brain damage; they talk about football teaching their boys ‘how to compete.’

I wonder if they ever wonder how the species itself somehow managed to survive without football? Dumb luck, I guess.

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That’s me. I’ll pay any credentialed member of the Cleveland media $100 for asking the following question of Pat Shurmur at one of Shurmur’s press conferences:

“Why would any Browns fan feel that you are a competent NFL head coach?”

The question must be asked in those words.

I’ll toss in a $50 bonus for eye-rolling during or immediately after Shurmur’s answer.

*****

While I’m at it, I’ll make the same offer to any credentialed member of the Miami media: You get $100 for asking LeBron James if he has read The Whore of Akron.

I’m biased, of course, but I find it fascinating — and revealing as hell — that not a single member of the pack of fanboys paid to cover every aspect of LeBron’s existence has had the cojones to ask him about a book that 1) was just published, 2) has been reviewed by Sports Illustrated, the Associated Press, the Wall Street Journal, Time, Parade, and many other media outlets, and 3) examines the issues of villainy and regret that James himself has recently and repeatedly raised in his quest to rehabilitate his brand.

I’m not asking for free publicity, you lickspittles. I’m willing to buy it.

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I heard a lot of great stories while I was working on The Whore of Akron. The best one isn’t in the book. Its hero is Drew Gooden, who played with the Cavs for four seasons during the LeBron epoch, and it takes place on a road trip, when the Cavs’ charter lands in Toronto for a game against the Raptors.

As Jason Whitlock has noted, Toronto is known to many NBA players as ‘White Vegas,’ a place to party and get laid. Gooden, a sweet-natured fellow, though not the brightest bulb in the chandelier, was so looking forward to his visit that when the Canadian customs agent boarded the team’s plane and asked if anyone had anything to declare, Drew hollered, ‘YEAH — WE’RE HERE TO FUCK YOUR WOMEN.’

The way I heard it, the entire team then sat on the plane for a couple of hours, cooling their heels while the agent slowly searched everyone’s luggage.

*****

Because the only NFL team I actually care about is a joke, I don’t watch much football. But the Tim Tebow phenomenon is pretty compelling, not least because of the hostility toward him among folks who seem to find his professions of faith intolerable. Evanglism is essential to some Christian sects, and Tebow’s witnessing isn’t strange or singular. Because of his fame, he has been asked about his religion often, and every time I’ve heard him discuss it, he sounds like a nice young guy. The worst I can say about him is that I think he’s sincere in his delusions.

While watching him play against the Bears earlier, my twitter timeline was full of derision and loathing for him, most of it based on his religion, some of it from people who would be fighting mad if you accused them of bigotry. Yet I’m not sure what else to call it. It’s vile, it’s relentless, and it’s based on nothing more than the man’s faith in his version of God.

I’ve been called a ‘hater’ thousands of times for my feelings toward LeBron James, and I’ve heard from plenty of folks eager to ascribe my feelings to racism. It’s a conversation worth having, and I’ve enjoyed more than a few of them on the subject. I also understand that it’s far more palatable — and far less dangerous — to mock the majority culture. Still, much of what’s said about Tebow is brutally dumb and ugly, full of a profound ignorance and vicious contempt that say nothing about Tim Tebow, and a whole lot about the jagoffs saying it.

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I started to take writing seriously when I was 11 years old. Never was interested in, or much good at, any craft, trade, or profession, but I never thought of writing as a career path. Until I was in my mid-thirties, the closest I ever came to journalism was my paper route; I wrote poetry and fiction. I got a degree in English, then a graduate degree in creative writing, and then a weird thing happened: I started writing a weekly editorial column for a college paper in Iowa City. I liked it right away, mainly because I suddenly had a much larger group of readers. It was a major rush, and it felt great.

I don’t usually think about readers when I write. Writing for me is both a way of figuring out what I think (and why) and also an ongoing effort to figure out how to tell a story. But that’s not an intellectual exercise or a ‘process’ or anything but one guy typing, so the less conscious I am of anything beyond the keyboard — readers, editors, my neighbor’s leaf blower — the better off I am.

Writing The Whore of Akron was different. I was conscious of a nation of Cleveland fans who are just as — maybe more — crazy, frustrated, hungry, and pissed off than I am. It wasn’t just about LeBron, who in a lot of ways is no more than another unhappy ending; it was also about a city that has been mocked, scorned, and pitied for decades. I knew  plenty of Clevelanders and expats would read it. I knew I was speaking for them, for better and for worse. I saw that as a privilege, and I took it more seriously than anything else about the book.

I’ve gotten a ton of love in return. Great letters — and not just from Cleveland fans — full of kindness, gratitude, and encouragement. I’m trying to answer those letters with more than a simple ‘thank you,’ and it’s going to take some time. Meanwhile, I wanted to say thanks in a more general way. To a writer and a Cleveland fan, nothing could mean more.

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Spent last week in Cleveland and Columbus pimping The Whore of Akron. Had a ball. A couple of bookstore events, a few TV spots, a ton of radio, local and national. It was great.

The book’s official publication date was 11/15. The Associated Press, the Christian Science Monitor, Parade, Sports Illustrated, the Wall Street Journal, and various other national media outlets all weighed in on it. Not all the coverage was favorable, to be sure, but I have no problem at all with that.

I do have a major problem with one media outlet, though: ESPN. The World Wide Leader. The most powerful institution, bar none, in the wide world of sports. Bigger than any league, any apparel or sport drink or shoe manufacturer, any other network, any other entity you can name. They’re not only business partners with the NFL, NBA, and MLB; ESPN calls all the shots, and everyone knows it.

To ESPN, there is no such book. The Whore of Akron simply does not exist. Search the Heat Index, where 18 writers are standing by to file columns in case King James strains himself during a bowel movement. Zero. Zilch. Nada.

Their treatment of the book is no surprise, really. I’m hard on ESPN. The Decision was a travesty, the Heat Index is an ongoing parody of sports journalism, and I genuinely believe that anyone who ascribes any degree of honesty or integrity to ESPN as an unbiased source of sports coverage is a damned fool. All this, and more, is in the book. So I would’ve been naive to think that a book like mine would get much play there. Hell, I’m the one who used #ESPNMiamiHeat as a Twitter hashtag all season. I get it, honest. I’ve worked at national magazines for 20+ years. It’s just business, and that’s all it is. Nothing personal.

Then I found out that Bill Simmons spiked a review of the book written for Grantland, the Sizzler of sports websites. Ran it up the flagpole first — and Simmons doesn’t answer to a lot of people; he’s Bill fucking Simmons, after all — and then killed it. And that was the last straw. That I did take personally.

You guys want to rip the book? Fine with me. You want to rip me? Even better. I’ll go anywhere anytime with anyone ESPN chooses to debate my opinion of ESPN. It’s just one asshole’s opinion, after all. But the fact that ESPN is ignoring the book is not an opinion; it’s a fact, and it strongly supports my opinion of ESPN’s corporate cowardice and utter lack of integrity.

By the way, I have plenty of colleagues at ESPN whose work I respect, and more than a couple I consider friends. This isn’t a writer/reporter problem. It’s a management/editorial problem, and my colleagues and friends there know all about it. It goes WAY beyond one asshole’s opinion or his book. And, sooner or later, it will sink the Mothership.

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I’m a union man. Always have been, always will be. Turns out I love money as much as the next guy; capital is one of my favorite isms. All the same, I don’t like living in a culture driven to a sickening degree by a corporate oligarchy. And I know enough about American history to know how much blood it cost –  no metaphor — for workers qua workers to gain any semblance of human rights from their employers. That’s apparently a battle without end.

So all of my natural sympathies in the NBA lockout go with the players. No one ever paid a dime to see the Cavs’ Dan Gilbert or any other franchise owner write a check or take a phone call. The players ARE the game, and they have precious little time to make the money they make, especially compared with the long-term earning and staying power of billionaires with business interests way beyond their basketball teams. LeBron James’s career could end on any game night with a torn knee ligament — not that I’d evah, evah, evah, evah wish for such a thing to come to pass — but Heat owner Micky Arison’s fleet of Carnival Cruise Line boats will sail on serenely. (Yeah, Timmy D, I know they’re ships, not boats. Fuck you.)

Why then do I hope that this lockout turns into a lost season?

1. Because we’re not really talking about a traditional union. We’re talking about a professional guild whose members’ average annual income is more than five million dollars. We’re talking about a 50/50 split of revenues being portrayed as an attempt by the owners to destroy the players’ right to bargain as a collective. We’re talking about a whole bunch of fools, most of whom mean well, talking about plantations and slaves. We’re talking bullshit, pure and simple..

2. Because anything that costs LeBron James a year of his career — a year that no amount of money will ever buy back — is a good thing in my book.

By the way, anyone who saw The Decision as some bold new paradigm for young athletes to follow to seize control of their working lives — forged by that brave warrior-pioneer, King James — ought to recognize that he has been, and continues to be, entirely missing from what’s going on between the league’s owners and players. He’s not in New York showing his solidarity with his brethren; instead, he’s shooting hoops as a rec-league fill-in. As always, when crunch time comes, the Chosen One can’t handle the pressure.

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