Revenge is for suckers

Alec Nathan, Bleacherreport:

"When it happens to your son, it's a whole different context. Or your daughter or any one of your kids and I think any parent kind of understands that. They'd rather take the slings and arrows in the heart than have their kids take it. For what the league did to him (Tom Brady) and what Roger Goodell constantly lied about is beyond reprehensible as far as I'm concerned.

“He (Goodell) went on a witch hunt and went in way over his head and had to lie his way out in numerous ways, and the reality is that Tommy never got suspended for deflating footballs,” Tom Brady Sr. said. “He got suspended because the court said that he could, Roger Goodell could do anything he wanted to do to any player for any reason whatsoever. That’s what happened. The NFL admitted they had no evidence on him.” If the Patriots win Super Bowl LI, Brady and Goodell would inevitably cross paths during the handing off of the Lombardi Trophy. Steve believes that Roger shouldn’t even be on the same stage as his son. “ Somebody that has Roger Goodell’s ethics doesn’t belong on any stage that Tom Brady is on.”

Prior to Super Bowl 1, Green Bay Packers' Head Coach Vince Lombardi remarked that "you players should be proud of your profession." 50 years later, Tom Brady Sr. and New England Patriots' owner Bob Kraft want to incite the masses and upstage NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. The four game suspension levied against Patriots' star QB Tom Brady pales in comparison to the one year penalty that Packers' RB Paul Hornung received. Hornung, along with Detroit Lions defensive tackle Alex Karras, were banished by Commissioner Pete Rozelle on April 17, 1963 indefinitely for betting on NFL games and associating with undesirable persons.

Paul Hornung was the 1956 Heisman Trophy recipient from Notre Dame. He is the only winner from a team with a losing record. He was the first person to be inducted into the High School, College and Pro Football Hall of Fame. His 176 points in 1961 were an NFL record, and his 19 points in a NFL title game still stands. The suspensions lasted only one season, the fines were minor ($2,000 for each player) and the betting incidents now appear small. But the suspensions were crucial, representing the establishment of his authority and the backing of the owners. "I felt relieved," Pete Rozelle said. Forthright in admitting to his mistake, Hornung's image went relatively untarnished.

In 1990, the NFL instituted the Pete Rozelle Trophy to honor the Super Bowl MVP. NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle died at home on December 6, 1996 in Rancho Santa Fe, CA. Paul Hornung attended the funeral services.

In the final act of The Sting, Henry Gondorff(Paul Newman) tells Johnny Hooker(Robert Redford) that "You beat 'em, kid." Hooker's response was "You're right. It's not enough, but it's close." Tom Brady Sr. and Bob Kraft would be best served in watching this four star gem.


Paul Murphy

Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy

Fat, drunk and stupid finishes off the season for the New York Giants

The Deltas lived by one rule. "We can do anything we want. We're college students."
"What we need right now," Otter tells his fraternity brothers, "is a stupid, futile gesture on someone's part."

The New York Giants wide receiving core of: Odell Beckam Jr., Sterling Shepard, Victor Cruz, and Roger Lewis spent their off day on Monday in Miami Beach. The four partied at a Miami nightclub and spent time on a boat with Justin Bieber. This was their preparation for the wildcard showdown with the Green Bay Packers at Lambeau Field.

The Giants took out their frustrations at blowing their ​first ​shot at the Super Bowl​ in five years by trashing the jumbo jet that carried them home — leaving it reeking of booze and forcing a major clean-up at Newark Airport, passengers who boarded the plane afterward told The New York Post on Monday. The Big Blue got trashed by the Packers, 38-13.

Mark Kropf said he was waiting to board United Airlines Flight 934 out of Newark when “the pilot came out and asked for everyone’s patience, and shared where the plane came from and that the plane needed extra help repairing and cleaning the interior.”

“Another 30 minutes passed and the gate agent told us it was the Giants that destroyed the biz class cabin, and we saw service personnel walking countless seat cushions off the plane. Flight 934 was scheduled to depart for London’s Heathrow Airport at 8:30 a.m., but didn’t take off until 11:47 a.m.

Seven years of college down the drain. Movie critic, Roger Ebert gave the movie four stars. Maybe the New York Giants can tell the FAA(Federal Aviation Administration) that it was just a college prank to delay the continuing flight. Season's over.


Paul Murphy

Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy

May I have another

Cherry Starr, wife of 82-year-old Hall of Fame quarterback Bart Starr, recently outlined severe hazing her husband underwent while at the University of Alabama.

"He was hospitalized at one point in traction," she told Joseph Goodman of AL.com. "That was in the days when they were initiated into the A-Club, and they had severe beatings and paddling. From all the members of the A-Club, they lined up with a big paddle with holes drilled in it, and it actually injured his back."

She added, "His back was never right after that. It was horrible. It was not a football injury. It was an injury sustained from hazing. His whole back all the way up to his rib cage looked like a piece of raw meat. The bruising went all the way up his back. It was red and black and awful looking. It was so brutal."

The Starrs hadn't disclosed the injury until now, as the former quarterback always maintained he had injured his back in a punting exercise.

"It was hell," Starr's teammate and former Alabama tight end Nick Germanos said of the beatings from the A-Club. "Lord have mercy, it was a rough initiation."

Starr possibly got the worst of it because he not only eloped before his junior year—schools would remove or reduce scholarships for players who married in those days, according to Goodman—but he also did so with an Auburn student, Cherry.

His back injuries, which would hound him for the rest of his career and most of his life, cost him a major chunk of his junior season before he was inexplicably benched for much of his senior year.

Bart Starr graduated from the University of Alabama in 1956 and started his professional career with the Green Bay Packers. Paul "Bear" Bryant replaced head coach,Jennings B. Whitworth for the Crimson Tide of Alabama following a 0-10 record. Bryant was famous for his barbaric tactics and the hazing continued.

In 1954, Bryant had been the head coach of Texas A&M. His first season produced a mark of 1-9 which led to the training camp battle in the summer of 1955 held in Junction, Texas. Bear took his squad out onto the scorched plains to see who would survive.The "survivors" were given the name "Junction Boys".

Shortly before his death, Bear Bryant met with evangelist Robert Schuller on a plane flight and the two talked extensively about religion, which apparently had a considerable impression on the coach, who felt considerable guilt over his mistreatment of the Junction Boys and hiding his smoking and drinking habits from his mother.

Starr, who’s now 82, is unable to discuss the matter after suffering two strokes in 2014. According to Cherry, he never wanted the hazing injury to become public because “it would make him look bad.” Only now do she and her husband feel comfortable talking about an injury that required spine adjustments and epidurals until the 1980s, when famed orthopedist James Andrews discovered a nearly invisible crack in one of Starr’s vertebra.

In a weird twist, the back injury is indirectly responsible for Starr’s standout NFL career. After his rookie season in 1956, Starr was called to active duty in the Air Force. But his back was so badly injured that he failed his physical and was deemed unfit for military service. He ended up playing 15 seasons in Green Bay, helping lead the Packers to five NFL titles, including victories in Super Bowl I and II. Starr is only one of five players to capture multiple Super Bowl MVP's. In 1977, he was elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame.


Paul Murphy

Follow me on Twitter at @_prmurphy