The State of the NFL – Guest Post by Knox McCoy

November is a special month. Along with some awesome, awesome posts about facial hair in celebration of No Shave November, The GBOAT is also featuring a collection of guest posts on Fridays.

Last week, Stanton Martin provided what appears to be an inarguable history of sports.

Today, we welcome Knox McCoy, A.K.A. somebody who actually knows something about sports but still wants to be funny about it.

A.K.A. stands for Ambitiously Killed an Aardvark, which is a truly special accomplishment.

So football, right?

So good. I love it. You love it. Basically, everyone loves it except Europeans because they play the “real” version or something. Yeah. Good job guys. Fainting because some guy built like Clay Aiken grazed you with his celery stick thin legs is so BOSS. You totally deserve to be the real football. NO REALLY. I’ll tell people like Ndamukong Suh and Ray Lewis that they are such Streisands for being obscenely fast and strong and colliding with other massive, athletic human beings 100 times a game. I mean it’s like, go have a tea party, or watch Gossip Girl or something Ray Lewis.

Which brings me to the point of this post, which is about the state of the NFL today.

Essentially, the most compelling part about football today is the collisions. It’s hard-wired into our DNA to love body shots and it’s why America’s Funniest Home Videos is STILL on: because EVERYONE loves a good testicle tackle.

I played football in high school. I was a linebacker and it was fun. In high school, you have a freshman team who plays a season and then the varsity who plays a separate season. This is the place where guys like Matt Saracen and Smash Williams exist. Our varsity team was not great but our freshman team was all cleareyesfullheartscan’tlose. We were undefeated and pretty fantastic. So after our season, a few of us were asked to play varsity. So the coach approaches me and is all like,

“We’d like you to come play on the varsity team for the playoffs.”

And I was like, “Ok. Do you want me to play quarterback like Jason Street before paralysis?”

And he was like, “Um no.”

And I was like, “Do you want me to play running back and talk EXCLUSIVELY in the third person like Smash Williams?”

And he was like, “No.”

And I was like, “Do you want me to kill a man trying to rape my unattainably hot girlfriend and then dump his body in some kind of Texan ravine even though I clearly killed him in self-defense?”

And he was like, “Hahaha LOL wait whuut? Who did that?”

And I was like, “Landry. Didn’t you watch Season 2?”

And he was like, “No I heard it was awful.”

And I was like, “You’re right. It was. Don’t EVEN get me started on Santiago.”

And he was like, “Ok, I won’t.”

And I was like, “Do you want me to play linebacker like Tim Riggins and be like ‘DURN IT, BILLEE. TEXAS FOUREVAR!’

And he was like, “Kinda sorta.”

Come to find out, he wanted me to be a wedge buster. Do you know what a wedge buster is?

QUICK LESSON
A wedge buster is now outlawed, but in 1998, it was a position on kickoffs where the wedge buster sprinted downfield and hurtled himself into the “wedge” (a wall of opposing players built to obscure the kick returner) in hopes of knocking it down like a wrecking ball so that the wedgebuster’s teammates could find and destroy the kick returner. If the word ‘kamikaze’ is leaping to mind, then treat yo’ self.
END OF QUICK LESSON

Essentially, this was awesome. This hurt a lot. But it was awesome. You don’t really hear a lot about wedge busters, because as I mentioned, they are outlawed now. That position is the asbestos of football because at the time, everyone was like, “YOU GUYS. It’s TOTALLY safe for high school-aged boys to run full-speed and launch themselves at a wall of other teenage boys running full speed. It’s things like Splenda that are REALLY troubling.”

Now, we realize that human missiles aren’t great ideas. Which is progress. But at the same time, the game is changing to reflect this enlightenment and it’s changing the way we perceive the game. Essentially, toughness and massive collision are being legislated into oblivion.

Basically offensive players are like, “Don’t touch me there!” about everywhere except for a few inches on their torso, where they can be tackled.

Defensive players are like, “For serious?”

And refs are like, “HAHA OMG TOTALLY. FLAG! EXCESSIVE MANLINESS! INFINITY TOUCHDOWNS!”

And the commissioner is like, “LOL You just got fined, Son. How much does you make?”

And the defensive players are like, “X Million. Why?”

And the commissioner is like, “What a coincidence! That’s the exact amount of your fine. Please pull through and pay at the first window.”

And that’s basically the state of the NFL today.