Tuesday, September 9, 2008

Broken News: Amid Discord, Frustrated God Cripples Brady, Puts World on Notice

brady knee
God smites the ligaments of Tom Brady early in the first quarter. (AP/Tom Smorgenberry, now deceased)

SILVER CITY--Distraught over the collapse this week of negotiations to find a replacement for the deposed Holy Ghost, God held a press conference where He stated His intention to revert to Old Testament form and start, "dealing on all the pricks who've been getting free passes lately."

A visibly irritated and uncharacteristically brash deity then claimed, "That asshole, [New England Patriots Quarterback] Tom Brady, was just the beginning. Rest assured, it won't be this season's last knee implosion."

When a reporter asked why God hadn't instead crippled Patriots coach, Bill Belichick, long considered one of the more rueful, dismissive, morally repugnant figures in professional sports, God immolated the journalist before training a smoldering finger on the press corps and asking, "Next question?" When met with silence, He continued, "What's wrong with you people? I pop the MVP's knee like a warm grape less than 15 minutes into the season and still my wrath is questioned? Of course I'll get to Belichick. Is it so wrong that before conjuring a massive heart attack or paralysis-inducing stroke while that cretin is greasing himself up for another roll in the rubber kiddie pool with a half-dozen prepubescent Thai boys, I warm up with a little debilitating knee injury that simultaneously ruined the lives every single Patriots fan and tanked no fewer than 10 million Fantasy Football seasons? If you'll allow me a small concession here, Jesus Christ..."

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell was quick to issue a response, insisting that the league would cooperate fully with God's decrees. "We are in no position to oppose His will, and ask only that Peyton Manning, LaDanian Tomlinson, Brett Favre, Adrian Peterson, and Tony Romo be spared, purely for commercial purposes. After all, a girl's gotta eat." At that, Goodell was stricken blind as his tongue turned into a pile of putrid ash.

NBC commentator Chris Collinsworth, predictably drunk during his segment, blurted out, "Who does this 'God' think he is, anyway? Brady breaks every offensive record in existence and gets rewarded with a season on the trainer's table? If I see That Guy on the street, I swear I'll knife--" before his hair caught fire and his teeth exploded one by one. Sources close to His Holiness suggested this only further infuriated God, as Collinsworth was all the way down at #7 on His list.

Only the recently retired John Lynch, a 15-year veteran and newest member of CBS’s 17-man, six-hour pregame preview show, “NFL Ex-Player Jugfuck and Mushmouthed Idiot Merry Go-Round” seemed to think before he opened his mouth. “I’m not saying He is wrong or in any way could be wrong,” Lynch whimpered through a torrent of nervous, pouring sweat. “But isn’t God in a Catch-22? If he injures more players then the profile of the league goes down, garnering less attention for each player he injures."

Lynch then checked over each shoulder for stray lightning bolts before clarifying, "Not that God even needs or would take advice from such a lowly wretch as myself,” before tearing off his microphone and scampering into the woods to hide.

Questions persist as to the true impetus behind God's sudden reversion to an iron-fisted ruler who once demanded child sacrifices and turned disobedient women into spice piles. Many wonder -- most either very quietly or to themselves -- if this can really be blamed solely on the lack of a successor to the Holy Ghost.

“It’s a lot of things,” said one of God’s circle on the condition of extreme anonymity while zipping up a fireproof suit. “As far as football goes, frankly He hasn't been paying much attention since the Montana years. When training camp started, He was talking about the upcoming season and He kept mentioning how 'great the LA Rams were going to be this year.’ We let him go on like that for a couple of weeks before we told him that the Rams moved to St. Louis and were going to be terrible. He didn’t take that so well. Then we did our Fantasy draft and he got stuck with Tavaris Jackson and Vince Young as his QBs and he just started throwing shit around and demanding a redraft. Then he locked Himself in His room for three days before coming out talking all this fire and brimstone and about ‘doin’ shit old school!’ He saw Brady walking around with some smug look on his face and a supermodel on his arm and He just said ‘Fuck this guy’ and, well, here we are.”

Inquiring minds question whether His holy wrath might be more justly trained on other sports, such as baseball. As Ken Burns, historian, jazzbo, and director of the documentary, Baseball, says, “No.” Or to put it more verbosely, “Look, with the same few mega rich teams like the Red Sox and Yankees dominating the sport for the past few years and pricing out the small markets with their reckless overspending, baseball already qualifies as sports hell and thus the domain of the Devil. Sure, He could take a run at America's Pastime but infringing on one of Satan's clearly designated playgrounds involves a ton of paperwork. Plus, any sport that punishes both the Kansas City Royals and Pittsburgh Pirates every year is A-OK with God. It stems from an incident at the 1992 MLB winter meetings where Willie Stargell got God to drink out of a punch bowl George Brett had peed in. He’s never really gotten over that one.”

With His wrath trained squarely on the National Football League, players, coaches and front office personnel are doing their best not to incur their own taste of God's seemingly random, horrific, non-specific sense of justice. The NFLPA today announced several new binding resolutions, all unanimously agreed upon during an overnight teleconference. The list includes a moratorium on pointing skyward during touchdown celebrations for fear The Almighty will take it as some sort of challenge, more affected weeping during pre-game prayer, new levels of incessant God-thanking during post-game interviews, and the addition of sulfur rain to this year's Super Bowl halftime show.

In light of these concessions, speculation abounds as to the identity of God's next target. The initial Vegas line, complete with perceived offenses, broke down as follows:
Bill Parcells (Giving hope to Dolphins fans): 7/2
Chad Johnson (Improperly translating 85 into “Ocho Cinco” and not “Ochenta Cinco”): 7/2
Art Modell (Refusal to move a second team out of Cleveland): 7/1
Al Michaels and John Madden (Using each successive year to further degrade their reputation as great broadcasters): 8/1
Peter King (Insufficient Brett Favre fellatio in his columns): 9/1
Tony Romo (Not laying a big enough egg in the playoffs so that God could break even after his Wildcard Weekend betting fiasco): 9/2

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