Sports media types can be so superficial and pretentious…
Especially those of the print persuasion.
The Sam Mellinger‘s of the sportswriting world don’t write fawning tributes and dole out miniscule wrist slaps to their sports heroes because they grew up dreaming of being investigative journalists, a la Woodward and Berstein.
The aforementioned who are so full of themselves and nerdish these days that nobody could possibly visualize them as the once-glam actors Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman who played them in the movie All the President’s Men.
Nope, it’s all about jock sniffing and the Bejamins for Sam and Joe Posnanski.
Oh, they’re talented wordsmiths alright.
They just don’t have much to say that about stuff that actually really much matters.
Take Mellinger’s column in the Kansas City Star about troubled Chiefs star Tyreek Hill.
Pretty much everyone in KC (who thought with their big heads as opposed to their little ones) knew the way Hill beat the tar out of the mother of his yet-to-be-born son, that he was a ne’er-do-well of the first order.
Yet the Chiefs swooped him up a couple years later and he went on to become of the team and league’s top stars.
So, dutifully Mellinger wrote at the time about what a bad dude Hill had been, but quickly changed his tune to celebrating Hill’s on-field successes and – given no high profile incidents or convictions – how Hill had turned his life around.
You know, out of sight, out of mind.
Trouble is, really bad dudes tend to remain really bad dudes.
Belcher
Kinda like that leopard that never changes its spots.
Which is maybe why, when it comes to criminals, there are so many repeat offenders, three-time-losers and the like.
For example, in a 2012 study of battered women, 32 percent “were re-assaulted after their partners participated in violence treatment programs. An even larger percentage – 70 –were subjected to verbal abuse, 45% to controlling behaviors, and 43% experienced threats.”
Factor in the enormous egos and paychecks of NFL stars – the fan adoration and jock sniffer media adulation – and maybe steroids and other drugs – and what are the odds dudes of Hill and former Chiefs star Kareem Hunt turning into choir boys and living happily ever after?
So forget all the faux handwringing and politically correct double speak Mellinger laid down “grieving” for Hill’s previously assaulted girlfriend and banged up three year-old son.
The bottom line is that true fans of the so-called “Chiefs Kingdom” – Mellinger included – mainly care about one thing and one thing only:
Just win, baby!
Chiefs fans are not reading the Star to hear Mellinger equivocate about some lunkhead jock’s bad behavior.
They’re there to be titillated by lavishly-worded, poetic prose celebrating the winning exploits of Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes.
And if Hill, Hunt and Jovan Belcher mess up, of course Chiefs fans want to slow down and get a good glimpse of the grizzly roadside accident before they settle into being massively mad at the players for screwing up the team’s chance of winning a Super Bowl.
For the most part though, they could care less about Mellinger or pretty much anybody else proselytizing about what a sad situation it is and trying to conjure up some sort of Oliver Twist vibe.
The truth is, the Chiefs have an increasingly long track record of throwing caution to the wind and hiring tremendously athletic bad guys to put butts in seats at Arrowhead.
Ditto for Mellinger in the Star’s losing effort to stave off hemorrhaging readers.
Unfortunately, KC’s local newspaper of record is not going to succeed by writing weepy sports columns that zero in on political correctness rather than bottom line reality – that being that the Chiefs well could be up you-know-what creek next year with the loss of two of its top three superstars.
And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what Chiefs fans expect from sportswriters – not cleverly worded morality sermons.
Where are the leaders in the black community with enough guts to speak out and demand changes in the violence in their community?
The local radio and TV stations wouldn’t have anything to talk about if black-on-black violence in KC ended. ….well they’d still have the nightly house fire in kck.
If Hill actually broke his 3 yo son’s arm and beat up his pregnant girlfriend again — he needs to be tarred, feathered and run out of the USA.
PS: the gold teeth tell a lot about the man …. and it’s not good. Thug.
Yeah, the columnists at the Star blathering about how well Hill’s handled his richly-deserved “second chance” rings a little hollow when you cast your aspersions upon that lovely photo of him demonstrating how far he’s come.
Homers – fans, scribes, announcers, are legion. Hypocrisy too. ‘Cosell’ing, aka ‘telling it like it is’ – is rare, stands, scribedom and booth. Howard tack employed, employees often become former’s, as in the case late KC Athletics broadcaster Red Rush.
Return now those thrilling days of yesteryear when the swiss were Chiefs and the A’s were, well, what they always were. On the heels perpetual lack of success, A’s Owner Charlie Finley’s ‘cellar-bray-tion’ was born. A mix place reside and sound the mascot mule (moreso, nece$$ity mother of invention), aft exiting AL basement (a few hours) late 1965 Finley ordered Rush to announce ‘the A’s are going to win the pennant.’ He did… then added “I’m just not sure when” (swiss chiefs fans identify; thus, Rush first and only year in KC ended.
It proved contagious: that same year, (soon to be former) Chiefs Head of Talent man Don Klosterman uttered his infamous epitaph “Kansas City isn’t so much Heaven or Hell as purgatory.”
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Which brings us to today’s running joke of half an century in the making, swiss chiefs.
The record affirming how successful local also-rans are their annual quest disappoint, revisit ‘character.’ Have said it afore, say it once more: undisciplined, ‘in numbers too big to ignore’ nod Helen Reddy early 70’s lyrical roar; coincidentally, also the last time the swiss were Super Chiefs. Not coincidentally, last time on/off field deportment was not an epidemic of embarrassment as it is today.
The franchise has had its share of sorrow, on-field failures to off-field tragedies going back to their inception here in 1963. As society at large (and players are a part of that society) has gotten worse so too has ‘the show’ afield… and off it.
Where to begin/how much internet paper have we?
When you’re ‘desperate’ for success as the local franchise and its aficionados are, you will try almost anything (or anyone) change the results (see ‘Monday Night Football’ as well season meltdown 1998 the likes management/Schottenheimer et al/Thomas, Simmons part of a team also took a chance on guys named McGlockton/Rison, all in the name ‘just win baby’ (which no one beside the late Al Davis managed accomplish with some his teams of dubious regard.)
Is much easier and more convenient to blame 2018’s lack of success on something or someone other than on themselves: that the team was the most penalized entire NFL not near as romantic an notion ‘we wuz robbed’ by officials, bad luck, opposition, etc. Of course we’re the best – KC says so, and so it must be, according local aficionados.
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If you don’t believe lack of discipline on the field correlates with a lack off, peruse the headlines going back a couple years and more. Infractions (rules infractions/conduct) on as well off the field (police response and/or arrest/conviction) no longer exception: https://www.usatoday.com/sports/nfl/arrests/
I recall at least two ejections from games as well in 2018: Chris Jones (for throwing a punch) and Dee Ford (taunting/second unsportsmanlike – and you thought lining up off-sides was all he did wrong in ’18, right?)
In addition the recent reports re: Tyreek Hill and earlier former teammate Kareem Hunt for off field incidents, both current / former swiss chiefs De’Anthony Thomas, Demetrius Harris, Pierre-Louis, Roy Miller and Khaseem Greene names are found link above. ‘On the field’, boorish behavior not so distant includes a Marcus Peters (throwing official’s flag/punting the football into stands) and Travis Kelce (obscene gesture/throwing his towel at an official.) Sure, discipline has nothing to do with on field (or off) outcomes in life. Right. No ‘World Champions’ among those listed too.
A select few 1960’s hot dogs Namath/Fred Williamson wearing white shoes were not legion, and the latter’s cheap shots as his peer Johnny Sample’s too were rebuked by players opposition and on their own team (each played for multiple teams/wore out their welcomes each stop.) Occasional fight (1970 Otis Taylor et al vs Ben Davidson
et al) was aberration – more rare was an player(s) ‘showboating’ afield. Alas, things WERE changing, and not for the better.
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Elmo Wright and his end zone nonsense began in KC in 1971 (enraptured by himself by all appearances, was so great a player he was able to demonstrate his ‘hey, look at me everybody’ td dance a total of six times in a five year career… nuff said.) A couple years later, Billy ‘White Shoes’ Johnson brought his prima dona act to the NFL; that Johnson as Chiefs Wright/Williamson were never World Champions, poetic justice.
Flash forward century 21, the descent continues – now in free-fall – Kaycee’s team of ‘entertainers’… another long off-season to practice ‘their show’ dawg, if not size their ring fingers up for hardware.
Yesterday, if you wanted to watch Championship football played by the rules courtesy players did so with class, you watched the Green Bay Packers. If you are looking for it today, must make do impostors, players lacking class and results despite the modern day medicinal benefits, training, obscene $ and a rule-massaged game and stats that have turned what was once epic into an utter joke.
Desperation? Here in Kansas City? We spell it ‘wait till next year’, part 2019 verse 50.’
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Chiefs are cursed due to the Belcher suicide. Playing the game was disrespectful and showed what turds that organization is. They won’t win a Superbowl for 50 years.
The idea that people were tailgating and drinking it up only a few hours after they gave the ole coca-cola on the pavement treatment outside of the Chiefs Indoor Facility.
And remember Jamaal Charles decided to raise the kid. The next year the Chiefs made him take a pay cut.
Negocio es el negocio! So sayeth the Chiefs’ front office.
Tell you what, the fact that several weeks in, there’s still no word on something pretty basic – breaking a kids arm and roughing up family members – makes it seem like a fix may be in.