COWARDS WITH KEYBOARDS: THE NEW AGE OF HATCHET JOB JOURNALISM IN FOOTBALL

              This is by no means a slam on professional legitimate sports writers that have integrity, credibility and class. There are many that I respect and admire. This is aimed at those that have none of those admirable traits that are legion today.  I don’t know when  this disturbing trend of hatchet job journalism became  popular but I myself am getting very sick of these mean spirited “journalists” that enjoy writing about the failures, tragedies and disappointments of others. It is everywhere today, these “cowards behind keyboards” that write hateful and hurtful things about the personal lives or careers of others in the limelight that they themselves will never see.  We see it with politics, with celebrities, but nowhere is this more prevalent than in sports, especially football, with articles like “25 BIGGEST HEISMAN FLOPS IN THE NFL OF ALL TIME” that I saw recently.

            I am using this particular title above as an example of a microcosm of a macrocosm of these kinds of "journalists" that have no absolutely no business writing anything at all,  as all of these bozos have zero football credibility to begin with.  They take cheap shots at Heisman Trophy winners but yet not ONE of these pencil-necked  “sports writers” probably even played flag football themselves, let alone know how to throw a spiral. But yet they think that they  are “experts” on these college football standouts and can pontificate about  what “lousy careers” they had in the NFL??? HUH??? Are you kidding me??  

          The questions I want ask these "experts" are: "Excuse me, but who the (fill in the expletive of your choice) are you? Where did YOU play your college football or where did you coach in college? What NFL team did you play for or coach for or scout for that would give you such football omniscience?"

          If some NFL Hall of Famer or an ex-NFL or division one college player wants to write an article like this above,  then they have earned the  RIGHT to and the CREDIBILITY to do so…(Mike Ditka for example has an excellent column where he sometimes criticizes players in the NFL. But the difference is he  has the credentials to do so as a Hall Of Fame NFL player and Super Bowl winning head coach.) The rise of the internet, blogs, tweets, and social media  has given a forum and platform to an army of these malcontents that obviously still have some deep seeded resentment issues for getting picked very last out on the playground for sports. Now they have an "equalizer" in being to be able to lash out at strangers more successful than they will ever be, by verbally sniping them from behind the safety of keyboard on the internet.

           One of these idiots, (who I will not name because I do not want to be a hypocrite myself,)  is a perfect classic example of this and of his ilk: He wrote  a column several years ago about "The Biggest NFL Busts Of All Time" on on a well known sports site. I had never heard of this tool, and just by looking at his picture, I could tell he was the size of a Wizard of Oz munchkin and I knew immediately he had never put on a football helmet himself. Even more laughable was that he wrote  about an age in football in which the era he wrote about, (and after a little research on his biography,) I found out  that he was an 6 year old kid at the time probably still watching Barney, Sesame Street, or the Teletubbies. How can this fool write about a time period 20 years later that he never saw or could possibly understand as an 6 year old child even from a fan's perspective??

            First of all, a Heisman Trophy winner is not a guaranteed ticket to NFL success. Some luckily have had equal stellar NFL careers as they had in their college careers and some have not. But that is beside the point. My question is WHY and for WHAT reason do they want to write about the failures or disappointments of these past Heisman Winners: What is their motive? Did they ever pause to think of the people they are smearing and stop to consider their feelings?? What pleasure does ANY person get by sticking a knife in someone's back by attacking them in the media for the sole intent of hurting them or by trying to immortalize them by embarrassing or humiliating them? Like I said, I think the ONLY thing that explains this, is that these losers were losers themselves in sports and this is their chance to stick it to the letter winners they never were. 

             Second of all, these Heisman Trophy winners were extremely young men coming out of college and I am sure each and every one of them had dreams of being an NFL star and did their very best to succeed.  But the sad truth is some dreams don’t work out. This is true of any NFL player. Some maybe didn’t have the right team or system to excel, some had unfortunate career ending injuries that robbed them of their talent, and others maybe weren’t mature enough to handle the money, the spot light, or the pressure. But these Heisman Trophy winners are ALL winners  as the best player in college football voted by their peers and a panel of credible coaches. 

             I get really angry at seeing their names tarnished by these malevolent  maggots who never even played sports themselves but yet that sit behind a keyboard and criticize a player about a game they don't know anything about nor participated in (or have any kind or any sense of decency and respect.) I would love for these wimps to say the mud they sling to their intended target's faces in person and see how they fare. If there are any losers or busts it is all these trolls that write these tabloid-like turds. 

            I would encourage you as readers, the next time you see some mean spirited article written by one of these cowards of this ilk, shoot them an e-mail and ask them what I said above : “Who the (####) are you? Where did YOU play your college football or where did YOU coach in college? What NFL team did you play for or coach? Please send resume."