Outside The Lines -Why You Should LOVE It
Posted 08-20-2012 at 01:04 PM by SaintsBro
Wow. Did ya'll watch this? It got me almost as pumped up for the season as watching Youtube videos of Drew in the pregame huddle or Tracy Porter taking it to the house in Miami -- you know the clip where you see Sharper yells something at Peyton Manning and taunts him as he runs past him. Love. It.
Here's the thing. Don't fall for it. Don't be butt hurt. Transcend the butthurt. Embrace the hate. Breathe it in. I watched this thing and I loved every minute of it. I loved it because they're lies, I loved it because they're wrong, and mainly I loved it because I know good and well that it would piss Outside The Lines, Goodell and the rest of the world off to no end, if they heard that Saints fans down here LOVED the report, and embraced it and high-fived each other, when they learned that people out there thought their coach was "rogue" "cocky" "troubled" or "arrogant." Fist pump! Yesssss!
If you watched it objectively, with fan goggles off, it was actually pretty weird. John Barr's portion of Outside The Lines yesterday seemed to me, to be more focused about un-named journalist sources grumbling about how Sean Payton treats reporters, and how no one in New Orleans would answer Barr's questions, than anything else. We all know what a terrible crime that is. Turrible, just turrible.
Sean Payton not answering a local beat reporter's question about a Jeremy Shockey rumor that he got from the internet, from some teenage kid on Saints Report? Oh, the humanity. The arrogance. The shield cannot abide this hubris. Can Payton ever be rehabilitated, or is he just too arrogant for words? According to one unnamed league source, Payton is a "cancer" on the NFL? Oh man that got me sooo stoked. You know why? Because cancer wins, dammit!
They conveniently left out details that this unnamed reporter who got "blacklisted" for asking a stupid question was ...Bryan Allee-Walsh.
Now. Brian's okay. Not a great writer, not bad, just okay. But put yourself in Payton's shoes for a minute. When Payton looks out from the podium, the expectation is that he will see a bunch of professional sports reporters, doing their jobs. For the most part he does see that. But it's New Orleans. The Deep South. We're way down in Dixie here. Payton is from Illinois, up north, and he has done time dealing with big powerhouse media types in Dallas and New York. He looks out there, and sees a room of reporters... and then he sees this one dumpy, kinda-hungover looking guy off in the back corner, with a flowing ratty gray beard, who insists on looking like a gonzo journalist version of General Robert E. Lee in a Hawaiian shirt and straw hat. Is Payton supposed to take this guy serious? Looking like that?
Some of these "lifer" local reporters with nowhere else to go, seem to forget that how you look and how you carry yourself is important, in any profession. That you get back what you give out. That if you look like you are a dapper Confederate colonel dressed year-round for the Economy Hall tent at the Jazz Festival, serious people might not take you so seriously. That if you dress like you are in the same decade with everybody else, or don't look like you just wandered in off Bourbon Street, they might take you more seriously.
If you listen to the NATIONAL guys, like Pat Yasinkas (on the show), the respected guys, and especially the media guys who actually played or coached the game, they don't EVER seem to have any problem with Payton's attitude! Even Larry Holder, a national CBS guy recently turned local, he came right out after this story and said, "no, I don't have a problem with Payton, and that story was wrong." Jim Fassell basically said, "yeah he's cocky, but you have to be, in this profession, we all are." Hmmmm.
The ones who are clueless, or extremely LOCAL, or have an axe to grind, well they're the only ones who seem to see this horrific "dark side" of Payton or his "arrogance" when he's dealing with the press. Who'd a thunk it. Beats me why that happens.
I mean Jeff Duncan had all that hard-nosed football reporting experience and expertise, before he came here to New Orleans, right? Knows the game inside and out? Uh, no. I'm sure Sean Payton didn't ever Google Duncan's resume, or read Duncan's 2004 book "Tales From The Saints Sideline," or nobody in the office ever told Payton about it. The book where Duncan called the Saints "the NFL's bumbling, lovable Fleur de Losers"? Payton came here to get RID of all that type of talk. Duncan was one of the main ones perpetuating and doing it. You do the math on that one. Payton is so freaking arrogant, to not be amused by bag-head jokes!
So Brian's journalistic question that got him temporarily booted from the press pool in 2009 was, in essence: I heard a rumor on the internet, that you are lying about the turf toe, that it's not turf toe, did Jeremy Schockey actually injure himself by kicking his foot against a soda machine.
Is Payton supposed to dignify this with a straight answer? Now I don't know about you folks, but I can think of about eight million better things for Sean Payton to be doing with his time in the middle of a Super Bowl run, then answering stupid questions from local beat reporters, debunking anonymous posts and threads that came from Saints Report... or Canal Street Chronicles or The Onion for that matter. It's the National football league. Payton is the coach. Next time, ask him a question about football, Brian!
So before we freak out, or bust a blood vessel by hating on ESPN or John Barr, ask yourself this question. How many other NFL teams out there have a half hour special of "bulletin board material" for the season, custom made for them, and entirely dedicated to them? Most teams and locker rooms have to grope for bulletin board material, for motivation.
That montage of last season highlights and collisions that played on the Jumbotron in the Dome, before the Saints took the field last Friday night? Benson had to pay somebody money to have that thing edited up and made, to get folks pumped up. And now we have ESPN coming down here, spending their money, and going to all this trouble researching and editing all these really slick and very classy-looking productions just for US, just for our players and coaches to watch them and get that chip on the shoulder even bigger and more ready for a fight. This stuff looks a heckuva lot better than Gregg Williams' crappy Powerpoint slides, don't you think?
Here's the thing. Don't fall for it. Don't be butt hurt. Transcend the butthurt. Embrace the hate. Breathe it in. I watched this thing and I loved every minute of it. I loved it because they're lies, I loved it because they're wrong, and mainly I loved it because I know good and well that it would piss Outside The Lines, Goodell and the rest of the world off to no end, if they heard that Saints fans down here LOVED the report, and embraced it and high-fived each other, when they learned that people out there thought their coach was "rogue" "cocky" "troubled" or "arrogant." Fist pump! Yesssss!
If you watched it objectively, with fan goggles off, it was actually pretty weird. John Barr's portion of Outside The Lines yesterday seemed to me, to be more focused about un-named journalist sources grumbling about how Sean Payton treats reporters, and how no one in New Orleans would answer Barr's questions, than anything else. We all know what a terrible crime that is. Turrible, just turrible.
Sean Payton not answering a local beat reporter's question about a Jeremy Shockey rumor that he got from the internet, from some teenage kid on Saints Report? Oh, the humanity. The arrogance. The shield cannot abide this hubris. Can Payton ever be rehabilitated, or is he just too arrogant for words? According to one unnamed league source, Payton is a "cancer" on the NFL? Oh man that got me sooo stoked. You know why? Because cancer wins, dammit!
They conveniently left out details that this unnamed reporter who got "blacklisted" for asking a stupid question was ...Bryan Allee-Walsh.
Now. Brian's okay. Not a great writer, not bad, just okay. But put yourself in Payton's shoes for a minute. When Payton looks out from the podium, the expectation is that he will see a bunch of professional sports reporters, doing their jobs. For the most part he does see that. But it's New Orleans. The Deep South. We're way down in Dixie here. Payton is from Illinois, up north, and he has done time dealing with big powerhouse media types in Dallas and New York. He looks out there, and sees a room of reporters... and then he sees this one dumpy, kinda-hungover looking guy off in the back corner, with a flowing ratty gray beard, who insists on looking like a gonzo journalist version of General Robert E. Lee in a Hawaiian shirt and straw hat. Is Payton supposed to take this guy serious? Looking like that?
Some of these "lifer" local reporters with nowhere else to go, seem to forget that how you look and how you carry yourself is important, in any profession. That you get back what you give out. That if you look like you are a dapper Confederate colonel dressed year-round for the Economy Hall tent at the Jazz Festival, serious people might not take you so seriously. That if you dress like you are in the same decade with everybody else, or don't look like you just wandered in off Bourbon Street, they might take you more seriously.
If you listen to the NATIONAL guys, like Pat Yasinkas (on the show), the respected guys, and especially the media guys who actually played or coached the game, they don't EVER seem to have any problem with Payton's attitude! Even Larry Holder, a national CBS guy recently turned local, he came right out after this story and said, "no, I don't have a problem with Payton, and that story was wrong." Jim Fassell basically said, "yeah he's cocky, but you have to be, in this profession, we all are." Hmmmm.
The ones who are clueless, or extremely LOCAL, or have an axe to grind, well they're the only ones who seem to see this horrific "dark side" of Payton or his "arrogance" when he's dealing with the press. Who'd a thunk it. Beats me why that happens.
I mean Jeff Duncan had all that hard-nosed football reporting experience and expertise, before he came here to New Orleans, right? Knows the game inside and out? Uh, no. I'm sure Sean Payton didn't ever Google Duncan's resume, or read Duncan's 2004 book "Tales From The Saints Sideline," or nobody in the office ever told Payton about it. The book where Duncan called the Saints "the NFL's bumbling, lovable Fleur de Losers"? Payton came here to get RID of all that type of talk. Duncan was one of the main ones perpetuating and doing it. You do the math on that one. Payton is so freaking arrogant, to not be amused by bag-head jokes!
So Brian's journalistic question that got him temporarily booted from the press pool in 2009 was, in essence: I heard a rumor on the internet, that you are lying about the turf toe, that it's not turf toe, did Jeremy Schockey actually injure himself by kicking his foot against a soda machine.
Is Payton supposed to dignify this with a straight answer? Now I don't know about you folks, but I can think of about eight million better things for Sean Payton to be doing with his time in the middle of a Super Bowl run, then answering stupid questions from local beat reporters, debunking anonymous posts and threads that came from Saints Report... or Canal Street Chronicles or The Onion for that matter. It's the National football league. Payton is the coach. Next time, ask him a question about football, Brian!
So before we freak out, or bust a blood vessel by hating on ESPN or John Barr, ask yourself this question. How many other NFL teams out there have a half hour special of "bulletin board material" for the season, custom made for them, and entirely dedicated to them? Most teams and locker rooms have to grope for bulletin board material, for motivation.
That montage of last season highlights and collisions that played on the Jumbotron in the Dome, before the Saints took the field last Friday night? Benson had to pay somebody money to have that thing edited up and made, to get folks pumped up. And now we have ESPN coming down here, spending their money, and going to all this trouble researching and editing all these really slick and very classy-looking productions just for US, just for our players and coaches to watch them and get that chip on the shoulder even bigger and more ready for a fight. This stuff looks a heckuva lot better than Gregg Williams' crappy Powerpoint slides, don't you think?
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