The Hate List: 4/29/09 – My Top Two Most Hated Sports Teams

The top two teams on my hate list do not even play in the NFL…

FULL DISCLOSURE: I spent eight years as a student of Our Lady of Fatima Elementary School and Home for Sexually Frustrated Women in Penguin Costumes. My mission while I was there was to torture nuns. Their mission was to beat me. Neither party failed to meet their objective.

The reason for this disclosure makes a modicum of sense when you learn the runner-up on my personal Hate List is…

THE NOTRE DAME FIGHTING IRISH 

Where do I begin?

Every year, it’s the same ol’ story: Notre Dame has one of the top ten recruiting classes, then they gag in a big game or three and end up sucking. They often lose one or two blue-chippers a year because the recruits cannot hack the “stringent academic standards Notre Dame demands of its students.”

What’s the word I’m looking for? Sheep__?… No… Alpaca__?… No…

BULLS#$@!

Given the advantages the Irish enjoy—NBC contract, weekly television, football conference independence—they should win a national championship every year. When Notre Dame manages to win 6–7 games a year they are awarded a second tier bowl game, thereby, often screwing a much more deserving, smaller conference team out of a big payday. There was a time Fighting Irish refused to go to a second-rate bowl game

Watching Notre Dame lose is about as spiritually uplifting as sports allows a heathen like me to be.

You might be asking, “…but Gairzo, why would a nice Catholic boy like you be a hater of the most revered Catholic institution in America?”   The answer—besides the fact this topic provides me the perfect passive aggressive way to avenge the Evil Sister Euphemia’s sadistic tendencies—is, in a word…

HYPOCRISY

In 2001, the Fighting Irish hired George O’Leary as the Domer’s head football coach. He had very recently turned around the Georgia Tech program. O’Leary resigned five days later because, as a young guy, he padded his resume. Okay, I can understand the need to maintain the illusion of integrity. But, I would have also fired the AD for not vetting his candidates more closely.

Then, Notre Dame shocks the world and hires Tyrone Willingham who had made Stanford football, yes, Stanford, respectable. They give TW, an African-American, a five-year contract. The “shock” comes from Mr. Willingham’s race; given the fact the school had never even interviewed a black individual for the head coaching position. His hiring was supposed to demonstrate Notre Dame had evolved from a lily-white institution into a progressive bastion of diversity—even though the deepest rumblings of dissent came from the school’s nation-wide and predominantly white legion of fans.

After winning ten games in his first campaign, Willingham was fired after two mediocre campaigns; his record was 21-15.

First year hires get five years to fail—at most universities. Makes sense, because college football coaches can’t field a team of “their kids” until after they recruit four years. Willingham got three. Even if we give the Notre Dame brass the benefit of the doubt, and not blame the Willingham debacle on racism, the facts say Willingham is the only ND football coach since Hugh Devore in 1945 not to be given at least 5 years at the helm. Willingham was the first African-American to coach any Notre Dame sports team—and the only one to this day.

For an in depth statistical analysis of ND’s hypocrisy regarding Mr. Willingham, read this commentary from Jon Wilner:

http://blogs.mercurynews.com/collegesports/2008/12/03/charlie-weis-return-makes-it-official-the-irish-are-hypocrites/

But, wait, my dearies, there is so much more…

THE CATHOLIC THING

Sorry, but you can’t boast about being a great Catholic University when altar boys are getting fondled under tabernacles across America. In fact, you might want to come out and support the victims of systemic pedophilia in some kind of public way.

You want the status of higher education pre-eminence in the Catholic universe? Donate a home game’s receipts to help kids whom your clergymen have scarred for life.

FIGHTING IRISH

I had the distinct pleasure of seeing my Irish neighbor, Tommy McLean’s, naturally red-faced head almost implode when I asked, “Hey Tommy, would you still root for Notre Dame if they were called the Passive Bulgarians?”

Seriously, the name “Fighting Irish” comes from the stereotypes of drunken Irish fighting while drinking. Even if you buy competing theories of the name being based on the famous Civil War brigade, perception does count. Calling a team the Fighting Irish is still the equivalent of say… The Baltimore Dumb Pollacks, The LaJolla Shining Wet Backs, or the California Bad Driving Asians.

Of course, one very possible side-effect of calling your team “The Fighting Irish”—the moniker could potentially embolden Irish Catholics who like to drink—and haven’t been to church in decades—to well, fight, at the drop of a penalty flag.

TOUCHDOWN JESUS

As opposed to a term like “The Immaculate Reception”, which cleverly describes a football play that seemed to have come about as a result of divine intervention, Touchdown Jesus is a mural of the Risen Savior looming above Notre Dame’s football stadium.

A few years back, I went to the annual ND spring game with my neighbor—he almost came to tears when he referenced Touchdown Jesus. I am not kidding; the man was about to weep.

Like many Irish fans, Tommy insists Jesus is signaling a touchdown.

I’m kind of thinking that’s not what the artist was going for.

BLUE JERSEYS

Talk about annoying. Please, if you nickname your football team with a negative ethnic stereotype have the decency to get the friggin’ color scheme right! I know the Irish have, on occasion, worn green jerseys, but the official team colors are blue and gold. And, no, I don’t care what those colors symbolize in Catholic mythology; if you call yourselves the Fighting Irish you are required to wear green—Kelly green.

Imagine the Red Sox wearing gold leggings… the Duke Blue Devils in orange shorts… The Raidas in pink jerseys…

WHAT THE F%#K!!?

The only other sports team that boils my plasma more than the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, the team destined to always be number one with a hollow point bullet on my Hate List is…

THE NEW YORK YANKEES 

This sports franchise represents all that is, has been, and forever will be wrong in American professional sports. Their corporate greed is the perfect American example of capitalism’s limitations as an economic structure.

GREED IS NOT GOOD

Before you assault my editor with vicious e-mails, and, please, feel free to do so, I do not begrudge great players—those who consistently average .300, smack 40 homers and/or 175 hits a year–the top money in their sport.

However, the Steinbrenners have single-handedly ruined baseball for a significant number of fans of less financially gifted franchises.

They are paying A.J. Burnett 13.2 million. By any measure of modern day statistical standards Burnett is barely a spider’s eyelash above average: 88-76 with a career ERA of 3.81. He also, conveniently, puts up his bigger numbers only when a new contract is at stake.

Hideki Matsui, 35 year-old designated hitter. Doesn’t even play the field: 13,000,000.00. Johnny Damon—terrible fielder, slightly above average hitter: 13,000,000.00.

And that ain’t all…

Forget the Stanks pay over the hill players obscene money. They even overpay the great players of the game. A-Roid—admitted, tiny-balled, steroids user—27,000,000.00. Let me write that out because I didn’t believe it when I verified the figure: twenty-seven million dollars!!!!

No athlete who has ever lived can justify earning that money.

However, if by yanking that kind of money from the Steinbrenners, A-Roid and his ilk hasten the team’s financial demise, then I hope Hank and the Boys suffocate between their own deep pockets

For all you Yankee fans out there, I know you are cursing. It ain’t my money, I’m from Pittsburgh, and that alone means I know nothing about winning baseball. No arguments here. The Pirates have sucked for so long Linda Lovelace has a lawsuit pending against them for copyright infringement. I also admit to a certain jealousy of nearly always seeing the Wankees making the post-season—but it’s way beyond petty jealousy.

Just like Neuter Dame, the Skanks have enjoyed certain advantages since the light bulb flashed over Abner Doubleday’s head.

The concentration of population in the New York Metro area gave the team once called the Highlanders the same economic advantages today’s Yankees enjoy. New York has always been able to pay the most to the best players just as they can today.

So, every time I hear Billy Crystal or some other smarmy Yankee fans drone on about how flies flutter like ballerinas around their hot dogs excuse me if I roll my eyes.

Don’t blame me if syrupy memories of the day Joe DiMaggio screwed Marilyn in centerfield, or the bonding a little boy enjoyed with his dad and a hooker on a steamy July afternoon makes me want to chug some ipecac syrup and give their remembrance a good taste of reality.

You know what, Billy? Nobody gives a damn. Not everybody thinks the Yankees have been fair to the game or to other teams in baseball. People in Kansas City and Minnesota, and Milwaukee have memories, too.

And, yes, Yankee lovers, I know. I could blame the four or five other teams who, along with the Yankees, relegate the rest of MLB to the ranks of a farm system—the Mets, Red Sox, Dodgers, and Cubs, but what fun would that be?

Besides, the Mets have no choice, as they are cross-town rivals in New York. Red Sox fans hate the Yanks worse than I ever can, the Dodgers high-tailed it out of New York, and the Cubbies are named after cute little baby bears. All legit reasons to like them and direct all my pent-up hate at the truly, and only, evil New York team.

Admittedly, there are smaller market teams that have found success in recent years but their long-term performances cannot and never will equal that of the Hankees. And, I am not blaming the Pinstripers for the utter failures of perennially poorly managed clubs like the Pirates and Royals.

I hate the Yankees because when they pay mediocre players huge money, the market skews unfairly and inexorably to them and the handful of teams who can, at least initially compete with the Steinbrenners.

To hell with the Yankees!

So tell us, who do you hate?

I am shocked that no Steeler haters have yet written in to excoriate your humble columnist and to disrespectfully refer to the only six—let me repeat—only six-time Super Bowl Champions as the Pittsburgh Squealers.

Where’s the Hate?

Next month: The Lighter Side of Hate…

• February 10, 2009 -- Poor Economy Doing It to Manny and the Mets (1)
• April 8, 2009 -- Panic in the Bronx (or, The Soap Opera Continues) (2)
• February 7, 2009 -- A-Fraud (2)
• October 30, 2008 -- Baseball’s New World Order (0)
• May 5, 2009 -- Red Sox 1, New Yankee Stadium 0 (0)