some fun, lighthearted, snippets of dr. z trying to be funny

after my marathon simmons piece yesterday, i would be lying if i said i had a ton of energy to put into an article today. so i did what any sensible person in my position would- headed over to cnnsi.com and checked out the latest rambling, nonsensical, unfunny mailbag from resident village idiot dr. z. included here are the best of the best dumb jokes and pieces of non-analysis the poor guy could muster up. hey, if chris w can do this, so can i.

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2007/writers/dr_z/05/24/michael-vick/2.html

this week, like any football writer worth his mustache, dr. z begins by weighing in on the whole clinton portis-michael vick-dogfighting thing.

The Skins have issued an apology. So has Portis. So has Samuels. Hey, fellas. Hey, Redskins. Take you're apologies and stick 'em.

the typo is [sic]. also, way to go, dr. z. you call those guys out. tell them how it is! i know a lot of "you're" readers were wondering whether or not you support portis and his remarks... glad we cleared that up. dr. z: always on the extremely obvious side of justice and not encouraging dogfighting.

See, the mistake we make is equating athletic excellence with excellence on a human level.

i don't think many people make that "equation" at all. right or wrong, with the way things have been going for the past 5-10 years, i think it's safe to say most people (especially casual fans) assume athletes are bad people until they see something to that indicates otherwise. now this assumption may not necessarily be true... but im pretty confident thats where most people's opinions start from when it comes to this topic. i have no proof of this whatsoever, but honestly... imagine taking a random poll of 100 people. how many do you think would agree with the statement "pro athletes, due to their excellence in athletics, are also excellent people in their personal lives." 10? 5? any? there are too many cincinnatti bengals out there making headlines, and not enough david ecksteins. (david eckstein did recently end poverty, correct? i remember seeing a lot of articles about him a while back and since hes not that good at baseball, i figured he must've ended poverty.) when dr. z says "we" in this sentence, he really means "me and anyone else out there without a firm grasp of the obvious in this case, which is probably just about no one."

moving forward, sort of on the same subject but not really:

Every so often, when a guy lays out an opponent with a blatant cheap shot, I revive my old rant about how, if I were commissioner, I'd institute a form of Old Testament justice, you know, an eye for an eye. Put a man out of a game and you, too, get ejected. If he's out for a week because of the dirty play, then you have to sit out for the same length of time. Out for the season, and so is the perpetrator, and if, heaven forbid, it costs someone a career, well then, see ya around, Jack.

better update your resume, dr. z. i think roger godell might just resign and hand the job over to you when he reads this.

This used to draw some interested mail.

"Surely you can't be serious?"
"I am."
"What are ya, nuts?"
"Yeah, that's me."
"Seriously now..."
"Seriously now, I mean it, seriously now..."

the only way dr. z could have saved this joke would have been to respond to the first question by ripping off "airplane!", saying "i am serious. and dont call me shirley." and then instantly jumping into a new topic that didnt suck. alas, it did not happen.

later, a conversation with the oft-mentioned mrs. z:

"What's MMA?" The Flaming Redhead asks.

"Mixed Martial Arts."

"Who's Marsha Artz?" she asks.

OK, this is serious stuff. Let's cut out the horseplay. Millions are spent to watch this stuff, maybe even billions. Not sure. It combines boxing and jujitsu and judo.

"You said what?" the wife asks. "It combines Judaism? You mean like Ultimate Seders?"

That's absolutely insulting.

"Reminds me of the ones with your family."

OK, I'm going to cut this off right now. It's getting out of hand, and The Redhead is into her Don Rickles shtick again.

i just realized, maybe bill simmons went to the dr. z school of bad journalism in which you are taught to bring up your family as much as possible in your columns. just a thought.

anyways, don rickles would probably blow a gasket if he read that. jeez, how devastating would it be for your ego as a comedian if you woke up one morning, logged onto cnnsi.com for a some quick football news, and stumbled onto dr. z referencing your schtick? what a disaster. a potential career killer.

Olufemi of Marysville, Wash.,"a sailor currently deployed in Iraq," wants to know if the Redskins' LaRon Landry-Sean Taylor safety tandem will be among the NFL's top 10 pairs. Well, Olufemi, I know things are tough enough over there, and I don't want to make them any tougher for you, but in all fairness I can't say yes. Taylor, to me, is the classic case of a guy who occasionally messes up his coverage because he's trying so hard to make the big hit. And Landry hasn't played a down yet, so how do we know anything?

so taylor isnt very good because he "occasionally" messes up his coverages (who doesnt?). i know defensive stats can be misleading, but taylor led his team in tackles last year. he was #20 in the whole NFL, and #2 among safeties. hes been a part of 13 turnovers in just 3 years in the league. the guy can definitely play, and i think youd be hard pressed to find more than 10 free safties in the league that are better than him. and then landry- well, i dont know that much about him or how good hes expected to be in 2007 at the NFL level, and apparently dr. z doesnt either, but you know what? i bet we can find out by reading scouting reports and watching film. i know dr. z isnt paid to provide that kind of "hard" analysis. but to just flippantly dismiss the idea of being able to estimate how good a rookie will be is lame. boooooooooooooo, dr. z, booooooooooooo.

Another Skins fans, from up the road in Baltimore ("Baltimore? Up the road from Marysville, Wash.?" The Redhead protests. Honey, you had your nutty moment, now let me have mine), by name of Scott, as in Great and Sir Walter but not The Striding because that was spelled with one t ... OK, old baseball fans, who am I talking about? Answer, Bobby Thomson of the Giants, nicknamed The Striding Scot...

as you can see, stream of consciousness writing is not dr. z's strong point.

later on....

"...we have Randy of Excelsior Springs, Mo., who feels that T.O. is the ultimate me me me guy. "I did the Desert Storm cha cha," he writes, "and I can tell you this: a man like T.O. would not be on my list of guys I'd want in my unit. In the military, divas kill, but they kill the wrong people."

this is kind of weird, and most definitely irrelevant. which is probably why dr. z chose to print it.

meanwhile, in a different and even less funny part of the column:

Tim of Dover, Del., wonders when Eli Manning will receive the official "bust" label. "When do we fans and you media types call him out?" he asks. Now I don't want to be resentful, after you said such nice things about my work, but honestly, I'm not in the business of calling people out.

except when you lead off your column with a scathing indictment of clinton portis for saying some dumb stuff that everyone already knew was dumb.

I try to evaluate what I see on the field, but I know what's bugging you, the idea of high draft "savior" types getting the benefit of the doubt far too long. Manning is a scatter-passer. It's time for him to get his gunsight in place. Another up and down year and...well, a bust? I don't like that word...how about a "burst?"

is... is... is that a joke? im confused. but im also terrified to write dr. and ask for clarification. i picture it going something like this:

"Larry B from our nation's capital (the one with the singing "Steps", not the punishment... or was that fun-i-meant?) wants to know what i meant by saying another up and down year from Eli Manning could cause him to "burst". He's confused as to why i would comedically associate that with the term "bust". Well, Lars, if you want to know about breasts- i mean busts- youll have to ask The Redhead. But if you want to question my humor, why don't you just get on the #6A bus to Sillysville and jump in a lake? I think even Eli would understand that one."

ok, i admit, that wasnt that good. for an actually funny dr. z spoof, look in the archives for a posting chris w did right after the blog started called "let's write a dr. z column" or something. then come back to this article while youre still chuckling and read this last part, because its a doozy:

Ryan of Castro Valley, Calif., reminds me that when I said Sid Gillman never coached a scrambling QB, I was forgetting that he had Steve Young on the L.A. Express of the USFL in 1984. Yeah, but he wasn't the head coach, he was the coordinator. In other words, he didn't sign one and develop one himself. And thank you, Ryan, for your pledge to buy 500 copies of the book when it comes out. Is that right? Wait a minute, make that one copy. I have trouble with numbers.

what? screw this, im done.