Bad Ego!

I realize I have not been focusing on hard hitting journalism lately but the national sportswriters have been very sneaky as of late and have not written anything I feel the need to attack. Bill Simmons is taking a 10 week vacation to focus on making himself more money through book sales, Jemele Hill wrote a column I agree with as much as I can agree with a column she writes, and Peter King is talking about kids making out under a blanket, so I can't count on any of them. Fire Joe Morgan even attacked the Dave O'Brien column I had bookmarked.

Good thing Mark Kriegel and his mug shot photo tackle an enormous scientific problem. How to separate one's ego from his body so the ego, which as everyone knows is just some asshole hanging out in your body causing you to be an asshole, can not disrupt the football team. It's kind of like Innerspace except the ego is not quite as annoying as Martin Short.

http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/8363808/On-the-Mark:-Shockey

It was often said that Jeremy Shockey possessed the physical skills of a wide receiver. The problem, at least for the defending Super Bowl champions, is that he had a receiver's ego as well.

Ba-da-boom! Good one Mark! I can do it too!

It is often said Bill possessed the demeanor of a little child. The problem, at least for his neighbors two young children, is that he liked little children too much.

It is often said Mark possessed the writing skills to suck an audience in. The problem, at least for his audience, is that he sucked too.

Maybe that one was a little off. What a way to start a column though. I AM sucked in. If this were Grease and I were in a leather jacket, I would be surrounding Mark right now asking him to "tell me more, tell me more." Later I would get a girl who looks like a man pregnant, dance on a car and get knocked out before a big car race.

The position has become the greatest haven for trash-talkers, self-promoters and prima donnas in all of American sports.

Oh hell yes Mark, that is so true. I have never heard this before though. Is ESPN aware of the penchant for receivers to do this? If not, then need to hire some of them for the pre game shows they have, possibly interview them, and cover these gentlemen in training camp. That would make terrific television.

I suspect you need their kind of ego (though not necessarily the mouth) to catch a pass over the middle of the field, to fear not that blow from the blind side.

Marvin Harrison has it, so you are completely correct. Tony Gonzalez has to be the biggest ego tripping star I have ever heard of. Did you know he saved a man from choking recently? What everyone failed to mention is he was beating the shit out of the guy and just happened to knock the food out after he hit the guy in the chest with a tire iron. What an ego!

Despite the imposing physique and all his biker-chic body art, Shockey wasn't unlike that snot-nosed kid you may recall from your touch football days. He was always open.

Yeah....that snot nosed kid was always....open? I am going to go ahead and stop you there. This analogy does not make sense. Is it an analogy or a reference to Shockey's ego? Sorry but wouldn't you want your players to feel they are open all the time and how is this a bad thing? Would you prefer Gerald Contrarian, the WR who played for the Idaho Lightning in the old PFL (Pacific Football League), who always insisted he was never open. Great guy, always opened the door for his mother, paid his bills on time. He played one year in the PCL because he never was open. From then on, coaches took players on their team who always claimed to be open. Historians still wonder why.

The great egos are tolerated, even celebrated, as long as they're cost-effective. But Shockey, the 14th pick in the 2002 draft, never developed into the franchise player he was forecast to be, that game-breaking receiver who came off the line.

This was all his fault. Back in 2002 the tight end was actually responsible for throwing the ball to himself. Not many people remember that time.

Ok, enough sarcasm. Can we be honest? Eli Manning was not exactly the model QB for his first couple years. Do you think maybe the fact Eli could not get him the football when he was wide open had anything to do with this? This is like blaming a WR for having a bad Quarterback. No, it is blaming the receiver for having a bad QB. Other than a four week period last year, Eli Manning has been bad.

He'd never play a full 16-game season. Most damning, of course, was the fact that the Giants would go on to win the Super Bowl without him.

Injuries were a problem with Shockey as well. I think it was his ego that would break his leg from the inside of his body because it was just so pissed off that he never got the ball.

Just because they won a Super Bowl without him does not mean he sucks and is no reason why he should not still be on the Giants team. This is the same logic people use when they say Alex Rodriguez sucks because the Yankees won 4 World Series with Scott Brosius at third base.

None of this has anything to do with an ego problem.

Four days before that championship game, I asked Eli Manning if he had spoken to Shockey since the team's arrival in Arizona.
"I've not spoken to Jeremy this week," said Manning, before adding none too convincingly, "Uh, so, I'll try to talk to him sometime."

I am going to take a deep breath before I write this because I want to stay calmish. There is a litany of reasons that Eli Manning did not talk to Jeremy Shockey before the Super Bowl. I will list them below for your perusal and you can choose which of these make more sense than the fact Shockey is such an asshole Eli did not want to talk to him.

1. Eli was preparing for the fucking Super Bowl and did not have time to to talk to Jeremy Shockey because this was going to be the biggest game of his entire life against a team that had gone undefeated throughout the entire season, so Manning knew it was going to be a difficult chore and he had to be focused, so he did not have time to answer stupid fucking questions about injured players because that certain injured player was not even playing in the game that Manning was preparing for and Eli was also wondering why the stupid writer would ask this question of him when he was obviously preparing for the most important game of his life in front of the biggest audience that any athlete can ever play in front of.

In fact, Manning — who flourished, unadmonished, in Shockey's absence — hadn't even seen him. Nor did he care to.

He did not care to because he was preparing for the Super Bowl.

What's more, outside of a few reporters who could've used the smart-ass quotes, nobody seemed to miss him.

You know why the reporters did not use the quotes? They were smart enough to realize the quote was given four days prior to the Super Bowl when Manning was probably too focused on the game ahead and the players who were actually playing. Basically this quote was a non story, except to Mark Kriegel, who found it so important he put it in an article after the Giants traded Shockey.

And do you know why nobody missed him? Because the bigger story was the game and the Patriots attempting to go perfect throughout the entire season. Is this a hard issue to understand?

Think about it: The Giants actually decided to quarantine him in a luxury box for the duration of Super Bowl XLII.

Think about it: The luxury box has free food, beer and a great view of a historical game. I would not call it quarantine.

The end came Feb. 3 in that luxury box, where Shockey was forced to watch as Manning earned the Super Bowl MVP.

I am sure everyone in the luxury box was holding Shockey's head forward forcing him to watch his team win the biggest game on a national stage that he could not play in because of an injury that had nothing to do with ego.

A receiver like Shockey can endure broken bones, but never a bruised ego.

Ba-da-boom! The Giants are not better off with Kevin Boss as the starting tight end and you are stupid if you think they are better off.