Christmas 2013: A sports fans wishlist
By Phil Daniels
Dear Santa Claus:
My name is Phil Daniels, and I write about sports on the Internet. I question whether you even have cell phone reception at the North Pole, let alone any reliable Internet Service Providers. But I digress. Look, I know that you must be incredibly busy planning a safe Christmas trek in light of all the air-defense missile equipped No-Fly Zones popping up all over the globe, but I have an admittedly late arriving Christmas list for you.
This Christmas list is written on behalf of “nice” sports fans everywhere—you can just ignore the wishes of the naughty ones like Aaron Hernandez. I know that you are generally in the business of delivering tangible goods—what with your forced labor elven army handcrafting Playstation 4s, iPad 3s, and American Girl dolls 365 days per year— but given your panoply of anthropomorphic flying reindeer, I trust that you are capable of delivering us some magic too. The following are, in no particular order, five gifts that every sports fan is deserving of and would appreciate immensely. Thank you in advance for everything!
- An end to the “Adderall Excuse.”
Given the sheer violence and physicality in the NFL, it only makes sense that professional football players take performance-enhancing drugs to maximize their chances of not being literally severed in two on any given Sunday. Santa, you’re an innovative guy—after all, you were the first to do the whole “flying sleigh” thing, and given the fact that your very own Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer doubles as a professional baseball player in the Holiday League, I’m sure you can appreciate the need for a revamped discussion on the legalization of certain PEDs. But that discussion will never happen if every time an NFL player is suspended for using a banned substance, that player takes advantage of mandated league confidentiality and claims he simply got busted for taking Adderall. Santa, we need a little bit of your Christmas magic to get these players to challenge the status quo and to admit that they are using various performance enhancers.
- A Super Bowl blizzard
As a reward for the creation of MetLife Stadium at Meadowlands Sports Complex in East Rutherford, New Jersey, the NFL is letting New Jersey host Super Bowl XLVIII. As you might know, Santa, the Super Bowl is traditionally either played indoors or in warm weather climates. The NFL thinks that bad weather makes for bad football, but oddly enough still decided to inexplicably schedule a football game in February in the northeastern United States. Now realizing their mistake, the NFL has made Super Bowl contingency plans—demonstrating a willingness to change the Super Bowl to the Saturday before or the Monday or Tuesday after the currently-scheduled date in light of possible inclement weather. Well Santa, we think this is stupid. We love snowy football, and who wouldn’t want to see the look on Roger Goodell’s face if New Jersey is covered in several feet of snow for the entirety of February? I don’t know if you have the ability to manipulate the weather, but if you can, please make the Super Bowl be played in a blizzard of epic proportions. I’m talking the North Pole on steroids. Feel free to throw in a polar bear or two as well, just to mix it up a bit. Oh, and could you do something about global warming too while you’re at it?
- A lifetime of coal for Terence Garvin
Does your workshop get NFL Network or ESPN? Would a rabbit ears antenna work at the North Pole? Do you even have a television? I don’t know the answer to these questions, but I do know that if you have access to sports highlights, you have probably already seen the vicious and unnecessary hit that Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker Terence Garvin delivered to Cincinnati Bengals punter Kevin Huber last week. In case you didn’t see the play, Huber punted to dynamic Steelers return man Antonio Brown; Brown made a series of moves and ends up with a clear path to a return touchdown; but rather than blatantly giving up on the play, Huber ran in the general direction of Brown despite having no chance of getting within seven yards of him; and Garvin—rather than merely push blocking Huber out of the periphery of Brown—delivered an illegal hit to Huber, breaking his jaw and cracking one of his vertebrae. Santa, professional football is a violent enough game as it is. Nice sports fans don’t want to see gratuitous bodily harm. The NFL already fined Garvin $25,000, but that probably is not enough to change the behavior of a man making several hundred thousand dollars in a single year. Perhaps a lifetime of Christmas coal from you and a nasty letter from Mrs. Claus might do the trick?
- An NBA One-on-One tournament
Who would win: Wilt Chamberlain versus Bill Russell? Larry Bird versus Magic Johnson? Michael Jordan versus Clyde Drexler? Lebron James versus Kevin Durant? Arguments surrounding professional basketball one-on-one hypotheticals have been around for years, and they will never go away, so why don’t we do something about this. Santa, something tells me that you are not much of a hoops fan, but just imagine being able to pit your elves against one another to see which ones are the best at making toys. Wait… what? You already do that? Well, that’s the point! In the North Pole, you have the ability to force your workers to compete against one another in individual productivity contests, but in the United States, NBA players would seemingly never agree to a publicly played one-on-one game out of fear of losing and the incessant trash talk that would result from that loss. I’m not sure if you practice the art of mind control or anything like that, but can you get these millionaire basketball players to agree to a single elimination one-on-one tournament—ones and twos to eleven, loser’s ball, win by two? If you can’t do the whole Jedi mind tricks thing, maybe you can just organize a pay-per-view with the revenue going to the tournament winner and a mandated NBA Cares reindeer poop scooping for all of the losers; I hear these basketball players like money and self-promotion masked in charity.
- Granting the wishes of other sports fans
Santa, I’m sure you have to go consume copious amounts of cookies and milk or something, but I only have this one final item on this list. I am just a writer; I can’t really speak on behalf of all sports fans worldwide. As a result, please entertain the sports-related Christmas wishes from other fans in the comments section below. Merry Christmas to you, your family, your talking pets, and your elven sweatsh.. workshop workers.
Love,
Phil Daniels, on behalf of sports fans everywhere