Stool Samples
Actual Crap That Came From People's Mouths
Imagine you’re at a restaurant with your girlfriend. You’ve decided that tonight will be the night you propose. You’ve got the special table all scoped out, the ring is in your pocket and you’ve even let the waiter know ahead of time so he knows not to interrupt when you get into your speech.
You and your gal polish off dessert and you’re all set to drop the bomb when your waiter comes over and says in full earshot of your soon-to-be fiancé, “since you’re going to propose to your girl here, I’ll take an extra few minutes getting the check ready.”
You’d probably be pissed right? What type of a moron basically tells your girlfriend that you’re going to propose five seconds before you’re about to do it?
Answer: Chris Myers, sports reporter.
On Monday night, the Fox sideline reporter played the role of big mouth waiter to perfection at the end of the epic Fiesta Bowl between Boise State and Oklahoma.
As most sports fans have probably seen through various replays and online stories, Boise State running back Ian Johnson proposed to his cheerleader girlfriend minutes after he ran in the game winning two-point conversion.
What you may not have seen was Myers completely ruining the surprise by closing his interview with Johnson by blurting out, “I know you’re going to propose to your girlfriend now…” while standing no more than two feet away from the would-be recipient of the proposal.
We here at JSF aren’t what you would call hopeless romantics, but for the love of God, Chris, when the guy tells you before the interview that he’s going to propose to his woman, he’s probably banking on you keeping your trap shut.
Crap that actually came from somebody’s mouth
“Allen Iverson, obviously, is one of the premiere basketball players in the National Basketball Association.” – Mark Schlereth
Schlereth-ese and it’s staunch hatred of acronyms extends beyond the National Football League.
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“Maybe the Greatest Show on Turf is back.” – Jeff Skversky, KMOV St. Louis
Maybe Jeff; or maybe you should come to grips with the fact that the “Greatest Show on Turf” was a once in a lifetime occurrence from 1999 through 2001. Nothing more, nothing less.
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“(Chad Pennington) is complete. You stand there and you wait to call the timeout.” – Joe Theismann
If waiting to call a timeout at the time that most benefits your team makes one complete, than there are roughly 784 complete quarterbacks in the NFL. Of course, we don’t know what complete really means since it’s a nebulous term. Freaking Theismann…
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“Maybe they’re not as good as we thought they were.”– Sean Salisbury on the Cowboys
We’re cool with this quote so long as Salisbury defines “we” as “me and the other guys that I work with that constantly overrate players based on a few games.”
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”All (Vince Young) does is win.” – Sean Salisbury
Be careful Vince; that exact same comment was applied to Tony Romo this past November.
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“That’s what’s dragging this all out, and making us all crazy.” – Jon Clayton on Nick Saban’s lack of comments regarding the Alabama job
How dare Nick Saban take the appropriate time and level of privacy to make what he feels is the right decision. Doesn’t he realize the media has things to report?
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“I really wanted to see (the Bengals) in the Super Bowl to illuminate this problem.” – John Heyman, SI.com on NFL related crime
”Hey, pass me the chicken wings please. Oh and did you see that special on Frostee Rucker’s assaults during the pre-game show? Freaking awesome man. Awesome… way better than this game we’re watching.”
A Question for Fox Sports 
Did anyone fall off the ladder in the BCS Bowl commercials? Dropping from the sky is usually fatal, so we were just wondering.
Media Rant of the Week – The “Genius” Tango
The phenomenon we’ll call “The Genius Tango” has been documented on this site in the past. It goes something like this…
Step 1: Over anxious media members search for a coach experiencing some level of success and label them a “genius” or some version of the same.
Step 2: Coach previously labeled a genius goes through a period where his team struggles.
Step 3: Media determines that anyone who called said coach a genius is sorely mistaken.
The NFL is a breeding ground for this process, as most coaching staffs in the league have either a current or former “genius” on staff. We’ve got current genius’ like Bill Belichik, Nick Saban and Bill Parcells, former genius’ like Romeo Crennel and Norv Turner, and future genius’ like Sean Payton and Eric Mangini. If you trust the media’s judgment in dishing out the label, then America is likely increasing its IQ simply by watching these men work on Sundays.
Denvercoach Mike Shanahan has long teetered between genius and former genius. He won two Super Bowl’s with John Elway and Terrell Davis and his intelligence was unmatched. A few years later he’s struggling with an erratic Jake Plummer at QB and the genius tag was temporarily revoked.
According to an article written prior to this past week’s games by John Clayton of ESPN.com, Shanahan is once again earning the title of “mastermind” thanks to his decision to bench Plummer and go with rookie Jay Cutler. Witness a few of Clayton’s flowery remarks towards the Broncos coach:
“Everyone who came across Shanahan knew he was brilliant”
“The old Mastermind pulled off another brilliant move. By going down the stretch with rookie quarterback Jay Cutler and a cast of rookie offensive players, the Broncos appear set to enter the AFC playoffs as one of the wildest of wild cards.”
“If they beat the 49ers next Sunday in Denver, they are the AFC’s fifth seed. To think, they did it with a cast of rookies. That’s why they call him the Mastermind.”
Of course, this past Sunday the Broncos blew their chance at the playoffs by losing at home to the San Francisco 49ers meaning that it’s probably only a matter of time before we start to quoting people claiming Shanahan isn’t the genius everyone says he is. And on it goes…
By the way, did you see how sharp that Lions offense looked on Sunday? I hear they have an offensive coordinator who is positively brilliant. What’s his name…Martz or something?
Scoop Jackson’s Annual New Year’s Bash
A new year ushers in Scoop Jackson’s “biggest” sports stories of the year, or as he puts it, those that “mattered most”. As a history refresher, Jackson believed that Stephen A. Smith hosting Quite Frankly was one of the biggest sports stories of 2005, saying this in the post-2005 column… “No disrespect to Bryant Gumbel, Michael Wilbon, John Saunders, Montell Williams, Orlando Jones or DL Hugley, but … not since they pulled Arsenio Hall off the air in 1994 has a black man had his own talk show -- or been slated to host one with his name in the title.”
Rather than list the 236 reasons why that comment sucks, we decided to go straight to the post-2006 edition, which didn’t disappoint on the stupidity meter…
”Critics who panned it will hail it as a classic 20 years from now, sort of like they did with Muhammad Ali. It's been documented that slavery ended more than 140 years ago. "$40M" reminded us that slavery never really ended, it just got expensive.”
Yes, William C. Rhoden’s book “$40 Million Slaves” will be revered on the same level of Muhammad Ali in 20 years. Uh huh.
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”This is what America could rightfully call black-on-black crime on a higher level.”
Count us as two Americans who didn’t look at the Jason Whitlock/Scoop Jackson feud as “black on black crime”. In fact, you can count us among the people who agreed 100% with Whitlock in the instance.
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”The Duke University rape case was easily the biggest sports story of the year, if not the biggest non-war news story of 2006.”
Oddly enough, coverage of the news that the case had been thrown out pailed in comparison.
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”The Dennis Rodman, AI, Michael Vick, TO, Joey Porter, Ben Wallace era of sports worshipping is over. There's a new model of icon in town, and America is lovin' him. It's the return of the nonthreatening (perfect) black athlete. And if you think I'm joking, who are arguably the three new (if not best players) faces of each professional American sport? LaDainian Tomlinson, Dwyane Wade and Ryan Howard.”
Stupid on so many levels it deserves no commentary.
At least Scoop isn’t relying on racial barriers to drive the content of his columns anymore.
Stool Samples is written by Josh Bacott and Pat Imig. They swear this stuff is real. Email them at info@joesportsfan.com