Houston, Where Monkey’s Call the Shots and The Pro Football Fan is a Common Whore
I have been mired in sadness and reflection ever since hearing of the death of racing friend, Canberra caller and personality Tony Campbell, yesterday morning.
Tony was a fine judge, an entertaining caller and most of all, a damned decent fellow. He’d always have a moment for you, usually to regale one with his daily tipping record or a story of days gone by. TC loved a yarn, that is for sure and certain.
For some reason, when the news filtered through, I got to thinking of Christmas. Being slightly to the left of melancholy, cheery thoughts of warm plum pudding, drunken midnight mass, hungover Christmas mornings and the yearly morph of annualized relatives weren’t at the fore. No, for some reason, all I could think of was one certain childhood Christmas.
It is impossible to, in any accurate and useful way, remember what year it was. But that’s not all that relevant…
As I wandered around the Canberra racetrack, sucking back Dunhills like their number had been called, I looked back on this particular Christmas. It is the only time I remember ever being down around Christmas. Not that I had any reason to be. I just was. It was only childish greed and western materialism, but these concepts are fairly hard to grasp when you’re only five or six years old.
I had locked myself into believing jolly old Saint Nick would shoot down the chimney, sometime in the dark and slow morning of Christmas, and deliver me a Justice League fort. It was, to a six year old cranked on the Justice League, the balls. I had saved all my pocket money to buy the action figures. Superman. Wonder Woman. The Flash. Green Lantern…
Once Santa dropped off the fort, well, the whole world would be okay. There was nothing else I wanted. There was only one gift that would make the nut…
Well, when I had finished unwrapping my gifts, I could do nothing else but put on The Disappointed Face-the face that nearly everyone has and usually reserve for socks and poorly painted artwork. I probably felt like crying. I was shattered. It was the only sad Christmas I can remember and it put me on guard from that point on. It wasn’t so much missing out on the fort.
It, to my fast fading mind, has a lot to do with the expectation that I would be getting it. I could have been given a Santa Bag filled with gold, the Dead Sea Scrolls and the greatest collection of gummy bears and sour worms this side of reality and I would still have been let down. My expectations had been built up and when they go unfulfilled, well, the disappointment of same is pretty much front and centre in your thoughts.
And so it is for the football community of Houston, who have been treated like a common whore by Houston Texan decision makers.
Now, Houston pro football fans are used to suffering. The original Houston team, the Oilers, was jacked up in the middle of a moonless 1997 night and didn’t stop until they hit Graceland. Before that, Houston fans suffered through 21 losing years in the last 34. They had choked worse than any playoff team in memory when they blew a 35-3 halftime lead against the hapless Buffalo Bills. ESPN rated the poor fans of Houston third on their all time NFL Misery Index, behind only Cleveland and New Orleans.
Well, the decision of Texan management to not take Reggie Bush in the NFL draft this season has at least pushed Houston fans to second (New Orleans ran into some luck and landed him) on that list and could easily have see them slip back into the number one slot.
Just when it couldn’t get any worse, they thought. But the wise-heads who run pro football in Houston had other plans. The sadistic bastards wanted to sink the slipper into the collective crotch of Houston one more time.
And they did with a vicious back kick, so hard and so unexpected, that the pain won’t set in until the shock of the brutality has worn off.
For some reason, unbeknownst to any football fan with a rudimentary understanding of the game and a shred of intelligence, the Houston Texans chose to forgo future superstar running back Reggie Bush and take, instead, defensive end Mario Williams. And to make matters doubly worse, not only did they overlook Bush, but also local and the Texas Longhorn hero of the greatest Rose Bowl ever played, Vince Young.
Houston football fans would be forgiven, in this quarter at least, if they went on a savage riot frenzy that saw cars upturned, shopfronts looted and effigies of Texan management burnt.
With the benefit of hindsight, there have been some very ordinary top draft picks. Jesus, as a San Francisco fan, I’m still reeling from what turned out to be the Alex Smith-small hands debacle.
But that is with the old 20/20 hindsight…
Never, at draft time, has there been a worse selection blunder. Mario Williams could be a more than decent player. A pro bowler. It won’t matter. The only thing that will save this selection from the masochistic comedy section of history is if Reggie Bush does not fulfill his destiny. And that destiny looks pretty rich, with a long lasting legacy, unparalleled heroism and the sharp tick of history his file will be marked with.
So, to hell with the Texans. May they continue to rot in mediocrity. Any organization stupid enough to let Reggie Bush slip by deserve the locusts of failure.
The winners out of all this were undoubtedly the New Orleans Saints. They have landed Bush, to go with their decent QB acquisitiion in Drew Brees from San Diego. A few lower round picks were questionable but they have just snared the Next Great NFL Running Back, so they walked away from draft day The Winner. They have bought the nucleus of success and will be my pick for the NFC South.
The other teams with top five picks also walked away winners. Big winners. The Titans were gifted Vince Young at three and while he may take time to adjust to the NFL, I challenge anybody who saw the Rose Bowl-where Young single-handedly beat USC- to say he won’t make it. The Titans also scored in the second round when they landed LenDale White, the promising fullback from USC. So it was all roses and good weather in Nashville. The Jets did well, picking up the best offensive lineman in the draft. And the Packers also made the nut, signing the gifted outside linebacker A.J Hawk, pleasing both Packer faithful and Brett Favre.
Other teams to win in the draft include the Arizona Cardinals and the San Francisco 49’ers, which should make for a most interesting NFL West this season. The Cardinals have the core of a championship team this year after picking up Matt Leinart in the draft and acquiring Edgerrin James from Indy in the off season while the Niners landed square when they picked up TE Vernon Davis in the first and promising linebacker Manny Lawson. Both teams are expected to improve markedly.
In death, you are bought back to your context and you are shown the limited nature of opportunity. Those who take their opportunities, well, they tend to come up trumps. And those who don’t seem to drift along from mediocrity to failure to nothingness, with little feeling and even less forethought.
And that, friends and well-wishers, is that.