The Devil Made Them Do It

Being a creature of habit, I must have my morning newspaper and a cup of Folgers’s ( Melita and 8 O’clock are also acceptable) black coffee every morning. Like most red blooded Americans or if you prefer 99percenters, the paper of choice is the local rag - in my case The Plain Dealer. I understand that blue blooded Americans, better known as 1percenters, prefer The Wall Street Journal along with their Starbucks Cappuccino. Before the reader dismisses this missile as another class warfare rant, please be advised that the opening was what my Italian ancestors referred to as a “botta” or a slam couched in some civil words. Now that the “botta” is out of the way, let me get to the purpose of this post.

As I took my second sip of 99percenter coffee and flipped the pages of the paper over to the “Opinion” page ( I used the plural of page even though the number of flips involved in today’s shrinking newspapers are minimal - another “botta”!) my eyes wandered to the bottom of the page. Staring at me were the words “Justice Must Come Down On The Saints”.

I was startled. What in hell or better yet heaven had the Saints done? Was my patron saint Anthony involved. Had someone discovered that some saints were pedophiles? More to the point, what business did we have administering justice outside the boundaries of the United States. It didn’t work in Iraq and surely not in Afghanistan. There was only one way to find out - read the damn article.

What a relief! The Plain Dealer had excerpted an editorial which appeared in the Dallas Morning News. Texas, where  humans are executed like they were cattle, was calling for justice to come down on , not the heavenly saints, but New Orleans Saint football players.

After decades of violent football, someone went public with the news that the New Orleans Saints ran a bounty program from 2009 to 2011. The nerve of those Saints. They actually played football with the intent of hurting opposing players. No wonder that the Dallas Morning News was demanding justice. Everyone knows that the Dallas Cowboys play football as it should be played - beat the shit out of opposing players ( another “botta”).

It looks like the Saints got caught doing what everyone has been doing in the NFL for decades. Still, justice must be done. I suggest that the NFL require New Orleans to drop the name Saints and replace it with Devils. After all the devil made them do it. If harsher judgment is warranted, then the Saints should be required to play a football game without their protecting pads, in the Coliseum, against the Lions.

As for football, I would not buy stock in any NFL football team. The NFL has a death wish and they will not be satisfied until football goes the way of gladiator games. And that’s my “botta of the day”.