For those uninitiated into the Brotherhood of the Interwebs, FJM started out by the wonderful people over at FireJoeMorgan.com, a site dedicated to a truly noble pursuit. It is, simply, "Where Bad Sports Journalism Came To Die." The infamous Joe Morgan was their patron saint, but these online crusaders took any and all crappy sports writing and rendered it asunder. The tradition lives on at places like deadspin.com and ksk.com, but FJM has become a verb that means to go through an article, copy/paste lines from the article, and mock it mercilessly. It's quite wonderful, really.
Why is this coming up only four days until Super Bowl XLV? Because our very own Kevin McCauley found a positively putrid piece of writing from ESPN.com's Rick Reilly, and brought it to our attention. (I'll ignore the fact that he actually read a Reilly column.) Kevin writes,
I don't write Haterade blog posts for every columnist I disagree with, though I would love to see a Fire Joe Morgan re-birth happen, even if Joe Morgan has alreadly, in fact, been fired. This is just so beyond absurd that I can't help it.
Ask, and ye shall receive (an ameteur FJM of Reilly's latest "drivel".)
You root for the Green Bay Packers in this Super Bowl because Steelers fans want their team to win but Packers fans need their team to win. They need it like air.
Because, as science has taught us, winning and breathing are interwoven to the point of being unable to do one without the other. But only in Green Bay.
One in every 54,000 Chicagoans is a Bears' fan, but one in 1,900 Green Bay residents is a Packers' fan.
One in every 1,900? I would love to see the U.S. Census Bureau gather together 1,900 Green Bay residents and poll them on their Packer-fandom. Surely, only one person will raise their hand. And it won't be this kid.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because karma owes Brett Favre a very terrible Sunday for what he did to Packers fans; for what he did to the front office; for all the fake retirement press conferences and fake tears and fake posturing; for dragging Aaron Rodgers' career around through his own muddy whims.
Of course it comes back to Favre. It's absolutely impossible for anything to not get traced back to Brett Favre. Let's see...
1) Brett Favre was traded to the Jets.
2) The Jets are named after jet airplanes.
3) The German Luftwaffe debuted jet fighters late in WWII, scaring the crap out of Allied airmen.
4) Military personnel that undergo intense trauma (i.e. get the crap scared out of them) can come down with PTSD.
5) One in every 8 returning soldiers suffers from PTSD.
Therefore, rooting against the Packers (which, therefore, is rooting for Brett Favre), is rooting for PTSD, and therefore shows that you don't care about the troops. Way to go, jerks.
You root for the Packers for the same reason you root for Roberto Benigni to win the Oscar or Buster Douglas to win the fight. It's right.
You root for the Packers for the same reason that you would go back if a cashier gave you too much change. It's right. For the same reason you would stop to help an old lady cross the street. It's right. For the same reason you would donate all your income to charity, move to the Pacific Northwest, join a commune, and live off the land while hiding from the government. IT'S RIGHT.
They drive down Lombardi Avenue. They speed down Holmgren Way. They park on Reggie White Way.
They buy gas at the BP on Frank Winters Lane. They eat fried mayonnaise balls at a cart on Gilbert Brown Alley. They perform illegal u-turns on Ahmad Carroll Street. They throw rocks at the crackhouse at the corner of Tony Mandarich Road and Allen Barbre Boulevard.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl for guys like the one on PackerForum.com writing about hearing his mom shriek downstairs and thinking she's in trouble and running down to find her in her robe and slippers shrieking in delight at the man standing in the doorway, Packers god Bart Starr
"Son, I've had it with the constant vandalism, stealing money from my purse, and repeated arson attempts during church! Pack your bags, you're off to the Rawhide Boys Ranch!"
Nobody on Broadway is rushing to see the hit play Cowher, but they are rushing to see the hit play Lombardi.
The only reason people aren't rushing to see Cowher is because if they run too fast, they'll trip over the giant plastic Gallagher tarp they need to stay spittle-free during the performance.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because Packers fans took a taunt -- "You cheesehead!" -- and turned it into a gouda thing.
I thought that Reilly knew jack about cheese puns, but using "gouda" in place of "good" just about bleu me away.
/Limberger joke
In Green Bay, you can also buy cheese top hats, cheese sombreros, cheese ties, cheese earrings, cheese footballs, cheese bricks, cheese beer cozies, cheese sunglasses, cheese flying discs and, naturally, cheese fezzes.
Cheese Bibles, cheese wallets, cheese bullets, cheese fax machines, and cheese lingerie, unfortunately, is all still in R&D.
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because if the Steelers left Pittsburgh there would still be the Penguins, who won the Stanley Cup in 2009, and the Pirates. True, they stink, but Albert Pujols visits all the time. If the Packers left, Green Bay's major attraction would be the L.H. Barkhausen Waterfowl Preserve.
HOW DARE YOU BEFOUL THE REPUTATION OF THE L.H. BARKHAUSEN WATERFOWL PRESERVE?! Or, in Reilly-speak, "be-fowl".
You root for the Packers in this Super Bowl because of Ouida Wright and her boyfriend, who never dreamed being homeless in Green Bay would be lucky. They were on the street when the Dallas Convention and Visitor's Bureau sent a "mystery" man out, waiting for someone to address him with the secret phrase: "Have you been to Dallas lately?" Wright heard about it, said it to the right guy and now she's going to the Big Bowl with her boyfriend. Hotel, tickets, flights--everything paid.
That's cool. No, really, that's a nice thing to do. Are they going to buy them a house, too?
Yes, when they come back to Green Bay from watching the Packers play in the Super Bowl, they still won't have anywhere to live.
Oh.
What's your point?
...What's YOUR point?