Feasting on the Least Meast in the East, or: Why Michael Silver has Barry Switzer running down his chin

OK.

I've spent too long on this sideline. Put me in, coach. I'm ready to play. Today. Look at me--I can be another asshole spouting ill-informed opinions on the world wide webs. What took me this long? Well, if you spend as much on Thai ladyboy prostitutes as I do, you know you ain't about to get anything but your money's worth.

But Aun finally left, taking my heart and $14 with him. So I have nothing to do but comment on Michael Silver's continuing quest to be the biggest ass-kisser in major media.

If you aren't familiar with Silver--or "The Silv," as I shall hereby refer to him for reasons entirely my own--he writes about football for Sports Illustrated. Sometimes.

Mostly what he does is profile the lifestyles of the rich and athletic in columns titled "Rollin' With..." And "Bring on the Weekend." I haven't a clue why the editors at si.com bothered differentiating the two, because both share the same bootlicking conceit: athletes are cool. And rich. And they drive nice cars and eat expensive food and look! Here I am hanging with them! And calling them by their first names!

Pretty standard fare for that breed of sportswriter. Some guys just want to be around that aura of fame and don't care about J-school bullshit like "objectivity" or "reportorial responsibility." But The Silv takes the form a step further--he admits, openly, that these are his rooting interests. His boys.

A bit o' background on The Silv. He evidently grew up in the Bay Area as a Niners fan. And worked for the Sacramento Bee as a beat reporter, covering that same squad. At some point, Eddie DeBartolo let him carry some towels out of the locker room.

From that point forward, every fourth line of every piece The Silv churns out calls that mean ol' NFL power structure to task for dunning his pal Eddie out of the league. What a class act, The Silv will tell you. Gambling? Fah. Who cares? He flew me out to Las Vegas with the team and I had my own room and everything. The York family? Whores and satanists. Did I mention he gave me a hug? Because he did.

And not just DeBartolo. If you ever played for, worked for or showed even a passing interest in the team, The Silv thinks you are Awesome (capital A on purpose...we don't fuck around with capitalization mistakes at The House of Georges). You were not only underappreciated as a (player, coach, locker room assistant, "masseuse" for Mr. Rice) but possibly deserve Hall of Fame consideration. Anyone who thinks otherwise is a moron. And lying. And probably a whorish satanist.

Of course, his fawning doesn't end there. He has a few faves in other arenas as well--pretty much anyone who ever gave him an interview, actually. This week, the target of his love is that famous bumpkin, Barry Switzer.

You might have thought that Switzer was a pretty good college coach and an excellent recruiter, back when big schools employed armies of barely-concealed hookers, test-takers and 'roid dealers as line items in their athletic departments' budgets (these days, they pay 'em under the table). You might have thought that a guy who once supposedly pulled a pistol on his team IN THE HUDDLE and threatened to shoot his running backs with it if they kept fumbling was, well, a blinkered asshole. You might have felt that a guy who liked to run up scores on teams like Drake and Baylor--way, way up--was just another big-program bully. You might have thought that...whore. Satanist.

No. Actually, Barry is a genius. A coach who inspires such love and affection that he can park anywhere he wants at a school he no longer works for, who asks his daughter to give him enemas, who trades jokes with his good pal, noted non-dickface Toby Keith. You thought anyone could coach that '95 Cowboys team to the Super Bowl? You're so stupid we can barely stand the thought of you dying painfully--such a fate would be far, far better than you deserve. Barry, through a combination of brilliant motivational strategy and ol' fashioned values (why, he skipped Saturday meeting to watch his son's football games!), did something that pathetic coaches like, say, Bud Grant never could have.

And then there's the Natalie Coughlin factor. Who the fuck, you're mumbling in between bites of Totino's Pizza Roll, is Natalie Coughlin? Only America's greatest competitive swimmer EVER. She's called "The Golden Girl" by people in the know. People like The Silv. Did The Silv mention his book about Natalie Coughlin? It's called "Golden Girl: How Natalie Coughlin Fought Back, Challenged Conventional Wisdom, and Became America's Olympic Champion." That's Natalie Coughlin, golden girl, in case we hadn't mentioned it. Natalie. Golden. Champion. Book. The Silv. Buy on amazon.com right now for $13.54 (down from $24.95)

The Silv also believes that the University of California at Berkeley is the Center of the Universe (no, really, that's the title of a regular feature in his column).

Now, I lived in San Francisco for a few wonderful, hazy months as a teen, and spent a lotta time in Berkeley (and the Oakland ghetto, but that's another post, and I'd need to borrow Ol' No. 7's Greeel-pic for it). I dig Berkeley. My dad, Cecil the 1st, was kicked out of Cal back in the '40s. My mom's fam helped settle the area in the 1880s. So we have some history there.

But The Silv's maunderings about Cal this, Cal that, Cal Women's Softball(!) and Adam Duritz, who went to Cal and has dreadlocked hair extensions, are so far beyond the pale as to make the pale seem positively ruddy. As an occasional supporter of UCLA--long story, more family ties, plus my first basketball ever was the old gold-n-blue--it makes my teeth hurt to even think about. If Marshawn Lynch asked The Silv to lie face down in a pile of catshit so he and his boys could throw bones on his back, The Silv would immediately produce a well-fed cat with diarrhea.