Just Give 'Em the Damn Keyshawn! (11/18/03) --

Please, oh please, let this happen. After using up my decade’s worth of NFL luck two years ago with the Bears improbable playoff run, I am now hoping to mortgage further against the future by seeing this one come to fruition.

Let Keyshawn Johnson sign with the Cowboys.

With Sportscenter buzzing about Keyshawn’s unceremonious dumping from the Buccaneers, they are also speculating, re-speculating, and then speculating some more with the help of some real experts (Sports radio callers) that the Cowboys are going to reunite Keyshawn and Bill Parcells next season. If this comes to pass, this will finally give me a definitive reason to abhor the Cowboys again.

For the past few years, there’s been this uneasy feeling surrounding the Cowboys, similar to what’s been hanging around Notre Dame for over ten years now. You see this team. You see their helmets. You see their stadium. Deep down inside, you know that you should be vigorously cheering against them. But it’s nearly impossible at times to get angry at the 6-10 Cowboys or against the Fighting “We almost lost to Navy for God’s sake” Irish.

But now, there may be light at the end of the tunnel. It’s like unwrapping a gift and finding a delectably guilty pleasure inside. Just give the ‘Boys the damn Keyshawn.

Since Barry Switzer was fired, the Cowboys have been an awful mess. They have been so bad that I have gone past the well, the reserves, and deep into the storm cellar to find any malevolence that I can will towards the Cowboys. Much of this has been in the form of giggling mischieviously at Jerry Jones’s transformation into Geri Jones, but even that has started to become stale lately.

Then of course you had Quincy Carter. A ridiculously high draft pick, you could sit there and laugh at them them as they unfailingly try and stick with this experiment to show that he was the “right” pick at that point. This reminds me of an old guy with back problems trying to shovel snow. People are asking him if he needs help, but he just curses these nuisances until four hours later when someone finds him laying in a small heap with disks bulging in thirteen different directions. That’s the state that the Cowboys have been in for the past three years thanks to their staunch defending of Kordell Carter.

Then the team dumped Emmitt Smith. This one required a lot of work on my part to try and find some bitter feelings that I could direct at “America’s Team.” This was because back when the Cowboys were on top of the world, nothing incited more rage within my cranium then when Emmitt would rip his helmet off in the end zone to expose his. This still burns me to this day.

When your little girl is a robot, expect wildly stupid things to happen!

Sidebar: A couple years back, Barry Sanders steps up to the podium to announce his surprise retirement. In the process, he hands a giant gift-wrapped box to Emmitt in Dallas who can’t help but grin from ear-to-ear. This, too, is something that troubles me. Back in their heydays, Emmitt Smith’s line consisted of Hercules, Samson, Mark Henry, and Magnus ver Magnusson. Barry Sanders, by contrast, had Woody Allen, Urkel, a retired jockey, and Screech opening the holes for him.

So in 2002, we all have to trumpet Emmitt Smith for taking the award that clearly was as much Barry Sanders’ as it was Magnus’s. Well screw that, I know who the real rushing champion is.

But back on topic, Emmitt gets dropped by the Cowboys and I have to pretend that I am angry. “Shame….on….them….” I say, much like the robot girl on Small Wonder would. “How…….dare…….they.”

Yes, friends of American football, this was the sad existence of the Cowboy hater for the past five plus years. But now it looks as though our sad existence might be coming to an end.

Sign Keyshawn, Geri. Make it happen for the suffering people like me. At least then, I can get back to truly despising one of the teams that is deserving of it. And if you could find a way to have him split time at Notre Dame, well, then I’ll accept the eternal ineptitude of the Bears like a true soldier (as opposed to a Kellen Winslow soldier. Ooh, draft him too, will ya?)

The Leonardite <bgsound src="http://www.leonardite.com/misc/fight.mid" loop="Infinite">