For those not familiar with Piers Morgan, he's a transplanted Brit with a nightly show on CNN. 9:00, eastern standard time. Sandwiched right between Anderson Cooper's first hour at 8:00, and second hour at 10. For those that ARE familiar with him, you know that Piers has never had a guest he couldn't constantly interrupt and talk over, though that pesky Ted Nugent gave him a jolly good run for his shillings regarding the gun control issues in America a while back.
Nevertheless, like most other talking heads, Piers wants to at least the project the image he's on the cutting edge of various newsworthy events as they develop -- evidently including sports. So on the eve of the Super Bowl, of course Morgan and his producers booked "experts" to inform his adoring throngs of viewers what the mind set is of the two quarterbacks (Russell Wilson and Peyton Manning) that will participate in the big game.
That all sounds good until one considers who his guests were. First up -- Dan Marino. Marino set a bunch of passing records during his day, but he was only ever in one Super Bowl, almost 30 years ago, and his Dolphins got blistered by Joe Montana and the 49ers to the tune of 38-16. Yes, Marino is a Hall-of-Famer, and perhaps rightly so, but they only thing he knows about Super Bowls is how it feels to get blown out in one.
Oh, it got better -- or worse -- depending on how one looks at it. Next up for Piers, Joe Willie Namath to espouse his views on how modern day Super Bowl quarterbacks think. Namath has a plaque in Canton himself, and actually did win a Super Bowl. Just one small detail about that. Namath and his NY Jets hoisted the Lombardi trophy just before, or maybe just after, I can't remember for sure, the even more legendary Woodstock music festival happened. You know -- hippies, flower-power, free-love, Jimi Hendrix playing the national anthem , and all that? Was I there? Hell no. I was too busy losing my virginity in the back seat of a Chevy Nova parked way out in the boonies at a gravel pit to have time to go to upstate New York. Ah yes, fond memories indeed, but I digress.
Thing is, after all these years, Joe Willie likely knows about as much about how modern day Super Bowl quarterbacks have to perform as yours truly would know about getting the Playmate of the year into another back seat somewhere. The gravel pit is out. Last I heard, they filled it in and built condos.
And who the hell is Piers Morgan to talk about the Super Bowl anyway? He might know about cricket, soccer, polo players, and the names of all his Queen's thoroughbreds as they prance and jump around doing that ridiculous elite class equestrian thing. The hoi polloi would likely just as soon make stew out of them.
But Piers Morgan probably knows as much about American professional football as Captain Morgan. He was a Welsh "privateer" (see British pirate) that roamed the Caribbean back in the 17th century. Henry Morgan died in 1688, but he still has a spiced rum named after him. You've seen the commercials. It's the jolliest pirate ship there ever was. The slogan of that product to this day? To life, love, and loot. No fighting, mind you. Just a big party. Where they got their loot from would seem to be a good question. Of course, if Piers had had his way back in those days, pirates wouldn't have been allowed to have any guns either. Perhaps they could have just crashed their ships into each other and waited to see which one sunk first. And I'm not at all sure I really want to know about the actual love life on those sort of vessels either. I suspect that yo-ho-ho thing could get bloody well ugly at times.
Hmmm. Maybe I should stick to ESPN. Safer that way.
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