Marshawn vs the NFL
Marshawn Lynch is easily the coolest player on the Seahawks and probably in my top 5 current players in the entire league (My other 4, by the way, are Eli, OBJ, Watt, and OBJ). Marshawn is just so goddamn cool. I have a special love for a player who is so good and won’t put up with the league’s BS (as much as he reasonably can, anyway).
On one hand, I actually perfectly understand what angle the league is coming from in regards to Marshawn grabbing his crotch after he scores and does cool things. It’s not exactly the most polite gesture and if you grabbed your junk in front of everyone at your job after making a sale or filing the TPS reports or whatever your bosses probably wouldn’t be too happy unless he’s the type who does it already. A lot of people think it’s BS that Marshawn is getting threatened for this but really, it makes sense. I think a 15 yard penalty is ridiculous but the NFL has a bigger issue with not allowing any sense of expression on scores, which seems bizarrely contradictory to the NFL’s nature as an entertainment source. That’s what sports are, they are entertainment. Let the people entertain. But even then I can still see why grabbing your junk might be seen as a bit unnecessary and vulgar and anyone who says Marshawn should be allowed to do whatever he wants are just Lynch fans blindly siding with their super star and missing what makes his dick grabs so great.
Marshawn’s dick grabbing antics are great precisely because the NFL hates it. If he was allowed to grab his dick with no penalties, it would lose a lot of what makes it so fantastic. It would still be cool, but it’s even cooler knowing a bunch of stodgy old farts are stewing in their seats when he does it. Very few players can do what Marshawn does, so to see him do something remarkable and then grab his dick at the end as an extra special suck it gesture is part of the Marshawn Lynch mystique. It’s part of why we love him. We love him for wanting to wear Gold Cleats. We love him for refusing to tolerate the cliche BS post-game interview and give silly answers to deliberately annoy the media, who he knows will just twist his words anyway. Marshawn has to abide by certain restrictions, but in challenging them at every turn whilst being a ridiculously awesome player is what gives Marshawn his magic. I love that he pisses the NFL off and shows their hypocrisy with his actions. That’s part of what makes him cool. Marshawn is the Breakfast Club standing up to the snotty principal who tries to mold them into what he thinks is the perfect student. Marshawn is the badass action hero who just can’t be brought down by the man no matter how mad the man gets, because the people love him. I hope he continues to find ways to piss off the NFL, and if the Seahawks win the Super Bowl, I hope he wins MVP, gets on the podium, and grabs his junk right before shaking Goodell’s hand and getting the trophy, all on national television. It would be the best thing I have ever seen.
If he doesn’t I’ll at least make a comic with him doing it.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Thanks for asking.
Maybe.
I’m just here so I won’t get fined.
I’m thankful
Bloody hell. Brent Grimes just can’t catch a break, can he. OBJ is already in your top five once, and yet Optimus gets denied by him AGAIN!
You lost the comic when you Godwin’ed it. I dislike Goodell as much as (probably more than) the next guy, but the Hitler poster’s a bit much. :-S
The Best Part is that the league was selling a picture of his crotch grab on nfl shop. It got pulled, but still.
http://deadspin.com/the-nfl-sells-a-photo-of-marshawn-lynchs-obscene-gest-1681714535/1681784842/+bubbaprog
I’m thankful.
No one likes Goodell.
Guessing the comic was meant to allude to earlier comics about stupid decision making by Roger Goodell in the past, no?
Oh and loving Roger’s expression. It’s priceless.
Funny comic, but the picture of hitler was too far.
The idea that one of the most popular, well-known players in the league is being persecuted just shows how delusional the Seattle Seahawks and their fanbase are. All they’ve ever done is whine and complain.
All I see is you doing the whining. Stop being do salty and enjoy the sport kiddo. Nobody likes a crybaby.
I was with you except the stuff about the interviews. It’s played out at this point. The members of the media have a job to do, and getting a quote, no matter how cliche, from the star player is part of that job. I was fine with him making a point when someone took him out of context and screwed up his words, but this has gone on past that. Part of the job description of a professional athlete is to speak with the media. It’s part of the reason he is getting paid a buttload of money. He doesn’t have to like it, or even pretend to like it (See Belicheck, Bill)… but he has to do it.
The description is to speak with the media. Saying “I had oatmeal and toast for breakfast” or some other useless statement 49 times is *technically* fulfilling that side of the bargain.
If you asked me to take a look at your 10-page paper, and I take it, glance at it, and return it to you; I have done exactly what you asked me to do. You meant “take a look” idiomatically, but I interpreted it literally. If you want to remove the gray area to force me to actually *read* it then you would have to be more specific in your request.
There are over fifty other players the media can go talk to. I’m sure Steven Hauschka is just dying to tell everyone about his new minivan, and I hear Russell Wilson will trade you a sermon in exchange for a platform. If you’re a writer and the extent of your creativity extends no further than generating hackneyed narratives from selectively mined quotes from Marshawn Lynch, then you don’t deserve a job – because there are legion 20-somethings who can do exactly what you do for literally no money.
BEAST MODE MOTHERFUCKERS
The posters are a nice touch.
If you worked for a design firm where your job was to create cool posters, but once a month you had to do a presentation for the big wigs to show them what you were up to, you’d probably bitch and complain leading up to the meeting, but you’d do it. If when designing posters, you’re told to keep them clean, but the company uses them to market violent movies, you may not like it, but you’ll do it. You’re an artist, and you’re getting paid to do what you love to do, so you take the good with the bad, and suck it up. So why should Lynch get a pass? NFL contracts require media availability, and they have a code of conduct players are expected to adhere to. It may be rediculous, but so is being paid millions to play football.
I get ragging on the NFL being a bunch of hypocritical assholes, because they are, but I’m not going to toss Lynch up on a pedestal for some of his bullshit. We all hate or disagree with some aspect of our jobs, but that doesn’t give us free riegn to be dicks about it. He’s free to voice his opinion (or protest in his own way) and many of certainly agree that he should be able to skip interviews if he wants, but to act like he doesn’t deserve punishment for his actions is a bunch of crap.
He and other players can keep on giving the NFL the finger, and I’ll continue to enjoy it when they do, but people need to stop whining when they’re punished.
If you’re one of the top five best at X job in Y field in the world, you can bet your ass that you get special treatment. If there is a part of your job that you HATE, that everyone else in your field has to do because “reasons”, but it doesn’t actually influence you doing the part of your job that your employer cares about, you can be damned sure your employer will make it so you don’t have to do that part of the job, because you’ll just go elsewhere.
Lynch doesn’t really have that choice: he can do another job elsewhere, sure, but he can’t do THIS job. And the NFL, in this case, isn’t 32 teams– it’s one league, with rules that follow you around. And there really is no way to effectively protest it, particularly with Goodell in charge– the players have no trust in him, and he has certainly done everything in his power to earn that mistrust. If he becomes a large enough media problem for punishing, though, if the public simply refuses to tolerate it (and there is a pretty vocal outcry against Lynch being punished), then Goodell might have to take a back seat on this one.
Most NFL personalities relish the spotlight. They WANT the interviews, they WANT the attention, and the NFL caters to that kind of glory-seeker. Lynch doesn’t want it, the NFL won’t suffer for it, and allowing the enigma is, frankly, good for the brand.
That is one of the worst analogies I’ve heard about this situation. How does talking to the media even begin to equate with being given a performance evaluation by higher-ups in the company? As it stands, Lynch is talking to the media, and this is where your comparison falls flat on its face- If you don’t give your bosses a good presentation, you could be fired. If you give the media a terrible interview? No-one bothers showing it, unless you embarrassed yourself.
A more apt comparison would be “You have to perform a meaningless and pedantic task for someone else (which they don’t particularly need anyway) which doesn’t reflect on you at all unless you just don’t do it for a while, every now and again. In order to get out of the task, you half-arse it all the way, and in the end it doesn’t matter how you perform, as long as you perform. The point of half-arsing of course comes from the hopes that the other party realise that you are both wasting each other’s time, and you get an out as a result. This is the part the media hasn’t really gotten yet, though.
I think I need a Tshirt with that last panel on it.
I like the idea, but I think a pair of sweatpants with goodells face on the crotch would be better… a different version of the sweatpants that have juicy written on the ass
and Dave continues to suck the dick of the seahawks
You do realize he pretty much illustrates current events of the NFL, right?
Your an idiot. He is a professional football player. He gets paid millions of dollars to make plays. Why does he have to celebrate and make stupid childish gestures after plays? He’s a spoiled child that’s why. It’s his job to make plays. Do your job shut up and play the game you get paid millions of dollars to play. Stop subjecting millions of kids to this stupidity.
“Your an idiot.”
Oh, this is just precious.
irony is delicious
“your an idiot”
OH IT TASTES SO GOOD
15 yard penalty assessed to the NFL for excessive sales of Viagra and Ciallis ads. Penalty will be assessed until they pull their own heads out of their own asses.
Can someone explain how a celebratory crotch grab sends a bad message compared to the objectification of the female cheerleaders? What is their purpose besides giving TV viewers a little eye candy between plays?
Signed,
Father of a daughter
cheerleaders aren’t entirely objectified. I mean sure, they’re treated badly, just look at the Bills cheerleaders.
But objectified? Not any more than the NFL players are. They dance around and do choreographed stuff because they want to, otherwise they wouldn’t do it. Are their internal issues? Of course. And in some cases (like the Raiders) they’re really bad. But the very existence of cheerleaders doesn’t really serve for objectification. Come to think of it, it really doesn’t serve for anything. Why are they even there?
For those saying the Hitler poster is too much, stop it. He put as much “evil” stuff in Goodell’s office as possible. Why shouldn’t Hitler be in there?
Raven in Syracuse,
I would have gone with a King Leopold II poster – the trolls wouldn’t get it and Godwin’s law would be left unsullied.
If you had relatives who were slaughtered in the Holocaust, you would understand. It shouldn’t be necessary to have relatives who were slaughtered to understand, but there you go.
The fictional evil stuff is pretty funny, though. Love the alt text, too.
I don’t see the distinction between people who had relatives slaughtered by the Nazis and people who had relatives slaughtered by Stalin, Mao, the Japanese Occupational forces, Pol Pot, the US Government, the British, and all the other recent mass murdering organizations.
Would the same people have complained if there had been a picture of prince Asaka or Saloth Sar?
Hyperbole is supposed to be absurd.
The difference is that none of those real tragedies are featured in this comic… All of the Ultimate Evils except Hitler are fictional.
I whole heatedly agree. My family was massacred on the planet Alderaan, and when I see that death star even in what is clearly a tongue in cheek cartoon. I burn the cartoonists building to the ground.
If only Marshawn’s ring was on his middle finger. That’d be the icing on the cake.
Forgot one crucial detail…
Lynch 3:16 says he just whipped Goodell’s ass!
To be fair, glorifying this voilent game (of which he is a willing participant) “that literally shortens lives and irreparably damages players,” is what allows him to play the game that he loves and make the money that he makes so that he can do what he wants like start his own company. However, fining him for his ‘gestures’ and the fact that he doesn’t want to talk to the media is beyond ridiculous.
I’m honestly not sure why there are media people still trying to get a quote from Marshawn Lynch at this point. Do they honestly think they’re special enough that Lynch will pull a 180 and suddenly start giving real answers? He hates them for constantly misquoting him so why would he bother answering their inane questions so they could continue to misquote him?
The other thing that confuses me is fans who are critical of Lynch. I’m sorry but would you really like him more if he gave a canned “We need to execute our gameplan.” type of response which 98% of pro athletes already give when you ask them a question? At least what he’s doing now is entertaining.