http://tinyurl.com/69tnxpd

Rare is it that ESPN turns out mind vomit, but Ashley Fox (who?) decides to dump a heaping helping of it in response to a photo spread of Pittsburgh Steelers linebacker James Harrison in the August issue of Men’s Health (http://tinyurl.com/5s8oyjk).  For those that don’t know, James Harrison is one of, if not THE, hardest hitting defensive player in the National Football League over the past 3 or so seasons.  He has also played the bitch in the NFL’s desperate bid to prevent the league’s poster boys (Tom Brady, Drew Brees, Peyton Manning, among others) from getting their bells rung in a contact sport.

Yep, football is a contact sport, but you wouldn’t know it from the way certain players are protected by the league.

Harrison was fined $100k last season for “concussive hits”; these hits are, by definition, impossible to objectively classify, seeing as we all don’t have the same resilience to trauma to the upper body, or, put another way, some crybabies are more glass-jawed than others.  Imagine your job, full time, is to take that guy over there, and make sure he doesn’t cross this line here.  What would you do?  Would you hit that guy as hard as you possibly could, to make him fight for every inch of grass toward that line, to make that guy think twice about coming within 10 miles of you again for the rest of the game?  I would; it is that intensity that separates the best defensive players from the rest.

Back to the mind vomit from Ashley Fox, there are a couple of points I’d like to dispute from the article:

Playing football under a six-year, $51.175 million contract does not mean Harrison isn't still an employee. He is. There are rules, and there are consequences for breaking those rules.

I’m not sure if Ashley noticed, but James Harrison’s boss told him not to bother coming to work until further notice a couple months ago.  The political details of the NFL lockout are not important, but the fact that there is a lockout is the key point.  James Harrison doesn’t have a boss right now, so he can say whatever he wants to in whatever arena he wants to about his former, and most likely soon-to-be-again, boss.  In this case, any action taken by the league would be a reprisal action, and would also be conclusive proof of what most of us already know, and James Harrison said, about NFL commissioner Roger Goodell.

The photo accompanying the article shows Harrison shirtless with his arms crossed holding two of his guns, reportedly an FN Five-Seven pistol and a Smith & Wesson 460V revolver. It is a ridiculous image for kids to see. Harrison is a professional football player and therefore, unfortunately, a role model for some children. In the picture he is promoting guns, as if he has never been to inner city Chicago or Detroit or Philadelphia and seen the devastation gun use causes.

James Harrison is a role model?  I don’t think so.  The NFL would certainly agree, considering they’ve slanderously labeled him as “dirty” in their crusade to take real defense out of the NFL.  By labeling him as a dirty player, the message to children, specifically, is to NOT be like him.  Further, if Harrison is a role model, ESPN and other media outlets have made him a role model by showing his hits on highlight reels, and debating or discussing him and the fines leveled against him for hour after hour.  Besides, no kid grows up and wants to become a linebacker; kids dream of being the star quarterback—the Golden Boy with the golden arm.  It’s only later when kids mature and discover a desire to hit and an aptitude for the position that they decide to become linebackers. Only in the same vein that the predatory media made Charles Barkley a “role model” is James Harrison a role model, and I suspect that James Harrison would believe something Charles Barkley said a generation ago, “The meek shall inherit the Earth, but they won’t get the ball.” Harrison would also elbow an Angolan in the throat, which is why both he and Charles Barkley are awesome.

No one has ever questioned Harrison's toughness. But it is now fair to question whether he has a clue.

James Harrison does not look tough. He does not look like the meanest player in the NFL, the hardest hitter or the most feared defender.

The first sentence above is the last line of the article in question; the second sentence is the first line and hook for the article in question.  So, the first thing is to question a man’s toughness as a hook for an opinion piece, and then try and save face by saying no one questions his toughness?  So you need a hook to get people to read your stuff, fine.  I understand it as a device for writing.  Questioning the toughness of a legitimately tough guy who grabbed a rattlesnake barehanded to remove it from his place in Arizona when his son was visiting is just foolish. 

So, thanks ESPN for posting this nonsense.  I can see why Simmons got the hell out of Dodge and started his own brand.  I wouldn’t want to be associated with this kind of shoddy commentary, either.