ESPN Editor’s Note: The opinions voiced below are those of the infamous Doctor Thompson and are absolutely not the views of this network or the editors. That is free journalism.
I know this is hard for some people to accept, but the fact is that Football season is right on top of us again. The first game on TV is scheduled for August 9, less than two weeks from now. It will not be real Football, of course, but it will look like real football, and it will sound like real football—and if you cross your eyes and blow on your thumb hard enough, it will almost be possible to bet on it.
Only a real addict can look forward to that kind of desperate scratching and sniffing, and I am one of them. I am a student of the NFL game. I have been with it since the very beginning, since the start of the modern TV era.
In any case, I had an extremely busy schedule last week. It combined the best and the worst of everything and led into a frenzy of involvements. I was still recovering from my alloy spine replacement procedure when the real world suddenly caught up with me and called me back into action. There was no way to avoid it. I had no choice.
The real shocker of the week, for me, was and remains the stunning collapse of the evil Bush administration, which I view with mixed feelings.
In truth, I could be a lot happier about the collapse of Bush and his people and his whole house of cards and everything he stands for, if it didn’t also mean the certain collapse of the U.S. economy, and the vital infrastructure, and indeed the whole “American way of life.”
It will not be anything like the collapse and Impeachment of Richard Nixon, which had little or no impact on day-to-day life in this country. Nothing really changed then, except Some people went to prison, of course, but that was to be expected, considering the crimes they committed and the shameful damage they caused. They were criminals, and the righteous American people punished them for it. Our system worked and we were all heroes.
Ah, but that was twenty-nine (29) years ago, Bubba, and many things have changed. The utter collapse of this Profoundly criminal Bush conspiracy will come none too soon for people like me, though it may already be too late. The massive plundering of the U.S. Treasury and all its resources has been almost on a scale that is criminally insane and has literally destroyed the lives of millions of American people and American families. Exactly. You and me, sport—we are the ones who are going to suffer, and suffer massively. This is going to be just like the Book of Revelation said it was going to be—the end of the world as we knew it.
Okay, Okay, don’t get away from yourself, Doc. That was an extremely heavy riff. Not all sports fans are in perfect agreement with your aggressive political opinions, so let’s try to tread lightly for a while. You are, after all, a professional sportswriter, and you have work to do. Ho ho ho.
Exactly, and that is only one of the reasons I was visited last week by the eminent Daniel Snyder, “new” owner of the Washington Redskins. Dan gave me a football and we exchanged many other impressive gifts, such as the world’s best whiskey and the finest Davidoff cigars. I liked Snyder and I have vastly improved expectations for the Redskins this year. They are a team that has played a large part in my life. I still have friends who played for the Redskins—people like John Wilbur, whom I still see frequently in Hawaii, and Billy Kilmer, Sonny Jurgensen, Roy Jefferson, Charlie Taylor—players mainly from the Good old days of the 1970s, when the Skins were usually on the top of the NFL East, and I was living, for intensely political reasons, right smack in the middle of Washington, DC. Those were violent years for everyone, or at least everyone even faintly involved with either Football or Politics, and that was just about every person I knew.
I particularly remember Edward Bennett Williams, who was then the Owner of the Redskins. He had been a personal hero of mine long before I ever met him. Ed was arguably the Number-One Criminal Lawyer of his time or any other. Ed Williams was royalty, he was a living legend at all Law Schools, including Columbia, where I was spending a lot of my time in those years. Edward Bennett Williams was the Real Thing.
And so am I for that matter, but we will not dwell on that now. Time is running out on us. Alas, we will be forced to abbreviate or even chop off the many other things I was planning to discuss this week. I am still fatigued from my extremely successful, though tiring, spinal situation. I feel no pain (knock, knock), which is a beautiful improvement. That is all ye know and all ye need to know, for now. Mahalo.
—July 28, 2003