FanNation - The Republic of Sport

Hello and welcome!  We're here in the beautiful town of St. Louis, MO, for the 40th annual You-Blew-It! conference and awards.  For those of you who are unaware, the conference is held amongst those in the sports world who have had everything at their fingertips, only to let it all slip away in one monumentally hilarious moment of stupidity.  Of course, being the all-encompassing entity that it is, this is not limited to on-field activity.  Past honorees at the conference included Harry Frazee, given a posthumous Lifetime Achievement Award for shipping the Babe off to Boston, and Rae Caruth, given the award for Most Horribly Managed Murder for Hire.  Usually, those given the year's awards aren't in attendance, but this year is different, as one of our honorees is also on the panel!  Well, let's get down to this year's coverage, shall we?

First, as MC of the event, we have Arsenio Hall!  He's Eddie Murphy's best friend, for those of you didn't know.  Michael Richards was originally offered the job, but the conference coordinators didn't think he could be around that many black people without a "relapse."

Making up this year's panel, we have everyone's favorites, Steve Bartman and Moises Alou, who worked in concert to produce one of the biggest, and funniest, blown moments in sports history.  Also joining us will be this year's runner up to the You-Blew-It! Man of the Year award, Kobe Bryant.  LaVar Arrington is here from Washington, DC, and we'd like to thank him for taking the time to come to us even with his broken leg and broken arm.  Lindsey Jacobellis is here to exhort to us the virtues of keeping oneself balanced.  As always, elder statesman Leon Lett is here to make sure the panel pays proper respect to both the conference's dignity, and the spirit of our patron saint, Bill Shoemaker.  Tony Banks would have joined us, but he made a crucial mistake at the last minute, misreading the lanes at the Airport and going to gate C13 to St. Kit's instead of gate D13 to St. Louis.  Classic TB.  Michael Rasmussen wanted to show up, but his team wouldn't let him.  Also, Chris Webber didn't have as many frequent flyer miles as he thought, and could only make it half-way to St. Louis.  We don't know where he is right now.

Arsenio: How is everyone doing today?  For those of you in the audience new to our proceedings, I'm Arsenio Hall, and Eddie Murphy is my best friend.  He even got me my own television show!  But then I made Muhammad Ali's friend look like a horse's as$, and I lost that gig.  I went from "Cool Black Guy" to "That dork in the 10-10-220 Commercials" in no time.  So I think I know something about blowing it.  Our panel, seated with me, is made up of the various personalities in sports through this past year that have really shown a knack for blowing it, on and/or off the field.  Let's get on with it!

(sounds of "hoo hoo hoo" made by crowd.)

Arsenio: Panel, what is it about blowing it that sets you apart from the rest of the crowd?  I mean, can just anybody miss the big play, or does it take an extra something to really make magic happen?

Moises:  Oh, it definitely takes a certain dedication to stinking the place up.  I mean, I could have removed my head from my rectum after Steve caught that inconsequential fly-ball, told my team to pull their sh*t together, and that would have been that.  But instead, we came together; I mean, as the CUBS, we came together, realizing a special moment was upon us.  I'm talking about a moment to truly reach into the collective body of the fans, and rip their puny little hearts out.  We were winning three nothing, for god's sake!  I honestly didn't think we could blow it, but, god willing, we did.  They scored 8 unanswered runs on us, including our failure to convert a double play to end the inning that could have ruined our chances at history.  You really do need the ambition to screw up on that kind of level.

Steve: I just tried to catch a fly ball.  What the hell am I doing here?

Kobe:  Arsenio, Moises really hit the nail on the head.  I couldn't have said it better to a fan with a camera phone.  When it comes to totally squandering a good thing, say, one's self-image, you have to work at it.  Hard.  An interview here, a snide comment there, that's not enough.  You have to flip-flop on every little issue.  Pro-life?  Give money to an abortion clinic with a camera crew to record ever second of it.  Want to be traded?  Say you don't want to be traded at noon, then by five make sure you call the owner of your team a collie-molesting commie ****.  And who gives a rat's as$ what the fans care about or think?  I mean, isn't that why we're here?  Because we don't care what the fans think?  I sure as hell don't, and I think I speak for my fellow panelists here when I say that.  Screw the fans.  If I can't play with their emotions, what am I?

Lindsey:  Kobe is totally right.  You have to really lure the fans into thinking everything is locked up and done.  I think I showed the right way to do it in the '06 Snowboard Cross.  Everyone and their mother, my mother especially, thought I had that sh*t on lock.  So I did what any sensible athlete would do, about to win a gold medal: attempt a meaningless and high-risk manuever so as to decrease my chances of winning and increase my chances of screwing up.  As we all know, the manuever paid off in spades.  I repeated this at the '07 Snowboard Cross.

Steve:  What in god's name is wrong with you people?  I was horrified when the Cubs couldn't close off that series!

Moises:  Don't mind him, he's not an athlete.  He don't understand.

(the others laugh good-heartedly).

Kobe: Also, you have to realize that in order to really screw up a good thing, you have to either do something so bad that it's irreversible, or you have to be so obnoxious for such a prolonged period of time that people can't forget you anymore.  For example, I'm too much of a little p*ssy to kill a dog or a person, so I made sure to be as big an as$ for as long as possible, thereby ensuring my place in the history of screw-ups.

Leon: True dat!

Kobe:  It's all a matter of what people can remember.  If your action is concentrated and brief, there's a good chance people will forgive you, provided you don't do something that bad.  I mean, we forgave Marv Albert for being a freak, right?  That's why my adultery wasn't good enough.  Oh, don't get me wrong, I though I had a winner.  I though that was that, and I had really screwed the pooch.  But as it turned out, everyone stood behind me as I cried out all those BS apologies, and then it came out that the girl's real name was Loony McSlut, so I realized that I had to prolong my exposure and be as insufferable as possible. 

Arsenio:  Well, then, what are the ingredients that go into making a juicy, delicious, screw-up?

LaVar:  Expectation is a big thing.  The fans have to be realistically expecting a good outcome when you blindside them with the bad.

Lindsey:  That's true.  Also, you need to have maximum exposure before the fall, say, credit card commercials, and then appear to make sporadic appearences afterwards.  In reality though, you have to overexpose yourself as much as possible, so not only are the fans ticked off at you, but then they become sick of you.  It's a page straight from Kobe's handbook.

(everyone laughs).

LaVar:  When I was with the Redskins, everyone expected me to be the focal point of the team.  Everyone expected me to be a community leader.  So by complaining about money as often as I could, I alienated two parties in one stroke: the team that believed in me, who then benched me, and thereby the fans who believed in me, who saw me as a whiny jerk.  Staying on point is another big issue.  If you really want to blow it, you cannot stay on point.  You have to change your story as often and as ludicrously as possible.  Floyd Landis was a master of this.  One day it was shots of Jack Daniels, then it was male PMS, then he settled on the absurd tactic of going after the testing protocols of the lab.  Pure genius.  He ensured his downfall before the results even came back.
           

Leon: Coming from my vast experience, I know that the context is also a big factor.  When I screwed up that touchdown in Super Bowl XXVII, we were already winning 52-17.  All that cost us was the biggest margin of victory in Super Bowl history.  Certainly costly, but not enough.  That made me look like a doofus, but it didn't embarrass the team.  Thanksgiving Day, 1993, now that was a screw-up.  All I had to do was stand around looking at the ball, and we would have won.  Instead, I ended up costing my team the game by trying to pick the muffed kick up off the ice.  The rare snow storm made the moment all the more important, as there were multiple reasons to remember that day.  That time, I made a mockery of the Cowboys and the Cowboy nation, which is what a true screw-up should try to do.

LaVar:  Yeah, but you guys won out the season and then won the Super Bowl.

Leon:  Yes, but I still made us look like idiots.  I mean, after that play, you have to be thinking, 'Don't they teach their players the rules of the game?'  It takes stupidity of a stronger magnitude than blowing a meaningless touchdown.  Context is very important.  Lindsey's screw-up is clasic because it cost her a gold medal.  In Super Bowl XXVII, there was little importance to me scoring that touchdown.

Arsenio:  That's why he's the savvy vet!  Who do you guys think should be honored with Man of the Year?

Kobe:  Me.

LaVar:  Michael Vick has done so much this past year to distinguish himself, I don't see anyone catching him at this point.  I mean, murdering dogs?  That's hard to top.  He'd have been better off murdering people.  On top of that, he's got the water-bottle incident, and the middle finger incident all playing is his favor.  I can't think of another personality who can come close to him right now.

Kobe:  What about me?

Lindsey:  What about the entire sport of cycling?  I know it's not one person, but after Floyd Landis, you'd think they'd clean up their act, but it's, like, all of them!  Can we give a communal award, or something?

Kobe:  We could give a communal award to me.

Steve:  I don't think we should give awards to people who want to do these things, nor do I think we should single people out for mistakes they made.  For god's sake, it was a foul ball!  Why couldn't the Cubs just close that damn series?  At least I used gifts I received for the ball to help kids with diabetes.  Kobe, you've squandered every last bit of good will you ever built up in your career.  Lindsey, you embarrassed yourself trying to showboat needlessly.  Why are you guys pround of that?

Kobe:  I'm proud of me.  So proud, I think we should give an award to me. 

Leon:  I have to go with the dark horse contender, Tim Hardaway.  I'm pretty sure I hate g*y people too, but I could be wrong; still, you don't just go on record saying "I hate some group of people" and then not expect a backlash.  Tim handled the situation in a manner befitting the You-Blew-It! Man of the Year: he totally flip-flopped.  I think he claimed that he was misquoted, or that his comments were taken out of context.  Ha!  The classic line of a proven screw-up.

Moises:  Aren't we forgetting Barry Bonds?  Here's a guy who's on the verge of breaking the biggest record in sports, and he's going to be remembered as one of the biggest villians in all of athletics.  I think he finally needs to be recognized for his many contributions to screwing-up.

Kobe:  Aren't we forgetting me?

Arsenio:  Ha ha, how could we ever forget you, Kobe?  Let's take a brief recess, let the panel mingle with those in attendance, and then we'll reconvene with a few more questions, and then this year's awards!  Also, Chris Webber should be joining us, but Tony Banks is a no-show for sure.  Oh well.  See you again after lunch!