It can't be only me. I used to get up early on Sunday mornings in the fall to watch SportsCenter and then NFL Countdown to get me ready for 10-plus hours of football-fueled testosterone bliss. I still watch the football, but I've dropped the rest of my routine.

I can't decide if it's because I'm getting older or if it's the current state of affairs in professional sports.

Let's start with the NBA dress code. As far as I'm concerned, the NBA can go to hell. It's nothing but a league of pot-smoking thugs. In fact, I've heard that the NBA doesn't drug test it's athletes because it would have to suspend 75 to 90 percent of its players for marijuana use. Smoke up, gangster! Most of us would be fired for that kind of behavior.

Now, back to the dress code. Most of us would get canned if we dressed like a thug. Anyone with a 9th-grade education (like a pro athlete) can put on a shirt with a god damned collar and a clean pair of trousers. And let's face it, Allen Iverson seems capable of scraping together $30 for a pair of blue Dockers so don't bitch about getting a clothing stipend above your 5- to 10-million dollar per year salary.

David Stern is doing the right thing. There are lots of people like me who don't watch anymore basketball mainly because of these overpaid criminals.

Next up, Vikings and boat sex.

Let's face it. If any man between the ages of 13 and 90 was invited to take a boat trip on Lake Minnetonka with ten $5,000 hookers, he'd go. If nothing else, just to see what a $5,000 ho looks like.

Here's what you dummies did wrong. Do it in the privacy of someone's house and not on a rented boat. Some poor 17-year-old is going to have to swab that deck. I'm not bothered by the actual fornicating. Heck, our last president fucked a fat, ugly intern in the Oval Office. Bottom line, people are horny. Fuck all you want—just do it in private and don't get caught. Idiots. I'll cheer for fuckers but not stupid fuckers.

The Vikings franchise wants the people of Minnesota to build them a new stadium. I'm all for it, and here is my plan. Build a maximum-security prison with a fenced-in football field and put all the players in cells between practices and games. That will keep the bloodthirsty fans safe from all of the criminals in the NFL.



The worst thing about all of this is that there still are millions of people whose lives depend on the outcome of Sunday's game. I work with lots of people who come to work on a Monday after a Vikings loss and are totally depressed. That will happen a lot this year. I quit caring long ago. In fact, in 1998 when Denny Green made Randall Cunningham take a knee with two timeouts left and 1:29 left in a tie ball game in the NFC title game I didn't even blink an eye. I just grabbed another High Life and smiled. The overtime loss didn't take very long.

Let's get back to those waterheads on ESPN. Am I the only one who is sick of special-interest stories about someone who got injured in a football game? Pro football is our modern-day gladiator games. We pay these savages millions of dollars to beat each other into a bloody mess. And when they can't play anymore, we purchase fresh meat for our brutal pleasure.

Well, I have to get going. I have tickets for tonight's Minnesota Wild game.