There’s a lot of things that can be said about professional football players. One thing that shouldn’t be said, however, is that they lack toughness to play. In a sport where the average professional football player’s career is only four years, these men sustain a tremendous amount of physical abuse. It takes tremendous courage to walk on a playing field knowing that you might leave it on a cart. And one of the bravest people on a football field is the quarterback. This player handles the ball more than any other position player and is just as likely to get punished with a bruising hit or tackle if the offensive play he called doesn’t work. In 2011, two games into the season, we’ve had, so far, a quarterback play with a broken rib and punctured lung and another one suffer a concussion and one played with a broken index finger. And then there is that one quarterback in Indianapolis who is out indefinitely because of a preseason neck injury.
On the whole everyone knows that these position players are pretty tough people – everyone except Fox Sports. It seems that during the September 11th broadcast of the Chicago Bears- Atlanta Falcon game, Fox Sports aired what it said were the actual headlines from the local papers in Chicago relative to last season’s playoff game that Cutler sat out due to an injured knee. The headlines shown under a picture of the injured Chicago Bears quarterback, Jay Cutler, read:
1. “Cutler Leaves With Injury”
2. “Cutler Lacks Courage”
3. “Cutler’s No Leader”
The problem is none of the headlines were true or ever appeared in ANY newspaper in the United States! In fact, most Chicago newspapers were adamant in their defense of the decision to have Cutler sit the game out.
My love for News Corporation has always been razor thin and half as deep. The organization lacks integrity and has difficulty in spelling the word “truth” twice the same way. The fact that Fox Sports would lie about something doesn’t surprise me as much as the fact that the lie was uncovered so quickly. The headlines weren’t just misleading; they were blatant out and out lies. In my opinion, Cutler should get an on-air apology, and someone at Fox Sports should be fired. But this is News Corporation we’re talking about and neither one of those two things is likely to happen.
Kudos to the Chicago Tribune for its fact-finding and a bouquet of thorns to Fox Sports for reminding us of its parentage. The apple never falls far from the tree.