shootout-chrisberman

We’re in the slowest stretch of the offseason now: the dreaded post-draft period. There’s no football on, and there won’t be football on for quite some time. You’re angry. You’re hateful. We understand. At KSK, we’re hateful too. Of all things, at all times. Hating is what we do best. So, in that spirit, I’d like to present you with our new off-topic (or on-topic this week) offseason feature…

THIS WEEK IN FUCK YOU.

Every week or so, we’ll be taking our lack-of-football-related depression out on any number of deserving targets: people, things, abstract ideas, group dinners, etc. It’s just the kind of cathartic invective we excel at. This week, BERMAN.

You know, we’ve made fun of pretty much everyone at this site: King, Simmons, Easterbrook, players, coaches etc. Barely anyone has escaped our scorn. But I’ve never devoted an entire post here to how much I fucking can’t stand Chris Berman. Oh sure, I’ve bitched about him in Gamebooks and what not. But the fact is that Berman, like John Madden, has been so mercilessly picked apart elsewhere (particularly, in Berman’s case, at Deadspin), that we never had a solid chance to give him a proper reaming here.

Well, that ends today.

Because when I heard about the absolutely fucking abominable news that Berman was going to give Ralph Wilson’s Hall of Fame induction speech, and that ESPN apparently has no problem with it, I just about lost my shit. Now, I have no beef with Wilson himself for picking Berman. He’s an old man who can’t fucking read. I wouldn’t be surprised if Berman had also managed to talk Wilson into putting him into his goddamn will. Old people are easy to manipulate like that. That’s why I always target them when I need to steal prescription drugs.

But I’d like to again take you to Peter King’s take on this piece of news:

In the days when the Bills were the lowest team in the league, Berman always boosted the team. You can judge whether a TV host should be rooting for a team, but regardless, Wilson, Marv Levy, Bill Polian and Jim Kelly loved him for it.

I will judge. IT’S A FUCKING ABORTION. Okay? Berman is host of a national program that is meant to cover every team in the league. That’s his job. It’s not his job to single out one goddamn team for special treatment. It’s not his job to be a frontrunner who decides to boost whatever team that has an ownership he happens to be close with. But that’s exactly what he fucking does. And now it’s come to this, where he’s so tight with one league owner that he is allowed to personally induct him into the Hall of Fame. Would ESPN stand for this shit if it were Dan Snyder he was inducting? Or Al Davis? Jerry Jones? Would it be appropriate for Berman to give Jerry Jones a public endorsement like this?

“What Mr. Jones has done for pro football and for the city of Dallas and the state of Texas, it’s hard to put into words.”

Because that’s EXACTLY what he fucking said about Wilson…

“What Mr. Wilson has done for pro football and for the city of Buffalo and Western New York, it’s hard to put into words.”

Really? Okay, well I’ll put it into words. Here’s what Wilson did for pro football. He owned the team for fifty years (good, I guess), he helped fold the AFL into the NFL (very good), and he presided over the Bills’ four straight AFC titles (very good). All arguably worthy of the Hall of Fame.

But don’t give me this bullshit that somehow Ralph Wilson helped make Buffalo some incredible utropolis. Unemployment in Buffalo is currently 9%. And the team may flee the city for Canada within the next few years because the economy in Western New York sucks and because Wilson doesn’t want to build a new stadium with his own money. Oh, and Wilson doesn’t even FUCKING LIVE IN BUFFALO. He lives in Grosse Pointe, Michigan.

But I wouldn’t expect Berman to note any of those things. And you know why? BECAUSE HE’S A FUCKING CLOWN. Like Peter King, he’ll happily use his media platform to boost the image of anyone smart enough to crony up with him. The worst example of this was when he was forced by ESPN to return a championship ring that 49ers’ owner Eddie DeBartolo gave him.

In 1991 Berman accepted a 49ers championship ring from DeBartolo, only to return it after taking some flak for it, within and outside ESPN. “I know one thing,” Berman says of DeBartolo. “The league misses him.”

Oh it does, Chris? It misses having one of its owners be a convicted felon who openly bribed a sitting governor? FUCKING BULLSHIT. The reason you think the league misses him IS BECAUSE HE’S YOUR FUCKING BUTTBUDDY AND HE LET YOU IN THE FUCKING CLUB.

Make no mistake: Berman isn’t doing this Wilson induction just out of charity. This is, without question, his first official campaign stop for his own Hall of Fame candidacy. If you don’t think this asshole is buttering up everyone in hopes of one day being officially immortalized as part of a game that he is only supposed to COVER, then you’re out of your fucking mind. Watch the speech. Berman will say, “No one circled the wagons like Ralph Wilson.” This isn’t a prediction. IT WILL OCCUR. And what purpose will that line serve, other to again make Berman more of the focus than whatever subject he’s talking about? He’s going to try and get into the Hall. And I bet you he succeeds, because no one is able to communicate the importance of Chris Berman quite like Chris Berman. “I built ESPN myself!”

I can’t stand it. Look at what this fuckface said on the occasion of his 30th year at ESPN:

“Just don’t call me a personality,” he said. “What is that? That’s a morning disc jockey. I entertain, but I take what I do, the journalism part, seriously. Sportscaster, that’s fine. That encompasses all of that.”

Oh, you take it seriously? FUCKING BULLSHIT. If you had taken it seriously, you never would have accepted that ring from DeBartolo, and you never would have accepted Wilson’s request to have you speak. THAT is what a journalist would do. I know this, because I make fun of journalists on a daily basis.

“You know,” Berman explains, “these [athletes and executives] aren’t enemies to us. We get into sports because we like the games and we like the people who play them.”

WRONG. You get into sports because you like the games. Nowhere is it in the sportscaster manual is it mandated that you LIKE everyone and anyone who plays them. That’s fucking shit.

”Maybe what we’re supposed to be, to quote Woody Allen from Broadway Danny Rose, is friendly but never familiar.”

Again, FUCK YOU. You ARE familiar. Enough so that one owner sees fit to have you induct him into the Hall of Fame. What fucking distance are you putting between yourself and your subject when you do that? The Bills weren’t even always your fucking favorite team. You were a season ticket holder for the goddamn JETS. So what genuine reason do you have to like the Bills, apart from the fact that they have an owner vulnerable enough to grant you access?

“It almost goes to, you know, ‘Are you a journalist?’ With the stuff [I] learn all the time, it isn’t like, ‘I have a scoop’ or anything like that. I may not have a scoop, but I [get it] right. I mean, ask the people I work with. Go ask Belichick or [ Philadelphia Eagles coach] Andy Reid. My job is different from the guys at the network who have to be pit bulls. I mean, I’ve got information that can sink countries. I just don’t need to bury banana republics every day. It’s not my M.O.”

“I’m a really important person who has really important information, but I’m too important to divulge it.” That’s the essence of how Berman operates.

And so, allow me to sum my feeling up to Berman thusly: FUCK YOU. YOU FUCKING SELF-AGGRANDIZING SACK OF SHIT. YOU COULD GIVE TWO SHITS ABOUT NFL FANS. THE ONLY THING YOU GIVE A SHIT ABOUT IS WHO AND WHAT HELPS ENHANCE YOUR GODDAMN PROFILE THE MOST. THAT’S IT.

I fucking hate this man. I hate all his fucking nicknames. I hated his “Nickname Show” where he explained the etymology of how he derived those stupid nickames. Curtis “My Favorite” Martin was inspired by a TV show? GTFO! I hated his old Roy Firestone interview where he lectured everyone that “postage stamps and newspapers are still the two greatest bargains in our world.” What the fuck is Roy Firestone doing interviewing you, anyway? I hate the “Fastest 3 Minutes in Sports,” a segment that tells me NOTHING, other that the ESPN production truck has a “star wipe” option.

I fucking hate him tipping draft picks every year. Right before the Vikings drafted Percy Harvin, Berman said, “Here comes the Vikes’ pick, and it might be someone unexpected.” Oh, aren’t you just so coy, you goddamn hot air balloon. “Let me ruin the suspense of the pick, but phrase it in a way where I sound both cute and prescient.” DIE.

I fucking hate The Schwam. That whole fucking segment. Who the fuck is rooting you to end the season over .500, YOU FUCKING CUNTSTAIN? No one, that’s who. No one wants to see your big fat head wearing a goddamn turban. No one wants to see that ass old footage of your at Bucs training camp, although it helps explain why the Bucs belong to that small suite of teams (Jets, Packers, Bucs, Pats, 49ers, Bills) that you give favorable coverage to. No one wants to see that footage of you singing on stage with Huey Lewis and The News. You’re a fucking embarrassment. I guarantee the biggest thrill you get is when you go to some retarded celebrity golf tourney and people clap for your drives.

Just don’t call you a personality? THAT’S EXACTLY WHAT YOU ARE, AND YOU’RE A LOUSY ONE AT THAT. You’re a morning disc jockey, asshole. You’re a goddamn mascot. Just know that, if you get into the Hall of Fame, the Hall of Fame will cease to be anything close to a credible enterprise. Just know that there are people out there who clearly recognize you for the enormous fucking fraud you are. You think you’re some kind of institution. You’re not. YOU’RE A FUCKING DOUCHELICK AND I HOPE THE NEXT LEATHER-CLAD WHORE YOU PICK UP WHIPS YOU UNTIL YOUR ASS BLEEDS, YOU COCKBIN.

I fucking hate Chris Berman.