According to Drew Brees, the NFL Lockout is almost over. According to Chad Ochocinco, it’s far from over. Either way, while the NFLPA* and team owners met into the late hours last night, James Harrison’s big mouth continues to be the top NFL news because that’s all we’ve got. Well, except for Hines Ward’s DUI, and he must be absolutely loving Harrison right now.

Harrison recently sat down for an interview with Paul Solotaroff of Men’s Journal, which I once read on an airplane, and he sounded off about everything from his hatred of Roger Goodell to his problems with his own teammates. And if you haven’t already read the article, Harrison really sounded off. Most notably, he called out Ben Roethlisberger for some mistakes in the Super Bowl and pointed out that he’s not Peyton Manning, he labeled Rashard Mendenhall as a “fumble machine”, he said that Houston Texans linebacker Brian Cushing is “juiced out of his mind”, and he called Roger Goodell many things, including (allegedly) a f*ggot. Harrison also defended his reputation, most notably as a thug, but… hey, did I mention that banner pic is the lead image from the article?

And with all of that on paper, published and available on magazine racks, Harrison claims he was misquoted and Solotaroff, the guy who says he has notebooks full of other quotes and hours of digital interviews, agrees.

“We talked about 11 o’clock yesterday morning,” Solotaroff said on Thursday. “Look, James is the guy who’s got to live with Ben for the next three years. . . . So as I told James, ‘Listen, whatever you’ve got to say to mend fences is perfectly fine with me.’” (Via Pro Football Talk)

That’s the quote that really should stop the story. Solotaroff is an admittedly big fan of Harrison, which moves this article from “insightful interview” to “sloppy knob polish” and renders it irrelevant, as far as journalistic integrity. Essentially, Solotaroff told Harrison that he can say whatever he wants and he’ll manipulate and fix it after the fact. As I learned in one of the few journalism classes I stayed awake during, that’s not kosher.

But what is relevant is that Harrison has a big mouth and he said a bunch of things that he can’t take back. Cushing has since said he would pray for Harrison, whatever that means, and it has been reported that Roethlisberger and Mendenhall will take Harrison at his word (translated: they’ll share some “What the f*ck”s in private). Goodell, though, is a different story. While he has his hands full trying to make sure that Harrison and the rest of the players have a job this season, I can’t imagine that he’s going to look to favorably upon a guy that he has never looked favorably upon.

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Here’s a fun clip of Houston Texans Brian Cushing and Antonio Smith getting involved in a scuffle during their game with the Tennessee Titans yesterday. Tennessee, behind the virulent exuberance of 37-year-old Kerry Collins, handed Houston their seventh loss in eight weeks. Eventually one has to fight the fights he can win, I suppose, and there aren’t many of those in the AFC South.

The easy joke here is “Roid Rage,” as Cushing was suspended for the first four games of this season after testing positive for excessive levels of Human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG). But the fact is that hCG is a hormone that occurs naturally in the female body during pregnancy, while an anabolic steroid is technically synthesized. Now don’t you feel stupid. If Antonio would have just handed his boy some pickles and ice cream, everything would have been fine. Vid via TBL.

After Brian Cushing became, oddly, the two-time AP Defensive Rookie Of The Year, more more attention is being given to why the AP’s revote was rushed (or even held), and why the voters couldn’t decide upon to supplant him. Let’s be honest, this re-vote was an attempted coup by the writers against PED use. And that coup was a disaster, both in terms of logistics and PR.

The AP has copped to organizing this effort, which makes sense to me. Surely if one of the writers had done so, there would have been a better push for someone to supplant Cushing for the award. But the whole process just felt wrong from the onset, and nobody has summed that up better than Tom Curran, who actually changed his vote to Cushing on the re-do:

In casting my “re-vote” in favor of Brian Cushing, I wasn’t condoning or excusing his use of PEDs. The vote was cast as a protest of The Associated Press demeaning its own process of by allowing for do-overs.

The deadline for voting was in January. When the deadline came, I used the available information and made a decision. The information told me Brian Cushing had a more impressive rookie season than the Bills’ Jairus Byrd.

It’s now the middle of May. If I knew then what I know now, I probably wouldn’t have voted for Cushing. But there’s a deadline for a reason. What if, in the re-vote, Byrd was given the honor. Then in June, we came to find he lost a PED appeal in March? Have another re-vote? And when does the window on re-votes close for good? I believe it closes at the deadline. That was in January.

Curran continues: Read the rest of this entry »

This Brian Cushing story has finally become interesting, and all it took was alleged masturbation and a roomful of old white people to make it happen. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Cushing is the Houston Texans linebacker who, in his rookie season last year, earned Defensive Rookie of the Year honors and a spot on the All-Pro team. But that was before he failed a drug test, and now suddenly there’s Cush-Lash all over the place [emphasis added].

Here it is: Brian Cushing tested positive for slightly elevated levels of hCG (a non-steroidal substance produced naturally by the body).

More hCG: it is in seminal fluid and slightly elevated levels can be discovered in the event that a test occurs soon after ejaculation. –@Adam_Schefter.

Here comes the science: Human chorionic gonadotropin is used as a masking agent in the process of cycling steroids through the body. PFT points out that it’s the same substance that caused Dodgers outfielder Manny Ramirez to test positive in 2009. Ramirez was suspended for 50 games, because baseball is touchy about that sort of thing. Read the rest of this entry »