Disclaimer: This has nothing to do with Kate Upton.
It is not an easy task to put together a list, such as the Greatest Sports Moments of 2012, specifically because so many things happen in any given year that it’s all but impossible to universally gauge which one event or person is greater than another. But since we’re just a couple dudes who like to make fun of stuff and almost always ignore actual sports news, it’s really quite easy.
Gabrielle Ludwig is a 6-foot-8 50-year old playing junior college basketball for Mission College in Santa Clara, California. She was born as Robert Ludwig, and now lives her life as a woman. If you have just logged on to the Internet for the first time or have never met a person who is not exactly like you, you may find this shocking. What you may also find shocking is that three guys hosting a local sports talk radio show in Washington, DC, have maintained 1975′s asshole’s opinion of how transgendered people work, and would love to tell you about it.
The men featured in this clip are Steve Czaban, Andy Pollin and Chris Knoche. They do the asinine “he/she” thing for a while and believe “IT” is the politically correct term for a woman who used to be a man. They have a legitimate point about age limits in college sports and bring up the interesting question of how transgendered athletes should fit into sex-specific sports leagues, but it’s hard to pay attention to because they’re more interested in groaning and wanking to each other about how they want the gist of the story, because they aren’t going to read it. They say they believe that Gabrielle should have the same human rights as everyone else, but sports are different. You know why? Because transgendered people only deserve rights if Weenie and The Butt over at ESPN 980 don’t have to know about it.
One thing they suddenly know about: issuing public apologies to keep their jobs. This was ESPN 980′s statement:
We strongly believe two of our employees crossed the line when discussing a tanssexual person on their program last Thursday. Such intolerance and insensitivity will never be tolerated by this company. Due to the nature of their conversation, the pair have been temporarily removed from ESPN980′s Sports Reporter program.
ESPN wasn’t happy either, but they barely know ESPN 980 exists:
“The two are not employees of ESPN and made the comments on an affiliated radio station that controls its own local content. The offensive commentary goes completely against ESPN’s company culture and values. We have expressed our significant dissatisfaction to the station’s management.”
Here’s the simple answer, from the smallest soap box I can find: The correct pronoun to use when referring to Gabrielle Ludwig is “her.” She’s a woman. If you are a DNA scientist and want to expound upon the genetic differences between classically-defined “men” and “women,” fine, let’s do that, but do it in a respectful, intelligent way that shows folks you’re a grown-up in the current century. If you’re educated enough about sports to get a job talking about it on the radio, there’s a good chance you could become equally educated about human sexuality.
Or, you know, you could keep my grandpa’s weird opinions and superiority complexes forever. However you wanna do it.
You know you’re onto something good when the first 40 seconds of your minute-20 video is about how everyone you know thinks you’re terrible. Regardless, Mike & Mike in the Morning had the ‘idear’ of doing a Gangnam Style parody, so now that’s a thing that exists.
A quick question for producer William: Did you get the idear from the 400,000 other people who did a Gangnam Style parody video? Because it’s the end of October, and that shit was barely timely a week into September. Also, was your parody idear to just do the Gangnam Style video badly? Because that’s not really a parody. That’s just you doing a horse-humpy dance and putting it on YouTube.
As regular readers may know, With Leather moonlights as a Frank Caliendo fan site. We’ve covered the comedian’s firing from FOX Sports and hiring at ESPN, all the while clutching our bellies thusly and guffawing deeply at his non-stop John Madden impressions. It’s like “cut, it, out” for a new generation!
Because you’re Caliendoholics like us, you’ll be excited to see this clip of his Jon Gruden impression on ESPN’s Sunday Countdown. He has a wig! He makes faces! He says things about the football and his impression is pretty good! If he could somehow work in a jalapeno on a stick he’d be the greatest comedian of all time.
That video is below. WARNING: EXTREME LAUGHS AHEAD!
I don’t want to come off as one of those bros who only talks about Steele because she’s very attractive, because I think she’s excellent at her job. But yes, she is very attractive. And Ponder is showing flashes of being a solid-to-great franchise QB for the Vikings, so of course they’ll just run off and get married now and have a bunch of kids that are really popular and cool, and Ponder will be elected president and they’ll do it in the Lincoln bedroom and everyone will be like, “World peace!” and good for them, because would it kill Ponder to let Adrian Peterson score one damn touchdown this week?
Wow, I’m an emotional mess today because of this news, as I’m sure many other dudes who think Samantha has that whole “Brooklyn Decker with an incredible sports encyclopedia” for a brain thing happening. I guess there are worse guys out there for her – Mark Sanchez, Matt Leinart, Brian Urlacher, to name a few – but we’re allowed to be sad, fellas. So I’ve put together this excessive collection of GIFs for both bros and babes to gauge their emotional response.
When I first read that ESPN the Magazine had teamed up with Marvel to create a one-time, limited edition comic book for LeBron James, I rolled my eyes and groaned. It was bad enough that Tim Tebow got his own comic book – not sure whatever happened with that – but now ESPN could profess its hot, stinky man love for the reigning NBA Finals MVP and gold medalist across 20-plus pages of embellished artistry. And when I read that the comic was titled “King of the Rings”, I pulled my eyes out of my head, dipped them in acid, shoved them back in their sockets and rolled them again.
But then a funny thing happened – I read the comic. It’s actually not terrible. Sure, in theory it only feeds the league’s greatest, most uncontrollable ego and provides more ammunition for the shallow belief that the Miami Heat can just steamroll the entire league for the next 5 years. I mean, it’s not out of the realm of possibility, but it’s still an obnoxious overstatement. When it comes to pure, comic entertainment value, though, this little book is pretty damn good.
You know you’re onto something good when the first 40 seconds of your minute-20 video is about how everyone you know thinks you’re terrible. Regardless, Mike & Mike in the Morning had the ‘idear’ of doing a Gangnam Style parody, so now that’s a thing that exists.
