If you’re like me, one of the reasons you find yourself glued to your couch with a bowl of Cheetos and a bottle of Mr. Pibb every Sunday is because of the amazing athleticism displayed week in and week out in the NFL. The other reason being of course you desperately need to know if the Seahags cover the spread so you’ll win the office pick ’em contest.
Every year it seems the players are getting bigger, stronger, faster, better. It’s no wonder they’re paid so well…if they’re going to perform like Steve Austin, they might as well be Six Million Dollar Men. Except Max Starks. I wouldn’t trade him for the Buffalo Nickel my grandmammy gave me when I was eight, let alone pay him six large.
Anyhoo, if you’re like me, and I’m sure you are in some deep dark place you don’t like to acknowledge, I’m sure you also wonder how these players get so good. Natural ability is one thing. But there are a lot of sprinters who run fast, there are a lot of collegiate wrestlers who are strong…why are they not playing football? What gives them that little extra edge? Where do they find that little bit extra regular athletes don’t have?
Well, I can tell you the secret of Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver Santonio Holmes, but only if you read very very quiet.
He hunts rabbits.
Now I’m sure many of my NRA-loving fellow Pittsburghers (and perhaps the few readers I have from West Virginia… Yes, I too was shocked to find they do indeed have fancy book-learnin’ in WV, or as we say, “literacy”) are saying to themselves, “I hunt. Why, just last year I sat up in a tree for three hours before I was able to blow the head off Bambi’s mother. I ain’t in the NFL. What’s up with ‘dat?”
Santonio, you see, doesn’t hunt like we hunt. Shotgun? Bow and arrow? Two buckeyes and a slingshot? Nope. Santonio hunts in a manly and honorable way.
He chases them down on foot.
So does Jacksonville Jaguar running back Fred Taylor. And a bunch of other collegiate and professional football players. It’s evidently the thing to do in high school if you live in the Florida Everglades. I guess it beats captaining the mathletes and painting trees for drama club like a certain blogger I know did during his angry teenage years. Hey, Mick had his methods for developing greasy fast speed and Santonio has his. As anybody who’s seen Big Ben throwing bombs down the field to number 10 will attest, can’t argue with the results.
If you’ll excuse me, I have to fire up my Ipod and blast some heavy metal music as loud as I legally can without being arrested for noise pollution because watching that video, I have Elmer Fudd singing “Kill the Wabbit! Kill the Wabbit!” stuck in my head. And now, probably so do you.