Hines Ward: Dancing with the Stars Fever

If someone would have told me three days ago that while starting off this new venture with NPC I would have to talk about Hines Ward being on Dancing with the Stars, I would have said you were nuttier than Charlie Sheen… on a bad day.  But lo and behold during the last 10 minutes of last night’s ABC’s The Bachelor, Hines Ward is announced as one of the contestants of this upcoming season of DWTS.

I guess I should be thanking my wife for watching The Bachelor while I worked on my recent post last night.  It helped me absorb the emotional shock of hearing it then instead of at 7am over a bowl of Cheerios and OJ – which probably would have ended up all over the table.

I’m not going to lie – I’m a little angered that Hines would do such a thing.  First and foremost for health reasons.  He’s no Jerry Rice or Lawrence Taylor – retired and old with nothing to lose.  And from what I’ve seen and heard of this show, people get beat up over the course of their stint on the show.  The Steelers have 4 million reasons WHY he shouldn’t be on there.  It will be interesting as the week goes on to hear from Tomlin’s camp.  Did they encourage this?  Did they have reservations against it?  At 34, I don’t know how many season’s he has left in him, and you would think he would want to make the most of those last few… on the football field.

My second reason why I’m a little distraught over this is that if a lockout happens, this may be the only interesting thing to talk about for the next several months.  Thoughts of watching Kirstie Alley, Ralph Macchio and yes, even Kendra send chills down my spine.  Will I really have to argue  how Hines should have gotten 8’s instead of 7’s?  Or how Carrie Ann Inaba’s grin seemed a little too predatorial while watching Hines do a Pasodoble.

I guess this could be good entertainment.  Too bad I don’t have a DVR that I can just fast forward through all the train wrecks of each episode.  We’ll just have to see how this all plays out for Hines’y.  Who knows, maybe he’ll channel the twinkling toes of another Hines – Gregory that is.