God Bless Mark Bradley, That Jerk
Dan Ryan
Tuesday April 23, 2002
--Some lame 70s song.
Hopefully, you’ve read his not so-flattering review of his first arena football experience. That’s right. You should read it. Hey, tech support, put a link to it right here.
This was no Force, just farce (OK, but I’m not tech support –ed)
Now. Did it incite you? Did it make you think? Did it inspire you to post on our state-of-the-art message board? (Some of you have. Excellent posts!) Or even better, did it make you write Mr. Bradley to express your feelings? Then it did its job. Even though, from our perspective as proponents of the game, it was pretty much a mediocre piece of crap.
Mark Bradley’s Email Address
Robert Mashburn, his editor’s Email Address
So why invoke God’s blessing upon someone you might think is the spawn of Satan? Shouldn’t you instead be telling him to go to hell? Nah.
You didn’t like his diatribe, but that’s okay. We’re all entitled to expressing our opinions. There are thousands of crosses lining the beaches of Normandy that gave us the right to do so. Only difference is that Mr. Bradley has space in one of the nation’s largest daily newspapers and is compensated -- he'll tell you not enough -- to fill it with his musings. His company also probably gladly gave him a golf shirt, but the running joke just doesn’t work here.
In this situation, us media types have two approaches we could take to counter, and since the space is available, let’s roll….
The Rip Session
Mark Bradley takes the cake… and anything else that isn’t nailed down. But then again, who could blame him for his sorry state? After years of following the pathetic Falcons, the underachieving Braves, the forgotten Hawks, the over-commercialized Olympics and whatever the hell a Thrasher is, not to mention that Georgia and Georgia Tech have been owned by Florida and Florida State… his mind must be numbed to the point that an afternoon in the sticky Gah-ja humidity couldn’t bring him to a reasonable state of consciousness.
It’s why columnists get old young. You go to enough pro sports and major events, you can’t think for yourself. You don’t want to try new things. You lose your perspective. I can bet any amount of money that Bradley probably couldn’t find Morris Brown or Life College without the aid of Mapquest.
Without John Rocker or Eugene Robinson gift-wrapping his daily chore, Bradley had to work, and by God if the Force didn’t just spoon-feed him quote sheets. So he resigned himself to the media room, booted up his antiquated laptop and preceded to recycle some of his most tired clichés as he spewed 14 inches of phlegm upon which the $8 an hour copy clerk performed meatball surgery to make readable and then slipped away unnoticed in the third quarter to wallow in his receding hairline, bulging waistline and the honest truth that Rick Reilly has had more creative bowel movements than any Braves sidebar he’s ever written. (Whew! Breathe…)
{Notice I held back on the CNN and Gone With the Wind reference. Have to save for the two Georgia Force games here later this season.}
If you didn’t think the Rip Session works, why don’t we try…
The Pontification
You wonder if Mr. Bradley had been around at the turn of the century, would he have bitched about the introduction of the forward pass? What would he thought about the 1932 NFL championship game moved indoors from Wrigley Field to Chicago Stadium and played on a modified field -- only 60 yards long and 30 feet narrower? That game changed the outdoor rules for the next half century. How about the old ABA, with its three-point shot, up-tempo game and the starting point of Dr. J? What about the Brooklyn Dodgers’ second baseman in the 1947 season? That was different indeed.
C.G Jung, a noted Swiss psychiatrist considered one of the great pioneers in the area of depth psychology and the field now known as adult development theory, once stated, “Condemnation does not liberate, it oppresses.” Perchance, Mr. Bradley’s quick road to judgment has blinded his ability to see and comprehend new ideas and approaches, thus, stagnation.
(OK, OK, I can only b.s. so much, but let me know which approach worked better for you. Now we try to take the high road…)
Not everyone is going to agree. You don’t need a unanimous decision to get elected, just a majority. Well, actually, you don’t need that in national elections these days, but as our fearless leader Kevmo once told me, this isn’t whackeduppolitcsfan.com. Be courteous in your debate, but go for the jugular like that O’Reilly guy on FoxNews. Agree to Disagree.
So, I’ll agree to disagree with Mr. Bradley. And if you’re reading this Mr. Bradley, here’s hoping you’re a good sport.
So, God bless Mark Bradley
Don’t tell him to go to hell, but if he should want to go on his own, he can always use Mapquest for directions.
Dan Ryan has been involved with all forms of arena football since 1988, including writing for ArenaFan when Joe Kauffman and Tim Capper aren’t killing his columns because they don’t get his jokes or perspective. His day job is at Bethune-Cookman University, which has produced both an NFL Hall of Famer (Larry Little) and an Arena Football Hall of Famer (Stevie Thomas) and his hobby is tracking how many f-bombs Adam Markowitz drops in the chat room on game nights.
