The Mark Schlereth Positivity Hour
Enjoy the smile while it lasts.
We’re avid watchers of NFL Live, and quite like listening to Trey Wingo and co. recap, preview, and generally sound off about the week’s games and player news. At first we thought Mark Schlereth was a sensible, no-nonsense guy with good insight and the balls to call things like they are. But after weeks of this in the off-season, and more in the pre-season, we now have Schlereth fatigue in the regular season. The dude is like a school principal or a hall monitor, just waiting for the rascally kids to fuck up. We used to like pre-empting his denouncing of big-mouths like Ocho Cinco and Terrell Owens: the fact that we always knew what he’d say made us giggle. But now it just seems kind of sad.
Take last night’s NFL Live, for instance. After Sunday’s nail-biter against New England, Buffalo Bill T.O. kinda sorta complained in his press conference about not having as many opportunities to catch the ball as he should have. He didn’t quite “throw Trent Edwards under the bus,” in the words of one of the co-hosts (sorry, dude, we forgot your name), but he still had to get a dig in. Sure, we rolled our eyes when we heard this. I mean, is there a city and team in this great big country that T.O. will go to and be happy with? Then they played the clip and we realized it wasn’t as big of a deal as they were making out. If any other receiver said that his team missed some opportunities, would it get this much attention? No.
But, OK, we’re ready—throw to Schlereth. We know he won’t be happy. The program was almost over by this point, and our DVR has a strange habit of finishing recording too early, and cutting people off mid-sentence. Usually it pisses us off to the height of pisstivity (thanks, Ocho!) but last night, it didn’t really matter. We only got to hear the first part of the Schlereth screed, and it pretty much summed up his attitude about any player that isn’t a total mummy’s boy. “What do you think about T.O., Mark?” says Wingo.
“I think he should shut his mouth.”
Sigh.
