Bad sports, good sports: Plaxico Burress rips old mates from the Giants

Posted on September 12th, 2011 by Alan Spoll

In case you were unaware, Plaxico Burress is an idiot. He’s just a bad guy, and from my perspective, he appears to have learned little from his incarceration. Burress played his first real post-jail game on Sunday night, this time for the New York Jets. Earlier in the week, Men’s Journal published excerpts from an upcoming article about Burress in which the wide receiver took shots at Tom Coughlin and Eli Manning, the coach and quarterback, respectively, of his former team, the New York Giants.

Burress went to jail in September of 2009, almost a year after accidentally shooting himself in the leg at a New York night club. He had been carrying a gun in the waistband of his sweatpants, and while reaching to grab the gun as it slid down his leg, managed to fire a round into his thigh. Genius. The level of stupidity involved in that incident was pretty mind-boggling. I am pretty sure that if I felt it necessary to carry a loaded gun with the safety off into a night club, and I had chosen sweatpants as my attire for the evening, the waistband of said sweatpants would likely not have been my holster of choice. Burress paid for his crime by spending nearly two years of his behind bars. I see no great redemption story here, though. You would expect a guy in this position to toe the line in every way possible, considering that he is still planning on continuing his NFL career. Rather than keep his mouth shut and collect a paycheck, though, this guy is busy taking public shots at people, so to speak. About Tom Coughlin, he said:

“After my situation happened, I turned on the TV, and the first words out his mouth was ‘sad and disappointing.’ “I’m like, forget support — how about some concern? I did just have a bullet in my leg. And then I sat in his office, and he pushed back his chair and goes, ‘I’m glad you didn’t kill anybody!’ Man, we’re paid too much to be treated like kids. He doesn’t realize that we’re grown men and actually have kids of our own.”

Hey Plaxico, you did shoot yourself, right? Tell me exactly what Coughlin said that was not entirely appropriate. If you don’t want to be treated like a kid, how about not acting like a moron? The fact that you have children is frightening to me, and the sense of entitlement that you are no doubt imparting to them gives me the shivers. The genius then went after Manning, saying:

“I was always his biggest supporter, even days he wasn’t on, ’cause I could sense he didn’t have thick skin. Then I went away, and I thought he would come see me, but nothing, not a letter, in two years. I don’t want to say it was a slap in the face, but I thought our relationship was better than that.”

I wonder if it ever occurred to Burress that maybe these guys just did not like him. After all, he does not strike me as a warm and fuzzy guy that is likely to endear people to him. I would assume that Manning just didn’t care enough to drag himself into a prison visiting room. This is not a criticism of Manning in any way at all. For Burress to make an issue of this is foolish and shortsighted. I don’t imagine he cares what I, or anyone else, thinks, as is evidenced by virtually everything he has ever said or done in his career, though. I am glad that his summer campaigning to be signed by the Eagles did not happen. The Jets can have him.

Bad sports, continued:

2) University of Minnesota head football coach Jerry Kill suffered a seizure just before the end of his team’s loss to New Mexico State on Saturday. He had experienced seizures during games twice before in his career, but not since 2005. As of Sunday evening, his condition was improving.

3) A plane crash in Russia killed 43 people this week, including most of the Lokomotiv hockey team from Yaroslavl. Several former NHL players were among the dead, including former Philadelphia Flyers defenseman Brad McCrimmon, who was the team’s coach.

4) Latrell “Fred” Dunbar, a high school football player from Mississippi, died on Friday during his team’s game. Dunbar collapsed on the field when returning to the huddle after a play.

5) Here is one I haven’t heard before. More than 20 football players from Fresno State University are apparently part of some kind of welfare fraud scam. This should be fun.

6) San Francisco Giants reliever Jeremy Affeldt will miss the rest of the season after slashing his hand with a knife while trying to separate frozen hamburgers at a family barbecue. Maybe next time, he will let someone who doesn’t make millions of dollars playing a professional sport mess with the frozen meat.

7) Golfer Nick Watney cost himself a two-stroke penalty on Monday by smacking the ground with his club after failing to make a good shot out of a sand trap during a tournament in Boston. That seems like a rough penalty. I wonder how many strokes I would lose for throwing myself to the ground and yelling after a shot. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

8) Serena Williams, no stranger to the kind of self-destructive anger that hurt Nick Watney this week, was her own worst enemy yet again during the U.S. Open final on Sunday. Williams yelled at herself after a poor shot, costing herself a point, as the rally was still alive, and the yell was ruled to be distracting to her opponent, Samantha Stosur. Stosur went on to win the match and the title, her first in a major tournament.

Good sports:

1) Buddy Ryan, one of my favorite coaches of all time, was at the new Meadowlands stadium on Sunday night to watch the New York Jets play the Dallas Cowboys. Ryan’s twin sons, Rex and Rob, were on opposite sidelines for the game, Rex as head coach of the Jets, and Rob as defensive coordinator for the Cowboys. Buddy put off cancer surgery for a few days in order to be at the game.

Bad sports, good sports appears every Monday

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Alan Spoll

Alan Spoll is a software quality assurance director from the suburbs of Philadelphia where he lives with his wonderful wife and children. He has spent his entire life as a passionate fan of the Eagles, Phillies, Sixers, Flyers, and Penn State. Recent Phillies success aside, you will understand his natural negativity. Follow me on Twitter - @DocAlan02