RUSH: Dan Wetzel is a sportswriter at Yahoo Sports. The headline of his story: “Robert Griffin III’s Lies, Mike Shanahan’s Poor Management Doom Redskins In Playoffs.” Here’s his piece: “Robert Griffin III couldn’t run, at least not in any way resembling his usual sprints through the line and into open turf. Robert Griffin III couldn’t throw, at least not the deep darts that move the chains and keep defenses honest.
“Robert Griffin III couldn’t lead the Washington Redskins’ offense, not after his knee buckled in the first quarter … Robert Griffin III couldn’t do much of anything Sunday except lie, which is what he’s been trained to do in situations like this. Lie to himself that he can still deliver like no backup could. Lie to his coach that this was nothing big. Lie to the doctors who tried to assess him in the swirl of a playoff sideline. …
“So Robert Griffin III lied, which is to be excused because this is a sport that rewards toughness in the face of common sense, a culture that celebrates the warrior who is willing to leave everything on the field, a business that believes such lies are part of the road to greatness.” Yahoo Sports, folks, Dan Wetzel. This is why we need a congressional committee for safeguards.
These people can’t be trusted to do what’s in their own best interests. The coaches can’t be trusted, the doctors can’t be trusted, the commissioner can’t be trusted, the referees can’t be trusted, the fans can’t be trusted. Somebody needs to step in here and get this warrior mentality out of the NFL, because it’s a business that believes these kinds of lies are part of the road to greatness.
I’ve read a number of sportswriters today who agree that there ought to be federal safeguards to prevent atrocities like this. That happened yesterday in the Redskins game. (interruption) No, the atrocity is RGIII being allowed to play. The kid couldn’t walk! He was exploited. He was put out there. This warrior mentality was exploited! (interruption) I know we’ve got rules for concussions. We need rules for knees.
If we’re gonna have rules for the head and the brain, why not for the ACL and the MCL and the PCL, while we’re at it, and then the patella tendon? If you have a problem with that you have a real problem. Ask Joe Klecko. People forget about the patella tendon. Ask Joe Klecko. I’m just telling you: If we’re gonna have all this compassion to the brain then we’re gonna have to have equal compassion for the ACL, the MCL, the PCL, and the patella tendon.
We’re not even talking about hamstrings yet, and the dreaded groin injury. Ugh! You don’t even want to go there. The dreaded “groin pull” if you get my drift. It happens in the pile. Anyway, folks, this game is out of control, and what happened yesterday in Washington, it’s there for everybody to see. We had a caller in the first hour who celebrated a female Olympian who competed on a broken leg in the vault! (interruption) What was it, Kelly Strong? (interruption) Strug, that’s right. Kerri Strug. She jumped on a broken leg, and we were applauding it.
A bunch of barbarians!
RGIII was hurt five weeks ago.
He been lying for five weeks, according to the Yahoo Sports writer.
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RUSH: We have a large audience in this program. It’s the largest audience in talk radio. In fact, the audience here is larger than audience for number one rated cable television shows, and as such there are a lot of people who listen. That’s what a large audience is. And in that large audience who listen, are people that do a lot of different things. There are NFL coaches who listen to this program. There are National Football League players who listen.
I opened the program with some quotes from a story by a sportswriter, a guy who earns his living covering the National Football League and other sports, Dan Wetzel, who says that the thing to learn, the take-aways from yesterday’s Redskins-Seahawks game is that Robert Griffin III was responsible for the loss because he lied. He lied about his ability to run. He lied about his ability to throw. He lied about his ability to lead. He lied because he couldn’t do much of anything yesterday, and he lied about it, and his coach accepted the lies, and as such, the Redskins lose.
Well, an NFL coach happened to hear me say this, and I got this e-mail from the NFL coach. And this is profound. It’s just one line. “Leave it to liberals to destroy a great American tradition taught in the greatest American team game ever invented: selflessness. One of the reasons a great team wins a Super Bowl is selflessness.” So the NFL coach who saw the game yesterday thought that RGIII was being selfless, putting the team first. He was doing everything he could to help the team win.
Shanahan said the quarterback — this is Dave Wetzel — quarterback who lies to me is better than our backup, I’ll go with the guy lying to me. Anyway, I predicted, how long ago was it? It was this summer or maybe back in the spring, I made a bold prediction that the forces of the left were marshaling against the NFL, focusing on head injuries, the concussions. I said, “I don’t know if it’s gonna happen in my lifetime or not, but if they don’t give up the quest, they’re going to succeed in altering this game in a way that nobody would ever believe.” I don’t see them giving up. In fact, people who earn their living covering the game, are perhaps unwittingly leading the charge to change the game into something that nobody will recognize. I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime or not, but clearly the effort is underway.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: We have a large audience in this program. It’s the largest audience in talk radio. In fact, the audience here is larger than audience for number one rated cable television shows, and as such there are a lot of people who listen. That’s what a large audience is. And in that large audience who listen, are people that do a lot of different things. There are NFL coaches who listen to this program. There are National Football League players who listen.
I opened the program with some quotes from a story by a sportswriter, a guy who earns his living covering the National Football League and other sports, Dan Wetzel, who says that the thing to learn, the take-aways from yesterday’s Redskins-Seahawks game is that Robert Griffin III was responsible for the loss because he lied. He lied about his ability to run. He lied about his ability to throw. He lied about his ability to lead. He lied because he couldn’t do much of anything yesterday, and he lied about it, and his coach accepted the lies, and as such, the Redskins lose.
Well, an NFL coach happened to hear me say this, and I got this e-mail from the NFL coach. And this is profound. It’s just one line. “Leave it to liberals to destroy a great American tradition taught in the greatest American team game ever invented: selflessness. One of the reasons a great team wins a Super Bowl is selflessness.” So the NFL coach who saw the game yesterday thought that RGIII was being selfless, putting the team first. He was doing everything he could to help the team win.
Shanahan said the quarterback — this is Dave Wetzel — quarterback who lies to me is better than our backup, I’ll go with the guy lying to me. Anyway, I predicted, how long ago was it? It was this summer or maybe back in the spring, I made a bold prediction that the forces of the left were marshaling against the NFL, focusing on head injuries, the concussions. I said, “I don’t know if it’s gonna happen in my lifetime or not, but if they don’t give up the quest, they’re going to succeed in altering this game in a way that nobody would ever believe.” I don’t see them giving up. In fact, people who earn their living covering the game, are perhaps unwittingly leading the charge to change the game into something that nobody will recognize. I don’t know if it will happen in my lifetime or not, but clearly the effort is underway.
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RUSH: And we’re back. El Rushbo, serving humanity simply by being here. 800-282-2882. Here’s Mike in Charlotte, North Carolina. Hello, sir.
CALLER: Hey, Rush, how you doing?
RUSH: Good. Thank you.
CALLER: Huge fan. I wanted to share my own personal story about the warrior mentality and all that you were talking about earlier. I played high school football in North Carolina, and I played all four years of high school. When I finished up, I had a couple of scholarship offers with that. But when I played high school football, my coaches instilled in me that warrior mentality you were talking about. They got us to where you could basically take your aggression, your anger, and, you know, turn it off and on like a switch. You know? And they made us play hard. They made us play as hard as we could every game. And for me personally there was that — you know, that result has affected me for the rest of my life. It’s affected me ever since high school, and it’ll affect me for the rest of my life. My sophomore year —
RUSH: Wait a minute. Is that a good thing or a bad thing?
CALLER: It’s a bad thing.
RUSH: All right.
CALLER: I’ll tell you why. My sophomore year, I dislocated one of my knees just playing. I was playing too hard. I pushed my body way too hard. The coaches, you know, they told us — they told us then — if you do not play as hard as you can every game, that’s how injuries happen. You know? You were taught not to show pain. You did not show pain, you did not show injury.
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: If you were ever on the sidelines with a bag of ice, coaches could walk by and just by the look that they give you… That look of disgust is what made you just want to say, “You know, I gotta get back in there. I can’t have him look at me that way one more time.” My sophomore year, I dislocated one of my knees. Last play of it game, last game of the season, I dislocated one of my knees, and I had to have a knee surgery on that one knee.
RUSH: Are you saying that if you had not been instilled with this warrior-like mentality you wouldn’t have blown your knees out?
CALLER: Exactly. Because you take risks! You take risks that common sense would normally tell you not to.
RUSH: Wait a minute. What does being tired have to do with a knee injury?
CALLER: Oh, no. It wasn’t being tired. You were instilled with the aggression and you want to just push yourself that much harder. You take these risks in the game that you would not normally take. You’d say, “I can jump over this guy and hit him from as far away as I am,” and sometimes you just can’t do it or you ignore —
RUSH: Right.
CALLER: — another player’s size over your own, you know?
RUSH: So you are sympathetic now, then, to the movement that has sprung up to fundamentally change the game of football?
CALLER: Rush, I’m 23 years old. I’m a college student. I did not take a football scholarship because I couldn’t. I’ve had seven knee surgeries. I’ve had my left knee completely replaced. I have a prosthetic kneecap in my right leg. I have a fake MCL. I have a prosthetic ACL. I have no meniscus in my right knee. I have to take pain medication to get up every day just to go to class. And they told me already that by the time I’m 35, I’ll have to have both my knees replaced again.
RUSH: Are you gonna sue anybody? Are you thinking about that?
CALLER: I can’t! There’s nothing I can do about it, you know? I mean, that was the thing. You play high school football, you sign a bunch of waivers.
RUSH: Did anybody make you play the game or did you choose to?
CALLER: I chose to. It was my dad’s dream to play football and he had to drop out of school in the ninth grade to help support his family.
RUSH: Yeah?
CALLER: He never got the chance to and, you know, I really enjoyed the game. It wasn’t until after I got done playing. I admit, when I was in high school, I didn’t know what was best for me, you know? My dad knew more than I did, and he would try to get me to sit back a little bit. “Take a break, let your body heal,” you know? That kind of stuff.
RUSH: Yeah.
CALLER: The coaches… You know?
RUSH: Well, I played high school football, too, for one year, and then I got a chance to work at the radio station, which to me was a no-brainer. But I wouldn’t trade it. I’d played baseball up until that time. No comparison. It was playing football, football practice, where I learned that I had more in me than I thought I had, that I was better than I thought I could be. It was in football where I was taught that some people have to be pushed beyond where they will go. And I think it’s applicable in life throughout, not just physical things. (chuckles)
I remember at the end of practice every day we had to run wind sprints. I was an offensive tackle, which meant that I lumbered with the big guys. And not every day, but most every day the coach would say after running a bunch of sprints, “After the first three tackles, take it in,” meaning the day was over. After hearing, “First three tackles take it in,” I would watch, look down the line during the sprints and I’d make sure that I finished in the middle of the pack.
And then first three tackles, I’d take it in. I always was in the top three, always got taken in. One day coach came over and said, “You know, I’m noticing here that during the sprint you’re always right in the middle of the pack, maybe toward the end. Then ‘first three take it in,’ and you’re like a bat out of hell. You’re beating everybody. What are you doing?”
I said, “I’m pacing myself, Coach.”
He got this stern look on his face. His name was Norman Dockins, and he’d played football at Southeast Missouri State. He was a running back. He got a stern look on his face and said, “Son, we don’t pace ourselves in football, and we don’t pace ourselves in life. We go all out, all the time.”
And the rest of the week I had to run ten or 15 more sprints every day, because I had admitted to dogging it. Now, to me, it was a valuable lesson. Now, I don’t know… You know, I got fired seven or eight times. I’ve lost count. I don’t know if the experiences I got playing football for one year were relevant in my sticking to it. I couldn’t say for sure because I had such a burning desire to do radio that every time I heard I didn’t have the talent for it, I didn’t listen ’cause I loved it so much. I just kept trying.
I don’t know if football had an effect, but I can’t say that it didn’t have an effect, either. I’ve always admired the players. I only played organized football for just one year. I’ve always had a profound admiration for the people that play the game, and those guys that succeeded are so tough… I mean, the average human being wouldn’t last two plays without being carted off to the hospital. They’re a different breed.
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RUSH: Just to show you how things are changing, it wasn’t that long ago that Robert Griffin III after his performance yesterday would be portrayed as a hero, as a role model in America. Today? In the pop culture of today he’s called a stinking liar.