What are fans supposed to do? congratulate the visiting team for winning. Are you serious? pointing at the scoreboard is one thing, being a classless jerk is another.
Basically everyone (except me) in my extended family is a Packers or Vikings fan so this game certainly brought out a lot. ****, now I have to take my mom out for pizza next week so she can watch the Eagles slaughter her beloved Vikings.
"Anyone who has played in the NFC Central knows what that's about. The fans in Green Bay have a tradition in the parking lot after the game where they moon the visiting team's bus," he said. "It's kind of a unique send-off." -Tony Dungy http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/20.../2004/01/10/bc.fbn.moss.mooning.ap/index.html clarify's the humor a bit. makes it a little funnier IMO.
The only thing more annoying that Moss acting like a jackass is the sanctimonious overreactions & condemnations that follow from the tallking heads on Fox & ESPN who act like he just despoiled our lives irrevocably, and our children, and our childrens children. He should grow up, they should lighten up.
Much to do about nothing. It isn't like he went to sacred symbol (e.g., Cowboys star) and had a party. I hate the overly orchestrated crap with props (pens, phones, etc). But a little bit of rubbing obnoxious fans noses in it mostly in the heat of the moment, not overly concerned with it. The Vikes may be a lot more formidable in Phily than people think. The Vikes, like the Eagles, usually wait until the stakes get higher (Superbowls, NFC chmapionships) before choking in the playoffs. Besides, the Vikes do match up well with Phily given the absence of Owens. The Vikes have a lot of offensive weapons that can hurt you even when you have the right defensive scheme and Culpepper is so mobile and tough to bring down he can kill you when you blitz. If Phily does not jump on them early and control the Vikes O look out.
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/sp...Buck+stands+on+the+firing+line+for+first+time Buck stands on the firing line for first time By Dan Caesar Of the Post-Dispatch 01/14/2005 Joe Buck has led a charmed life professionally, one with little controversy, in his meteoric rise to his status as one of the nation's premiere sportscasters. He's only 35, but he's been in the national spotlight for nearly a decade. He soon will be entering his 10th season as the Fox network's lead baseball play-by-play broadcaster and is in his third year as its top football announcer. He's just the third man to hold those duties simultaneously for a major network, following NBC's Curt Gowdy and ABC's Al Michaels. He has won three Emmy Awards for national sportscasting excellence and a few weeks ago was picked by USA Today's Rudy Martzke as the country's top play-by-play broadcaster. He has his first Super Bowl assignment next month. But the fairy-tale ride suffered its first significant tarnishing this week, as Buck has come under a barrage of criticism for comments he made on the air. After Minnesota's Randy Moss scored a touchdown Sunday and simulated mooning the crowd and briefly rubbed his rear end on the goal post, Buck said on the air: "That is a disgusting act by Randy Moss. I think it's unfortunate that we had that on our air live. That is disgusting by Randy Moss." That three-sentence commentary created a firestorm of controversy. To wit: Vikings owner Red McCombs asked Fox to pull Buck off his assignment to cover the team's game this weekend, saying the remarks "suggested a prejudice that surpassed objective reporting." Los Angeles Times columnist and ESPN commentator Bill Plaschke blasted Buck, who also does Budweiser commercials in which he interviews a character who is a parody of egocentric, money-hungry modern-day athletes. "This is the same Joe Buck who takes a lot of money from a beer company to do a commercial about a self-serving, self-indulgent guy named Leon who reminds people of Randy Moss," Plaschke said. "It's fine when he's getting paid to do it, but when he doesn't get paid to do it, he calls it disgusting." ESPN's Woody Paige called Buck "a hypocrite. He's in a commercial with a guy who does that kind of stuff (Moss does). I don't think you can be in those kinds of commercials and then say and act like that's disgusting." The topic has been a major topic this week on sports-talk radio, with much of the reaction negative toward Buck. There has been some sentiment that Buck is getting too full of himself, that he thinks he's bigger than the event. Fox reacts The wave of criticism has flummoxed Buck's boss. "I was stunned," Fox Sports President Ed Goren said in a telephone interview from his Los Angeles office. "Talk about shooting the messenger. I've been doing this for almost 40 years. Just when I thought I saw it all, I guess I haven't. "I ask anybody (who questions us), 'What would you have done, what would you have said? If we play it down, just ignore it, you don't think we'd be criticized? If we kept on this conversation for another five minutes, we would have been criticized for overkill. What exactly would anyone have wanted to hear from our broadcasters?" Goren said there was no chance McCombs' request to remove Buck from the booth for Sunday's Vikings-Eagles game ever stood a chance of being granted. "You've got to be kidding," Goren said. "He'll be there this weekend. He'll be there next weekend. He'll be there for the Super Bowl and he'll be there for the World Series (next fall). And he'll be here for 100 more years." Buck brushed off McCombs' comments, saying, "He's just trying to show support for his player, but this has been taken to a silly extreme." Goren was more pointed in discussing McCombs. "He's made his feelings public. ... We tried to take the high road all week. We didn't go public with any of this. But we've been reacting to what's coming (from him). We're trying to move on. We're not fanning the flames. My goodness gracious. C'mon." Goren then pointed toward the bottom line: "As for who is in the wrong here, I think the fact the NFL decided to fine Randy Moss $10,000 - double what that fine normally would be - makes it pretty clear where the NFL executives believe the blame belongs." Buck is staggered Buck also said he is befuddled by the controversy, the first major wave he has faced other than the "he's rooting for the other team" remarks that eventually target all national play-by-play announcers. "I feel like I'm getting punked and somebody's going to come out and go, 'Ha! Just kidding you,'" he said before leaving his St. Louis home to travel to Philadelphia. "I don't know that I've ever said anything controversial, but this certainly is something I never thought would be in that category. I was immediately proud that I reacted the way I did (with the call). I thought more people would say, 'That (celebration) was way over the line." He said he personally has had positive reaction but knows much of the sentiment in the national media is negative. Buck said he was most offended by Moss' appearing to rub his rear end on the goal post. But he has come under fire because most listeners thought he was criticizing Moss' faux mooning, which apparently was in response to a tradition in Green Bay in which some fans moon the visiting team's bus. Did Buck know of this custom? "It's irrelevant," he said. "Even if he didn't do the thing on the goal post, it's still wrong. Forget the Green Bay tradition, that doesn't mean anything. Fans have gotten on visiting teams since 1904. Somehow excusing that behavior ... that surprised me more than anything, that some people wanted to point to that as justification for doing that as a paid professional athlete on national television. That is the flimsiest excuse of all." Goren agreed. "I'm shocked. Anybody who wants to equate what may or may not take place with a few fans as a bus pulls into a stadium to what is seen by 30 million people who have sat down to just watch an afternoon of football with their families is beyond belief - especially in an environment where we as broadcasters are being held accountable for what we put on the air by the FCC." The Leon factor Buck is seen as a shill by some as having a double standard for pushing Budweiser in the "Leon" ads yet criticizing Moss for outrageous behavior, but Buck says the two don't correlate. "There's a big difference to me," he said. "One is obscene, one isn't. One is a satirical look at paid professional athletes that is funny because of the perception of guys, but never is done in a vulgar, obscene way. They call me a hypocrite, yet every sports page where these columns are found are paid for by ads for strip clubs and gambling hot lines. There's hypocrisy everywhere you look. ... If it's that offensive, why can't that be said? I'm not certain I understand that still." Goren was more heated in his assessment. "I'd like somebody to explain to me how you would equate a commercial that's been run by every network in the country to what took place and what we said on Sunday," he said. "If that commercial is offensive, networks wouldn't run it. If it was in poor taste, people would have been in an uproar (demanding to) take that commercial off the air. How do you equate the two? You want to criticize NBC announcers because there are some parodies on 'Saturday Night Live' that are edgy? Leon's a parody for crying out loud. ... It's a parody, folks! This is real life!" There also has been criticism directed at Fox for its handling of the Moss incident because the network has racy programming on in the evening. "We don't run the network, we don't select the programming in prime time," Goren said of Fox's sports division. "Are we edgy at times at Fox Sports? That's fine. I'll accept that. But should I criticize a sports columnist at a newspaper because his sports section takes what I consider offensive ads? ... What does one have to do with the other?" Looking ahead Buck said the brouhaha will have no impact on how he broadcasts the Vikings game Sunday, even if there are more antics from Moss - who has said he might do something even more outlandish. "I'd deal with it as if nothing happened last week," he said, adding that he stands by his words. "You think back on different things you say during the course of a broadcast and say, 'I could have said that differently.' If it happened in front of me right now, I'd say the same thing. I don't even know what else I could have said. If I was backing off it and said, 'Oh my' or 'Gosh golly,' that just doesn't seem right. But I'll leave that to public opinion. That's just not me. "I'm not trying to change the world with one comment. If I have to come down on one side or the other of this issue, I'm happy to be on the side I'm on. The media's perception of this is that it was over-reaction. I think the reality is that a lot of people are tired of this. Enough's enough." Reporter Dan Caesar E-mail: dcaesar@post-dispatch.com Phone: 314-340-8175
I'm sure ya'll saw it, but man, this guy is hilarious...I know, its classless, but when the guys were asking him about the fine... Reporter: "Hey Randy, what do you think about the fine"... Moss: "It ain't nothing, What's $10K to me, c'mon" Reporter: "How you going pay for the fine" Moss: "Cash money homie"
