You Can’t Kick the Ball that High and Dad’s Thoughts

Dallas Cowboys owner, Jerry Jones, thinks pretty highly of himself. If you’re even a casual NFL fan you know this. If you don’t watch the games regularly you might come to the same conclusion just by noticing the old white guy on the sidelines in a suit who’s yelling at the head coach. Can you image George Steinbrenner in the dugout yelling at the manager of the Yankees over a hit and run call? Ok bad example but you get the point. Anyway back to the story, Jones has built a band new football only stadium deep in the heart of Texas (Dallas). This shrine to his own crapulence has it all from luxury suites (complete with their own $90 package for a six pack and a pizza) to the biggest and clearest Hi-Def video boards.

It’s actually the later of the two that I’m interested in. These giant video boards are placed only 90 ft above the playing surface and have already felt the brunt of the pig skin slamming into. The ball came off the leg of Titans rookie punter A.J. Trapasso during a recent pre-season game. Titans starting punter Craig Hentrich also managed to “put a few off” the board during pre-game warm-ups.

Jones was obviously not pleased. He claims that the kickers intentionally tried to damage the board. Well Duh! Thank you Captain Obvious. What would we ever have thought without you? Actually I’d say that Hentrich most certainly tried to hit the board (you can’t just go to Best Buy and have the Geek Squad fix something this big) but Trapasso was in a game situation and the last thing he wants to do is have his punt knocked down so the guy up in the luxury suite can have a better view of the cheerleaders on the side lines. (Those of us at home however not only need a better view but demand said close-ups!)

Maybe Jones could have run tests to see how high most punters kick the ball during games to judge what the optimum, MINIMUM height of his video boards should be. Oh wait he did, during the 2007 season when his team’s punters put some balls over 100ft in the air. And where was the NFL when Jones was building the stadium? Maybe the league could have some standards and minimums in place. Just a thought. Personally I think that Jones might be more concerned that his employees are still seriously injured after the Cowboy’s practice facility collapsed in on itself earlier this year.

Closing out today...I don’t like Twitter. I think it’s yet another useless technological tool that is only obsessed over by people who have no physical life and have to live virtually by tracking the every second of their “friends” oh and Ashton Kutcher. However once and a while a “tweet” feed is particularly worth keeping tabs on. Today we have one of those specially tweeters out there: Justin. This 27-year old who still lives at home with his 73-year old dad has a Twitter feed called ShitMyDadSays. According to the site, Justin just tweets, well “shit” his dad says all day. You have to read some of this stuff to believe it but it really sounds like yours truly in about 40 years!