No apologies, damnit!

January 23, 2009

To be sure, certain situations call for a guy to apologize. Rod Marinelli shouldn’t have apologized.

For many years now, Head Coach of the Detroit Lions is about the only job in sports, from coach to player to hot dog vendor, which is less prestigious than just being some guy sitting and farting on his couch at home watching sports on TV. For those of you who are inclined to disagree with this thesis at first thought, picture the decidedly unglamorous image of the corpulent Wayne Fontes, in that giant light blue shiny jacket, pacing the sidelines. Sure, there have been other perennially bad teams in sports, but many of them stay under the radar screen, away from the national media spotlight. By contrast, if you coach the Detroit Lions, year after year you have to parade your team on national TV on our national Thanksgiving holiday, in a game watched by millions of people who won’t watch any other game that year, and wear your team’s woeful late-season record like a dunce cap.

And no coach of the Detroit Lions has ever been less prestigious than Marinelli, who “led” them to an 0-16 last year before being fired.

On Tuesday, Marinelli apparently brushed off reporters at the Senior Bowl by saying “Goodbye, ladies” http://msn.foxsports.com/nfl/story/9115584/Marinelli-apologizes-for-’ladies’-comment?MSNHPHMA Apparently not the guy reporters he was actually (perhaps) insulting, but rather some ladies (The Association for Women in Sports Media), didn’t like this.

Marinelli apologized. It wasn’t even an off-the-cuff “sorry, won’t happen again” apology – it was a lengthy, written, premeditated, humiliating, suck-uping, whimpering, mercy-begging, Sal Governale – ish apology - I can barely even read it without feeling disgusted at this sorry imitation of a guy. Here’s the text, as reported by Fox:

“Please accept my personal apology for the words I used in response to the request of a few Detroit reporters covering the Senior Bowl. In attempting to avoid being interviewed, I understand that my comment was inappropriate and wrong. I want to assure you that this tone and this choice of words will not occur again in response to questions from reporters.”

I like to think that Marinelli’s apology was so over-the-top because it was intended as a wink-and-a-nod to guys, but would still fool the broads. Even if it was, its unacceptable – it displays a lack of balls.

Now, by apologizing, by his act of submission to a bunch of broads, most of whom are each filling jobs thousands of 12 year-old guys are more qualified for, Marinelli hasn’t damaged the prestige in the sports world of recent Detroit Lions coaches – they had no further down to go, unless there’s some guy I don’t know about it whose job is to sniff jock straps. But he has reduced his standing in the Guyinismsphere.
In fact, Rod Marinelli is hereby named the initial inductee into the Guyinism Hall of Shame. There can be no second chances for an offense of this magnitude. Rod Marinelli, if you are reading this: you are dead to me now! You, sir, are a lady.

Lets this be a warning to all of you! If you ever, ever, apologize for calling someone a woman, lady, wench, bitch, cunt, slut, or whore (the latter two are especially cardinal sins, since they are supreme compliments coming from Guyinists), you will be banished from Guyinism. Your comments will not be accepted on this or any other Guyinism-affiliated website – you will be on the outside, with Marinelli, forever. What did he have to lose, anyway? He’s now just a relatively anonymous assistant coach.

He should have stuck to his guns.This kind of shameful weakness is unacceptable.

Remember, we are guys, which means we should conduct ourselves as men - we should conduct ourselves as people that have balls.Guyinism – the ideas that all of us Guyinists out there (whether you knew you were a Guyinist or not, and even if you don’t care to admit being one) will share will help you develop ways to handle a similar situation a lot better than Marinelli.

Just don’t ask me exactly how right now.

Click on pen to