An ode to Devin Hester, one of the few things about the Bears you can't mock

I have to sit here throughout the football season, and now even a month afterwards, and read all the other jackasses on this staff say stuff about the Bears. None of them are from here, most of it’s wrong, and even if it’s correct what gives them the right? Everyone’s got a goddamn thought and none have earned the pleasure of mocking this furshlugginer franchise like I have (and maybe Julie). They just want to kick us while we’re down to score some points.

So they can all sit there and let me and the rest of the Bears fans who have sat through dreck for most of their childhoods and adult lives exult in something, anything, that was a good memory. Because this dude is toddling off to Canton come August:

Devin Hester was just about all we had to watch for far too long. His rookie year there was more, but he was the unquestioned highlight. Ask any Bears fan about that game against the Cardinals, where his punt return won the game, and they’ll cackle with delight because the Bears were so awful that night and yet still won the game. I was at the Division Round playoff game that year against Seattle, and though he had a TD return called back that day, I’ve still yet to hear 60,000 people sound like they were being taken on a roller coaster while standing still as soon as he caught the ball.

Hester is still the only person to do something so cool in a Super Bowl, on the very opening kickoff even, that they canceled the rest of the game because all entertainment value had been wrung from the game with one return. SHUT UP, THEY TOTALLY DID!

No kick returner should be able to win games by himself, and yet Hester did, which said just as much about those Bears teams as it did about him. The funny thing about all of it was how simple it was. Hester didn’t crack some code or invent a new way to return kicks. He was just faster and shiftier than anyone else, aided by the attention to detail that Lovie Smith and Dave Toub provided to their special teams.

And to not get burned by him was also pretty damn simple. No one had to kick the ball to him, they just kept doing it. Every special teams coordinator was convinced they were the one who could solve the problem of Hester, and none of them could. Somehow Hester, in his goofy and electrifying way, kept proving the folly of man’s ego. All anyone had to do was admit they didn’t have the answer and they would find salvation. But that was too simple for far too many football coaches.

Yeah, it could be argued that kick returners are just football’s version of relief pitchers, and I’ve said in these very pages that relievers shouldn’t go into the Hall because they’re part-timers. But the greatest one of all time should. Hester took something that was mundane and made it appointment TV. No one else has. No one else probably will. That’s more than enough to go to Canton.

And the rest of the staff here can kiss my ass and call it a love story. STAY OUT OF BEARS BUSINESS!

Well, this wasn’t surprising

I bet you would have never guessed that the worst broadcaster in hockey would also have some galactically stupid takes about the sport:

Bucci was reacting to Brenden Dillon facing suspension for this hit:

This hit was aimed at Noel Acciari’s head and nothing but his head, which is the exact type of hit the NHL wants out of the game. Dillon didn’t merely miss, or have Acciari turn at the last minute. He aimed for the kill shot and followed through.

It’s probably the kind of moment that Bucci would love to slather in one of his dumbass and ill-fitting catchphrases, and that’s why he’s objecting. ESPN can do better to find someone to be the voice of the game.

The strangest soccer tourney ever?

Ivory Coast may complete the most bonkers tournament ever by winning the AFCON as quite possibly the worst team to win a major soccer tournament. How bad were Ivory Coast in the tourney they’re hosting? They fired their manager after the group stage! They were so certain that the two points they collected in those three games were going to see them out on their ass that they canned the coach and got ready to start over. Then every result went their way and they somehow qualified as one of the four best third-place teams (another argument that tournaments should only be 16 or 32 teams, and wait until the 48-team World Cup in two years gets a crack at this mishegas).

Ivory Coast’s 1-0 win over DR Congo in the semifinal is the first game they’ve won in 90 minutes. They beat Mali in the quarters in extra time, needing goals in injury time in both the 90 minutes and in extra time to do that. They beat Senegal on penalties after getting a late penalty to tie it. They got drubbed 4-0 by Equatorial Guinea in the group stage.

And yet they’ll play the final on home soil against Nigeria, whom they’ve already lost to in the group stage that they were certain they hadn’t gotten out of. Sometimes it be like that.