"If You're Watching, Take Off Your Skirt"

I heard a great one today.  As I was watching the Steelers whoop the Chargers on NBC Sunday Night Football (go Steelers!), the half-time show featured a story about New England Patriot Quarterback Tom Brady barely being touched by Baltimore Raven Linebacker, Terrell Suggs.  Suggs was penalized for “roughing the passer”.  Watch the play, you decide.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnmGSMccDuU]

I find this penalty completely uncalled for in football and tend to think that quarterbacks need to “man up” and take a hit sometimes.  Regardless of where you stand on this penalty, it’s not the point of this post.  The point is about the “great one” I heard during the half-time show.  It came when Rodney Harrison, retired NFL Safety, former teammate of Brady’s and now NBC football analyst, looked directly into the camera and said, “Tom Brady, if you’re watching this, you need to take off your skirt and take a hit…”!  I was thoroughly impressed with this comment!  His point was that the game of football is a physical game and that the game was intended to be hard hitting and intense.  If a guy can’t take it, he needs to hang up the cleats.

Why do I like this so much?  Because it’s time that men start being held accountable for their less-than-manly actions.  Granted, Tom Brady was trying to get a penalty called so that his team could gain some extra yardage; fine.  One man needs to be able to call out his fellow man when his fellow man isn’t living rightly.  It’s not about roughing the passer, I’m talking about this in a much larger context.  Men MUST stop “sissifying” this game we call life.  Men MUST stand in there, take a hit when necessary and if/when he gets knocked down, he needs to stand up, dust himself off and get back in there.  In life, there aren’t any little yellow flags that give us a free ride.  In life, it’s up to each one of us to push through, especially in the tough times.  Living a TrueManhood life means that, no matter what, you are striving to live out an authentically manly life.

Man up!