CURBSTOMP THE BIRDGANG: a collection of good-karma football essays by phillyb and SCP

PhillyB · January 23, 2016

It has recently been brought to my attention that SCP's weekly Pulitzer-quality rants, and my own weekly breakdowns of upcoming opponents, are absent this week. In the name of plausible superstition and honoring the football gods, here I provide you two excerpts from the recent best-selling book Fifteen and 1: An Unofficial and Unfiltered History of Professional Football in Carolina that in some way encapsulate the spirit of this weekend.

First is SCP's post-season football rant, exclusive to the book. It's the best thing he's ever written. Read while pooping. Secondly I have constructed a lengthy parable focusing on the Washington Redskins, which I will share with you in all its glory. We're not playing the Redskins, but the attentive scholar may draw a clear parallel between Dan Snyder's asshatted support of icky historical racism with your average Arizona resident's support of icky contemporary racism vis-a-vis Sheriff Joe and octogenarian wall-builders. Together these two essays sum our season and our mission, if abstractly at times.

Posting this is kinda sorta a violation of Amazon's content-sharing policy, so nobody tell them, and in fact go buy our book. It's 250 pages of pure Panthers candy.

Without further ado:

Suck it Opposing Fans: A 2015 Soliloquy

By S. C. P.

15-1! Sumbitch how sweet is that? What a season! Never forget this folks! Savor the flavor because it is glorious.

Falcon fans; kiss my ass and have fun discussing draft picks, bitching about team photos, and trying to come up with nicknames for that architectural anus Arthur is building in the ATL. I hope the Falcons staff finds it impossible to remove the shart stains from Matt Ryan’s game pants.

Saint fans; you bunch of Danny DeVito looking oompa loompas. Toss my salad and enjoy on-line bidding wars for Euro size 8 foamposite tennis shoes. Have fun stalking Mickey Loomis around the Metairie Home Depot as you ponder the future of your team with zero salary cap tethered to an old mole attached to an expensive QB while your pucker faced coach decides if he will be stealing Vicodin from the Saints or some other team next year.

Bucs fans; suck it and have fun going to your PT Cruiser Owners Club rallies and shopping for new pirate eye patches, plastic swashbuckling swords and puffy shirts at the Dollar General while Lovie Smith continues to get out-coached, this time by old Canadians in the Hillsborough County Parks and Rec Summer Curling League.

I hope you all hated watching my Panthers go 15 and 1 because I thoroughly enjoyed watching your teams suck. Good sportsmanship be damned. I hope your 2016 offseason is a dumpster fire of bad decisions and gut wrenching diarrhea. I hope your respective teams blow it in the draft and waste money in free agency. As the lyric goes in Auld Lang Syne: Should Old Acquaintance be forgot, and never thought upon. Bye. See ya. The Panthers have work left to do so grab a snack sized bag of peanuts and don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out.

Panther fans. Hell fire, we all knew this would occur in August right? Even I knew Mike Shula was going to adjust and become an efficient play caller and lead one of the leagues top scoring offenses. Go ahead, search the Carolina Huddle threads from August 2015 and enjoy the praise-filled Shula positivity that was spewing from every orifice of my sexy body. Actually, never mind, don’t do that. That’s some damn bullshit. Like the rest of my fellow Panther fans, when Kelvin went down I curled up in a ball and bit that pillow like a bitchy Tennessee Titan team mom preparing to get gang banged by the cast of Oz in a Nashville, TN Motel 6. Like that googly-eyed Susan Sarandon in Thelma and Louise, I hopped in that beat up 1966 Thunderbird, grabbed the hand of my fellow Panther fans, and hit the gas heading toward the cliff of a 6-10 season. Eyes closed, I was belting out the lyrics to Nickleback’s “Photograph” at the top of my lungs as the inevitable demise of another wasted season approached.

The shitty car left the ledge and was floating through the humid stench of a Spartanburg summer. As the car began to plummet I could feel my stomach float as I crapped out every ounce of Beacon burger a-plenty from my soon to be dead digestive system. Then out of the chaos I heard an Angel with a thick Boston accent sing “Bup, Bup, Bup” as an elastic waistband arose from the depths of the canyon and cradled my metaphorical car like one of those stupid things celebrities use to carry their babies around. My car was gently placed on a road that was pointing north towards B of A Stadium. Was I dreaming?

I had never seen coaches shorts hiked so high. The moose knuckle was blinding and the roster card was tucked into a place that scared me but the calmness of this beautifully rotund mini-van driving sumbitch gave me a confidence that was foreign to me. He looked right into my soul and said “The answah is on tha rosta. Now quit being a whiny bitch fan and suck it up.” All hail the Nippleshorts. For he will guide us to the promised land in loafers, tit-high shorts, and a golf shirt unbuttoned to his belt buckle.

Without our #1 receiver and doomed to fail quicker than a New Orleans Parish high school senior, the Panthers rolled into Jacksonville. Thousands of Panther fans lead by the Roaring Riot held their noses and flooded Everbank Stadium, nestled on the shores of the only northward flowing sewage canal in the western hemisphere. The Redneck Riviera became BofA south and we got the W despite losing Luke Kuechly for what seemed an eternity.

In rolled the Houston Texans and the Mighty Whitey JJ Watt. He would single handedly destroy us, they said. One man would make us 1-1. Only Texans fans forgot about our lock down offensive tackles, Mike Oher and Mike Remmers. In temperatures that exceeded 150 degrees Fahrenheit, this Dynamic Duo of Goo shut down that white trash loud mouth. Even Trai Turner got into the action, bouncing JJ like a basketball on one pass rush attempt. The Panthers rolled out to 2-0 and Texans fans went back to being the Colts’ bitch.

Next the Taints came marching in and nary a peep was heard from the Who Dat Nation. My farts linger in a CAT 3 hurricane wind longer than Who Dat Nation hung around. Anyway, Josh Norman said “Hey,” and the Panthers made it to 3-0.

Onto Tampa we went. The Panthers fought tooth and nail, intercepted Jameis like 12 times and walked out of the STD Sombrero 4-0 and MRSA free. The few hundred pirate clad Bucs fans in attendance rattled their plastic sabers and swore they would get us next time but whatever, they are grown humans dressed as pirates.

After Tampa we headed up to the northwest to take on a team that nobody knew of prior to 2009. Surely the 4-0 Panthers would end up 4-1 against mighty Seattle. The pipsqueak QB with the Andy Griffith jerry curl was busy trying to re-virginize Ciara and cure concussions with his healing water. The ginger Macklemore and every barista in Seattle was sipping Russell Wilson’s air and stomping their Tom’s shoes as hard as they could to make noise in Century Link. Oops, Cam to Olsen. Husssh. Game. Sherman tears. 5-0.

From Seattle we headed home to face the Eagles and a group of fans that own more 1987 Buick LaSabres per capita than any fan base in the world. They yapped their loud mouths pregame but were quieter than Riley Cooper at an AME Zion Church service after the game. Hey Eagles, bye. GTFO of my stadium. 6-0.

Bring on the Colts. Indiana. I like corn. Boring. 7-0.

The next bandwagon fan base to invade B of A was made up of grown men in cheese shaped hats and 800lb women that smelled of aged muenster because sure, it makes sense that people from North and South Carolina are diehard Packer fans. Cam Newton made a statement that day. He claimed our house as ours and defeated a resurgent Packer team. Thomas Davis, ‘nuff said. W. A nice footnote to that win was Cam pissing off a family of Packer fan bigots from Fayetteville that would turn out to be the icing on my cake. The moron spent $500 on a $5 sign that a dying manatee with a tube of finger paint could have made. He drives over to CLT with his wife and kids just itching to show us Panther fans that Carolina is Packer country. Cam says not in my house and this family goes on the “Thug” media tour. It was glorious and the worst 8-0 team in history was born.

I have coined the next 5 game stretch The Hallowed Round of Beat Down. We literally demolished the Titans and made some Nashville TN redneck PR agent into a national joke. The Redskins came next and brought their fans along bragging about a home game as they “took over” Whiskey River. Is there anything more Redskin than “We owned the Epicenter bitches!”? I don’t know if it was the old jerseys or the Logo Athletic brand maroon hoodies but collectively that Redskin fan base looks like a group of third-world refugees. If I was a CPAP machine salesman I’d make my living knocking on the door of every trailer home with a Redskin flag stapled to the front skirting. The game was over before it started and Skins fans reenacted the Trail of Tears as they filed out of B of A Stadium in the 3rd quarter. Our city, our state. Jump in your 1991 Ford Explorer with the balled tires and get out of our stadium. 10-0, suck it Earnhardt Jr.

Off to Dallas and the “resurgent” Cowboys with Greg Hardy wanting revenge and God’s gift to quarterback play Tony Romo making his comeback! Remember “3rd and Romo?” Cowboy fans across America were thumping their chests. They were so fired up they were splurging and ordering those $2.99 Take Home Boxes after stuffing their faces at the Golden Corral because they were brimming with confidence and why not take home extra pot roast and fried okra for a midnight snack. Tony Romo is back, hell yea son! Cowboy fans gussied up and put on their fancy black stone washed jean shorts for this one because them Boys were about to put our small market Panthers in their place by gawd! Thanksgiving, done. Turkey, done. Beer, open. Ass on couch. Then faster than Saints fan could buy a Seahawks jersey on Amazon.com, the Dallas Cowboy beat down commenced and kids across America started to add a Cam Newton and Luke Kuechly jersey to that Christmas wish list. 11-0 and we are still over rated. How ‘bout em.

The Zoolander and Mole Face were a speed bump on the way to witnessing our team beat the living poop out of the Falcons in B of A. That once boisterous Falcon fan base was neutered. 38-0 and Matt Ryan left the field with a severe case of hematochezia (google that poo).

The following weekend was a trip to the Big Apple. Josh Norman thought he was going to a Broadway production of Fame but turns out it was just a butt hurt WR with frosted tips who said the Panthers were meanies. A quick head nod and a clutch last minute drive cemented our super QB as a true MVP candidate.

Christmas came and my wife bought me a Squatty Potty. After one of the best shits in my life thanks to the Squatty Potty, my son and I loaded up the truck and hit I-85 for a road trip to B of A South. We took the L on the field but Atlanta still has that pansy ass Matt Ryan at QB, so who really won?

Round two with Jameis wrapped things up and the regular season ended with a mind-blowing 15-1 record and me, my wife and our two boys singing Sweet Caroline in B of A stadium. A new-found legion of Panther haters have slithered out of the muck that make me smile every time I click on a social media web site. Relish the hate. Enjoy the insane comment sections and the idiotic op/ed pieces about how our QB is not like Tom Brady. This is our time to say “Suck it haters.”

The playoffs are around the corner. Can our boys make it to the Super Bowl and pull off something we have all dreamed about? Who knows! Whatever happens, enjoy it. The sun will come up and we will have some great memories from this season. I don’t care who we play in round 2 of the playoffs. Whatever team it is, they have to come to Charlotte and they have to beat the Panthers. One day you will be telling your kids and grand kids stories about Cam Newton and Luke Kuechly and Thomas Davis and Greg Olsen. Cherish these days.

Can you hear that drum? Keep. Pounding.

* * * * *

Hey You, Redskin!

A Parable by PhillyB

The Washington Redskins are a terrible football team. The Carolina Panthers beat their asses 44-16, and that’s really all that needs to be said. It was the sports version of this Caravaggio painting:

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YOU LIKE THAT? YOU LIKE THAT!

So here’s a parable instead.

The year was 1916. Jack-booted Germans were afoot, shenanigans were going on in the Middle East, newsboy caps were all the rage, and the game of football was growing in popularity. Meanwhile a well-respected manufacturing baron in the town of Birmingham, Alabama accumulated massive amounts of wealth on the backs of child laborers, exploited poor, and the fact that no one really cared how many of them caught on fire and died as long as the pockets of industrial titans stayed adequately lined and nobody’s bottom lines were affected.

In his declining years, this industrial titan and, incidentally, our protagonist, the good Mr. C. F. Murray, decided to spend his enormous wealth on a football team. Together with a cabinet of advisors and football aficionados, Mr. Murray liquidized a few of his assets, bought a team, franchised the organization in Birmingham, and purchased a stadium. With this complete, the first order of business was coming up with a name for the team.

“I think we’ll call our team the Birmingham N*ggers,” he mused aloud.

His advisors, all from the Jim Crow South, shrugged and agreed.

The general public, also all from the Jim Crow south, was more or less agreeable as well, so the franchise didn’t encounter any real resistance. The only people with something to say about it were members of the black community themselves, who were too marginalized by Jim Crow laws to actually wield any kind of real social power. And, of course, those fancypants carpetbagging Yankee liberals, what with their abolitionist grandpappys and silver-tongued contrarian balderdash. But who cared what they thought?

The Birmingham N*ggers played some football games under the flag of their logo, a caricature of a black man with exaggerated features and pigeonholed by his representation as a tenant farmer, a sharecropper’s straw hat drawn saunteringly from the back of his head. It was a flag full of pride and tradition, so no one really cared.

Then one day several decades later everything changed. America the Offended decided to get all up in arms and kick off the pussification of society by protesting the football team’s name. They held a rally and told Mr. Murray’s son, who had taken over the franchise after his father’s death, that the Birmingham N*ggers were pretty offensive. It wasn’t 1916 anymore and they weren’t going to stand for that sort of thing.

“Everybody’s always offended by something these days,” growled C. F. Murray Jr., standing beneath the unfurled flag of the Birmingham N*ggers. His shoulders squared, hands glued to his hips, he glared defiantly at the legion of stupid brainwashed libtards who were destroying this great country with political correctness.

“It’s just common decency,” said one of the brainwashed libtards who was destroying the country with political correctness. “Can’t you just change it to the ‘Birmingham Farmers’ or something like that? We have plenty of teams with names paying homage to professions. The Blacksmiths, the Steelers, the Warriors… and so on.”

“Over my dead body!” roared C. F. Murray Jr., turning a marvelous shade of red. “It’s tradition. It’s only offensive if you’re offended by it. And nobody is really offended by it anyway, except a couple of liberals with white guilt.”

A hand rose from the center of the crowd that had gathered outside the N*ggers stadium, hushing it. It was a smooth hand, a dark hand, black and bold, and it would not acquiesce. Its owner’s teeth were white as ivory against a Nubian visage that was still not as dark as the anger flashing from his eyes.

“As a black man, I find it offensive,” he said.

C. F. Murray Jr. waxed purple and wiped away the sweat beetling down his brow. “Don’t go bringing up the race card,” he hissed. “That was all sixty years ago. It’s 1930 now, and time to stop making everything about race. What are you doing in the whites-only section, anyway?”

The Birmingham N*ggers flag snapped crisply in the breeze above the assembly on the front lawn of the stadium. By now it had evolved into quite a scene. As the awful, unjust politically correct outcry against Charles Murray Jr. naming his team after an extremely offensive racial epithet grew in volume, the cabinet of advisors realized they needed to manufacture some talking points to deflect the criticism before things got too out of hand.

“Now look,” drawled C. F. Murray Jr., using his most agreeable honey-and-molasses voice to address the crowd, which had now expanded past the lawn, across the street, and onto the steps of the city courthouse. “Most everybody actually likes the team’s name, including the …er, the ethnic group the name represents. They take pride in it. Come on, Tom, tell ‘em.”

A black man, hunched and flap-gummed, straw hat perched on his head much the same way as the team’s logo, stepped in front of the crowd. “I ain’t never been on no flag before,” he said proudly.

“SEE!” roared Murray Jr., flecks of spittle dotting the faces of everyone standing within spraying distance of his validation. His eyes were bright with passion. “I told you nig- um, er, black people like the team. It’s just a few malcontents and the liberals that have a problem with it.”

“It doesn’t matter!” cried another voice from the crowd. His skin was bronze, his face broad and flat, his hair black as midnight. His face was twisted in pain. “A public team name should be offensive to no one,” he said, speaking to the crowd. “If the name is patently offensive, the voice of even one person should be enough to strike it down.”

“IT’S NOT OFFENSIVE!” he screamed.

The black man from earlier stepped forward once more, out of the crowd, taking a place directly in front of the spot where C. F. Murray Jr. was addressing the crowd. They faced off, glaring into each others’ faces: Murray’s, jowly, walrus-like, sweating profusely, and his challenger, soft with youth and hard with the hot charisma of a cause he’d die for.

When he spoke, his voice was low, so low C. F. Murray Jr. could barely hear it.

“If it’s not offensive,” he whispered, “then call me a n*gger.”

At that moment Murray’s coronary artery clogged with a wayward blood clot. He clutched his chest, an expression of surprise crossing his corpulent face, and stumbled backwards. Then his heart exploded out the front of his chest, a geyser of black blood spouting into the cerulean Alabama sky, and he pitched forward, dead before he hit the ground.

That day the terrified board of advisors changed the name of the team to the Birmingham Farmers and social progress was made. Everyone lived happily ever after.

Change the name, Dan!

* * * * *

There you have it, folks. Racism is a terrible thing and we should all be mindful of how we are prisoners of our own time, and how the best policy is to be respectful of other people no matter how different they are, and to introspectively explore our own hidden biases rather than dismiss the accusation as a result of whiners/the pussification of America. UNLESS THEY'RE CARDINALS FANS! Then they are just bitches and you should paste them upside the head with a slushball this Sunday, the spirit of which is embodied in SCP's glorious manifesto.

fug you, little red birds.

31-24 Panthers