Favre and Coles – Hilarious Comedy Team?

You thought punking people was only for Ashton Kutcher and stupid morning zoo radio hosts calling up vice presidential candidates pretending to be the president of France.  But you were wrong.  Punking is something anyone can enjoy – even NFL players.  No, football stars are not the super-serious, super-focused people you thought they were – they actually enjoy a bit of frivolity, even in the middle of a super-intense NFL season with all its stresses.  Take Brett Favre and Laveranues Coles for instance.  They’re in the middle of a mini-meltdown with the Jets, but are they going to let such a thing put a damper on their wacky antics?  Evidently not, given what they did to reporters ahead of Sunday’s game in San Francisco.

Snickering like naughty school girls making prank calls to their gay guidance counselor, Brett and Laveranues hatched a plot to make the media think there was tension between them – and the media bought it.  Well, one member of the media did, anyway.  And that poor dupe, San Francisco Chronicle writer John Crumpacker, will likely never be able to show his face at places where such people hang out ever again.  He may even have to hand in his legitimate journalism badge and secret decoder ring and become – gasp – a blogger.

Crumpacker really thought he was onto a great story too, given the semi-giddy tone of his article, which features a bunch of out-of-context quotes from an allegedly-disillusioned Coles.  “We’re in a quarterback-driven offense where [Favre] pretty much has control of everything, where before the offense was pretty much driven through me,” the “disgruntled” receiver is quoted as saying.  “I just kind of become a role player instead of a guy that teams had to prepare for.”  And:  “This is his offense. When we do throw the ball, there’s really no level of importance, where at one point it used to be where I was the guy … in position to get the ball most of the time.”  And:  “I catch balls from the Jugs machine. The ball probably comes out harder from there than it does from anywhere else.”  And:  “Of course he’s the big name, he’s the Hall of Famer, he’s going to get the majority of the credit but most of the guys who deserve the credit don’t really get it.”

Dissension in the ranks!  Jets in free-fall!  Coles ready to fight Favre in the locker room!  Crumpacker clearing spot for Pulitzer Prize on his dusty mantel!  Um…no.  Not according to Erik Boland of Newsday who says he saw Favre and Coles joking around about five seconds before the conference call where Coles unleashed his allegedly incendiary quotes.  Boland also offers the full transcript of said conference call, and it becomes obvious that Mr. Crumpacker played games with ellipses to amplify what he perceived as Coles’s irritation with Favre.  So Crumpacker is twice a dipshit:  He got fooled by the joking teammates into thinking Coles was mad, then, believing he was onto a hot story, spruced up the quotes to bring out the truth that wasn’t true. The sad thing is that it was a conference call…so lots of other reporters got the same quotes, and apparently, not one of them believed anything serious was going on between Favre and Coles.  Only Crumpacker with his day-dreams of talking about his big story on SportsCenter was sucker enough to fall for it.  Congratulations John Crumpacker.  You were punked by a couple of halfwit football players.  And people wonder why newspapers are dying.