Henry: Inflate-Gate and Other Sports Scandals

When I got off the conference call with Bill Belichick and Tom Brady this morning, my blood pressure, which I can normally control with intense hot naked yoga, was through the roof. You can’t see me now, but I’m in a sweaty, naked downward-facing-dog pose. Has it calmed me down? No,sireeebob. My temples are still throbbing.

Why, you ask? Because Bill and Tom did not follow my instructions! As usual, they called me last week for guidance before their press conferences. I told them to put Football Inflate-Gate in perspective for the reporters by referencing much more serious sports scandals from recent history:

1. Golf Shoe Cleaner-Gate: At last year’s Masters in Augusta, Bubba Watson won by three strokes in spite of Jonas Blixt’s undocumented alien caddy from Stockholm rigging the air pressure on the automatic golf shoe blower so that it wouldn’t remove excess pine straw and dead azalea blossoms from Bubba’s shoes. After extensive waterboarding, the caddy confessed and was sentenced to death by hanging.
2. Water Polo Peanut-Gate: Princeton Men’s Water Polo Coach Davey Jones was thumbscrewed until he admitted to dyeing white Styrofoam packing peanuts orange and feeding them to his players as Cheetos Puffs in an attempt to make them more buoyant in the Ivy League water polo championship game. Coach Jones was exiled to the barren island of St. Helena in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean and is currently serving his life sentence in the Napoleon Suite.
3. Baseball Steroid-Gate: New York Yankee reliever Sylvan “Sy” Clops finally admitted to “juicing” in last year’s pennant chase to enhance his physique and performance. The 8’6”, 450 pound, heavily-muscled relief pitcher came under suspicion when his fast ball reached speeds of 250 mph in the ALCS finals. League Commissioner Harvey Keitel stripped Clops of his league-leading season strikeout record of 879 K’s and suspended him for 75 years or life, whichever is greater.
4. Inflatable Advertising Wavers-Gate: Renowned Brazilian Futbol (Soccer) Coach “Yo” Soy Ladron was banned from the game for two centuries for intentionally deflating Argentina’s inflatable, arm-waving mascot “Rizado” before the World Cup Finals match, causing Rizado to go limp and bend over helplessly in front of the stadium, his tiny arms wrinkled and flaccid, a pointed assault on the virility of the opposing team.
5. Bocce Ball-Gate: After the International Finals of World Bocce Federation in Herzegovina, superstar Albanian bowler and femme fatale Aferdita Marjeta was convicted of welding tiny steel plates to the boules of the Azerbaijan women’s team causing violent wobbling in the boules as they neared the boccino. It was a second offense for Marjeta, who was found guilty of substituting cat litter for pea gravel in Albania’s finals match the previous year in Uzbekistan resulting in cat deposits of such magnitude that play was suspended until the grounds crew could remove it from the playing field. Marjeta was sentenced to 50 years of community service in charge of intake at the massive waste treatment facility in Banja Luka.

As soon as I finish the Twisted and Full Triangles and take a few deep cleansing breaths, I’m going to put my clothes back on and call Tom and Bill to get them back on track and ready for the Super Bowl.

But first, I need to apologize to the people behind me in my hot naked yoga class.

Mike Henry

Michael Henry is a HottyToddy.com contributor. A graduate of Tulane and Virginia Law School, Henry published his seventh novel, Finding Ishmael, in April, 2014.