Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Santa Gets the Boot

Today is Christmas Eve, and after doing my usual perusing through my sports websites, I noticed this little gem from www.si.com. I've got a couple extra minutes on my hand and thought the blog could use a sports/holiday related story. Its entitled "Tomlin annoyed by fake Santa." The title pretty much summarizes the story, but here's a little more detail:

A sports announcer has traditionally dressed up as Santa for the Steelers pre-Christmas press gathering. Apparently, he went a little overboard this year, though, after handing out gifts, cracking a few jokes, and even "roasting" a few Steelers, I'm not sure where he crossed the line.

The bottom of the article is what really gets me. "Later, the Steelers said there would be no future appearances from Santa at any of their news conferences." I do enjoy a fun tradition, and I understand that traditions will evolve and change over time, but putting an end to this bizarre tradition that apparently started during the Cowher era is silly. Its a silly tradition to begin with, but even the NFL needs a break from all the seriousness all the time. A little comedy and holiday spirit mixed together before the Christmas holiday sounds like a light-hearted laugh that has been enjoyed by the other press and Cowher when he coached. Tomlin clearly was not annoyed enough to boot Santa from press conferences last year. So what's the deal??

My only hope is that the football gods look down on this and hamper the Steelers winning ways.

Happy Holidays and Happy New Year!

1 comment:

GoodPointJoe said...

I'd like to hear input from some of the Steeler fans who frequent our site. I don't put much value on tradition, but it certainly seems harmless enough. This is Tomlin's second year as coach, so obviously this has happened once before without incident. What was different this time? Does DiFabio normally just interrupt for a minute or two, rather than the five minutes plus that he spent talking this year?

It's possible that Tomlin, who at 36 is the youngest head coach in any of the four major North American sports, believes that he has to maintain an excessively professional demeanor to keep his credibility in football circles.

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