The Glade 4.0

It didn't affect the game, though. The seahawks handed it over next play.

EDIT: Seems that point's been made.

LOL, stop living in the past...

I could dig up all kinds of crap about your favorite teams and players. The Seahawks are having a good year. Next year will probably be someone else's turn.

In the moments after Sherman's post-game interview, Twitter exploded. People called him everything from a "thug" to a "disgrace," and even Justin Verlander - a professional pitcher for the Detroit Tigers - suggested that Sherman would get "high and tight" fastballs if he were in the MLB. On top of that, tweets and memes like the one below spread like wildfire.

But from my perspective, the heat Sherman is getting is not just misguided but ludicrous. This is a guy who represents one of the best kinds of sports stories there is in the world: the rise from the bottom, the profound destruction of obstacles, the honest success story built by a foundation of hard work and loving parents. If anyone with a brain took the time to learn about Richard Sherman, and then put him in the context of the rest of the National Football League, he'd be a pretty hard guy to bash.

Firstly, we're talking about a 25-year-old who came out of the streets of Compton, California. Sherman graduated from one of the worst school districts in the United States, one that boasts a high-school graduation rate of 57 percent. In a country where 68 percent of all federal and state inmates are lacking a high school diploma, you could say Sherman avoided a horrifying fate. But to say he "got lucky" or "escaped" would be foolhardy. He didn't "just graduate," either. He finished with a 4.2 GPA, second in his class, and went on to Stanford University, one of the most prestigious places to get an education in the entire world. He busted out in a rocket ship. He went from a world of gang violence and drugs to everything that Palo Alto and Stanford University represent.

And where did Mr. Sherman get the work ethic to put up those grades and make it to a school that offers that kind of education? Probably from his father, Kevin, who has worked in the sanitation department for Los Angeles for more than thirty years. But you won't see that on Sherman's stat sheet, and you definitely won't hear about it when ESPN analysts comment on his post-game interview today. Most interesting, though, is that Sherman's story isn't a big secret. NFL Films has even done a short documentary on "the trash-talking cornerback."

So now, America, let's talk about Richard Sherman in the NFL. Let's talk about the Stanford graduate from Compton who has never been arrested, never cursed in a post-game interview, never been accused of being a dirty player, started his own charitable non-profit, and won an appeal in the only thing close to a smudge on his record.

This past off-season, 31 NFL players were arrested for everything from gun charges and driving under the Influence to murder.

Last year, Kansas City Chiefs player Javon Belcher killed Kasandra Perkins, his girlfriend and the mother of his own child, before taking his own life.

Week in and week out, we sit down in front of our televisions and cheer for these freak athletes to destroy each other's bodies in one of the most brutal games known to man. Most of us probably do it with a beer in our hand, screaming and cursing at our TVs in a desperate hope to change the outcome of the game. We ignore how the NFL's owners use our tax money so freely, and we don't seem to care much about the brain damage retired players suffer from every year.

Yet, when one kid who has overcome everything, one kid who was doubted by the very player he overcame on Sunday, decides to emphatically claim he is the best (by the way: he is), this is what upsets us? Man, could you imagine if this generation had to deal with Muhammad Ali?

Last night, when Richard Sherman went on his rant to Erin Andrews, most of America thought they were learning about the arrogance of another NFL player. But in reality, what Richard Sherman did was teach us about ourselves. He taught us that we're still a country that isn't ready for lower-class Americans from neighborhoods like Compton to succeed. We're still a country that can't decipher a person's character. But most of all, he taught us that no matter what you overcome in your life, we're still a country that can't accept someone if they're a little louder, a little prouder, or a little different from the people we surround ourselves with.

"I don't want this to look like I was upset with him, I was frightened, I felt threatened, we all like Richard Sherman a lot at Fox,” Andrews said. “At that moment I saw how crazy it was going to blow up, and I wanted to make sure people knew it wasn't a situation where I'm a victim and he acted like an idiot."

In fact, Andrews said it "was awesome" and she "loved it" when Sherman went bananas on camera afterwards.

“You expect these guys to play like maniacs and animals for 60 minutes,” Andrews said. “And then 90 seconds after he makes a career-defining, game-changing play, I'm gonna be mad because he's not giving me a cliché answer, ‘That's what Seahawks football is all about and that's what we came to do and we practice for those situations.' No you don't. That was awesome. That was so awesome. And I loved it.”

No, the call on the punt that should have resulted in a Niners' first down but ended up in a Seahawks' touchdown. Or maybe the field goal they got after a non-call on what was clearly an intentional grounding (on a 3rd down) which should have resulted in a punt but instead let them get points. So two horrendously officiated plays, 10 point swing.

tons of good memes on both sides of this one...
This one might be my personal favorite...

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

In comic strips the person on the left always speaks first. - George Carlin

Is the point of the above that Sherman > Bieber? Because that's setting the bar insulting low.