LITTLE ROCK — The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly . . .
- Theodore Roosevelt. For those of us who live outside the arena, whose faces on our worst days might have a slight case of razor burn, why would the brave combatant be dumb enough to trash talk before the battle?
As a writer, I love the concept of trash talking. What's there not to like about conflict? But as someone who tries to deal in common sense, I don't get it. What's in it for the player who opens his mouth and torches someone in the newspaper three days before the game begins?
Seahawks wide receiver T.J. Houshmandzadeh called out the Bears' secondary last week. He also let it be known he was upset the Bears didn't offer him a contract in the offseason. The two teams face off today in Seattle.
"(General manager) Jerry Angelo probably didn't even think I could play," he said. "So I'm going to show him Sunday."
Of the Bears' defensive backs, he said: "I feel I'm going to win 95 percent of the time, and they canget the other 5."
Where's the profit in any of that for Houshmandzadeh or the Seahawks? Couldn't the bravado pump up the other team? Because I had no answer for any of it, I called one of the best trash talkers in NFL history, former Broncos and Ravens tight end Shannon Sharpe. Check that. Sharpe was the Waste Management of trash talkers, the industry leader.
He once said that "comparing Takeo Spikes to Ray Lewis is like comparing 'Dude, Where's My Car?' to 'Titanic.' " Friends, it doesn't get better than that.
"I'd have to say that was one of my better ones," Sharpe said. "And I called Plaxico Burress 'plexiglas' because for the longest time he couldn't catch anything."
It's hard to suppress creativity, hard to self-censor wonderful thoughts, clever ideas and stiletto criticisms.
But why not operate under the radar? Why not say nice things until the game is over? What possesses players to diss the other team?
"Talking motivated me," Sharpe said. "I had to focus even more because I had put this out there. I knew if I said something it was going to be bulletin board material. As soon as I trotted out on the field Icould see the defensive guys shaking their head like, 'Yeah, all that talk. Can you back it up?' "
"Your Spidey senses have to be heightened because when you say something like that, you're going to get guys taking little cheap shots at you. But I also knew that I had a team that was capable of having my back."
And that would seem to be the difference between Sharpe, who had John Elway and Terrell Davis behind him with the Broncos, and Houshmandzadeh, who could be without quarterback Matt Hasselbeck and tackle Walter Jones on Sunday.
"I don't know if I'd be talking this week," Sharpe said. "I'd wait until they got back, and then I'd start talking again."
If I were a player, I'd be afraid of saying something that could come back to haunt me. If I had to boil down my fears, they would center on being Roy Williams. In 2006, Williams, then with the Lions, guaranteed a victory over the Bears. His team lost 34-7. How does one crawlback from that humiliation?
You might think the Williams incident would have worked as a deterrent against future trash talking, but it didn't. Mouths still run as often as players do.
Broncos coaches didn't like Sharpe's trash talking, but the only time Mike Shanahan asked him to stop was before the team's Super Bowl in 1997. It was like asking a fish to give up swimming, but Sharpe went along with it.
He's a believer that trash talking can distract the other team. The Bears might be so intent on shutting down and shutting up Houshmandzadeh, he said, they might forget to pick up a running back in the flat or a tight end up the seam.
But in the end, Sharpe said, it's only words.
"Even if you give the other team a compliment before the game, everybody's going to say, 'He didn't mean it; he's just saying that to pump us up so we'll let our guard down,' " he said. "That's what our coaches said to us. If anyone paid a compliment to our offense, our coaches would say, 'You know they don't believe that. They're trying to lull you to sleep.' "
So maybe calling out the opponent doesn't make a difference.Maybe everyone should just say what he feels. Muhammad Ali once said, "Joe Frazier is so ugly that he should donate his face to the U.S. Bureau of Wildlife."
Me? I would be worried about a left hook to the head.
Sports, Pages 26 on 09/27/2009