…Steelers linebacker James Harrison. James will not be accepting the award in person, because he’s convinced that someone in the audience doubted him, once. And fuck that guy. James, why would you not go to the White House with your Super Bowl-winning teammates? Well:
When the Pittsburgh Steelers visit the White House as Super Bowl champions on Thursday, they’ll be without their reigning defensive player of the year. Linebacker James Harrison has said the trip is no “big deal” and he’ll skip it again after not making the trip following the Steelers’ title in 2006.
“If you want to see the Pittsburgh Steelers, invite us when we don’t win the Super Bowl,” he told Pittsburgh’s WTAE-TV. “So as far as I’m concerned he would have invited Arizona if they had won.“
James Harrison basically intercepted a hoary, harmless tradition and returned it 100 yards for a BURN. Over my two years of furious over-writing for Athlon about the NFL — last year’s previews and some verbose set-up posts are here; if you feel like reading generally not-correct football previews in mid-May, I’d say to start with Week 16’s — I have been drawn again and again to the way NFL players and coaches seem to treasure miniature slights so that they can violently disprove them week after week. Far be it from me to tell James Harrison (or anyone else, honestly) how to motivate, but unless Terrell Owens refuses to wear pads next year because he knows that’s what Skip Bayless wants him to do, it’s hard to imagine a more comically churlish example of fuck-all-yall motivation in action than this. Hat tip, James. I didn’t think you had it in you. None of us did. We never thought that.