Fuck Up Athlete #1: Sean Avery

Sean Avery gets paid millions of dollars to be a fake asshole, and then is chastised when he is an actual one; it’s sort of the Dennis Rodman Effect (dying the hair, cool—kicking a photographer in the nuts, not cool). Avery’s a professional wrestler; he’s Daniel Day Lewis going squirrely and asking everyone to refer to him as his character on a movie set; he’s Christian Bale losing 100 pounds for a movie no one saw; he’s Don Rickles.

If you’re on this sporty blog (and my counter says about 650 non-me hits have been), you probably know what Sean Avery said in Calgary when referring to the fact that his old girlfriend was now with another NHL player (the progerian Dion Phaneuf). Even though he only said it two days ago, PuckBunnygate already seems like old news.



Okay, so sloppy seconds is a bit of a mean thing to say about an ex-girlfriend, especially when he’s referring to my number two crush from 2002-2006 inclusive: Elisha Cuthbert. I imagine the angelic voices of young Billys from Gravenhursts all over Canada asking Ma and Pa over dinner last night....

BILLY: Ma, what’s a sloppy second?
MA: It’s nothing...
BILLY: But the sportsman on TV said sloppy seconds.
MA: When you’re older....
BILLY: Can I have sloppy seconds?
PA: Stop it, boy!
BILLY: Can I get sloppy seconds for Christmas...
*If that's not proof I can write plays, what is?

What all this amounts to is that Sean Avery told a locker room joke in a locker room, only we all got to hear it. Should he be kicked out of the NHL? I don’t know—a million sports websites are talking about that—go look at them. The point is, lots of guys (fuckups and non-fuckups) have made stupid jokes out of jealousy, bravado, carlessness, accident, bullying, self-defence, or just plain absence of thought.
I'm not defending him. I still don’t like him. But no one’s perfect(except Elisha Cuthbert 2002-2006).