WTA, WTF? Boston media's love affair with Wilder the Animal on the rocks after blown wins

Animals GM and former wunderkind Wilder the Animal has left the team's fans wondering what he's smoking with some of his recent lineup moves.

By R.E. Porter
Associated Web Press

Like father, like son? After being the golden boy of the NFFA, the league's GM of the year in 2015, Cambridge Animals GM Wilder the Animal appears to have lost his magic touch this year, making lineup gaffes reminiscent of legendarily bad moves made by his father, Dave the Animal, that cost the team victories in seasons past.

Over the past month, WTA has fielded three lineups that included injured/inactive players, and in two of those instances, it cost the Animals a win — in week 9 against the Atlanta Smack Daddies and this past weekend against the West Nashville Beelzebubbas. In each case, had WTA played Randall Cobb at wide receiver rather than Kelvin Benjamin, Cambridge would have won the game and would now be tied with the Downtown Corsairs for the best record in the league at 8-4.

"I don't understand why Wilder hates me," Cobb said. "I lace them up and bring it for this team every week."

When he learned the Animals only had 12 active players in their lineup last weekend, London Bakers owner QCurl Sharif said, "I think Wilder was showboating, which he likes to do. Curlbaby likes to showboat, too. That's why I never let him coach." Sharif paused, then added, "I'll never forget when Wilder tried to big-dog Bill Money and me two summers ago. That's one thing I forgot to forget to hate."

Zuma the Animal

Media outlets in the greater Boston area normally deferential to the Animals young GM have found their spines in recent days and have been hammering his roster decisions relentlessly, referring to him as "Milder the Animal" and "blunderkind." Boston sports talk radio has been blowing up with speculation suggesting there will be a shake-up in the Animals power structure, with DTA's youngest son, Zuma the Animal, taking over as GM. "Some fans are understandably anxious about putting ZTA in charge, since he's only 7 years old," said retired Boston sports columnist Bob Ryan during a segment on ESPN's Around the Horn devoted to the Animals' woes. "On the other hand, they do have a wunderkind tradition, and it can't be much worse than how it is going now."

Neither WTA, nor DTA, could be reached as this story went to press. The person answering the phone in the Animals' media relations department declined to comment.

"MOST DEPRESSING CELEBRATION EVER"Corsairs lose 3rd straight but clinch Linardo title

Jack White leads the Leonard Four-nette while Mojo D (not pictured since he was curled up in the fetal position behind the amps) intones Ferlinghetti

By Soren Bernyn
FSN

The venue fit the mood Monday night as media, Corsairs front office and faithful fans gathered at The Blue Room at Third Man Records, home of Corsairs coach Jack White. The crowd anticipated epic, celebratory debauchery for the Corsairs' fifth playoff berth in a row; but after a blistering 8-0 start, the Corsairs have dropped three straight games, and the Corsairs boss was not happy.

The room was heavy with languor and nerves, as a visibly distressed and intoxicated GM Mojo D addressed the 450 friends, fans and media gathered at the Pie Town club that has become HQ for the Downtown Corsairs: “we ran the table in the first half of the season and swept the Black Dogs - two things we take great pride in. But I fear we started believing the media, which has bit us in the ass - a 3-game skid mark is unacceptable. We clinched the Linardo (Division), but only because the other three teams suck - two weeks in a row for a Jorge sweep? That’s unheard-of, but it means we’re going to the playoffs again, and for that, I’m grateful.”

Mojo D screeched "happy f*cking Thanksgiving, motherf*ckers!", signaled the bartenders to start pouring blue Solo cups of Playoff Punch-You-in-the-Mouth for the assembled masses, and brought coach Jack White to the stage. The mercurial musical and coaching genius [Corsairs lead the NFFA in Power Rank, Efficiency and All-Play percentage] led his newest art-rock quartet, “The Leonard Four-nette,” in a dissonant, feedback-filled, 60-minute improvisational opus backing Mojo D’s reading of Lawrence Ferlinghetti’s A Coney Island of the Mind, his voice processed through an increasingly disturbing series of distortions. By the closing chords, only a dozen or so people were left in the Blue Room, but Mojo D did not see the crowd leave, as he was laying behind the amps, rocking himself and sobbing silently. 

LYNCHED Cube fired midgame, RB Lynch named player coach, inspires victory

Marshawn Lynch, who led the Black Dogs to the 2016 NFFA title, was named player-coach of the team midgame this past weekend to inspire the team to their sixth win.

By R.E. Porter
Associated Web Press

Prior to the finale of the East Nashville-Fidalgo Island game last night, Black Dogs owner and U.S. Senate candidate Bill Money reasserted his control of the Black Dogs franchise and ordered the firing of head coach Ice Cube, the AWP has learned. It is the first time in league history a coach has been fired midgame. Former Black Dogs coach Marshawn Lynch agreed to be player-coach for the remainder of the game — and season. The man who led the East Nashville franchise to its fourth NFFA title a year ago spurred the Dogs to an improbable victory with an impassioned pregame speech.

According to a source within the Money for U.S. Senate campaign, Money was following Sunday afternoon's action from a hotel in Dyersburg, Tennessee, where he had a speaking engagement that evening at the local AME church. When Money realized longtime starting wide receiver Keenan Allen, who was having a career day, had been benched by Coach Ice Cube, he went ballistic. "When Bill realized Allen was not in the starting lineup, he let loose a string of profanity that would have made the devil blush," the source, who spoke only on condition of anonymity, said. "He was like, 'Goddamn mother[expletive], goddamn mother[expletive]! What the [expletive] was Cube thinking? That's it. He's [expletive] history. He's next-to-last in coaching efficiency and our [expletive] record shows it.'

"Later that evening, Bill got [daughters] Mo and Cash on a conference call and told them Cube had to go before the Monday night finish," the source continued. "He went on to tell them he wanted Marshawn to be player-coach."

Lynch agreed to become player-coach late Sunday evening, and awoke yesterday morning to find himself under twitter attack from President Donald Trump, owner of The Village Green.

Lynch said Trump's tweet made him "mad enough to run through a mother[expletive]'s face." By midday, his mother, Delisa Lynch, had jumped into the fray, calling on the league to suspend Trump for the remainder of the season. Earlier this year, the running back was photographed wearing a T-shirt that read, "Everybody vs. Trump."

Still steaming about Trump in the lead-up to last night's finale, Lynch gave his team a pregame speech for the ages — it was probably the most words the closemouthed coach has ever uttered in one sitting. At one point, Lynch was in tight end Jimmy Graham's face, telling him to make that "little punkass bitch Sea Hogs quarterback give you the damn ball, boss." At another point in the speech, he implored kick returner Tyler Lockett to "run through every mother[expletive]'s face when you get the rock." Stellar performances by Graham and Lockett sealed the victory, especially Lockett, who had 19.7 points in kick return yardage that provided the team's winning margin.

Apparently, Ice Cube wasn't too upset over his firing, as he was seen in the owner's box at The Dawg House last night, laughing and toasting champagne with the Money sisters as the team jumped out to what seemed like an insurmountable lead by halftime, but which turned out to be just barely enough to edge the visiting Sea Hogs. 

When asked to comment on the victory afterwards, Lynch would only say, "London's calling, and now it's about that ring, boss."

BAKERS RECLAIM 12 SOUTH SOVEREIGNTY Triumphant return to ‘The Goose’ erupts in cheers, violence

After his team's stunning victory, superfan Bill Cheatham led a group of Baker Backers in removing the tarp that the state legislature had ordered to be placed over the statue of Mr. TD.

By Ariel Mutha-Tafoya

FSN Sports

When President Donald J. Trump moved The Village Green’s home game against the London Bakers to the Bakers’ old home field, and then purchased the rights to rechristen it for one week as Trump 12 South Stadium, he intended to intimidate and embarrass the team that he has come to hate more than any other except his most bitter rival, the Downtown Corsairs.

Instead, in a raucous, sometimes violent weekend that reminded many observers of the rough-and-tumble early days of the NFFA, the Bakers not only throttled Trump’s team, but restored a degree of both physical and moral sovereignty in the city they once called home.

The weekend began with Bakers owner QCurl Sharif and an entourage of 500 Baker fans from London being turned away unceremoniously from the gates of the game venue, formerly known as Grey Goose Stadium. It ended with a sustained melee in the stands, a hurried evacuation of Vice President Mike Pence, and nude dancing that spilled out from spontaneous celebrations in The Cherry Bomb Café onto Avenue Q.

“It feels like the ending of Return of the Jedi!” exulted 12 South activist Roz Tefarian, who had stood alongside a phalanx of the hastily reorganized Fedayeen Bakers to protect one of the team’s sacred shrines, the Satan Tree in Sevier Park, from hard-core evangelical Trumpites, led by Rep. Marsha Blackburn, who threatened to chop the tree into pieces and build a bonfire. 

Similarly, Trump and his supporters had demanded that the NashVegas Metro Council remove the statue of beloved Baker mascot and Sharif confidante Mr. TD from the plaza outside the football stadium. Since the Bakers moved to London, the statue had become a pilgrimage site for fans who often left flowers or hoped to receive a blessing from the statue, which was rumored to have healing properties after a young girl saw real tears streaming from Mr. TD’s bronze eyes in 2016. The council had not acted on Trump’s demand, but the Republican-dominated Tennessee General Assembly ordered that a black drape be placed over the statue in the meantime.

After Sharif was denied entrance to Trump 12 South Stadium, he and the 500 fans who had made the trip from London walked to the Cherry Bomb Café, site of some of Sharif’s greatest triumphs as a campaigner for global peace through medical marijuana, and crowded inside to watch the game. 

The historic Cherry Bomb, which badly suffered from neglect after the Bakers left the US ahead of the Trump tidal wave, was unprepared at first for the large crowd, but quickly roared to life and regained its old form. Master Bartender Devlin Redd, on loan for the day from Club Gitmo to man his old spot at The Bomb, created a special drink for the occasion that he called the Knee Down in honor of a practice begun by Bakers and Bubbas fans this year to kneel during “The Star-Spangled Banner.” Redd said his concoction — a mixture involving Nehi Grape Soda, Johnnie Walker Double Black and a tincture of battery acid — was also a tribute to old-time residents of 12 South who had taught him how to mix a similar libation before gentrification drove them out of the neighborhood. A Metro fire marshal, alerted to code violations created by the throng of fans inside, was last seen heading upstairs to Sharif’s old quarters with a Knee High in one hand and a Touchdown Taser® in the other.

Throughout Sunday afternoon, when it became apparent that the Bakers were going to defeat Trump’s Village Green, roughly 3,000 Baker fans in one corner of the stadium began taunting Green supporters with chants of “You’ve been Goosed” — a victory cheer going back to the venue’s years as Grey Goose Stadium. The chants quickly escalated into fistfights as Baker fans began snatching Make America Green Again caps from the heads of Village boosters.

“It was a [bleep]ing outrage,” said Baker superfan Bill Cheatham, who was briefly taken into custody after being identified from cellphone video as an instigator of the brawl. 

As Cheatham was being led away, Baker coach Snoop Dogg ran into the stands and began to yell at police officers: “What do they mean ‘green again?’ The Bakers made this place totally green years ago, if you know what I’m saying. Bitch, we don’t let an insult like that just pass. Maybe in London, but not at the Goose.” As fans surrounded the police, blocking their exit, the officers let Cheatham go.

Cheatham then led hundreds of Baker fans outside the stadium, where they removed the tarp covering the Mr. TD statue and cut it into shreds.

Afterward, a visibly moved Sharif, who had a number of well publicized differences with Cheatham over the years, announced that the man he called “our number one fan” would be one of the speakers at the Bakers’ annual Integrity Dinner later this month in Nashville.

As the melee unfolded, Baker fans pointed to the VIP suite occupied by Vice President Mike Pence, attending the game while President Trump was in Asia, and began chanting, “Hu-man Pa-ra-quat!” over and over. According to eyewitnesses, a number of Village Green fans also joined in the chant. Secret Service agents quickly evacuated Pence via the escape tunnel designed into the stadium years earlier by Sharif.

The Green’s minority owner, Dave Goodrow, apparently was not in the luxury suite with the vice president. Hours after the disturbance, several fans noticed him emerge from a private coach in the parking lot, visibly intoxicated, asking passersby what time the game was supposed to start.

Early Monday morning, as the party shifted from The Cherry Bomb to Sharif’s lavish West End Tree House, reporters were invited to mingle with the guests, who included former president Barack Obama and former British prime minister Tony Blair. 

“Donald Trump has tried to tear down all the great institutions of this country,” Sharif told members of the media who had asked him about the significance of the Bakers’ victory. “We all know he tried to buy a team in this league once before. We managed to hold him and all his new money at bay back then, but once he got his nose under the tent it was a different kind of fight. This league is one of the institutions that binds us together and reminds us of our common humanity. And today our team stood up for that institution and echoed the words of Mr. TD’s grandfather at Verdun in 1916: ‘They shall not pass!’”

As Sharif concluded his remarks, a misty-eyed Joe Biden told a reporter standing near him, “If I could speak like that, I’d be president right now.”

Blair, who had crossed the Atlantic with the team’s boosters, remembered remarks that Sharif had made early in the afternoon, as the Londoners had begun to gather outside The Cherry Bomb. “He reminded us that it was Veterans Day weekend,” Blair said, “and he told us that we were all veterans of this struggle against fascism in football and everywhere else. 

“He stood on that balcony of The Cherry Bomb, where he had given speeches to huge crowds before, and spoke just to our group that seemed so small at the time. We all know he’s been battling depression and psychosis, and who can blame him, but he put that all aside and roused himself as in the old days. He said that, after we achieved victory today, no Veterans Day would go by ‘from now until the ending of the world but we in it shall be remembered — we few, we happy few, we band of brothers. Gentlemen in England, now a-bed, shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap while any speaks that fought with us on Veterans Day.’

“And then everybody began cheering as one,” Blair said, “After that speech, we not only knew we would win but that this day would be celebrated for as long as there is an England and an NFFA.”

BAKER RESURGENCE BELIED BY SHARIF'S PARANOIA

A photo from the war room at the One-Eyed Pig as QCurl Sharif organized a national anthem protest earlier this year. Recent reports cite Sharif's "full-blown paranoia."  

By Man Ray Natural

The Mainline Dope

LONDON—As the Russian probe into the Trump administration began to unfold Monday with the indictments and arrests of Paul Manafort and Rick Gates, and a guilty plea offered from aide George Papdopoulos, the London Bakers were in the process of nailing down a second straight win and doing their part to throw the NFFA's Jorge Division into a four-way tie.

While many in the Baker front office were celebrating that win over Atlanta in the states, owner QCurl Sharif was reportedly hunkered down and three days drunk in the infamous war room at the One Eyed-Pig in London. Reports have it that Sharif has become increasingly agitated over the past several weeks due to the Bakers' inconsistent play, and what some are calling 'full-blown paranoia' over the Trump investigation.

"He's really depressed," an unnamed source in the Baker organization said of the scene Monday night. "He's starting to think Poroshenko is glowing. Not that he's dirty, by any means, but all things considered with Sharif's well-known passion in Ukraine -- his heroism actually on the battlefield -- and his personal knowledge that politics are not always what they seem in that part of the world. There's been a shit-ton of money floating around there for some time now."

Reports of Sharif's erratic behavior in recent weeks have some in the front office on edge. In an alternately raging, tearful, postgame locker-room plea to his head coach and team following the tough loss to the West Nashville Beelzebubbas in Week Six, Sharif declared "don't fuck this thing into the ground!"

It was an unusually tense and candid scene according to one player, who described Sharif as "wild-eyed and naked" during the rant.

"It's not unusual in the sense that Sharif often comes in and showers with the team," the player, who also wished to remain anonymous, said. "What was unusual were the crazy mood swings and the fact that he menacingly presented himself around the room. I mean, some of our guys are men of faith, and the looks on their faces were so twisted, like they were watching the devil himself, dancing and screaming.

"When QCurl finally chilled down and went to the shower, most players just put on their clothes and headed for the bus. Like post haste. I did see Khalil Mack, and I think Brady and Snoop, go in there with him. When I left, they were back there singing old Gaelic fighting songs and QCurl just sounded really smashed at that point."

The Bakers stateside skid, which included losses to East Nashville, Downtown Corsairs, and the Bubbas, apparently left the fragile owner in shock. Sharif was unabashed in his taunting references to his own defense, while defending himself against the charges of increasingly erratic behavior. He spoke to reporters following the Black Dog loss.

"I've heard some of the reports of that locker room scene, and they couldn't be more inaccurate," Sharif said then, as sounds from The Band's The Last Waltz drifted through the fabled rumpus room at the One-Eyed Pig. "With the lone exception being my extreme drunkeness. And, if that offends, I can do nothing about it. I'm either drunk or high before, during and after every game. It's the Baker Way. I mean that Bubbas' loss was a culminating, crushing loss, and I was sharing heartbreak with my brothers.

"I want to live among men — walk with my head up among them — and these guys haven't resembled anything close, except in some aberrant physical characteristics. Our defense, once the fearsome banner under which the Bakers fought, is in tatters. And Keuchly — what a crybaby. I haven't seen that many tears since the Chocolate King pulled the candy-coated hookers out of Sepp Blatter's birthday party.

"It's not alright for our guys to walk around the streets of London in a genderless way. If I have to take this all back to Baker basics -- Baker bootcamp -- I will. Snoop remembers those days and no one wants to go there. I remember Bironas saying one day after practice back then, he felt like he'd been dry-humped by the whole team. And, actually, he had. He was just delirious. It's one of our drills."

But according to the unnamed source at The Pig Monday night, Sharif paid little attention to the game. Rather, he sat in an intense conversation with two unidentified men during Marcus Peters' brilliant night. The conversation reportedly lasted over three hours, with Sharif standing at one point and relieving himself into an empty silver bowl on a nearby table.

"We're all pretty worried right now," the source said. "We want to feel good about what's happening on the field, but wondering if there's any validity to Sharif's distraction. We've seen him strung out before, but this is different. Those guys he was sitting with seemed like they were holding some cards. Looked pretty medieval. Of course, could always be drugs. That's why we're sort of letting things play out. Could be nothing."