Quote of the Week

I haven't given a minute of my attention to the NFL lockout so far, because I really just don't care. Both sides in this mess are being beyond idiotic (seriously, I can understand a millionaires vs. billionaires fight when the economy's booming, but when unemployment is stubbornly high, such a standoff is devastatingly tone-deaf and completely idiotic--who puts an unprecedented run of success at risk for no good reason?), and I can't find an ounce of sympathy for anyone in this melodrama.

I assume that eventually they'll figure it out and play some football, and if they don't then I'm even more glad that I didn't pay them any mind along the way. With all that said, sometimes you come across something that's so amazing you just can't ignore it. Enter Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis.

This week's QUOTE OF THE WEEK

"Do this research if we don't have a season -- watch how much evil, which we call crime, watch how much crime picks up, if you take away our game... There's too many people that live through us, people live through us... There's nothing else to do."
                           - Ravens linebacker Ray Lewis

Holy inflated sense of self-importance, Batman! Are these people serious? Do they really think that if we take away football for a year, people will be so bored, angry, and despondent that they'll turn to a life of crime as the next best alternative? I mean, really?

I should be numb to this sort of egotism by now, in the wake of Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein's assertion that his blood-sucking, economy-crumbling company was doing "God's work", but somehow I'm still amazed when I hear statements like these. Wake up, guys, you're not nearly as important as you think you are, no matter what your bank account says.

Ironically enough, our friends over at the Freakonomics blog did a little study to see if there was any credence to Lewis' prediction. If the lack of a football season is expected to lead to an increase in crime, then we should probably see an uptick in crime every year when the football season ends, right? Eh, not really. In fact, if anything, gamedays tend to lead to an increase in crime, especially when the home team suffers an unexpected loss (granted, this study focused on college rather than the NFL, but the fan bases aren't so far different that I'd call the results irrelevant). It seems that cramming 50,000 drunken people into a tight space and jacking up the testosterone level isn't a crime deterrent... who knew?

Although, let's give Ray-Ray some credit here... maybe he was just talking about the players themselves. Touché.

[ESPN.com]