As Shanoff covered at length this morning, the lawmen ruled yesterday that the FCC’s $550,000 fine against CBS for the Janet Jackson “wardrobe malfunction” during the ‘04 Super Bowl was unjust. The court more or less decided that the nip-slip didn’t result in a high enough level of “shock treatment” for the audience, and therefore the FCC hadn’t followed their own, previously established course of action in indecency cases. ↵↵Blah, blah, legal speak, blah, blah. Basically, the incident wasn’t seen as offensive enough to warrant such a hefty fine. We agree. In its stead, however, we’d like to present five more offensive performances since the Janet incident took place. The FCC may want to look into some retroactive fines ...↵
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↵Cardinals, 2004 World Series. If I’m watching television with my kid, I’d rather he see any part of Janet Jackson’s body than any game of that ’04 Series. I mean, someday I’d hope this hypothetical son of mine sees a woman’s unmentionables, but I’d hope he never, ever does anything as poorly as St. Louis played baseball in those four games. They never lead once in the entire pathetic series. Not even for one inning, one out, one pitch, never. What’s worse is that their ineptitude allowed Boston fans to celebrate a championship, which is more disgusting than if Janet Jackson had been Rosie O’Donnell. ↵
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↵Greece, Euro 2004. Greece is the stingiest, least charismatic humbug championship team in recent memory to pull a major soccer championship -- and we're writing this after Italy won the last World Cup. Greece muddled their way through their opening group, winning, losing, and drawing before pulling a slate of France (aging chokemeisters), Czechoslovakia (in form chokemeisters) and finally Portugal in the final (chokemeisters in full, mature bloom.) At no point did the Greeks score more than a goal in a single game, preferring instead to line up all eleven men in a line across the front of the goal and wait for "something to happen," which for three games in a row worked. The Greeks crashed out of Euro 2008 when, building on their success from 2004, they eliminated scoring from their game plan altogether.↵
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↵Rex Grossman, Super Bowl XLI. Here are your eight Super Bowl QBs since the nip-slip incident: Peyton Manning, Tom Brady (twice), Donovan McNabb, Matt Hasselbeck, Eli Manning, Ben Roethlisberger and, last and certainly least, Rex “Sex Cannon” Grossman. Rexy single-handedly ensured that the most exciting moment of Super Bowl XLI would be the culmination of our party’s “how many times will Tony Dungy thank God after the Colts win” pre-game bet (I believe five was the winner). In a season full of “eff it, I’m going deep” moments from Grossman, the worst of them came in the XLI when he decided to play an impromptu game of 500 in the 4th quarter. Much like his season, that game, and soon enough, his career, the result was a sloppy, unwatchable disaster. ↵
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↵Hawaii, 2008 Sugar Bowl. Hawaii lost so badly they should have lost their apostrophe due to the impact of Georgia's offensive linemen crashing into Colt Brennan. Undefeated going into the game, Hawaii slid into the Boise State upstart-BCS-contender of the year-slot and then slid into a tree shredder. Seeing Colt Brennan beat into submission in the first half with five sacks, a fumble for a TD, and an interception was bad; watching Hawaii struggle with the snap count, refuse to change it due to the noise, and then all but telling Georgia when to get a head start on the ball was worse. Outplayed, outcoached, outmanned, and outgunned, Hawaii went from upstart to scalded dog in a half of brutal football. As a viewer, the only solace came when Brennan was finally knocked out of the game, thus ending the torture portion of the programming for the night.↵
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↵Roger Clemens. We all know you did it, so, please, stop insulting our intelligence. Seriously, we're offended. Your tips are not naturally blonde! You used the bleach, man! Just confess already, and we'll all forgive you.↵
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This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.
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