Breaking Madden Roster Cuts: Fryin’ bologna with a light bulb

Introducing a brand new weekly feature, Breaking Madden Roster Cuts.

Those familiar with Breaking Madden know that I commonly seek volunteers from Twitter to program into each episode. This week, I tweeted:

It’s a question crucial to the Week 7 episode of Breaking Madden. Because these volunteers will be doing something terrible. Over. And over. And over. And over.

And over:

Within two hours, I had received more than 800 responses. Whittling them down was not easy, because as it turns out, y’all make a habit of doing terrible dumb things on the regular.

These are the 21 individuals I’ve settled upon (10 Patriots and 11 Jets):

Tight end: Jeff

Let’s catch everyone up, because 2014 Southern Methodist football is really something to behold. Last week’s Shutdown Fullcast podcast estimated that this year’s SMU team might be the worst team ever in the history of FBS college football. Ever.

The state of things is such that last week’s 45-24 walloping at the hands of East Carolina is unquestionably the high point of the Mustangs’ season. These are their other four efforts:

Lost to Baylor, 45-0
Lost to North Texas, 43-0
Lost to Texas A&M, 58-6
Lost to TCU, 56-0

I imagine that bearing witness to this is like watching the final moments of the universe. It’s a tremendous spectacle, and you are there to see it. But who will you tell?

Left tackle: Tom Ziller

My theory is that AOL Instant Messenger was used widely, and exclusively, by people who were under, say, 23 years old between 1998 and 2005. Almost nobody above that age ever used it. This means that if a database of all AIM dealings exists somewhere, it’s weapons-grade crappy immaturity, all of it conducted in the era of the proto-Internet in which everyone was still kind of trying to figure out what being online was, and what the Hell it was for, and what we were doing.

If that database exists, and in case it ever leaks, I may as well take ownership of my greatest shame. When I was 15 I chose the screen name “SkaterHater.” I didn’t hate skaters, or really have any feelings about them at all. But it rhymed and it was available, and I thought it was so dang special of a name that I tried to craft an entire ideology around why I hated skaters. I think that screen name lasted a day and a half. Ever since that day in 1998, I’ve gone by my real name on the Internet, because I don’t deserve to be able to hide.

Left guard: Gabby Dearth

“Did you hear about Dennis? Took a dump the other day. One of his employees saw him.”
“Ah, man. What happened to that guy? He used to be one of the best pissers in this whole department.”
“I told him, man. I told him, ‘Dennis, man, you work at the pissin’ factory. You can’t be foulin’ up like this.”
“Nope. Nope ... you see it sometimes, though. People lose passion for this line of work, and before you know it, they keep messin’ up and makin’ shits instead.”
“He’s gotta get it together. If this keeps up, we’re gonna have to can his ass.”
“No, no, we can’t do that. That’s the problem, see.”

Center: Tommy Cook

If you go a while without being reminded how stupid you are, pick up some hot peppers the next time you’re at the store. Jalapeno, habanero, whatever. Make some salsa or chili or something. By all means, while dicing them up, feel free to repeat “I’m gonna wash my hands” over and over. There’s a 50-50 shot you won’t do it, and the next half-hour will be Hell for you. Fortunately, there is a home remedy for this, which is to burn your house down and cry.

Right guard: Aidan

Multiple times! Multiple times? Did you not know when you were supposed to show up for the hot dogs? The dang name of the place is dang 7-11!

Right tackle: Jason Harris

“Now, Jason. He was the best damn employee this factory ever had.”
“What’s he up to these days?”
“Went freelance. Doin’ some real art-house kinda pissin’ these days. Peein’ in dehumidifiers and whatnot.”
“Oh, that’s poetry.”
“That scene’s really blowin’ up. There’s one guy, he gets married and then pisses in his mother-in-law’s sink. Divorces, remarries another lady, does it again.”

Tight end: Joe Reynolds

The motive for this completely eludes me, but it’s totally doable, because a solid slice of the housecat population goes weeks without being seen.

Also, I really like it when things that could not possibly be gainful propositions, in any way, are described as “cons.”

Tight end: Brian Powers

“Wait, that guy’s real?”
“I told you.”
“You gotta be shittin’ me.”
“NO. HOW MANY TIMES DO WE HAVE TO GO OVER THIS?”

Fullback: Carl Engle-Laird

Superman 64 is widely regarded as one of the worst video games in the history of Earth. It was released in 1999, the most appropriate time in which such a crapshit product could be produced.

This is not the first time I’ve repeated sentiment from FreeDarko’s first book, which argues that American pop culture bottomed out in 1998. I’d expand it to a five-year stretch between ... I don’t know, 1998 and 2002. Comedy films that were actually funny nearly went extinct. Overly-ambitions CGI often looked like butt. The Internet was growing just visually sophisticated enough to look hideous. Almost all pop music and television was terrible. Creed, for a time, was permitted to peacefully assemble.

I doubt it’s an accident that video games, during this period, actually looked worse than they did five years prior. We had 3D games, but developers often seemed to sacrifice all aesthetic appeal, accessibility, and actual working mechanics for the sake of having three dimensions. I’ll go out on a limb and argue that, by and large and with exceptions, games made in 1993 were more fun to play than games made in 1999.

And I just remembered this week’s theme and it’s finally occurring to me that you rented Superman 64 multiple times. I am so sorry.

Halfback: David Conway

While working in SB Nation’s New York offices, I have suggested -- several times and completely sincerely -- that we go to lunch or have a meeting at this very Times Square Applebee’s. I can tell that every time I’m saying it, they think I’m joking. I’m not joking. I WANT TO GO TO THE FUCKIN’ TIMES SQUARE APPLEBEE’S!

FOOD
FOLKS
&
FUN

Linebacker: Matt Johnson

Over and over, for a solid 15 years at least, the folks who make the consoles have sent the following message: don’t buy a console at launch. The games just aren’t there. This was as true as ever with the Xbox One. I’m a giant NBA 2K stan who was ready to excuse away any shortcomings of NBA 2K14, the series’ first next-gen title. It turned out to be such an incomplete game that I dug my Xbox 360 back out, played that version of the game, and found it to be 10 times more fun.

Defensive end: Jeremy Dewar

yeah you know what time it is

Defensive tackle: Wes Bulgarella

Running is awesome if you don’t have access to a bicycle. Or maybe you do, but you want to see less of the world and have a bad time.

Defensive tackle: Bryan Brown

No further questions. This might be the second-worst tweet I received.

Defensive end: PhilKenSaban

Twice, huh? Me too! The first time, I was pulled over, and the cop found that I had a bench warrant I had no idea I had that stemmed from an old speeding ticket, so I spent that night in jail. I later had the fine taken care of through my lawyer, who failed to tell me that I needed to take a driving safety class to avoid another bench warrant. A couple years later, I’m pulled over on a routine stop, same thing, off to jail. The next morning, the judge was like, “huh, why are you even here” and immediately released me without any fines or conditions.

The thing I really hated about jail is that nobody tells you anything. Most people -- at least, most of the dudes I was there with -- are in and out of there so often that they know how the whole thing works. If you don’t, you’re constantly flagging down various guards and clerical people: wait, what happens next? Am I spending the night? Has someone signed me out yet? Can they do that? And you have to stay hyper-vigilant on the door in the group cell. If they call your name to let you out and you’re asleep, too bad. You’re waiting around for another couple hours at least. There is no clock on the wall and nothing to do, so a couple hours is approximately six years.

Also bad: when a dude is assigned the bunk next to yours approximately two years after learning that there are new charges on him, and that his two-week stay in the system will probably be closer to eight years. I don’t know what the charges were, and maybe he’s a horrible person. But god dang, just being near him is the most awful feeling in the world.

The sandwiches are terrible.

Defensive end: Jonah Keri

I bet most kids do this once. I did one time, purely out of curiosity. But Jonah, man:

“Jonah. Listen, young man. If you do this one more time, the Expos will go away forever!”
“Oh no!”
[Jonah never does it again]
[The Expos go away forever still]

Linebacker: Sean

Dude, I think this qualified you, in purely technical but very real terms, as a cyborg.

Strong safety: Dan Schwartz

I hope this was a Panera Bread on some college campus somewhere. I mean, I wouldn’t fall asleep in a Panera Bread, but if this was so, I could at least understand it. I spent much of my one semester of college napping in the fourth floor of the University of Louisville’s Eckstrom Library. I bet I’m still the only person to even go up on that floor since 1970. I’ve been lots of places, and I’ve never found a better spot on Earth to nap.

Linebacker: Colonel Sweeto

When you first discover craft beer, it’s exciting, and you want to talk about it. After a while, God willing, you’ll realize the immutable truth: “most beers are pretty good.” No, really. Every beer on Beer Advocate is like a four out of five. Almost all beer is beer is pretty good. Even Coors Light is pretty good. It’s all pretty good. Granted, you could probably fill two or three minutes of conversation with “pretty good.”

Free safety: The TRP

We’re almost done, right? We’ve gotta be almost done here.

Cornerback: Matt Spiegel

OH GOD.

We’re stopping here. I quit.