Adrian Peterson Ruins Your Dumb Friend’s Claim That He Could Have Played A Professional Sport.

I hear it a lot more, the older I get. The stories, the excuses, the lies.
And they all begin with the same couple of sentences:
“I could’ve played pro baseball,”
“I would have gotten drafted”
“I got invited to a try out”

And they all end with the same way too:
“….if I hadn’t blown out my knee.”

Sometimes it’s a guy who played a year of college someplace, which still, to play Pro? Kind Of a stretch. But if I had a dollar for every idiot who told me they could have played pro baseball or football without even playing an inning or a down of Varsity ball, I’d have enough money to make it rain for weeks in any strip joint in America. (By the way, bachelor parties or drunken nights at a strip joint are usually when you hear these inflated sports stories from guys.)

“Yeah, I’ve been a pharmacist for 20 years. But if I hadn’t blown out my knee playing JV football, I’d be wearing a Super Bowl ring right now, retired and living the good life.”

There was never a way to disprove the outlandish claims other than being incredibly condescending ,”But I thought you had asthma and were allergic to the foam pads. And also, weren’t you the fourth string punter?”

But Adrian Peterson changed all that. “I tore my ACL trying to dunk in a rebound during freshman basketball, but after that happens, you just can never run again.”

Oh yeah, you mean like the same injury Adrian Peterson had last year, but he came back without missing a game and was the best running back in the league and came within a few yards of breaking the All-Time Single Season Rushing Record?
Your dumb friend: “Well, yeah but he’s an amazing athlete.”
You: ”Yes, that’s why he’s in the NFL and you aren’t.”

Look at that guy, he’s a freak of nature. The only thing you two guys have in common is that you both breath air. And the air he breathes probably has a lot less Cheeto-dust in it.

Seems like an air-tight case but that probably still won’t end it.
Your dumb friend: “But I still could have played Semi-pro Golf.”
You: “What does that even mean? There is no such thing as Semi-Pro Golf. Either you pay greens fee’s or you don’t.”
Just let them hang on to the dream if they need to believe it. “Yeah, Steve, you would have ended up in the pro’s if you hadn’t torn that ACL….. but then again there’s Jerry Rice, Tom Brady, Frank Gore, Ricky Rubio, Kendrick Perkins, Corey Brewer, David West, Jamal Crawford, Donovan McNabb, Phillip Rivers, Deion Branch. And then I’m sure Derrick Rose, RG III and Mariano Rivera have called it quits and there’s no way they will come back tearing their ACL’s.“

I feel worse for the guys who actually did play pro sports but look like they never picked up a football in their entire lives. I bet Ron Jaworski has to bring his football card with him wherever he goes just to prove people wrong. “Sure you played Quarterback in NFL, Ron or I’m sorry ‘Jaws’ is what they called you? Right, sure.”