The Hitchhiker’s Guide to NFL S— Talking: AFC North

Ravens and Steelers fans, are you not entertained?

While the Hitchhiker’s Guide to NFL S— Talking isn’t the Bible (we should all be so infallible), it is extremely useful tool to use while traveling throughout the galaxy that is the NFL. Take if you will, the story of Harold Bentonville, a claims adjuster originally from Shawnee, MO but now living in Iowa, who while investigating a claim in Sioux City (a particularly nasty case where a worker at Tyson Fresh Meats lost their hand after she reached down to pick up a dead chicken before the other fowl cannibalized it, which they will do if unsupervised, thanks to the large amounts of growth hormones they are given from birth. Anyway, she moved a tad bit too slow, thus her ring, index, and middle fingers ended up as part of the meal. Her co-workers were able to pull her out before the chicken got to her pinky and thumb. After the case was settled, she used her money to move to Malibu, CA where she befriended a group of surfers who thought her attempt to flag down a taxi with her bad hand.)

Harold met Susan O’Reilly-Youngblood, a half Irish, half Sioux Indian divorce’, who had moved back to her hometown from New York after her marriage to William O’Reilly, an ill-tempered and standoffish fellow, fell apart due to his insistence that she not check off “Native American” when filling out their census form. Harold and Susan fell in love almost instantly, and after a brief courtship, they decided to marry. The only thing left to do was for Harold to meet Susan’s father, Amitola Youngblood (Susan’s mother had passed away).

When Harold arrived to the Youngblood household, he parked in the driveway, walked to the front door, and knocked. Amitola opened the door, looked at Harold, looked at Harold’s license plate, and saw that he that he had a Kansas City Chiefs frame around his plate.

“So you’re a Chiefs fan?” Amitola asked. “I hope you weren’t thinking of raising children with my daughter with that offensive image in your home. It is unacceptable.”

Harold panicked before answering, “Uh, no, no sir. I’m not really a big football fan. That frame was given to me as a gift.”

This of course was a lie. Harold had been a lifelong Chiefs fan. He even had a signed Elvis Grbac game-worn jersey hanging up in his den at home. His fantasy football team was named the “Black Tambas” after Chiefs standout linebacker Tamba Hali. But Harold’s love for Susan so exceeded his love for his football team, that he sold his team out.

Amitola looked at Harold for a moment, looked back at his car, and said, “I’m sorry, but I cannot allow you to marry my daughter. You must leave, now.” He then closed the door, and Harold walked back to his car, heartbroken having lost the love of his life.

What Harold didn’t know was that Amitola himself was a huge Chiefs fan. In fact he had made the trip to Tulane Stadium in New Orleans to watch the Chiefs win Super Bowl IV, the lone Super Bowl win in franchise history. Had Harold actually made it inside the house, he would have seen countless pictures of Amitola at Arrowhead Stadium, as well as other memorabilia (his prized possession being a picture he took with Tony Gonzalez and his super hot wife, October).

Had Harold simply referred to The Guide, he would have read that the first rule of being a fan of an NFL team is to never abandon your team, regardless of how desperate or self-serving it may seem to do so. Amitola couldn’t allow his daughter to marry. Harold Harold was a coward. No father in good conscience would allow his daughter to marry a coward (or a team bigamist. F— that s—).

(For a reminder of the rules, including the STFU Scale, please click here.)

AFC North

The Untouchables

Pittsburgh Steelers

Know your history: 6 Super Bowl wins, 7 SB appearances, last SB in 2010-11, 17 legit Hall of Famers

Know your present: 12 and 4 in 2010, 1st in AFC North, lost Super Bowl

Know when to STFU: 10 out of 10 (They’s yo daddy)

How do you make a fan of the Pittsburgh Steelers feel any shame? I mean aside from becoming a player for the Pittsburgh Steelers. God bless a die hard fan that is both bold and talented to train themselves to be the starting quarterback for an NFL team that they hate, win two Super Bowls with that team, then get multiple women to accuse them of rape, all in an effort to embarrass the Steelers fan base. I mean, if that’s what Ben Roethhlisberger was up to, I must say Al Davis went into some old Moses-and-the-10-plagues revenge mode for that Immaculate Reception bulls—.

Sorry, but unless you’re one of their many, many players who are accused of doing some pretty eyebrow-raising things from time to time, there isn’t much one can tell a Steelers fan that would make them shame their loyalty to their team. They have the most Super Bowl wins of any NFL team, the most appearances, the most playoff wins, the third most Hall of Fame players, the best ownership (currently represented by Art Rooney II), the least amount of head coaches (3) since 1969 (Chuck Noll, Bill Cowher, and Mike Tomlin), the best accidental-theme-song-made-by-a-tattooed-broomstick (“Black and Yellow” by Wiz Khalifa, and don’t you dare act like you didn’t like the song when you first heard it because that’s a damned lie), and arguably the best stadium in the NFL (Heinz Field).

But no one likes a bully, so if you happen to get into a s— talking situation with a Steelers fan, the best approach is to use their players off-field transgressions against them. Yeah, it’s cliche’ and it does kind of make you sound like a pussy as Kris Jenkins would say to Lebron, “sensitive”, but that’s really all there is. These will come in handy; Roethlisberger’s rape accusations (plural); Rashard Mendenhall’s political Twitter gaffe (because we were all supposed to have had blood lust for Osama bin Laden, and Rashard should have known that because it was all over Facebook); Hines Ward’s recent D.U.I. bust (unless you are at a bar, then you will just sound like a hypocritical ass); the whole “You know, the Steelers are like the most steroid-filled roster in NFL history”-thing; the story of “Jefferson Street” Joe Gilliam pawning his Super Bowl ring off to a crack dealer for… you guessed it… crack; James Harrison’s Men’s Journal interview (bashed teammates, Commissioner Roger Goodell, and his holiness Bill Belichick) James Harrison’s arrest for a domestic dispute… as a matter of fact, just start saying James Harrison’s name, then mumble gibberish while you sip your beer. I’m sure they’ll have some crazy thing he did come to their mind and believe that’s what you’re referring to.

Stepchildren need love too.

Baltimore Ravens

Know your history: 1 Super Bowl win, 1 SB appearance, last SB in 2000-01, 0 legitimate Hall of Famers

Know your present: 12-4 in 2010, lost in the Divisional Round of the playoffs

Know when to STFU: 7 out of 10

The quickest way to hurt a Ravens fan is to remind them that they are the Cleveland Browns in the witness protection program. Force them to acknowledge that they are the same franchise Art Modell uprooted from Cleveland, made a left turn at Albuquerque, and took his talents to Baltimore. Also point out the blatant pandering and hypocrisy done by the team honoring former players of the Cleveland Browns and Baltimore Colts in their “Ring of Honor” at M&T Bank Stadium. That is the single most off-brand act in NFL history.

The Ravens are a legit championship contender; they’ve won at least one playoff game three years in a row, and the last 4 teams that eliminated them (Steelers twice, and the Indianapolis Colts twice) all appeared in the Super Bowl that season. However, their lone Super Bowl win is over a decade old, and while one Super Bowl win every ten year average isn’t as laaaaaaame as Jay-Z would make it out to be, they’re vulnerable to attack on that subject.

As far as on the field s— talking is concerned, when in doubt point out that the team’s best player, Ray Lewis, is an overexposed, overemotional, overrated, over-the-hill, middle linebacker who does quasi-homoerotic pregame dances that are over a decade old, believes NFL players control America’s crime rate, lathers himself in Old Spice and rides a jet fueled Raven butt naked to sell body wash, plus testified in court against his friends during a murder trial. Tell them you’ve watched “The Wire” and you didn’t think Baltimore got down like that.

Cleveland just has a hard time letting anything go.

Cleveland Browns

Know your history: 0 Super Bowl Wins, 0 SB appearances, 14 legit Hall of Famers

Know your present: 5-11 in 2010, missed playoffs

Know when to STFU: 2 out of 10

I’m unwilling to accept the current incarnation of the Cleveland Browns are in any way connected to the organization that operated from 1946-1995 any more than Lou Dobbs is willing to accept Miles Morales as the new Ultimate Spiderman. The Browns, as we once knew them, have long been dead (or as previously stated, enrolled into the witness protection program), then these guys showed up in 1999, wearing the Browns clothes, playing on the Browns field, and reminding all the Browns fans the different ways in which the original Browns would lose games.

Since these Browns began playing in ’99, they have a grand total of 64 wins, an average of 5 wins per year. The one time they doubled their average with 10 wins in 2007, the only double-digit win season for these Browns, they still missed the playoffs.

If the AFC North were a woman, and the Steelers and Ravens are her good qualities (classic American beauty, can cook, nice curves, street smart yet classy) then the Browns and the Cincinnati Bengals (we’ll get to them next) are her bastard children from a prior relationship who are damaged beyond repair. Neither franchise show any signs of ever being able to rise above their daddy issues long enough to be effective contributing members of society. Their ring of honor giving credit to the former Browns players who played under the original regime is the equivalent of the child who never met his father, but found some random picture of the man taken years ago, so he holds on to it.

And we all know how hard of a time Cleveland fans have of letting things go, don’t we Lebron?

Can we start a jersey fund for Bengals fans, because who dey wearing "85" and "9" anymore?

Cincinnati Bengals

Know your history: 0 Super Bowls, 2 appearances, last SB in 1988-89, 1 legit Hall of Famer

Know your present: 4-12 in 2010, last in AFC North, missed playoffs

Know when to STFU: 3 out of 10

The Cincinnati Bengals are the NFL’s best at making headlines for the wrong reasons. Admit it, they are extremely popular for a team that has only two playoff appearances in the past twenty years. Then again, popular probably isn’t the right word, more like infamous. It’s been a long running joke that there are three certainties in life; death, taxes, and a Bengals player getting arrested during the off-season. The Bengals have had 35 active players arrested since 2000, the most in the NFL. If championships were made by the number of active players with criminal records, the Bengals would be the most decorated franchise of this century.

Continuing the analogy of the AFC North being an attractive single-mother with two bastard children, the Bengals are the older child with a bad attitude, and a lengthy juvenile record. Even if he wanted to get his act together, which he doesn’t, he couldn’t due to his lack of acceptable social skills.

The sad thing for s— talking sake is that it has actually become cliche to chastise Bengals fans about the criminal history of their roster. It’s been such a long run of consistently running afoul of the law that even when three Bengals players (Adam “Pacman Jones, Cedric Benson, and Marvin White) are arrested in the same week last month, they get less attention than Caylee Anthony got from her murderous idiot mother.

Good thing the team is just as inept from a managerial standpoint. The biggest news of the summer concerning the Bengals (aside from the arrests) was franchise quarterback, Carson Palmer, telling the team to trade him or he would retire and walk away from around $40 million rather than play for them. Owner Mike Brown has gone on record as saying he wouldn’t trade Palmer, citing Palmer making a “committment” and he wasn’t going to reward him quitting on the team. Meanwhile, Brown allowed a trade of wideout Chad Ochocinco to the New England Patriots after he previously had made a similar trade demand three years ago, and had openly flirted with the idea of playing for New England at the end of the 2010 season, despite he too being under contract.

Bengals fans rarely incite since they understand how abjectly pathetic their franchise is, so it’s doubtful that you’ll ever find yourself in a situation where you have to put one of them in their place. But if you must, feel free to hit on those points as well as; free agent safety Donte Whitner announcing he would sign with the Bengals last week, only to sign with the San Francisco 49ers an hour later; the quarterback carousel of mediocrity post-Boomer Esiason (David Klingler, Jeff Blake, Neil O’Donnell, Akili Smith, and Jon Kitna); and the genuine happiness every player seems to be full of when their indentured servitude with the team is finished.

Hell, I’m even relieved that I can stop writing about them.