Hazing At A Medium Pace

Part of being a rookie in the NFL is going thru your rookie “hazing” and earning your stripes with the veterans. The term “hazing” is more associated with the old school way of initiating players into the NFL, such as the Saints did with Cam Cleeland. Today’s rookie initiations are much easier.

Nowadays rookies have it pretty tame, well as far as we know. They may have to carry the veterans shoulder pads, something Dez Bryant was not down with. They may also find themselves taped to a goalpost or they may have to perform skits imitating coaches…or a $100 million dollar defensive tackle hurting his knee taking a dump. Another popular choice is to have a rookie stand up and sing a song in front of the team. While covering the aforementioned knee injury while dumping, D.C. Sports Bog unearthed this gem of Chris Cooley’s initiation by song.

“I sang Adam Sandler’s ‘At a Medium Pace,’ ” he told me. “I got a lot of blank stares. From anyone who knew it, roars of laughter, which was mostly the white guys. And then most of the black guys on the team were like don’t haze him any more. He’s done. He did his part.”

I’m not going to link the song, even for this blog which is not politically correct and a little on the edgy side, the song is not for everyone’s ears. Either you know it or you don’t. I love the song and I’ve been listening to it for 15 years. I love Sandler’s stuff from that era, included but not limited to The Goat, Toll Booth Willie and Joining the Cult.

What I really want to know and what I would have paid to have seen was Joe Gibbs reaction to the song. What was the look on his face after the line “I’m about to begin…loving you?” How long did he let the song go on for? There are questions that need to be answered and follow up that needs to be done on this matter. Perhaps between the Bog and myself we can get answers to some of these questions and bring closure on this matter.

Cheers and Hail