As he embraces life without the wonderful Michelle Beadle, Colin Cowherd reminded us yet again that when it comes to spewing opinions about sports, he’s a guy that does that. Cowherd didn’t make any friends in New Orleans earlier this week, after he complained about the prospect of the 2013 NFL Pro Bowl being held in the Big Easy.
Herped and derped ESPN’s popular radio and TV host:
“They have become the default place for everything, and the Pro Bowl is a family event. Players take their families,” Cowherd said. “Players aren’t going to go to New Orleans. New Orleans is not a family destination, it’s a party destination.”
Players aren’t going to go to New Orleans because it’s a party destination. Let that sink in for a minute. But Hawaii and its 12 hookers per square foot is practically a giant Chuck-E-Cheese.
Let’s just get to the meat of Cowherd’s beef:
“It is the least safe major city in the country… not my opinion, statistically the least safe,” he said. “There are only two where locals will tell you, turn around, don’t go that way…Detroit and New Orleans.”
Let’s forget for a second the fact that you can’t invoke statistics and then not offer any statistics, instead saying something as ridiculous as the locals will tell you to f*ck off like, fittingly, in Interview with a Vampire as they’re burning the city to the ground because of the plague. Cowherd’s entire argument boiled down to ignorance, as he eventually added:
“I want a lot of hotel rooms, a great airport, good weather, safety,” Cowherd said. “New Orleans is not top-15 in any of those.”
Naturally, New Orleans officials disagree.
“Everything he listed as an issue with New Orleans, we can come right back and say: Wrong, wrong, wrong,” said Mark Romig, CEO of the New Orleans Tourism Marketing Corporation,
“We are the most sought-after location for nation championships. We’ve heard over and over from teams, their players, their fans, their alumni, they love New Orleans, because New Orleans loves them right back.”
Take away hotel rooms (all 20,000 of them). Forget the weather. Screw the airport. Cowherd’s brain is clearly stuck in a post-Katrina stereotype that Bourbon Street is still overrun with looters, murderers and rapists, and anyone who enters the Superdome will be torn to shreds by violent mobs. That has to be his thought process, because if he has been there at all since that fateful year, he would know just how much of an asshole he sounds like.
Sure, it’s not San Diego in terms of safety and sunshine, but it’s sure as hell not Beirut. I was there in 2010 and I’ll be there again in November, primarily for a Saints game, but also because I love Bourbon Street, the French Quarter and Harrah’s. Bottom line is New Orleans isn’t the safest city in America, nor is it the most dangerous.
In fact, if the Sports Nation Spaz bothered to check, he’d see that aside from that one specific spike in crime a few years ago, New Orleans has enjoyed a relatively impressive decline in violent crimes over the last 13 years, and that’s something that state and city officials have worked hard to promote and improve upon.
Before I went to New Orleans for a UCF-Tulane football game at the Superdome in 2010, a friend offered me a warning – “Dude, this guy I know was on a bachelor party in New Orleans and his friend was wasted and got into a fight with some locals and he got his face smashed into a curb.” Whether or not that happened, I’ll never know, but it goes without saying that if you’re an asshole, you’re probably going to be received poorly.
But maybe Cowherd’s the kind of guy who likes to puke and piss on streets and punch police horses. Or maybe not. Either way, I don’t think the people of New Orleans give a hand grenade full of crap if he ever steps foot in their city again.
