There’s this awesome parody account of presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s VP pick Paul Ryan on twitter and all the tweets start out with “hey girl.” I think it’s so hilarious and have been dying to use it in the title of post. And lo and behold GQ magazine gave me a perfect excuse to do it when they posted pics of the cute caramel quarterback and Carolina Panther Cam Newton! Now yall know I love my Cammy and I’ll use any excuse to post on him.

This dude exudes charm that is beyond his 22 years.

You can read GQ’s cover story here and see other photos of Cam.

Here’s the part of the article I loved the most. I think Cam nailed the public’s hypocrisy when it comes to athletes being confident.

[To read the rest of this post and what I think of arrogant athletes and so-called "divas" click Read More]

Back before the draft, it seemed that Newton’s biggest crime—worse than the Florida stuff, worse than the recruiting stuff—was declaring to Sports Illustrated that he wanted to be more than just a quarterback, that he wanted to be an “entertainer and icon.”

If I come out and say, ‘I will be the greatest to ever play this game,’ that’s a no-no. If I come out and say, ‘I will not be stopped this year,’ that’s a no-no. People want to see humble,” Newton says. Never mind that icons and entertainers are precisely what the entire sports-industrial complex runs on. Or that IMG’s own “proprietary methodology” for its clients is called Icon Engineering.

All right listen. I’m sick of this “be humble” bull shit. I will never understand how one person’s self-esteem can offend the fuck out of someone else! Other people’s confidence bothers some people so much that they rush to cut them down to size. Why? Something is sick about that!

Plus, fact is,  you can’t be at, play at, work at, succeed at the highest level of ANYTHING without some arrogance to carry you through the hard times. It’s just not possible-not that most people will ever even know what that feels like. In that sense, they’re speaking on something they have no knowledge about.

At this point I don’t even think people want athletes to be humble, they want them to bow down and fake it for them. Then, they accuse them of being fake! (prime example, that asshole that “analyzed” Cam before the draft and found his smile to be “fake.”)

This week Yahoo sports published an article about the end of “diva wide receivers” that sort of relates to this subject. I was a little disappointed that Doug Farrar would write something like this cause I really enjoy his work normally. But not this piece in particular.

I don’t know why it’s so important to the public and media to check athletes for not behaving in a way they see as appropriate. We saw it with the Serena Williams C-walk and we see it in message boards and comments sections where fans delight in talking about how “stupid” players are and how they shouldn’t say this or that.

Plus Farrar’s piece was just wrong.

Farrar talked about how Chad Johnson’s dismissal from the Miami Dolphins signals the end of the diva wide receiver era even though bigger divas than Chad (like T.O. and Randy Moss) have managed to have lots of changes and are currently working. And nothing that Chad has EVER done remotely compares to the way T.O. and Randy Moss (who I love) have managed to make spectacles of themselves and cause disharmony on teams. Farrar goes on to label Mike Wallace, Desean Jackson and Stevie Johnson as divas. But how is the era over when two of these alleged divas just received extensions and the third one probably would too if his team didn’t make such a mess of their salary cap every single year?

Oh and I’m sorry…remind me what did Mike Wallace do that makes him a diva? The holdout? I hope there’s more than that. What did Desean do to make him a diva? flip into the end zone a couple times? What exactly is a diva anyway? Someone who doesn’t behave the way you want them to all the time? Listen…I love Larry Fitzgerald, Calvin Johnson and Andre Johnson but I’m glad every player isn’t quiet and “perfect.” I’m certainly neither myself and I’ve managed to make it in life. But of course I don’t have the holier-than-thou public watching my every move.

What’s ironic to me is the same message boards and comment sections where fans express dismay at how the players behave are filled with all kinds of filth, insults, racism and sexism. I guess athletes are held to a higher standard.

All I think when people complain about how athletes behave is this: