Those of us who are familiar with Tony Kornheiser are very aware that he has something to say about everything. Kornheiser’s loud mouth has gotten him into trouble with ESPN and may or may not have resulted in ESPN replacing him with Jon Gruden on Monday Night Football. We love him on Pardon the Interruption, but most of the time we wish he would just leave it at that.
Not surprisingly, Kornheiser is under the impression that he knows more about the current NFL labor situation than the owners — specifically Jim Irsay. According to Pro Football Talk, Kornheiser called Irsay out on his radio show Tuesday in response to Irsay saying he and center Jeff Saturday could sit down and hammer out a new CBA by themselves.
“What inflames this is a complete bozo, like Jimmy Irsay,” Kornheiser said. “Jimmy Irsay, who inherited his team. Worked very hard in the American way. He was in what Dan Jenkins used to call ‘The son business.’ He inherits a team, and now he says, ‘Jeff Saturday and I could hang out, we could go clubbing, we could work this out on a napkin at Ralph’s Boathouse.’”
Kornheiser even went on to say that Irsay’s fellow owners don’t respect him and he is nowhere near someone like Robert Kraft on the totem poll. As you have read, Kraft recently acknowledged that the fans have every right to be annoyed with the lack of progress between the owners and players.
“Jimmy Irsay, the rest of the owners wouldn’t trust Jimmy Irsay to call a cab for them,” Kornheiser continued. “Just so we understand that. They would not. Now, when the Krafts of the world, Kraft says, ‘This is hurting us with fans,’ he’s a reasonable guy. They would trust Kraft. There’s four or five owners that the other owners would trust to get involved in this.”
Kornheiser is right that Irsay inherited a team from his father, but it would be foolish to think that means he knows absolutely nothing about the business or labor negotiations. After all, he has a Super Bowl ring and has assembled one of the winningest franchises in the NFL over the past decade. Irsay took to Twitter to respond to Kornheiser, calling him a “bozo.”
“T.Kornheiser is a mean-spirited chump! When he can win 115 games n a decade,build a top 3 stadium,win n host a Super Bowl,then he can chirp!” Irsay tweeted. “I think he used 2 b Bill Tobin’s mailman…but that would b an insult 2 mail men! I just droppin’ knowledge…”
Bozo? Chump? I just droppin’ knowledge? What is this 7th grade?
