TAKE ON MICHAEL HOLLEY AND YOU ARE BEGGING TO BE JINXED

 

Bengals lost, 23-20, in Sunday’s Super Bowl. Did Akron native and Pittsburgh Point Park University graduate (think Three Rivers) Michael Holley jinx them? He seems to do that for people who take him on.

The 51-year-old former BJ reporter enraged Bengals fans by pooh-poohing their record, even took at poke at the airport being across the Ohio River in Kentucky.

It’s named Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Airport now but was Greater Cincinnati Airport when the wooden terminal went up in 1946 after the federal government handed out $2 million to Boone, Kenton and Campbell counties in Kentucky to build four fields in 1944 as part of the World War II defense effort.

Cincinnati Municipal Airport’s Lunken Field existed before 1944 IN Cincinnati but it was too close to the Ohio River and potential flooding for federal officials so Kentucky authorities intercepted the ball and got the $2 million to the airport 16 miles from Cincinnati but only 4 miles from the Ohio River.

Did federal authorities think that river only flooded north and not south?

But maybe Michael did the math. The Bengals were 5-14 in playoffs and NEVER won the NFL title, even with the legendary Paul Brown, who started up the team after King Arthur (as BJ sports columnist called him) Modell canned one of the greatest coaches in NFL history.

And 10-7 this season, which is barely keeping your head above .500 waters.

The lead on an article I read about the Holley dustup has this lede:

Holley’s co-host on NBC TV’s “Brother From Another” sports talk show, Michael Smith,  showed up with receipts (and a cigar) after the Bengals pull off the upset to advance to the Super Bowl and all Michael Holley can do is eat crow.

Michael Holley did a pre-Super Bowl show for NBC.

Holley and controversy are unstrange bedfellows.

Michael’s book, “War Room,” which he wrote after shadowing New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick, Atlanta Falcons GM Thomas Dimitroff and Kansas City Chiefs GM Scott Pioli for a year, for example.

Regarding the Chiefs playoff game against the Baltimore Ravens, some readers interpreted what Michael wrote as intimated that GM Scott Pioli got involved in the playcalling decision or told head coach Todd Haley that offensive coordinator Charley Weis, not Haley, has to call the plays. 

Michael went on the radio to be interviewed and said “it was flat-out fabrication. I never said Pioli told Haley to make Weis call the plays.

Weis called the plays, Michael said, because while working under Belichick he developed a great reputation as a playcaller that brought the Pats THREE Super Bowl titles!

But in May 2011 Weis was booted by the Chiefs and became new University of Florida head coach Will Muschamp’s playcaller.

Musschamp lasted four years with the Gators, going 7-6, 11-2, 4-8 and 6-5.

Weis got head coaching job at Kansas, bottom-feeder in the Big 12 forever (Jayhawks are a power in basketball; football is a boring pastime for Kansas fans), in 2012. After one year at Florida.

He went 1-11, 3-9, par for the course in Kansas football, and was fired 4 games into the 2014 season even though he ended Kansas’ Big 12 conference losing streak at 27 games by beating my alma mater, West Virginia, in November 2013.

Michael-Michael (co-hosts Holley and Smith) rowed the controversy boat ashore, maybe to the tune of the African-American slaves referring to Michael the Archangel trying to escape Union Navy during the Civil War on St. Helena Island in South Carolina after being abandoned by their plantation owners.

But the two Michaels didn’t create the controversy. They just interviewed former Bengals QB Carson Palmer who took cheap whacks of his paddles at Bengals QB Joe Burrows and his Bengals.

Palmer said Burrows would be waving goodbye to the Bengals soon because Burrows doesn’t think the Bengals give him a long-term chance at a Super Bowl ring.

Burrows would have had his Super Bowl ring Sunday but the game ran 85 seconds too long and Rams QB Matthew Stafford’s 1-yard TD pass to Cooper Kupp turned a 20-16 Cincinnati lead into a heart-wrenching 23-20 loss.

Maybe Michael-Michael should get Burrows on their TV show and ask him patient he’ll be with Bengals management. After all, Paul Brown is only a legend up in the Heaven Hall of Fame.

And eight months ago sportswriter Grayson Freestone who covers the Atlanta Falcons ripped into Michael Holley for saying Julio Jones is “terrible.” And that there’s friction between Arthur Blank and Jones and that Julio thinks Matt Ryan has lost a little “zing” on the ball.

Freestone called Holley’s comments “awkward and laughable” and “it almost looks like he is making it up on the spot.”

Last September Julio Jones was traded to the Tennessee Titans after 10 years with the Falcons.

Michael is no one to mess with. He was part of the crew that won the BJ another Pulitzer with his contributin to “A Question of Color” in 1994.

His book, “Patriot Reign: Bill Belichick, the Coaches, and the Players Who Built a Champion” made the New York Times best-seller list. 

And his reported net worth of $4 million didn’t happen by accident.

Surely by now most intelligent people in the NFL would know that it’s not wise to risk the Holley-gram Jinx by taking on Michael.

Or he’ll row their boat offshore and sink it!