QUEASY RIDER Brian Bosworth’s Harley has a mulleted skull on the gas tank, but apparently no license plate. That, and some erratic driving, got the former NFL linebacker busted for DUI recently. |
Poor Brian Bosworth. It's pro football's NFL offseason, which means the NFL Network is spending countless hours every day re-running shows like "Top 10 Draft Busts of All Time," making sure that generation after generation becomes intimately familiar with that moment when "the Boz" got steamrolled by Bo Jackson. I believe I've personally seen that clip replayed at least 600 times by now. There are babies being born in the Punjab as we speak that will have seen the footage by the time you finish reading this article.
Brian Bosworth being run over by Bo Jackson is like the Zapruder film for late 20th century sports fans. We not only remember the action sequence, we remember individual frames in the action sequence. We remember the Boz meeting Jackson at the two yard line. We remember the Boz hitting Bo, but Bo standing the Boz up. And then we remember seeing that number 55 of the Boz's, displayed on that cheesy aquamarine uni the Seahawks used to have, spinning helplessly around as Jackson knocked the Boz sideways on his way into the end zone.
That was the end of the Bosworth's pro career, more or less. The legend was over at that point. The Boz was actually kind of an interesting guy, not for any good reason, but because he had balls. He wasn't a great player and he probably knew that, but he made himself some money in the endorsement world by pulling crazy-ass stunts like showing up for his first day of practice as a rookie in a helicopter, wearing a three-foot mullet. When his football career ended, he parlayed his Right Guard commercials into exactly one part in a good movie — a bit role in David O. Russell's Three Kings. The rest of his career he spent jumping out of exploding trucks in crappy B-movies like Stone Cold, which is probably not a bad way for an ex-Oklahoma football player to end up — acting in the kinds of movies people watch late at night in their trailers, after having sex with their dogs.
Anyway, poor Boz got rung up by John Law recently, getting busted for a motorcycle DUI in Los Angeles. It seems he was driving erratically on his Harley, which had no license plate. LAPD officers pulled him over and administered a breathalyzer, a test he apparently flunked. Bosworth was said to have been "very cooperative," and was released on $5000 bond. The poor bastard. Give him the minimum DUI charge of 25 points and send him back to the casting couch — they might have a line or two for him in the next Steve Seagal movie.
Bill of goods
It's amazing what you can get away with in this country if you happen to run well between the tackles. Buffalo Bills running back Marshawn Lynch pleaded guilty to a gun charge this past week and got three years probation and 80 hours of community service. As we reported a few weeks ago, Lynch was recently pulled over in Culver City, California, after being found with several other men in a car with no license plates (again with the license plates!); when the window was rolled down, cops detected the smell of weed and searched the vehicle.
Some blunts were found, but no drug charges were filed. They did, however, find a semi-automatic handgun in Lynch's bag, resulting in a firearm possession charge.
Normally probation would not be shocking at all, except that Lynch's young career has already seen a lot of trouble, some of it serious. Last year, he admitted to driving off after hitting a female pedestrian in Buffalo. He had previously been accused of sexual assault, although he was never arrested or charged. A hit-and-run is not exactly a nothing crime, but Lynch escaped that one with just a $100 fine after police attested to the fact that his victim did not suffer "severe" physical injury. In this most recent case, the original felony-weapons charge was knocked down to three misdemeanors. So in less than a year, Lynch has been in a hit-and-run and found in a car full of weed smoke with a loaded, unregistered handgun. And yet he's never been disciplined, either by the Bills or the NFL.
This guy seems to me to be on the Chris Henry Express to bad news. For now, give him seven more points for the gun charge, on top of the 25 he's already got, and keep an eye out.
When he's not googling "Bosworth-less" and "Buffalo Bengal," Matt Taibbi writes for Rolling Stone. He can be reached at m_taibbi@yahoo.com.
