Giving the Finger

By Cookie “Chainsaw” Randolph(Published in the February 2010 issue)

We’ve known it since the seventh grade: chicks dig athletes. Always have, always will. It’s different for these guys in a way the rest of us will never know.

Too many temptations on the road-the iPhone even has an app for sports groupies looking for visiting team hotels. (It’s called the iJeter. It’s as easy as Click-Find-SCORE.)

Monogamy is virtually impossible for these guys during their careers.

Maybe athletes should treat marriage like the Hall of Fame: they shouldn’t be eligible until five years after their careers are over. It takes that long adjusting to life after sports anyway-the sudden lack of road action, budgeting 1/50th the income, sleeping in the same bed for months at a time-not to mention detoxifying from the steroids and regenerating the reproductive organs.

In the case of Tiger Woods, maybe he should have postponed marriage until after his putter failed him completely (and a sympathetic Veterans Committee votes him in), because golf’s senior tour keeps the pressure on almost indefinitely. To this day, veteran cougars are still lining up for Jack and Arnie at 19th hole saloons in Pebble Beach and Boca Raton. And after we found out Tiger tagged a hostess from Applebee’s, is it any wonder Coco’s waitresses are still fighting over Lee Trevino’s booth?

Of all the major sports, NFL players might be the safest bet for marriage, because they spend the fewest nights on the road. At two nights per road game, even a Super Bowl qualifier maxes out at 30-35 away nights per season. Double that number for the NBA. And counting spring training, major leaguers are away from the home bed a good 100 nights a year. I guess NFL players are the safest bet.

Until, that is, one remembers that former NFL player Travis Henry had nine kids by nine different women during his playing career. Another genius theory shot to hell.

Then there’s the case of A.C. Green, whose nickname should have been “The Immaculate Exception.”

A devout Christian on three of the Los Angeles Laker NBA championship teams in the ‘80s, Green had publicly declared his virginity and pledged celibacy until his career was over. Teammates would frequently send women to his room to tempt him, but instead of succumbing to their voluptuous charms and questionable medical histories, Green would respond by calmly quoting scripture.

I think it was John 3:69, which reads, in part: “Let ye be gone, thou harlot! Magic is in 508.” (Or something like that.)

Green stayed true and saved himself for marriage, which finally came in 2002, one year after he retired from the NBA, at age 38. Who among us could hold out that long?

Alas, for the rest of the pros who insist on sowing more oats than Quaker: Don’t get married until you’re at least 30...provided you retire at 25.