this is not always a good thing

When someone makes a “joke” that stupid they should apologize.

The guy in a gopher suit offended my highly refined sense of humor

Like, ‘Your Dad!’

and I didn’t think it was funny. Jerome Hayes was having a personal moment with his God. He deserves to be respected in doing so just like a Muslim would deserve respect if then needed to pray to Mecca on the sideline or a Jew decided to sit out a huge game for Yom Kippur. He certainly didn’t deserve to be mocked in his faith. It takes a lot of courage to kneel down and pray in front of 100,000 people. What the mascot did was inexcuseable.

And I’m not religious at all so I’m not offended by it from a religious standpoint, but I do find it offensive to openly mock someone having a personal moment with themselves and the deity they believe in. For me, I think it was more the fact that the cheerleaders at the end of the video were celebrating with the mascot and laughing at how they were making fun of him that bothered me the most. They were proud of it, and even though I’m not religious, that offends me.

Had some players run down to the endzone and tried to fire up the crowd in the North section, I could understand the mascot having a little fun with the players, but to openly mock a guy who isn’t provoking you in any way, just having a moment to himself, I can’t understand or defend.

But major props to Hayes for being the bigger and more mature man and just walking away and ignoring the mascot.

so was #1 or #11 not entirely sure, the video is pretty quick there at the end. and you’ll see there are a ton of other players down at that end, since they had just run out of the tunnel and they are kind of funneled down that way.

why i don’t think this is a big deal, it’s not hard to figure out why hayes was doing. it took me 2 seconds to realize he was praying. the gopher did mock him a lil bit. i don’t think he was going to give hayes a fist bump for praying. the gopher could not expect that hayes would play along with him. why would he?

When the players run out to the field, many of them cross all the way over to the alumni endzone. Several of them take a knee and pray, meditate, whatever. Hayes always goes over to the pylon to pray; I know he’s praying because he always makes the Sign of the Cross.

When I saw the Gopher make the Sign of the Cross, that was a first for me.

I just find it hard to believe he didn’t know what Hayes was doing. The dude is a mascot so he spends every game down on the field. How many players seek out an area of “solitude”, kneel with their head down to do anything other than pray? Did the Gopher think he saw a shiny heads up penny.

Sounds like an excuse to cover up an embarrassing mistake.