Cincinnati Bengals’ wide receiver Chad Johnson stunned reporters and teammates Sunday night by emphatically guaranteeing that the planet would be obliterated by an asteroid or comet during the year 2012.
The incident occurred in the home team’s locker room following Cincinatti’s 31-17 first-round playoff defeat at the hands of the division rival Pittsburgh Steelers. As members of the media swarmed Bengal’s head coach Marvin Lewis in an attempt to determine the status of All-Pro quarterback Carson Palmer, who was knocked from the game early in the first quarter after suffering an ugly knee injury, an ignored Johnson became visibly restless and irritable.
As Lewis was issuing his statement, the gregarious receiver climbed atop a training table, and after repeatedly smacking his cleats together to draw the attention of the room, loudly issued the following statement.
“Ya’ll might want to come over here and listen good, ‘cause none of that Carson Palmer s**t is gonna’ matter anymore when you hear what Chad Johnson got to say. Ya’ll can quote me on this: We all gonna die in six years.”
When pressed to further explain his bizarre proclamation, Johnson, basking in the attention of the gathering rabble, explained that a “big-ass rock” would strike the earth during the spring of 2012, resulting in what Johnson described as "some f**ked up 'War of the Worlds' s**t.” He then went on to assure the crowd that in the catastrophic events to follow, "even Chad Johnson won’t be spared. All ya’ll asses are dead.”
Upon completing his address, Johnson, who caught only four passes for 59 yards in the Bengals’ disappointing loss, calmly stepped down from the table, removed his gold teeth, and left the stadium without further comment.
While the outspoken wide receiver has a long and well-publicized history of making prognostications of the sports variety, this is the first time Johnson has ventured into foretelling the apocalypse. Later Sunday evening, as news of the guarantee was airing on a continuous loop on ESPN, the reaction of media members, teammates, and fans ranged from fear to skepticism.
“It’s scary stuff,” said David Bryson, a beat writer for the Cincinnati Daily who has covered the Bengals for the past seven years. “I mean, Chad did guarantee we would beat the Chiefs when they were undefeated a couple years ago and nobody thought that was possible, but it happened. So it certainly makes you think twice when he says the world’s going to end.”
“But on the other hand,” Bryson continued, “last month Chad guaranteed we’d score 40 points a game for the rest of the year and upset the Colts to get to the Super Bowl, but instead we got killed three out of our last four games and embarrassed at home in the first round of the playoffs. So I guess he’s not always right. Just to be safe, when 2012 gets here I’ll probably take some precautions to cover my ass – stockpile water and canned foods and stuff -- but I doubt I’ll go overboard with it.”
“That’s just Chad being Chad,” explained back-up quarterback Jon Kitna, who entered the game in relief of the injured Palmer. “He’s a very passionate guy, and he’s going to say what he believes, and as his teammates, we’re going to support him.”
When asked if Johnson’s vision of a natural disaster-triggered end times conflicted with Kitna’s faith as a devout Catholic, the QB remained steadfast in his support of the wide receiver. “If Chad genuinely feels that the earth is going to be smashed out of its orbit in the near future, then I’ve got to believe he knows something that we don’t. If I were you, I’d spend less time criticizing Chad, and more time making your peace with the Lord before 2012. Sinners.”
Unlike Kitna, Jim Thommason, a psychology professor from nearby Ohio State, seriously doubts that Johnson has any reliable information regarding the destruction of the planet.
“This has little if anything to do with the impending doom of the human race,” Thommason said. Rather, this is a classic case of an insecure megalomaniac who will constantly escalate the outlandishness of his statements because he can’t stand for one second to be removed from the spotlight. If the media had ignored him for another couple of minutes, he very well may have set himself on fire."
“It’s the same thing with his touchdown celebrations. Fans, teammates, announcers…they all excuse his idiotic, self-serving end-zone escapades as ‘just having fun.’ It has nothing to do with ‘having fun.’ It has everything to do with everyone looking at Chad Johnson. You think Marvin Harrison isn’t having fun when he catches another 80-yard TD pass? The fun part of football comes on the way to the end-zone, not after you get there.”
“Even worse,” Thommason continued, “is the fact that it’s now en vogue for announcers to differentiate between Johnson and Terrell Owens, claiming that Johnson doesn’t embarrass anyone with his antics, whereas TO has ‘malice in his heart.’ I’ve got news for you: when a guy scores a touchdown and dances an Irish jig, that’s no less embarrassing to the other team than someone waving Pom Poms or whipping out a Sharpee. It’s ridiculous to paint Chad Johnson as some sort of good-natured artist and TO as the Antichrist. They’re the same guy. The same sad, pathetic guy.”
