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In a development that must come as a complete and total surprise to anyone who has just emerged from a several month long coma, the incriminating, no, absolutely damning video of the Dallas Cowboys star receiver Dez Bryant has once again NOT BEEN FOUND! Those individuals who were unconscious or have not seen any of the many, many reports about this much sought after bit of surveillance last heard how it was going to be released at any time, like the next day, or the day after, or the next week, or some time in the future when purebred Durocs had sprouted pinions and mounted to the heavens!
It was confirmed by Jeff Pash, the NFL's executive vice president and general counsel, that:
"We investigated and we did not find a video,''
It seems incredibly implausible, even impossible, that this recording has once again eluded not only all attempts to locate it, but has shown absolutely no sign that it ever even existed in the first place! As you may recall, a crackerjack bit of investigative reporting gong back to last September had convinced a couple of the most brilliant minds in sports reporting that where there was speculation of a rumor of a hint of a possibility of a tiny wisp of smoke, there must indeed be a raging fire! This video of a 2011 incident involving Dez Bryant, a woman he had fathered two children with, a couple of other males, vehicles registered to Bryant, and possibly the CIA, Chinese industrialists, and the Illuminati, contained evidence of events so appalling and damning that it threatened Bryant's career, the Cowboys, the NFL, all of professional sports, and civilization in general! And the highly professional journalists who broke the story assured us that it was going to be revealed to all! Almost immediately! Or sooner!
The fact that the police department of Lancaster, Texas, where the Walmart that was the scene of the revolting scenes of horror is located, responded that night and found nothing to report was judged by the intrepid reporters involved in bringing this vitally important tale to light as meaningless. After all, as one of them stated, it showed Dez Bryant . . . well, let's use the correspondent's own bone-chilling words.
There were whispers of a video showing Bryant doing something he shouldn't have been doing.
Oh, the horror! For those cursed with a too-vivid imagination, the possibilities are blood-curdling. Was he driving without a seatbelt? Had his inspection sticker expired? Did he drive the wrong way in the parking lot, going toward the store when the parking spaces clearly indicated he should be driving away from it?? (That one always drives me into a state of near-uncontrollable rage. Can't the people see they are going the wrong direction and getting in everyone's way? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO OUR CIVILIZATION??)
I'm sorry for digressing. Now, since of course people who are actually paid to report for major media outlets could not possibly be fooled by an unfounded rumor, the question remains, where in the world is the video? What secret vault could it be hidden in? Who are the mysterious figures who have it in their possession? WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN??
Okay. You may have realized by now that I am not taking this as seriously as we do most things here, but this whole story has been part farce, part stupidity, and all pointless from the very beginning. If proper standards of basic journalism had been used, this should never had been released to the public in the first place. The one question that I would really like answered is just who or what led the reporters to believe that this video ever existed when apparently they had never seen anything. And what were they told it portrayed? Someone burned them badly, and it is possible that we will never know the real story. The league, like everyone else, has failed to turn up any sign of the video. It remains what it almost certainly always was, a nasty and mean-spirited rumor that spun real events out of all recognition. And it was not harmless. It cast a shadow over Bryant and the ongoing contract negotiations with the Cowboys. And it fed the whole image of Bryant as a reckless, out-of-control man who was undeserving of the large paydays in his future.
Hopefully, this will not rear its ugly head again. But given the unending appetite for negative stories about the Cowboys, that may be too optimistic.