Dateline: April 3, 2015

Right of the bat, my loyal readers, that date tells you a critical piece of information: this is no April Fool’s day joke. No sir, good ol’ Bud wouldn’t do that to his discerning audience. The only April Fool’s day joke I played this year involved a blindfold and unfinished cunnilingus, and, take it from me, it wasn’t worth sleeping on the couch for the next month. Apparently you either explore all 50 shades or else; nothing less will do!

Since that’s old news, let’s get to a really juicy tidbit of information that just came across the news ticker: the NFL has hired a full time female referee! “Oh golly gosh, Bud!” I hear you saying, “You must be shaking worse than ol’ Uncle Marty did when they hid his gin from him (on another horrible April Fool’s day idea)!” Well, dear readers, I’m hear to tell you this:

I’m fully cheering this idea.

“But, but, but, but, Bud!” You say, “I’ve read your words for decades now, and I’m used to your manly retellings of sexual conquest and exciting dalliances with famous movie starlets and national recording artists (okay, I may be embellishing just a little there)! How could YOU be okay with a strong female presence in any workplace?!”

Well, seeing as I’m writing your words for you, I’ve anticipated your question and have an illuminating answer to such inquisitive nonsense. It all started as an April Fool’s day prank decades and decades ago, when Big Jimmy Slazak, head football referee for the midwestern region back in the day, was slated to work the Oorang Indians/Columbia Panhandles game, but had come down with a case of the dry bellyache. Now, Mrs. Slazak was a stout woman who had birthed about a dozen children all while tending to her prized Christmas tree farm, and there wasn’t a thing she didn’t know about her husband’s job, so she tucked her hair into a cap, donned his uniform, and went in there so Head Ref Slazak’s streak of worked games remained unbroken.

She did so well that Big Jimmy just up and retired, and Ma Slazak kept at it, and no one was the wiser. She was the best damn ref in any sport, in any country, and in any decade until Law Guns Hochuli came along and saved us all. “Bud, what about the bathrooms?” I hear you clamoring, as if that’s any of your damn business. Well! From what I hear, she cobbled together the biggest dildo she could from a few potatoes and a lot of pine sap. She’d whip it out and take a whiz on the other refs’ shoes just to show them who was boss (not to mention whose was biggest). And if certain apocryphal late night bar stories are to be believed, both men and women were left satisfied time and time again by the ol’ Mighty SpudDick.

So women referees? That’s old news. In fact, when I asked Bobby Dubanowski, a guard on the Oakland Raiders practice squad and formerly of Detroit, New England, Kansas City, and Jacksonville, what he thought about it, he concisely said, “That’s just not going to make any difference to me.” See? We’re living in an enlightened age.

And if our new female refs want to throw a Rabbit into a harness and take me through the looking glass on the press room buffet table, you won’t hear any disagreements from your dear ol’ Bud Winston.