Ladies and gentlemen, sad news from the sporting world today as Toronto Councillo(u)r Rob Ford passed away at 46. We here at CrimeBeat! extend our best wishes to his family, his friends, and his dealers. Due to overwhelming sadness, and a complete goddamn lack of any newsworthy arrests, CrimeBeat! will be on hiatus this week.

“But CrimeBeat!” we hear you exclaim “other than trying to steal the Bills from their loving and proper home in Western New York during his tenure as mayor of Toronto, what connection to the NFL has Rob Ford?”

Well, fictional straw man, there are two answers. First, Ford was a huge football fan, playing up through college and attending attending both Washington Slurs and University of Notre Dame football camps as a kid.

But the real answer is this: Rob Ford was a symbol of a part of the NFL Experience, the Platonic Ideal of a sports-radio caller made flesh. He took all the distinctive mannerisms, dark impulses and barely-disguised racism that you can hear up and down the radio dial in any NFL city (except Jacksonville and Atlanta, where you just get Ess Eee See nutbunnies), distilled them down and channeled them into a disturbingly successful political career. He was a populist nutter who got elected based on the strength of his personality, despite that personality being objectively despicable. He lived the dream of every drunken crackpot who waited on hold for an hour to tell Jimmy & the Animal his master plan to trade [over-the-hill star player] for 25 draft picks and the current Rookie of the Year. He was Poor Impulse Control wrapped in Substance Abuse Issues and smothered in Secret Sauce.

Rob Ford was all the disturbing stories you hear about fan misbehavior. From the Jets fans of Gate D to Eagles fans and their batteries to Eagles fans and their cheering Michael Irvin’s neck injury to Eagles fans and everything they do, Rob Ford did it, and likely during his time in office. Racist spouting? Yup. Public drunkenness, groping women and legitimately threatening to kill people? Oh sure. Smoking crack and shooting up heroin with gang members while ruling the fourth-largest city on the continent? Better believe it. At this point, if you heard that he traded a jersey for a blowjob in the parking lot of City Hall, you’d probably be relieved that it wasn’t in the council chamber during a session.

We all have pictures that pop up in association with certain fan bases.

Now we have a symbol for the ages which transcends team allegiance or intoxicant of choice. So ladies and gentlemen, raise a glass (or glass pipe) with me and let us Get Crunk one last time.