Cris Collinsworth got a bit of stick from NFL fans for telling a childhood story about Dallas Cowboys running back Tony Pollard that they seem to have found in poor taste.
Collinsworth and Mike Tirico called the Cowboys’ blowout of the New York Giants on Sunday night, with Dallas running out to a dominant 40-0 shutout.
The former would tell a story from Pollard’s past late in the game, revealing how his father forced him to take contact from older boys in spite of his crying when he was just four years old.
“His first tackle football experience was as a 4-year old. He’s on the team with a bunch of 7-year olds, out there, and one of the first drills was that he had to tackle a whole line of people coming at him one at a time. He started crying wanting to go home and his dad said nope you can’t quit. Make it through the year we’ll let you leave,” Collinsworth said during the broadcast.
“So at the end of the year he did. Then at age seven he came back to it and he said, Saved myself a lot of hits over the years with that. He was detailing this thing to where you were like oh my gosh this little 4-year old boy out there, but he loved it and he wanted to do it.”
Doesn’t really make Pollard seem all that great, does it? Also doesn’t paint a nice picture of his dad given that he would put a four-year-old through such an experience.
As you would imagine, the reaction was not positive.
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Sure, it worked out in the end. But it’s probably something best left to Tony to tell himself.
