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Jim Rogash

Earlier today, Florida wide receivers coach Joker Phillips tweeted out this picture via the world wide web:

After being behind the curve on allowing women into the university, integration, and allowing students to bench press during lectures, it is refreshing to see the University of Florida embrace something before other institutions.

In fact, we're damn proud that the University is embracing the use of horses in human football. It is time we grant the same opportunities to our Equestro-American brethren that we have selfishly held back from them for years, particularly when John Elway, Shannon Sharpe, and so many others who claim Equestro-American roots have given so much to our game.

It also makes the argument against their participation in our fine sport that much more appalling would come not only from the Big Ten, the self-appointed arbiters of morality in sport, but from the Iowa Hawkeyes, a proud fanbase whose university and state have led the way in so many other civil rights issues.

Our rebuttal follows.

1. Horses might be able to catch. They're no more or less proven as pass receivers than the Florida wide receiving corps going into 2013. All they need is a chance to show you they can play. Heard that bit of circular reasoning before? You bet you have. It's time to break the wooden ceiling of that barn you call speciesism.

2. Horses CAN understand football. If Ray Goff, the greatest eohippus in sports history, can play it, then a horse can master it.

3. There are no more safety issues with a horse on the field than with Matt Elam on the field. It might be safer, actually, as long as you can guarantee Matt Elam is not on the field with the horse. Because Matt Elam has dreamed of killing a horse with blunt force his whole life, and you don't want to be there when it happens.

4. A lower number of holding penalties.

5. Horses can qualify academically in the NCAA. Provided they get a learning disabled qualification, a horse should be able to stay eligible at several SEC schools. Auburn and Ole Miss come to mind first, but let's not single out those schools alone, but yes, mainly Auburn and Ole Miss. Horses may also succeed--neigh! even thrive!--at the C-USA, Sun Belt, and MAC level.

6. Horses are not the only ones who poop on the field. For shame for suggesting that Bret Bielema has not proudly contributed towards the richness of the soil he trods for a living, sirs. For shame.

7. The NCAA would be able to continue using athlete images without paying for them, because all horses just look like a fucking horse.

8. Injury insurance is an irrelevance, because you may simply shoot them on the field and put in its replacement without a fuss. Nick Saban, the dream is REAL.


10. If the horse is going to be successful, then Joker Phillips is the man to do it. He won a game as a head coach of a Kentucky football game, is a grown man named "Joker," and played bass as an African-American man in a country music video. He has already done the impossible thrice over. Betting on a fourth miracle is just common sense.

11. Because Sanford Stadium is basically just a few strategically placed white two-by-fours from being steeplechase anyway:

Georgia player gets stuck in Hedges after TD (via GameDayESPN)

In short, your speciesism disgusts us, Black Heart Gold Pants. Do better. Be better. The hand you see rising to strike you isn't a hand at all: it's a hoof, extended across the aisle from one mammal to another. You should be careful, though. It may also be a horse trying to kill you. Horses deserve a shot on the gridiron, but no one said they wouldn't stop being skittish, huge, terrified dogs with hockey pucks for feet. Don't be dumb. They're still stupid fucking horses.