Eight days ago, Jets coach Rex Ryan underwent a surgical procedure that placed an artificial device around his stomach aimed at compensating for his inability to refrain from putting so much food into it. On Sunday night, at the league meetings in Orlando, Ryan spoke to reporters about the decision to undergo the operation.
“I’ve got everything right now,” Ryan said, per Bart Hubbuch of the New York Post. “I mean, I’ve got the world by the you-know-whats. It’s unbelievable. Everything that I’ve ever wanted in my life -- great family, healthy family. I’m financially [set].
“I’m doing everything what I want to do, which is coaching in the National Football League. And I’m a head coach in the National Football league. . . . But if you don’t have your health, you don’t have nothing. I want to be around and enjoy my kids, see my grandkids.”
He hopes to shrink down to 250 pounds, a 100-pound reduction.
“Because my stomach is going to be probably one-tenth its size, I’m going to have to chew my food like crazy,” Ryan said. “There’s ways of cheating the thing, but I don’t plan on doing it. It’s still going to take some kind of discipline to get it done.”
But, frankly, if Ryan had genuine discipline, he wouldn’t have gotten so big. And he also would have been able to lose the weight without having a doctor cut him open and put a big rubber band around a fairly critical internal organ in the hopes of making Ryan feel full at a time in the feeding process much earlier that he ordinarily would.
So how does a guy who has been unable to demonstrate discipline expect 53 men to discipline themselves when it comes to diet and exercise? It’s a great question, and it’s apparently a gift that is possessed only by those who have the world by the you-know-whats.
UPDATE: After further review, here’s some more on the topic.