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I’m a little late to this one, but I think it deserves a much more detailed analysis…

A few weeks ago, I found myself in a sports bar in Philadelphia, which was filled with people in Phillies jerseys who gathered to watch the Raiders upset the Eagles and kvetch about Andy Reid together. At some point in the game, this happened:

You never see those lazy gulls in Melbourne get involved in a footy match, but this pigeon? Yeah, he’s ready to go. And it would have been just a fun little aside — until Justin Fargas spoke up and said that the pigeon was the reincarnation of Marquis Cooper, the Raiders linebacker who died in a boating accident last March.

So how does a little piece of Marquis Cooper end up in pigeon in Oakland? Let’s examine this a bit further, beginning with the notion that, as the old saying goes, you are what you eat.

Marquis Cooper was lost at sea and presumed dead after suffering from hypothermia in the waters off the Gulf Coast of Florida. So we can suppose that his body sank to the bottom of the Gulf, where he was likely eaten by some fish. So those fish carried little bits of Marquis with them.

Perhaps those fish then came closer to the shore, where some pigeons (Mine! Mine! Mine!) occasionally go diving into the water for dinner. So one of those pigeons nabbed a fish that had dined on Marquis Cooper’s brain cells and took it back to its nest, where it fed its babies. That little bit of Marquis Cooper — the one that understood where it needed to be on punt returns, probably — was then infused into the being of one of those baby pigeons.

And when that baby spread its wings and learned to fly, it just knew where it had to be. So it began the long, arduous cross-country trip to Oakland — making plenty of new friends along the way, of course — where it could rejoin its teammates and play outside contain against the Eagles. After all, an eagle tried to attack our hero pigeon somewhere over Colorado, so he’s no fan of eagles. No fan at all.

This amazing tale has inspired me to come up with my own plan for reincarnation. When I die, harvest whatever working organs you need from me, then take what’s left of my carcass, drop it in the dirt, and plant an apple tree on my ass. Then, after that tree has fed off my remaining bits and started appling, invite everyone to come eat those apples. Eventually, some young couple who partook of those apples will get it on one night, and nine months later, voila! I’m back! Hand me my Terrible Towel, mom! The Steelers are playing!

Yes, it all makes perfect sense — until you realize, of course, that NFL players are more likely to suffer from dementia as a result of brain injuries than most of the general population. NFL players also seem to end up bankrupt more often than not. So maybe, just maybe, I shouldn’t take at face value the ideas of someone who plays a game that is likely to leave him broke and stupid.

Oh, well. It sounded like a good idea.