What's a curmudgeon to do?

It is with great pain I admit that the football highlight I look forward to the most each week is not the Jacked Up segment on ESPN, but the endzone celebration of Bengals wide receiver Chad Johnson.

After various TD catches this season, he's done the river dance, performed CPR on the football, putted the ball with an endzone pylon then done a Tiger Woods type fist-pump, and (my personal favorite) run over to a cheerleader and done a mock down-on-one-knee marriage proposal.

This week, Johnson is playing the Steelers in Pittsburgh and is promising to do some sort of gimmick based on ironing, since Pittsburgh is the steel city and the two teams have some busines to iron out.

Usually, I would harrumph with my best Gil Santos impression and root for this jamoke to get embarrased by the Pittsburgh defensive backs. But for some reason I can't explain I'm rooting for a 94-yard reception where he's so far out in front of the defense he has time to do a little celebratory preview before he's even in the endzone.

What's worse is that this offseason, after the Bengals wash out of the playoffs on wild card weekend, Johnson will be shooting his mouth off about how he's the most entertaining receiver in football, demanding a trade, and promising to hold out of training camp.

It'll be tough to criticize him then, because it's people like me who are giving him the capital he'll be expending. Oh well, at least Johnson's making my ride to hypocrisy enjoyable.