Brawn, Brains & Brash – There Is Only One George Parros

Anyone even vaguely acquainted with our B.M.O.C., George Parros, knows that he is both a gentleman and a scholar – showing respect and restraint during interviews, shooting down asinine interview questions (more on that a little later) and displaying a sense of humour and poise beyond the expectations of the average hockey fan.

Oh, sure, he draws a lot of ire.  He wasn’t exactly a fan favourite while he was with the Los Angeles Kings (they really had no clue what to do with him), is constantly called “the ‘70s porn star on ice,” and a fellow blogger once emailed me that he “creeps the **bleep** out of me,” but the fact of the matter is, all the haters and detractors cannot deny is that he is a pure team player, knows his place and rarely throws down without just cause.

Where the heck am I going with all this?  Oh, just another “nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah nyah” at all those that keep dissin’ the big guy.

Sporting News recently released their top 20 list of the smartest athletes and Georgie came in at #4 with an SAT score of 1250, a GPA of 3.18 at Princeton and he speaks English and Spanish.  What was YOUR SAT score and did you even go to college?  My SAT was only 1210 and I could only stomach a couple years at community college. 

On the asenine note above, maybe I haven’t watched enough episodes to separate the “10-year-old-boy’s mind in the gutter” aspect from the “refreshing and comedic” side of Cabbie on the Street that is featured on thescore.com, but Parros has the best comebacker to the idiotic question “how much do you charge for mustache rides?”  You can watch all the preadolescent stupidity here.

  For a bit of Parros doing the best he can the first time with a teleprompter, check out VERSUS’ Sports Soup segment where he mocks himself and compares host Matt Iseman to Sean Avery. 

Matt Iseman once told me that it was always a pleasure to see “the legend that is George” and everyone I’ve spoken to has described him the same way – serious and intense about his game, but also a fun and funny guy who loves the fans.  During the first day of training, while the guys were running drills, I couldn’t resist yelling “HI GEORGIE!”  And I was rewarded with an acknowledgement look and a nod.

And for me, that’s better than any $75 pre-signed puck and made the two hour drive worth every second.

And finally, what would a piece about Georgie be without a really funny fight?