In a battle of wills unlike any the world has ever seen before, Jerry Rice blinked first, and Dan Coulter exhaled. On September 5, 2005, after twenty seasons on the gridiron, Jerry Rice retired from professional football. The winner in all this is Prospect Pioneers Owner and GM Dan Coulter, who gets a new lease on life.
For those not in the loop, we must go back and explain the complex relationship that Rice and Coulter share. In early March 2003, Jerry Rice, then with the Oakland Raiders, signed a 6 year contract extension that would have kept him playing until the age of 46. While the move was primarily aimed at saving money under the Raiders' salary cap, it did allow for the outside chance that Rice could play for many years to come.
When word of this contract extension reached Pioneer's GM Dan Coulter, he proclaimed (in so many words) that it was nonsense, and that he didn't expect Rice to play out the contract. Furthermore, in an effort to prove just how serious he was, Coulter solemnly pledged that if Rice did play out his contract, he would take his own life. As the last two seasons unfolded, and Rice reported to camp, and played his game week in and week out, it looked more and more like Coulter may, in time, have to off himself. As the 2005 season began in earnest, Rice found himself now in Denver, a city unafriad to host old wide receivers. As each day past Coulter grew closer to his own demise. However, at the close of training camp, for the first time ever, God showed mercy upon Dan Coulter, as he made Jerry Rice the 4th receiver in Denver, behind Darius Watts. With that, Rice saw the writing on the wall and filed the retirement papers, thus freeing Coulter from his martydom obligations.
Now here we are, Coulter lives on to continue his reign of terror in the LFFL, and Jerry Rice rides off into the sunset, the last rays of the day reflecting off his old, balding, dredlocked head. Rice blinked, and Coulter exhaled.
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