The United States Football League is attempting to find success where other start-up leagues failed in recent years, but if nothing else comes from this league, we’ll still have one of the stranger roster decisions ever in professional football.
With the start of its inaugural season, the USFL put together a Hard Knocks-like documentary series called, United By Football: A Season in the USFL, and the recent episode brought us to the Pittsburgh Maulers cutting loose former Michigan running back De’Veon Smith.
Now, there was a lot of buildup to this decision. Head coach Kirby Wilson spoke about how the franchise had zero tolerance for unprofessionalism and disrespect. So, just based off that, you’d think that Smith must have really stepped out of line. He was brought in to the coach’s office, and when Wilson broke the news to Smith, we found out that the whole ordeal was over Smith simply preferring pizza to chicken salad.
Bro got cut by a USFL team for ordering pizza instead of a chicken salad??? lmaoooo pic.twitter.com/Vo7n7HD0PU
— gifdsports (@gifdsports) April 18, 2022
Smith said:
“I can tell you what happened exactly … Right, I didn’t say anything disrespectful. He said, ‘Is that gonna be a problem?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ That’s it and I walked away. I didn’t think that was disrespectful. Me saying. ‘Yes, I don’t eat chicken salad.’ I was like, ‘Is there another option?’ Walked in with pizza. I was like, ‘Can I get a slice of pizza?’ He said, ‘No … Is that gonna be a problem?’ I said, ‘Yes.’ That was all I said. I didn’t say no cuss words, no nothing. That’s all I said.”
I mean, wow. At first, it didn’t seem real. Like, it had to be a parody, but no, it was very real. Smith took to Twitter and reiterated that he wasn’t disrespectful. The man just didn’t want chicken salad, which seems like an awfully reasonable thing to not to like.
I SAID NOTHING DISRESPECTFUL OR DID ANYTHING DISRESPECTFUL!
— De'Veon Smith (@i_BSmith4) April 18, 2022
Despite the explanation, Wilson — who didn’t do any due diligence, obviously — said that the decision was already made and that Smith had to leave. All that over pizza. Fans couldn’t believe it. And frankly, it was a terrible look for the USFL to essentially end someone’s professional football aspirations over something like that.
