Last night the 76ers captured their 40th win of the 2017-2018 season, catapulted themselves into the fourth seed in the Eastern Conference playoff race, and years of losing melted away as the franchise seemingly positioned itself to be a serious contender for the next several years.

It’s an apex moment for a franchise that has toiled through The Process (which 100% worked) and years of mediocre shit, so why was social media abuzz last night about hobgoblin Colin Cowherd, purveyor of horrendous sports talk radio and known troll of all that is good and pure about sports?

Cowherd decided to welch on a bet he made he with a random 76ers fan at the beginning of the season when he said there was no chance this team would win 40 games. Cowherd promised he would wear a 76ers jersey on air if the team reached that mark, and after they did he immediately decided to needle the city of Philadelphia.

Did we really expect him to stay true to his word? Why the outrage? He’s a rat-faced goon, firmly entrenched in the Skip Bayless sports talk camp of “outrageous takes” with little to no time for facts or precious “logic.”

On a simply primal level, just look at his face. Is a guy with that face, one that is so eminently punchable, going to pay up on any bet? Of course not. He just looks like a weasel. You take one look at him and you’re filled with white-hot rage, even if you have no idea who he is. I’d wager at least three to four random strangers take a swing at him on the streets every day. He has that look about him that BEGS to be sucker punched. No judge in the world would convict you if you did it, so please swing away the next time you see him (please don’t).

He looks like the guy in every zombie movie who is too much of a coward to tell his group that he was bit, hiding his fate from the others survivors until he finally turns in the third act and wreaks havoc on those who risked their lives to protect him.

If he were your friend he’d be the one that you don’t really like anymore because he did something to turn the friendship toxic years ago, and you really can’t stand the sight of him, and you shudder every time he asks to hang out, but you’d keep the friendship alive despite every fiber of your being telling you to cast him off and be done with him. You keep up the charade for years despite your best judgement, until one day you find out that he’s been talking shit about you to the other friends in your group and was the one who ran over and killed your dog on the Fourth of July last year.

Cowherd is that piece of trash. And he probably smells (I have no proof, but we can safely assume that’s true).

So did we all just brush him off as the loser he is? Frankly, I’d rather not even see a 76ers jersey within miles of him, lest he get the stink of his dirty, black soul all over it.  So did we just write it off as a win for the city and put Cowherd back in the garbage where he belongs?

Of course not. We went APE SHIT on social media. Even beloved Joel Embiid had to take a swing and delightfully put Cowherd in his place on Twitter…

…and again on Instagram.

It was the same picture, the same message, but the location he tagged in the photo was “Coward’s Farm,” (a real farm somewhere in Massachusetts). Nice touch, Mr. Embiid.

Others had less clever messages:

https://twitter.com/TJHOshie/status/976628821301526529

https://twitter.com/michaelfazel/status/976622293047705600

https://twitter.com/jchurbock/status/976806656330825729

Even I fell into the trap of giving this no-talent muckraker the attention he so clearly desires.  We all fell for it. IT’S WHAT THE BRIDGE TROLL WANTS, PEOPLE.

He’ll continue to do his awful radio show, he’ll continue to make outrageous claims, he’ll continue to poke the drunken bear that is the Philadelphia sports community, because it’s the only way he knows how to get attention (and we give it to him).

He’s like the uninteresting, dull kid in high school who wore shorts and a t-shirt to school every day in the winter despite it being 10 degrees outside. It’s not a great gimmick, it’s pretty stupid when you think about it, but it got people talking about him. That’s Cowherd in a nutshell. He has no talent, but he is the loser that wears shorts in a snowstorm.

Just bray loud enough into a microphone, wear shorts in the winter, and people will begrudgingly listen to you. They’ll hate your guts, but they’ll listen.

So fuck him. Enough with Cowherd and his dumb show. Let’s kick him to the curb, Philadelphia, and never look back. We’ll be so much happier if he just disappears into the ether.

Or someone can run him down with one of the Eagles Super Bowl floats if he ever steps foot in the city again. Whatever works best.