Image via Complex Original
It's Thanksgiving. A time for family. A time to be grateful. A time to slug cheap wine and wolf down turkey until your khakis explode and you make an inappropriate pass at your next door neighbor. Feasting on white meat and blacking out on Merlot is fun, but it's a lot better when you're surrounded by a group of exciting people. Athletes eat and party their asses off, so it only makes sense that we invite a handful to our table.
Written by Sean Evans (@seanseaevans)
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Tim Tebow
The holidays are as much about making mindless small talk with distant relatives as they are presents and peppermint schnapps. If you're stuck in the same dead-end job and still recovering from a traumatic break-up with your girlfriend, you're going to need a wholesome ball of energy to occupy Aunt Tammy for a bit. Tim Tebow will enthusiastically play Apples to Apples with your family for hours while you watch football in your childhood bedroom. He may be a back-up but, on Thanksgiving, he's the perfect stand-in.
Michael Phelps
A proper Thanksgiving meal needs a good weed guy. Forget green bean casserole and candied yams, nothing compliments the taste of white meat quite like a few bong hits. With a proclivity for green and eating, Michael Phelps is a lock at our table. Plus, if your sister fucks up while trying to get her Sandra Lee on, this dude has the foot longs on deck. Ayo!
Clay Matthews
Every Thanksgiving has its Turkey Bowl, a chance for Uncle Chuck to insufferably remind us of how he was an all-conference honorable mention in '76 and, later, torch us in the air for a game winning touchdown. Well, Uncle Chuck's decade long stranglehold on backyard football is about to come to an end. Clay Matthews provides a violent, hair trigger pass rush that's our cocky relative hasn't seen since the Nixon administration. When the clock shows zeros on this one, Uncle Chuck's going to be eating Thanksgiving dinner through a straw.
Hope Solo
At the heart of every Thanksgiving meal is a divisive, wine-fueled political rant at the dinner table. Why should grandma have all the fun? Hope Solo is capable of coming completely unhinged and, after a couple tall glasses of Pinot Noir, will probably swing on your racist uncle with a serving spoon. Solo provides the type of tableside entertainment that you can only experience at 24-hour IHOPs and Real Housewives reunion specials.
Patrick Kane
We're young, so it's going to take a little more than the Jets offense and tryptophan to knock us out on Thanksgiving. The party's going late, so we need a hard-partying maniac with stamina. Rob Gronkowski's kind of a tool and he's playing tonight, so we're happy to invite unemployed hockey player Patrick Kane to the mix. Kane has the restraint of a pit bull on bath salts, so this should be a pretty wild evening.
Chad Johnson
Stuffing and turkey aside, Thanksgiving is really a time for you to count your blessings. Since nothing snaps life into perspective quite like being around a totally broken person, we're inviting Chad Johnson over for dinner. Outside of Happy Valley, Johnson's had the worst year in sports. Ever. Our dead-end jobs and recent break-ups don't seem as shameful with this dude staring despondently at an empty glass of red wine. Thanks, Chad!
John Madden
Do you know how to deep fry a turducken? Probably not. Before you burn the house down, consider calling John Madden. That guy's been serving up mouthwatering turkey legs to nameless Lions and Cowboys since the early '90s. He's a bit loud and insufferable, but dude can cook and at his age he'll be fast asleep by 4:30 pm.
Don King
Don King gets a lot of great publicity around the holidays for handing out free turkeys to impoverished neighborhoods in Cleveland. This is someone who has extorted and killed people. That's all you need to know, really. If anyone knows how to turn a deplorable conscience into a somewhat digestable household name, it's Don King. We'll be kicking it with this guy on Thanksgiving and hoping some of that good press rubs off on us.
Delonte West
Look, it's 2012, and your Thanksgiving ain't shit unless it has a profound presence on social media. We're inviting Delonte West because we need someone to check-in to our place on Facebook, Instagram the dinner spread, and live tweet the table talk. In addition to being an unabashed social media whore, West is also a proud "foodie" so he'll always have a seat at our crib.
Jared Allen
With preservatives, pesticides and hormones, the only way to ensure that your food is natural is to kill it yourself. When Jared Allen's not head hunting for quarterbacks as a defensive end, he's putting elk in the cross-hairs as an avid hunter. We're inviting Allen and his rifle to our place and sending him immediately to the back yard. He's allowed inside when he returns with an entree.