By Mark La Monica and Joe Fernandez
Earlier this month, Keyboard Quarterbacks reader Johnny Islander called our Mustache Madness contest "the biggest waste of internet bandwidth I have ever seen."
That's cool. We don't hate on people's opinions of our silly creations. He's got a right to his opinion and we here at the Keyboard Quarterbacks fully respect it. No harm, no foul. He's probably right, at least until recently.
Where we believe Johnny Islander went wrong is in not checking out what the American Mustache Institute is doing.
On July 16, they announced their Greatest Sports Mustache of All Time contest.
On July 11, we announced Keith Hernandez as owner of the Greatest Mustache in New York Sports History after the two-week contest called Mustache Madness which began on June 27.
A bit sketchy, don't you think? This is almost as shady as when the WWF pulled out a twin referee in the Andre the Giant-Hulk Hogan-Ted DiBiase fiasco on The Main Event in 1988.
This competition is like the WCW playing "American Made" when Hogan walks out instead of hearing "Real American." What's another word for remix? Oh yeah -- robbery.
Sure, it's easy to say they've done something different because they expanded it to the entire country. They can do that since they're not a New York-based organization.
But, seriously? Where do you think the idea came from? In fact, they linked to the Watchdog's interview with Hernandez on that site that ran in Newsday on July 13.
Sports Illustrated gave the AMI a paragraph. FOX even gave them a segment.
Just remember where Mustache Madness began, people.
We're not saying we're the only ones that can pull off a mustache competition. Heck, we encourage them. But just give credit where mustache credit is due. And maybe wait a month or two.