You had to expect it. We knew it was coming. If Seattle were going to win the NFC Championship on Sunday night, well then, defensive back Richard Sherman was going to have something to say about it.

Something loud and something gaudy. Goodness gracious did he ever deliver.

Straight after the game he had this to say about his personal battle with Michael Crabtree.

"I'm the best corner in the game, when you try me with a sorry receiver like Crabtree, that's the result you're gonna get. Don't you ever talk about me.  Don't you open your mouth about the best or I'm gonna shut it for you real quick."

By the time he had finished his last bitter, aggressive and taunting words, the Internet was already straining at the seams with the volume of chatter around the subject.

Sherman is the absolutely perfect poster child for the times we live in. His selfish, poorly-timed and graceless comments, coming on the back of very little effort (He made essentially one single play in the game), were just the first words in what would become a currently ongoing tornado of hate laced rhetoric.

It doesn’t matter which side the protagonists are on. Those in opposition to Sherman’s little tirade, or those who are defending his right to make same are embarrassing themselves equally on the Internet as we speak. Ironically many of those who took umbrage to Sherman’s rant are the ones who are displaying the least restraint, and spewing forth the most vile of hate filled (often racist) vitriol.

In the long scheme of things Sherman doesn’t really matter. Peyton Manning and his army of uber-talented receivers will absolutely shred the Seattle defensive backs in two weeks’ time, and Sherman’s comments will become a small, insignificant blip on the radar of the NFL season.

He is, however, as we said, the perfect poster child for our times.

It is all negativity, confrontation, taunting and hate, isn’t it? That’s it in a nutshell. The Internet, talk-radio, TV shows, whatever, you want to communicate about something? Just be prepared to get down and dirty, be prepared to fight about it. Have you ever seen a positive comment section on an Internet based article in your life? No such thing exists.

We live to hate.

Sherman is a perfect avatar for those anonymous, cowardly Trolls who are turning the Internet into some sort of Brueghelian nightmare. It would have taken a little bit of self-restraint and class for Sherman to bite his tongue and answer a couple of questions in a respectful way, however he chose to answer as many millions of today’s Trolls would have. The easy, lazy, disrespectful, selfish answer.

Love him or hate him, Sherman is just a talented athlete who happens to be in a position to have his views and personality aired to millions. A huge percentage of those millions are many, many times worse than Sherman on a daily basis.

Don’t for one second think that this author is suggesting this lets Sherman off the proverbial hook. The saddest part of the whole thing is that he is in that position where he can choose to do good with his opportunity to be heard. Instead this frothing, babbling, egocentric idiot has chosen to infect the Youth of the United States, and indeed the NFL watching World, with another class in how to be a selfish, disrespectful little Troll.

The fact of the matter is, however, that same lesson is on endless repeat 24 hours a day, every day of the week, through almost every single medium of communication available to mankind.

Sherman is just the tip of the iceberg. One of the master Trolls. His minions are busy at work, Trolling hard on the comment sections and talk show radio airwaves  all day, every day.

Don’t hate the player, literally. Hate the game.