Football Blog

As we approach the Fourth of July, I thought I should pause and take a moment to embrace the holiday. On other holidays you often hear of people using the occasion to appreciate their lives – whether it is assessing the things for which they are thankful on Thanksgiving or airing grievances on Festivus.

However, it doesn’t seem like anyone looks at the Fourth of July to appreciate all that our forefathers had to go through to allow us to live as we do.

It’s funny that as a kid you learn so much about the revolution but I don’t think it really dawned on me until just a few years ago reading about John Adams that our forefathers weren’t always heroes. Initially they were traitors.

With two hundred years of revisionist history, we have been trained to believe that they were good and the Brits were evil. All of this makes you really wonder what future generations will look back on this time and think.

Was the Iranian election of 2009 a watershed moment or a road bump on the road to continued maniacal, theological, narrow-minded, intolerant leadership? Was the war in Afghanistan, an imperial super power forcing its views on a simple people or the freeing of a people from tyrannical leadership? Was Michael Jackson a musical genius and man of god or a pervy weirdo that took advantage of children?

We can’t address these questions today, but it got me to thinking about the greatness of this country. Those many years ago our forefathers fought for freedom. Freedom to say and think as you desire. Freedom from afternoon tea and crumpets and poor oral hygiene.

So in honor of the men that founded this country I have decided to express a number of things I am free to think and say because of them.

In the United States in 2009 I am free to think:

• That Michael O’Donoghue’s quote of ‘Good career move’ when he heard that Elvis had just died summed up better than I ever could my feelings about all of these people suddenly sanctifying a child molester.
• That people who have decided to forget that Michael Jackson molested children just because he made some good music and passed away are too moronic to be allowed to reproduce.
• That when these people (inevitably) do reproduce their children will most likely become reality show contestants and inflict their uselessness and idiocy on the rest of us.
• That a better use for Guantanamo would be as a detention center for all reality show participants and the paparazzi
• That the 2-0 lead that U.S. soccer held over Brazil was a much less accurate indicator of their relative strength than getting outscored 3-0 in the second half.
• That you should only watch the movie Vantage Point once because the second time you will start figuring out that there are some holes in the timelines between the different versions of the same event.
• That the movie Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story is the perfect combination of realism and absurdity
• That in Walk Hard, the fact that Pam from The Office is surprisingly gorgeous and wearing low cut tops the whole time more than makes up for the extended penis close-ups.
• That Raul Ibanez is not taking steroids, despite what some blogger said. Here is what I wrote last year on my first visit to SafeCo field: Raul Ibanez might be the greatest player in the majors…if he could bat exclusively against Jered Weaver. Lifetime he is 12-21 with 4 homers against Weaver. Friday night, he hit two massive homers (the first was measured at 438 feet) on a cool, damp evening. Put him in Coors Field and he might hit one 600 feet.
• That the Rockies are a fun story but I wouldn’t put much money on a Rockune, Rockuly, Rockust, and Rocktember run propelling them into the playoffs.
• That after watching some of the Rockies / A’s series last weekend, everyone involved would be happier if Holliday were still playing for the Rockies.
• That Jim Tracy’s helming of this team to a 23-9 record actually helped prove the point of my rant in which I declared the Rockies dead to me.
• That after questioning every single move that Tracy made in the 9^th inning of a tie game against the Pirates a couple weeks ago only to see them all work to perfection, I should stick to football.
• That they could all get ‘Brady-ed’ in the first quarter of the first game and Colt McCoy, Sam Bradford and Tim Tebow would still be the top three vote-getters for the Heisman.
• That the guy whose thesis in PCU was that you could find a Gene Hackman or Michael Caine movie on cable at any hour of any day, will be proven correct this fall only it will be about finding a glowing tribute to Tim Tebow.
• That T.O. and Tony Romo are going to both wish T.O. was still in a Cowboy uniform by November 1^st.
• That Jay Cutler’s perception of his time in Denver is going to change radically about the fourth time he throws to a wide-open Devin Hester and the ball goes through his hand after spending an entire quarter handing off to Matt Forte.
• That it is sort of pathetic that the NFL is currently trying to determine which of the following players deserves the harshest penalty: a guy that inadvertently shot himself in the leg, a guy that ran a dog fighting ring and treated dogs worse than Kabayashi, and a guy that ran over and killed another person while driving drunk
• That a guy being stupid enough to shoot himself in the leg is to the other two as Martha ‘Dumptruck’ Dunstock is to Christian Slater in Heathers.
• That the Fourth of July signifies the beginning of the end of summer despite technically coming about 14 days after the official start of summer.
• That training camp can’t come fast enough.

What are you free to think?

As you may have noticed things are pretty quiet in the world of football these days. How quiet you ask? Well, this past Sunday the Denver Post did not have a single article about the Broncos in its sports section and today’s USA Today featured an article on collegiate strength and conditioning coaches. It is hard out there for a pimp. A pimp that tried to write about football that is.  To make it worse, with little new to report, I noticed that the stories that are out there seem eerily familiar. A little like The Cleveland Show coming to Fox this fall. You knew it before as The Jeffersons.

Anyway, since the archives at pfb.com are currently out of commission and I feeling lazy during the hot days of summer, so I have decided to re-post an article from last summer. Just change a couple names and places and it as timely today as it was a year ago when first posted.

Though, as you should expect, I can’t let it go without adding at least a couple comments here and there.

Prima Donna Disease

We can finally breathe again; our great national crisis has been narrowly avoided. 

No, not the Favre hostage situation, currently being reported breathlessly by Greta Van Susteren as the countdown clock in the corner of Fox News shows it reaching the 144^th hour since the communist sympathizers in Wisconsin asked Captain America to actually live up to at least some of the words coming out of his mouth. I’m talking about the other national (football league) crisis this spring. <<ED: God Bless Brett Favre, if I have to go a whole off-season without talking about him, I have no idea what I would do.>>

It appears that the Chad Johnson saga has been resolved peacefully and we won’t be subjected to hourly reports from Sal Paolantonio live in Chad’s driveway while Chad does sit-ups and curls in the background. <<ED: Replace the above name with Brandon Marshall, and this paragraph represents the dreams and wishes of Bronco nation. Well, at least some of their dreams and wishes. I would hope their dreams are bigger than just this. Like maybe winning the Lotto or maybe a playoff game>>

Thankfully, despite grumbling to the media for months on end about his unhappiness with his bosses in Cincinnati, Chad showed up to all required mini-camps (making him at least a professional, if still a showboating whiner), before deciding he needed to get surgery that was recommended for him months ago. <<ED: So apparently uno-cinco isn’t quite the professional that ocho-cino is. An unbelievable sentence in itself, which says a lot about both Marshall and the chances he comes back to the Broncos this season>>

It is pretty much globally agreed that wide receivers are prima donnas. The number of incidents of first grader-like tantrums by receivers is well documented. So I guess the only question at this point is, why do wide receivers seem more prone to acting out than other positions?

It doesn’t seem to make sense that wide receivers would be any more spotlight desperate than other glory positions like quarterback and running back, yet they are. Why?

Well, what separates wide receivers from these other positions?

Wide Receiver vs. Running Back

Let’s start with the average yardage for each position. The best running backs average around 5 yards per carry. Wide receivers can average 15 yards per catch. That is over a first down every time they touch the ball. Going back to our publicity shy friend Ocho Cinco; in 2007, generally considered an off-year for him, he averaged 15.5 yards per reception <<ED: Uno-Cinco averaged 12.2  yards per catch in 2008>>. A.P. (I refuse to call Adrian Peterson A.D.), the leading rusher in the NFL averaged 5.6 yards per carry. He would need to touch the ball 3 times to equal the yardage of a single average pass to Chad Johnson (unless he is playing the Chargers, apparently). You don’t think gaining 15 yards per play strokes the ego?

Think also about where those yards are gained. A wide receiver is out on the edge of the play or down the field in open space, allowing everyone to see him and appreciate his greatness (as far as he is concerned). A running back spends half of their carries running right up the middle into a line filled with people much bigger than he is (unless his name is LenDale White). There is very little glory in gaining three yards up the middle. It takes a special sort of humility and/or perseverance to willingly throw yourself into a bunch of monster sized men 20 -25 times per game with the hope of popping maybe one or two for long gains (unless you are playing the 2007 Broncos, then you can count on several long gains).  Many wide receivers probably played running back when they were younger but at some point moved outside, most likely because they couldn’t take the physical/mental beating inside.

Wide Receiver vs. Quarterback

The quintessential showboat position, the guy who gets the hot tub full of mediocre Juco girls and the trip to Disney Land after winning the Super Bowl.

Note: I still hold a grudge that Eli was named Super Bowl MVP this past year. If you think I was cruel to Mitch Kramer last year wait until this season!

Yes, it would seem that it would be impossible that a wide receiver could be more of a prima donna than the position that gave us Broadway Joe, Big Ben, Joe Montana’s masturbation skit on SNL and Paris’ Toxic Slurry, but every time Ocho Cinco or T.O. open their mouths they prove it again. <<ED: Welcoming Whiny-Jay to this group and it might be change this entire thesis in Dove Valley circa 2009>>

The interesting thing is that any wide receiver that wasn’t a running back growing up was probably a quarterback. The general philosophy in junior football is to make your best athlete your quarterback – given you want him to touch the ball as often as possible. What separates quarterbacks and wide receivers as they progress in football isn’t athletic ability it is commitment and maturity. Quarterbacks not only need to be the unquestioned leader of the team but they also need to be the one who studies the most, knows the most and holds the responsibility for the most. Any showboating wide receiver is probably not interested in studying film and the playbook twice as long as the rest of the team, knowing every position and being the team leader. If you are as self-focused as most of the wide receivers in the NFL there is just too much sacrifice to be a quarterback.

Quarterbacks also often have to take the responsibility for a loss, something thin-skinned receivers could never do. Other than Peyton Manning who has never personally been responsible for a loss (that damn offensive line), when an offense sputters, there is often one person that gets the majority of the blame (see, Grossman, Rex). A receiver on the other hand can always project all of the problems back to the quarterback as well: the pass was late, low, high, behind him or worse the quarterback wasn’t getting the ball to the receiver enough.

The final key reason that receivers are so whiny is also the same thing that makes them great: confidence. A receiver has to be willing to go across the middle and potentially get be-headed by linebackers or safeties. If they drop a pass they need to shake it off and be absolutely sure they will catch the next one. They need to go toe-to-toe with cornerbacks every play; guys, who have the egos and mouths of wide receivers but combine them with the hands of a guard.

Next time a wide receiver mouths off; remember that the belief in his own abilities is also what will enable him to get your team that first down on third and long.

It is a fine line between self-confidence and supreme arrogance.

We here at PFB are still reeling from the attack by the rebel alliance that somehow found our single point of weakness which is no bigger than a wamp rat (left open due to an aesthetic choice by the architect). Don’t worry we shall return even stronger than we were before.

Oh, and I am your father. Just ask your mom about that one party in college. She’ll know what you’re talking about.

Speaking of parties in college, we are also reeling because there is a strange feeling when it comes to the stories in the NFL right now. A sense of déjà vu. Haven’t we been here before? In fact, yes we have.

So, to make Al Gore proud I have decided to invoke the 3 R’s – Reduce-Reuse-Recycle. The last week of no new posts would be the reduce. Today and tomorrow when we re-paste articles as relevant today as when they were first written a year ago is reusing. When Fox College Sports Atlantic finally re-shows some old FSU games I will recycle the same jokes from last year’s Gift From the Gods.

Anyway, below is an article written almost exactly a year ago. Yet, with the changing of a few names I could have written it today.

One of those guys

Remember parties in college? Toward the end of the evening, most of the people have gone home or moved on to the next party or a bar. Yet there are always a few people that stick around to the bitter end. There are usually a few men and women coupling off in the corners, the hosts starting to clean up the mess and then a few guys in the kitchen trying to pound away the last bit of alcohol.

Then there are always those guys that don’t really belong in any of the categories. Maybe they came with one of the guys that is hooking up. Maybe their ride gave someone a ride home and ‘will be right back’. Maybe they came alone and just have nowhere else to go. But regardless of why, they are now sort of aimlessly wandering the party and have no one to interact with.

The guy can stand in the kitchen and try to join the drunks killing the keg or sit awkwardly near the make-out sessions in the living room or follow the hosts around and help clean up. Regardless of what he does, the guy is just out of place.

Brett Favre is that guy.

The party is pretty much wrapped up, the hosts are trying to clean up and thinking about what they need to do tomorrow (i.e. Packers are getting their new starting quarterback up to speed), the others still at the party have coupled up (i.e. the other teams have drafted or traded to fill their quarterbacking needs, other than the Bears <<ED: Make that the Vikings>>) and Favre is wandering around in his Wranglers desperate for someone to hang out with.

It is pretty apparent that the Packers have moved on and there isn’t really a place for Brett Favre in Green Bay. The man is 39 years old. Even if he comes back for another season and we go through all of this again next spring <<ED: Ooh, spooky>> – to make it a solid half decade of Favre debating whether he should retire – the fact is the Packers will still need a new starting quarterback soon.

The argument has been made repeatedly that the Packers should let Favre come back yet again, because he instantly makes the Packers a better team and puts them on the short list of Super Bowl contenders. While I accept there will be a drop with Aaron Rodgers at quarterback in his first year (though he did play well at the Cowboys last year), the reality is that it is happening sooner or later. I think the Packers have decided this is that set-back year. <<ED: Just to help, for the rest of this please replace ‘Packers’ with Vikings; ‘Ryan Grant’ with Adrian Peterson; ‘Aaron Rodgers’ with Tarvaris Jackson and ‘Greg Jennings’ with Percy Harvin>>

I agree with this approach actually. Think about the other great players on the Packers: Greg Jennings (3^rd year), Ryan Grant (2^nd year), A.J. Hawk (2^nd year). These guys are still young. They are only going to get better over the next few years. Do you really want them all to be in the prime of their career with a new quarterback under center? If I am GM Ted Thompson, I would prefer to have my quarterback grow with my players rather a new starting quarterback hold the team back when he starts for the first time in their 4^th or 5^th year in the league.

Let the whole team gel together, grow together. Heck, there aren’t a lot of great teams in the NFC North (or the whole NFC for that matter). Why not let Rodgers lead this team now when they can still win the division at 10-6? The only other competitive team in the NFC North is the Minnesota Vikings and they have Tarvaris Jackson at quarterback! The Packers with Aaron Rodgers aren’t at least competitive with that team? <<ED: As Willie Wonka said “Wait a minute. Strike that. Reverse it.”>>

Oh wait, the Vikings or Bears are suspects #1 and #2 to pick up Favre if the Packers release him. Really, those teams want to pin their hopes to a 39-year old quarterback who has to learn their offense for the first time and as league career interception record holder will never be labeled as a ‘game manager’ like fellow AARP members Brad Johnson and Vinnie Testaverde?

The Packers may be marginally better in the short term with Favre back at quarterback (except when he chucks the ball under hand to some grateful linebacker) but the team in the long term would be better off starting the Aaron Rodgers era now.

Not to mention that if they send Rodgers back to the clipboard this year, they have irrevocably crushed any ounce of confidence he has and if I am Rodgers, I demand a trade the moment Favre finishes his teary welcome back press conference – not to be confused with his many teary non-retirement/retirement press conferences over the years.

Brett, it is time to head home. If your ride hasn’t come back yet, we can call you a cab.

You may have noticed things have changed here at PFB. Well, apparently, someone was so envious of the massive readership here at PFB, hacked the site and added some malicious content to pull you to their (most likely) porn site. Since we can’t condone that kind of thing – unless we are getting a cut of the profits of course – we had to tear down the site and build it up again. Sort of like the Detroit Lions for the last decade. However, unlike the Lions, our re-building effort is only taking a few days.

We have put back up the last few posts so that there is something for you to do instead of work and the full archives will be put back shortly.

Thanks!

Dave

There is a classic film clip of Vince Lombardi taken on the sideline of a game with the Packers back in their dynasty days muttering a now immortal line.

 ‘What the hell is going on out here?’.

With that single sentence, Vince summed up the feelings of Bronco fans this offseason better than any commentator ever could.

• A head coach is fired who had rode a reputation built on two Super Bowl titles a decade ago  but stayed a couple years and a couple dozen awful personnel decisions too long.
• He is replaced by an unproven offensive minded head coach, despite the team being in desperate need of re-vamping a defense that the old coach had destroyed like a home owner destroys a home by continuing to build on unnecessarily.
• The new young head coach immediately alienated his young, immature but talented quarterback by floating the idea of trading him
• The young, immature quarterback turns into Veruca Salt and becomes the centerpiece of what could have become the 21^st Century version of the Herschel Walker trade
• One of the future first rounders received for said quarterback is traded away for an under-sized playmaking second round cornerback despite several un-addressed needs at linebacker and defensive lineman
• The top wide receiver on the team, wanting a new contract, decides to hold out from coming to mandatory off-season workouts. Actually, I take that back he did come. He came, asked for a raise from the owner and then went home when he didn’t get it. I may try that tomorrow morning instead of going to work myself.
• And now that wide receiver is demanding a trade because of some combination of wanting more money and bizarrely a mis-trust of the team medical staff.

I say again: What the hell is going on out here?

I wish I had some deeper point to all of this rambling. I really don’t. I just wanted to re-cap the Broncos offseason in print and see what it looks like.

You know it is bad when Alex Rodriguez looks at the Broncos and says ‘wow, they are having a rough offseason’.

You know it is bad when even Al Davis seems to have better control of his organization (sadly the same can not be said of his bowels).

I am at a loss. Looking specifically at the soap opera that is Brandon Marshall, what in the world happened?

How many people would walk away from $2 million when they have a bad hip and a history of off-field troubles? I understand that he has only a year left on his contract, feels he is one of the top receivers in the game and wants to cash in before the end of the Collective Bargaining Agreement potentially impacts how much he can earn. Really I get that. But since the last time we saw Marshall on the football field – he has had hip surgery (from which he hasn’t fully recovered) and been arrested (again). So, now is the time to demand a raise or a trade? How does that make sense? Who is advising him – Matt Harrington?

While young players (and their handlers) overestimating their value is not anything new, the strangest part to all of this has to be his dis-trust of the medical staff. Where did that come from? Did one of the trainers give him the Bird Flu?

The part about all of this that is going to annoy me is that everything I have read makes no mention of Josh McDaniels having a role in this, yet I can absolutely guarantee there are going to be a lot of idiots out there that pin the blame on him.

Remember kids, never let facts get in the way of a pre-disposed opinion.

So what now? Well, I guess it depends on what the Broncos can get for Marshall. Losing one slow, injury and incident prone receiver who dropped too many passes isn’t going to be what keeps the Broncos from the Super Bowl this season. Even if he is one of the best in the game, as he believes – just ask the Bengals.

But if played correctly, what they get back could at least put them back on the path.

What the hell.

Well, it’s official. To the surprise of no one not named Mrs. Simms, today the Broncos announced that their starting quarterback entering the 2009 football season would be Kyle Orton. Though I think everyone always assumed he would start over Chris Simms, if for no other reason then he completed two passes last year and he still has a spleen, the timing does seem a little strange.

Wasn’t it just this morning that I was reading in the Denver Post, that the quarterback race was wide open and that there was no rush to name a starter? What happened? On the way out to practice this morning did Chris Simms bit the head off of a squirrel or something?

Don’t take this as me complaining though. I am actually a huge believer in naming a starter early – especially with everyone learning a new system. Whoever is going to be under center come this fall needs to spend as much time as possible developing timing with his receivers and offensive linemen (at least most of his receivers. Uno-Cinco is apparently still hiding out down in O-town. At least he actually came and talked to Pat Bowlen first – are you paying attention Jay?).

So, now we know that unless Orton puts in an Alex Smith type performance in the pre-season he will be the Broncos quarterback. So what does that mean?

Well, there is a good reason the Broncos took Knowshon with the 12^th pick this spring. They aren’t going to be able to ride Kyle’s arm to an 8-8 record like the offense did last year. This offense is going to need to be more balanced. With a solid offensive line working together for the second year and some combination of Correll Buckhalter, Knowshon, and Peyton Hillis in the backfield, expect a return to an offense that is actually capable of gaining 4 yards when they need it, without resorting to dink-and-dunk passes to the wide receivers.  A solid running game, might also mean that linebackers won’t be able to freely drop into coverage and pick off all those underneath passes forced into a triple covered Uno-Cinco. Oh wait, Cutler is not here anymore.

The conventional wisdom (by which I mean, all of the so-called experts on TV that still think Brett Favre is an improvement at quarterback for the Vikings, despite all evidence to the contrary) is the Orton is a big step back from Cutler. But do the Broncos need Cutler’s flashy numbers and erratic play?

No. They need a leader that doesn’t make mistakes and puts them in position to win.

Is Orton that guy? I honestly don’t know. He has never had any talent around him while in Chicago so is a comparison of his numbers there really relevant? 

Remember this is a team that moved a defensive back to wide receiver, despite the accepted wisdom that defensive backs are defensive backs because they can’t catch. He handed off to ‘the other’ Adrian Peterson after Cedric Benson came and went quickly on his way to slotting his way right behind Blair Thomas on the list of biggest bust running backs of all time. Last season the Bears drafted Matt Forte to finally provide him at least one weapon. Is it a surprise Orton had his best season and led the Bears to a 9-6 record, which I believe may have been better than the record of the Bear’s new quarterback? This despite the fact that Orton was sacked 27 times last season. While some of that may be due to the extra drag cause by his grungy beard, you can’t tell me that his offensive line was as good as the one he now lines up behind.

So, while I don’t know yet whether Kyle will lead the Broncos back to the playoffs, I am at least content to know who the quarterback will be this year.

Now he just needs to grow that mangy beard back, like the last Bronco QB to play in the postseason.

So the big news this week out of Broncos camp is the Lindbergh baby act of Brandon Marshall.

NOTE: When I say ‘big news’, I really mean ‘minor, slightly interesting story blown completely out of proportion because of our love of football and the history of prima donna wide receivers’.

Brandon has gone home to Orlando to rehab his recently surgically repaired hip. Unhappy that Bronco trainers apparently were unable to properly diagnose his hip problems and spent all of last season telling him to ‘rub some dirt on it and get back in there’, Brandon decided to head to his old hometown and work with doctors there.

While this may seem like a relatively rational thing to do, when it comes to professional football, any time a player doesn’t show for Volunteer (read: mandatory) Offseason workouts, conspiracy theorists come out of the woodwork faster than when a new JFK Assassination document is released. The theory (as usual) is the B-Marsh is unhappy with his contract and is making it known by going off to work out on his own.

Whether this is true or not, we don’t know, but that won’t stop us from speculating.

He currently makes in the range of $2 million/year and with the possibility that the Collective Bargaining Agreement will be re-opened may lose his opportunity a year from now to cash in on being the athletic freak that he is. He wants the Broncos to sign him up to that big contract now.

Putting aside the horrendously mis-guided decision to make this point  with 1 – a head coach who has shown anything but a willingness to bow to the better players on his team and 2 – an economy in such bad shape, pro teams will inevitably begin to feel it and there won’t be a lot of empathy for a 24-year old making $2 million, I guess the real question is – does Marshall really deserve to get a raise?

Before diving into his on-field production, you have to factor in all of his off-the-field antics. Originally suspended for 3 games last year and until last week potentially facing another suspension this year, does a team really want to invest $9 million/ year in a guy who may or may not be allowed to play 16 games?

On the field, Marshall had a good year last year: 104 catches, 3rd in the NFL. However he also only caught 6 touchdowns, ranking outside the top ten in the NFL.

It could also be noted that the game in which Marshall was suspended last year was arguably the Broncos best offensive game of the season. I said it before the season last year and I will say it again – Cutler used Marshall as a crutch. He always looked to him first and when all else failed looked to him last. Without speed to beat players down the field, there is only so many underneath passes that can be completed before linebackers, safeties and corners start cheating up. Good defenses made adjustments; Marshall destroyed bad pass defenses. Over half of his receptions and five of his six TDs came in just six games – all against teams with passing defenses ranked 23^rd or lower.

Could it be that Marshall is the receiver equivalent of Christian Okoye? An imposing physical specimen who took the league by storm for a year or two until everyone realized that he really only had one way of defeating you?

Regardless of how productive he was last year, how effective will he be going forward – you know the time actually covered by his next contract? For that you need to look at the Patriots. What role would Marshall have played for the Patriots? The Broncos already have 2 players that are more suited to play the Wes Welker role – Eddie Royal and Brandon Stokley. He doesn’t have the speed to beat people down field like Randy Moss – which explains why he had nearly 40 more receptions and half as many touchdowns as Moss.  Yet, that will be the role he is asked to play this year.

Will he equal his 2008 production in this system? Will Marshall’s role in Patriots-west really warrant being paid like the best in the league? It is hard to say right now. We haven’t even seen this team on the field and the new coach hasn’t seen Marshall play yet.

That alone may be enough to tell you that, no, Brandon will not be ‘shown the money’ this spring. Let’s just hope for the stability of the organization, he didn’t head back to Orlando to force the Broncos to pay him. The last thing they need is another prima donna player who holds out from working with the new coach.

Let’s hope he just really likes DisneyWorld.

In the midst of the slightly over-hyped run-up to the inevitable Kobe-Lebron NBA Finals over the last couple of weeks you may have missed a news item about a cornerback at UF getting arrested.

My immediate reaction to this was obviously:  ‘HA! Stupid, cheating Gators’.

My second reaction was ‘wow, the Gainesville police really like to tase people’.

But the more I stewed on this (and I stewed, oh believe me I stewed), I started to think about the correlation between championship caliber teams and illegal activities.

When I think about it, I struggle to find any consistent championship contending team that didn’t have run-ins with the law and/or the NCAA. What does that tell us?

Maybe you have to have players get in trouble to dream of a college football dynasty.

Look at the teams that have been in the championship hunt for a sustained period:

2000’s

• Florida Gators – Sure, Urban Meyer has returned Alachua County to the national championship race as well as bringing Jesus Christ’s younger brother Tim to town, but he has also brought in players that have now been arrested 23 times. In their defense , if I were surrounded by that many people with mullets and wearing jorts I would be tempted to commit a felony or two myself
• USC Trojans – Other than that whole ‘agents-buying-Reggie-Bush’s-parents-a-house’ thing the USC program has been remarkably clean for a top-tier program. Oh wait, Mark Sanchez got arrested. And Rey Maualuga got arrested. And All Pac-10 DT Fili Moala got arrested. And some recruit before he even got on campus got arrested. How have we not heard more about this? I blame that damn east-coast media bias.
• Texas Longhorns – While his teams have regularly fallen short of the national championship game (other than when VY led them), off the field the Longhorns have tried their best to get themselves in the conversation. However, single digit incidents which barely make the backpage of the sports section outside of the Lone Star state? Just like on the field, it seem like Mack Brown can’t quite keep up with the big boys.
• Oklahoma Sooners – A return to national relevance also aligned with a return to off-the-field problems. I wish I could mock the Sooners. But after all of their BCS game problems, pointing out that half of their team received illegal benefits from local boosters (estimated), might be too much for Turner to handle. Plus, after all of the jokes I have made regarding car dealers and/or Rhett Bomar and/or Adrian Peterson, I should be a little more thankful for the Sooner problems.
• OSU Buckeyes – Yes, there have been arrests and academic problems for OSU players, which wouldn’t be that remarkable. What is remarkable is that they have played in 3 national title games since 2000 and won only one of those, when they were led by future one-man crime spree Maurice Clarett. Clarett looks at those 23 arrests in Gainesville and laughs. 23 arrests? That is a slow month for him.

1990’s

• FSU Seminoles – Wish I could pretend that FSU was the exception that proved the rule, but I still remember the whole ‘Free Shoes University’ thing my freshman year (i.e. the 1993 National Championship year). There was also when we kicked Randy Moss off the team for smoking the chronic, kicked Laveranues Coles off the team and suspended Peter Warrick for getting a 90% discount at Dillard’s and the time I watched Chris Weinke try to beat up a guy that was about 5’3” at Yianni’s before turning on a friend of mine who called him on it.  Of course, as penance we had to suffer through the Jeff Bowden and Chris Rix era, two Gator National titles but this year produced one of the all-time, all-around great guys in college football history, so I think our karmic slates are clean.
• Nebraska Cornhuskers – While the Cornhuskers may have had a cleaner program than a lot of National championship teams, they won their first title in 20 some years thanks to Lawrence Phillips. Lawrence was so talented he reminded a lot of people of O.J. Simpson. Unfortunately, that was both on and off the field.

1980’s – 1990’s

• Miami Cornhuskers – It isn’t really a question of which Canes got in trouble. It is more of a question of which players were only convicted of misdemeanors – you know the goody-goodys. Remember this is a team that included Ray Lewis, who may have killed a man in a fight at the Super Bowl in 2000 when things escalated rather quickly. I think he him in the chest with a trident. 

1980’s

• Oklahoma Sooners – The grandfather of the troubled program is Barry Switzer’s Oklahoma Sooners. Pick a problem and the Sooners had it. Steroids? See: Bosworth, Brian. Coaches cheating? Read Bootlegger’s Boy by Barry Switzer. Out of control players? Charles Thompson was dealing cocaine out of the football dorm! Wow, you know all of those old sports writers are right. Players today just don’t have the dedication that they used to.

It is sort of sad that when you look back over the last 20-30 years, it is almost a pre-requisite that a team with aspirations of being a consistent national championship contender needs run-ins with the law. Yet, that doesn’t change the inevitable response when another gets in trouble.

When news comes out of another college football player getting arrested, you can always expect a holier-than-thou soapbox article from some writer complaining about out-of-control players. But it is pretty obvious that if you take a step back, players getting in trouble are not something new to the game.

Look, I am not condoning illegal activities, but enough with all the hand-wringing. Only the myopic, naïve or stupid is surprised at this point when football players get in trouble.

Think about football players. To succeed in this game, you have to be a little unhinged. You have to be able to channel aggression toward others and an ability to turn off any self-preservation thoughts to be a great football player. Add that to being the center of attention everywhere you go, the freedom of being on your own for the first time and some alcohol-based fuel and it shouldn’t be a surprise that there are regularly players getting in trouble.

While players have always got in trouble, have things changed? Are more players getting in trouble today than they used to? Probably not.

In my mind, there are really two changes to the game that only make it appear that there are more kids getting arrested:

1 – Media – With the internet, blogosphere, cable television and sports radio; any incident is going to get completely blown out of proportion (see: career of Alex Rodriguez). Twenty years ago, a bar fight involving a football player might make the local papers. Now it will be a headline on espn.com and 43 bloggers will chime in with a comment in the span of a couple of hours (NOTE: I don’t include myself here. I am way too lazy to comment in less than 24 hours). Then if that player is a big enough name we will get sports radio rants, editorials in the paper and speeches on Around The Horn. Whether something is news or not, if you hear about it incessantly for a day or two you start to think it is news.

2 – Parity – While media members complaining about the role of the media is nothing new (and getting as commonplace as football players getting arrested), I think a less discussed and equally important reason for the seeming rise in college football players getting in trouble is the increased parity in college football. Look at that list again. For the most part in the 1980’s and 1990’s there were really only a couple teams that year-in and year-out were always national title contenders. Now, you could say there are 7 or 8 teams, at least, that have been in the conversation each year since Y2k. With more teams having a (perceived) shot at the national title, there are more players that are worthy of becoming a news story when they get in trouble.

Would anyone have cared if a USC player got arrested in 1997 when they went 6-5?

So, while you might have expected that I would take this opportunity to rip Urban Meyer for bringing a win-at-all costs attitude to Gainesville that looks the other way when his players get in trouble in search of more wins. I am not.

I know, I am shocked too.

It comes with the territory. To win titles, you need some players that will get in trouble. That is the deal with the devil that every team has to make to try and hold up that Crystal ball.

Because if you don’t make that deal, you are destined to just be a run-of-the-mill, average team. Maybe you have an occasional year where you do well but for the most part will never field a consistent winner.

In other words, you will be Notre Dame.

It is only fitting that at the dawn of the month of my 34^th birthday I am feeling old.

NOTE: I know that some portion of you just said something along the lines of ‘oh, bite me. You aren’t old’. Well, sorry. Get over it. I can’t do anything about you being older than me. Think of all the cool stuff you got to live through that I didn’t –  the Vietnam War, Watergate, Super Bowls I – IX, Deep Throat, the UCLA dynasty and…well, that other Deep Throat.

NOTE #2: To the other portion of you that just said ‘wow, he is old’. Bite me.

Anyway, it isn’t just my completion of another trip around the Sun making me feel old, it is the world of sports. When I hear about the latest sports news, I inevitably end up sounding like Statler and Waldorf when responding. Damn kids these days.

It wasn’t always this way. It used to be I would cheer for teams based almost solely on them being the new, young up-and-comers. I adopted the New York Mets back in the mid-eighties in part because I was fascinating by this young phenom pitcher named Dwight Gooden. I even went out and put a Gooden poster on my wall and bought all the rookie baseball cards I could find. Until, of course, my mom threatened to ring the nose on my poster with White-Out.

Later, as the Lakers, Celtics and Bad Boys of Detroit ruled the NBA, I had a soft spot for this young kid playing in Chicago who seemed to have a little talent.

Now, when I hear about LeBron James, not shaking hands with the Magic after losing Eastern Conference Finals and then skipping the press conference, I think he sees himself above the every day requirements of being a professional. Do you think anyone that lost a playoff series wants to go in and face the press? No, but when you get millions of dollars to play a game, there a few obligations you have. You have to practice, you have to show up at charitable events for long enough to be photographed for those NBA Cares commericals, you have to do whatever your shoe company tells you to do and you have to talk to the press after games. These are especially true when you are the greatest player on the planet. An excuse that ‘you are a winner’ and you aren’t happy about losing doesn’t fly. You think anyone in the NBA is ok with losing? Other than Shawn Marion of course. You don’t become a pro athlete unless you are a fierce competitor who wants to win at any cost. But being a professional (or even being a man) means sucking it up and facing the music when things don’t go your way.

Of course, if you were given a Hummer in high school and were never held to account for it, why would I expect you to understand what responsibility and accountability means?

And it’s not like David Stern is going to call out his meal ticket of the future. Sure, Phil Jackson gets fined $50,000 for correctly pointing out publicly what we all know (that the NBA refs are slightly less incompetent than Sling Blade), but LeBron can act like the biggest baby this side of the Cutler family ranch and never get a slap on the wrist.

LeBron isn’t alone in making we worry about this entire generation of athletes. In the same week that LeBron took his ball and went home, Brandon Marshall appeared on Outside The Lines to explain why (yet again) he has been accused of domestic battery. While I don’t know the details of this charge, I have had enough. Less than a year after being suspended for three games (reduced to one) for a multitude of offenses to the extra-touchy NFL, Marshall found a new woman and more trouble. Is it so hard for a guy to find a stable woman and not get in massive fights with them? B-Marsh (as I call him) is entering his fourth year in the league and he has seen a team mate get shot and killed, shouldn’t it be about time he realizes that professional athletes are always targets? Whether by women or thugs, athletes are always going to be in the sights of those seeking money and fame. Understanding that and learning who you can trust should be the first thing that pro athletes learn.

Actually make that the second thing. The first thing is that no player is above being traded. No player. Especially not players that haven’t had a winning season since high school. Get it, Jay?

I won’t go into my feelings about B-Marsh’s contemporary, Mr. Cutler. I think I have sufficiently beat that story into the ground. What can I say, I am to Jay Cutler as Skip Baylees is to T.O. 

I don’t mean to say it is just the off-the-field antics by the players these days that I don’t understand. I know that athletes have gotten in trouble for as long as there have been sports (or at least as long as newspapers have been willing to report it) but the growth of the me-first sports celebration drives me nuts.

When I was young…I can’t believe I just used that phrase, just shoot me now…the best known celebration in the game was the group high-five by the Smurfs on the Redskins. Now, we have the celebration dance of the week by a ridiculously overrated wide receiver on an awful team who legally changed his name to the incorrect translation of his jersey number. Maybe if his team had, you know a winning record and wasn’t just the punch-line of every joke about football teams with legal problems, his self-serving attitude might not have worn thin about 4 years ago.

Even on my teams, there are players who I don’t understand. Look at J.R. Smith. We get it J.R., you are a great athlete and made a great play. You know if you consistently did that rather than once every other game maybe you wouldn’t need to celebrate when you make a great play. It would happen so frequently it wouldn’t be worth going nuts every time.

Wow, just look at all that ranting about the players above. I am not sure what makes me sicker, how these guys act or my old man, holier-than-thou, things-were-better-in-my-day attitude.

It’s funny because my least favorite TV Sports opinionater is Skip Bayless and this is the exact reason why. He hates everyone and everything in sports and is so sure about what he thinks, he makes Bill O’Reilly’s opinions seem balanced and considered. Now I am starting to sound like him. When did this happen? What happened to the happy-go-lucky kid I used to know?

Getting old sucks. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go have some warm milk and go to bed.