The Cincinnatus Bengalsaurus was the rarest of dinosaurs, roaming the earth 1,000,000 years Ocho Cinco.

Found via Orrin Judd, a Red Sox baseball blog describes this key holiday for Bostonians:

A Red Sox season used to be something that you ran away from. With the final heart-breaking out, fans would turn to the Patriots - and, before them, the Celtics - as antidote for the pain of another Fenway collapse. Now, in the wake of back-to-back gut-wrenching Patriots finishes, the baseball season has become Boston's salvation.

That was no more evident than on Yawkey Way Saturday morning. It was Truck Day, cause for several television crews, Dirt Dogs staff, and a hundred fans to celebrate this distinctly Boston tradition so unique in all of professional sports. For all, it was the precursor to spring and hope. And for many, it was also an occasion for healing after Sunday's Super Bowl. I know. I was one.

My son and I started last week bent on attending a parade.

Of course, I would imagine Truck Day conjures up rather opposite emotions if you're a sports fan living in Baltimore.

Matthew J. Darnell, who edits the "Shutdown Corner" football on Yahoo.com notes that "Matt Millen's NBC commentary comes with a warning label." He links to a Detroit Free-Press article that explains how local TV provided a little extra expository information about the former Detroit Lion during the Super Bowl pregame show:

Every time a certain familiar face showed up on camera Sunday during NBC's Super Bowl pregame show, Channel 4 ran a scroll at the bottom of the screen:

"Matt Millen was president of the Lions for the worst eight-year run in the history of the NFL. Knowing his history with the team, is there a credibility issue as he now serves as an analyst for NBC Sports?..."

Hilarious. But good for Channel 4, not toeing the company line as it sought online comments from viewers on Millen's gig. Or maybe it was just trying to distance itself from NBC's brilliant move.

You can see video of the label in the YouTube clip above. Of course, it's too bad the networks don't inform their viewers with similar warning labels applied to those working outside their sports divisions...

Mime was money for Itzhak Perlman and Yo-Yo Ma at the presidential inauguration, and similarly, lip-syncing is good enough for Jennifer Hudson to get the job done singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.

During the Super Bowl, when Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald made a key play, NBC's cameras caught his father in the press booth, working the game for the Minnesota Spokesman-Recorder. Papa Fitzgerald acted remarkably stoically to his son's on-the-field wizardry and Al Michaels quipped, (and I'm paraphrasing), "No cheering from the pressbox--that's the sign of a true journalist."

I don't know if anybody else interpreted it the same way, but to me, that was was a short sharp rebuke to just about everybody in NBC's news department in 2008.

But when old media wasn't overtly cheering, they kept rockin' in 2008, as one of Glenn Reynolds' readers notes:

What Katrina taught the media was that they could hurt Bush by lying. What 2008 taught them was that they could help Obama by not reporting at all. What will 2009 teach them? I shudder to think.

Me too.

John Hinderaker adds:

A basic reality of our time is that our mass media are monolithic, and what they choose to report (or not report) depends on what fits the narrative they are pushing on the public. If our reporters and editors wanted to portray Obama as clueless and out of touch with ordinary Americans, he has given them ample opportunity to do so. But because they are Democrats and he is a Democrat, they have no desire to tell that story. So "let them eat steak" is not a theme you'll be seeing on the evening news.

Lovers rarely kiss (up) and tell.

Update: "Sometimes the mask slips." And, as happens very occasionally, more than one mask slips.

As I wrote in November about Bruce Springsteen:

To borrow from the vernacular of The Boss's early '70s glory days (to coin a phrase), has any musician become more Establishment than Springsteen?

Over at Andrew Breitbart's "Big Hollywood" salon, Nick Gillespie of Reason magazine (who, like myself, grew up in New Jersey in the middle of Springsteen mania) makes it official--and asks, "did Janet Jackson's nipple really condemn us to a lifetime of Super Sunday misery?"

To be fair it's the Super Bowl halftime show--whether it's Up With People or a corporate dinosaur rock star, it's supposed to be miserable. But at least Up With People was honest in its own relentless polyester cheer. Springsteen will be singing to 66,000 people who have paid thousands of dollars to be in attendance, and tens of millions watching the game in their warm suburban homes in Dolby Digital Surround Sound on 52-inch rear projection HDTVs about how Dickensian the nihilistic purgatorial Hell the American existence is. Gillespie adds:

I will say this much in anticipation of the composer of "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" performing this weekend: I grew up in Monmouth County, New Jersey, which contains both Springsteen's hometown (Freehold) and his early haunt (Asbury Park), so I can't stand him in the same way that only a New Yorker can really, really hate the Yankees. I think that even his biggest fans will admit that his output over the past 25 years or so would make even Beethoven nostalgic for the first few albums. Springsteen is in that elite group of rock stars who have objectively sucked two, three, or even four times longer than they were ever any good (are you listening Sting, David Bowie, R.E.M., Patti Smith?). That, and in the video for "Glory Days," he had the worst fake baseball throwing arm since Gary Cooper in Pride of the Yankees. Which is saying something.

Watching Springsteen perform at the Super Bowl--and before him, rock mummies like Tom Petty and Rolling Stones--let's just say I'd rather go straight to the Bodies exhibition, where at least no one is pretending that the corpses on display aren't actually dead.

But then, as Mark Steyn notes, (quoting from another "Big Hollywood" essay), "for half-a-century now rock has very successfully been 'both establishment and anti-establishment'":

In fact, "a rebellious underdog distributed by the status quo" is the very definition of rock: All those fellows calling for revolution while contracted to Capitol, Columbia, EMI., Warner Bros - the exact same companies running the music biz back in the days when Glenn Miller and Bing Crosby were where the big bucks were. A few years ago the Warner Megabehemoth Globocorp launched a rap label called "Maverick", and nobody laughed.

Rockers attending the Obama inauguration are like visiting royalty at a Bourbon or Habsburg wedding. By the way, over the years I've met kings, princesses, dukes and all the rest, and none of 'em were as hung up on precedence as the aristorockracy. A decade or so back, Sting had to issue a formal apology because at one of his big save-the-rainforest banquets at his country pile he committed the ghastly social faux pas of seating Jools Holland (of the band Squeeze) next to some no-name session musician. In Britain, these guys all live in stately homes, and any of their number who makes it to 50 without choking on his own vomit or being found face down in the swimming pool gets knighted - Sir Elton John, Sir Mick Jagger, Sir Paul McCartney, etc. Obama's pal Bono has a knighthood. You say you want a revolution? Sorry I'm having tea with the Prince of Wales that day.

Or apologizing to your fan base on the left for--gasp!--selling records in Wal-Mart.

Not that there's anything wrong with that--though of course, as Billy Joel said to John Cougar Mellancamp when the latter man was inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, "You're right, John, this is still our country and we'll always be victims of powerful people."

No matter how many tens of millions they stuff into your bank account.

The sadly deceased former Dallas Cowboys wide receiver is finally in the NFL Hall of Fame, making him, as the Dallas Morning News notes, "the only man to win a gold medal, a Super Bowl ring and selection to the Hall of Fame":

Hayes was selected for induction into the Pro Football Hall of Fame on Saturday in Tampa, less than 200 miles from his boyhood Jacksonville home. He will join Tom Landry, Tex Schramm as well as former Dallas Cowboys teammates Roger Staubach, Bob Lilly, Mel Renfro and Rayfield Wright in Canton, Ohio, as well as fellow Ring of Honor members Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Tony Dorsett and Randy White.

The wait was long - Hayes' career ended in 1975 - and painful - he reached the finalists stage in 2004 only to be rejected on the final ballot two years after his death - but historic - he is now the only man to win a gold medal, a Super Bowl ring and selection to the Hall of Fame.

Others named were: defense lineman Randle McDaniel, Bruce Smith, Derrick Thomas, Buffalo owner Ralph Wilson, defense back Rod Woodson.

Had Hayes not been selected this time, it would have been highly unlikely for him to come through the Senior Committee a third time.

After winning the 100-meter gold in the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo to earn the "World's Fastest Man" nickname, Hayes revolutionized the NFL with his speed. From 1965 to '74 with the Cowboys, he caught 365 passes for 7,295 yards and his 71 career touchdown receptions remain a team record.

In an era in which teams did not throw as much as they do now, Hayes changed the way the game was played. Defenses could not cover him man-to-man and developed zone coverages to keep him from beating them deep.

More on the rest of the class of 2009 here.

Mmmmm....steak.

(Meanwhile, Greg Pollowitz explains how PETA played NBC.)

David M of The Thunder Run asks, "Are You Ready to Get Angry?" If so, this story will do the trick:

Since 9/11/01 it has become quite the event to have military color guards present the colors and be present during the singing of the National Anthem at sporting events of all kinds, and at Super Bowl XLIII this will also take place. So to say I was surprised when I received this email from a distraught Marine Mom would be an understatement:

My youngest Marine called me this morning. In the course of the conversation he made mention of being part of the Color Guard for the ceremonies at the Super Bowl. He has been part of other Color Guards at other games and has been able to enjoy the entire game after presenting the Colors. HOWEVER, this will not be the case this time. The 12 man/women color guard will be presenting the Colors and then will be escorted out of the stadium and therefore not allowed to see the game. Steven and the 11 others are quite upset about this and have asked that I see if I could contact someone and have that changed.

What? The Super Bowl won't let the military color guard stay and watch the big game? Yes you read that right. Was I skeptical? At first, but after I contacted the Tampa Bay host Committee through their official website and spoke to Katie Wagner, I was assured that yes in fact her email inbox is full of emails from upset Marine Mom's all asking for an explanation. To Ms. Wagner's credit, who by the way was extremely gracious during my questions the Host Committee has no control over game day decisions; that authority rests solely with the NFL.

What has become a common yet gracious act of allowing a military color guard to stay and watch the game from the side lines, in honor of their service to our country, this time has them being treated as if they are the unwelcome guests, common servants to be whisked away as soon as their task is completed.

David writes that up next, "We'll see if I receive a reply to my inquiries for more information from the NFL."

We'll know one way or another by the end of the day on February 1st.

For Hell has officially frozen over, as I type eight words I never, ever thought I would:

The Arizona Cardinals are in the Super Bowl.

For the late Pete Rozelle's vision of parity in the NFL, I'd say it's very much Mission Accomplished.

Jonah Goldberg spots Bill Moyers channeling Jimmy the Greek.

Jonah writes, "It's long past time they put Moyers out to pasture." Of course, if his statement goes down the memory hole, it wouldn't be the first time an unsavory element of Moyers is excused by the liberal establishment.

Just up on Yahoo's NFL page:

Tampa Bay has dismissed head coach Jon Gruden and GM Bruce Allen after a late-season collapse.

Details here.

Will Jerry Jones use the $3.1 roster bonus that Terrell Owens is owed in March as an excuse to sever ties with the perennial head case?

He's had an absolutely awesome run as head coach, winning the Super Bowl (and giving the more reactionary the vapors with his postgame speech) and reviving two moribund franchises, interspersed with gutwrenching personal trauma--and steps down at the relatively young age of 53. Sounds like a wise move, if true.

Update: Dungy makes it official.

That's the subject of a recent op-ed by Terence Jeffrey--at least on the field. (Today's politicians--even Ted Kennedy and Chris Dodd--have little on Jerry Jones' mid-1990s Cowboys for sheer off-field debauchery.)

And of course, journalists could learn a thing or two from their sports department as well, a topic I discussed a few years ago. Though anti-Americanism may be somewhat less in vogue in journalism for the next four to eight years as they go to work for The One.

The Sporting News reports:

Former New York Jets coach Eric Mangini will be named Cleveland Browns coach by the end of the week, according to WEEI in Boston.

Mangini, fired last week after going 9-7 and failing to make the playoffs, would go to Cleveland, but Patriots general manager Scott Pioli "will not follow" the ex-Patriots assistant, according to the report.

The New York Daily News reports Mangini is targeting current Jets assistant head coach/offensive line coach Bill Callahan to join his staff. However, the report also notes the Jets are not required to let him leave because the job would be a lateral move.

No word yet on whether or not this will be the lead item on Hugh News later today.

Related: In other NFL news, the Dallas Cowboys pull the plug on Pacman.

Former athlete and congressman Jack Kemp, age 73 has been diagnosed with cancer. Here's the AP report:

Jack Kemp's office says the former housing secretary, congressman and Buffalo Bills quarterback has been diagnosed with cancer.

A brief statement says Kemp is undergoing tests to determine the origin of the disease and how to go about treating it. The type of cancer was not disclosed.

In the meantime, Kemp says he will continue to serve as chairman of his Washington-based Kemp Partners consulting firm and will remain involved in his charitable and political work.

After his football career, Kemp represented western New York for nine terms in Congress, leaving the House for an unsuccessful presidential bid in 1988. He later served as President George H.W. Bush's housing secretary and ran for vice president as Bob Dole's running mate.

House Republican Leader John Boehner (R-OH) adds:

"Jack Kemp has inspired a generation of conservatives with his unyielding commitment to freedom and free-market policies. Like millions of other Americans, I was saddened today to learn of his illness. My thoughts and prayers are with Jack, Joanne, and the Kemp family as Jack battles to defeat cancer. We need the strong, confident voice of Jack Kemp in the national dialogue as our country confronts the challenges that lie ahead."

Which means of course, that taxpayers are funding GMAC's sponsorship of a sporting event with what was sold to the public as desperately-needed emergency cash:

GMAC may be in financial trouble, but that isn't stopping the auto lender-turned-bank holding company from maintaining its corporate sponsorships. The question is - will anyone notice?

In October, GMAC (NYSE:GKM) changed its legal status so that it would be eligible for TARP funds passed by Congress. Late last month, GMAC was approved to receive a $5 billion lifeline from the U.S. government. However, the company is still maintaining its sponsorship of a collegiate bowl game set for Jan. 6 in Mobile, Ala.

"There's about 34 bowl games, 30 of which are sponsored in one way or the other," Fox Business Network's Jenna Lee said Jan. 2 on the Fox News Channel's "Happening Now." "The lower-level, the mid-level games pull in about six figures to have your name attached to one of the games - that's the estimate. And the big games, let's say the Rose Bowl for example, or the Sugar Bowl, or the Orange Bowl - those figures go upwards of $5 to $6 million for some sort of sponsorship."

I'm pretty sure this isn't one of the ads they'll be running:





There's quite an interesting story behind the making of this mock commercial, if you haven't read it, over at Iowahawk HQ.

"If you thought the Jets firing Eric Mangini was a surprise, then you better be sitting for this one: The Denver Broncos fired two-time Super Bowl winner Mike Shanahan this afternoon"--it certainly surprised me, when I turned on the TV in the hotel a few minutes ago.

If you're looking to give Plaxico Burress a Christmas gift tomorrow, a pair of trousers wouldn't be amiss: "Weapons, ammo, pants seized at Burress' NJ home."

One of Ace's co-bloggers writes that "The NHL Is No Longer Ace of Spades Lifestyle Compliant", because Dallas Stars player Sean Avery was suspended for--gasp!--using the phrase "sloppy seconds" to describe his former girlfriends?

(And you thought that the NFL was the No Fun League!)

But given that the NHL is the national sport of Canada, and that Canada is a nation where the "Human Rights" Commission will take up the case of an aging stripper suing her boss for being fired, is it all that surprising that the NHL would want to stick the boot that's on the cover of The Tyranny of Nice deeply into Avery's backside?

Ace posits that the potential of being cut by the New York Giants and suspended by Roger Goodell, the no-nonsense NFL commissioner (well, a bit less nonsense than his immediate predecessor) is the least of Burress' worries, given Manhattan's famed hatred of the Second Amendment.

"Terry Tate, Office Linebacker" made his debut in a Super Bowl ad that aired in late January of 2003, pitching Reebok sneakers. And considering the average career length of a real NFL linebacker, I guess Terry should be glad he still has a job. He's a free agent these days, no longer, to the best of my knowledge, associated with Reebok, but considering his national launch, it seems safe to say that Terry and Reeboks will forever be intertwined.

So I wonder what the sneaker manufacturer thinks of their former pitchman's latest video. Here's Terry, with a little digital editing help, brutally shoving a woman onto an unforgiving concrete floor and yelling oddly Freudian epithets at her, while tacitly endorsing high gasoline prices and the liberal media:

Is this funny? As they say in the NFL--you make the call! On the plus side, at least Terry's shown only trying to permanently injure Palin, not kill her, as The Economist and Keith Olbermann metaphorically called for, when Hillary was running.

So in that sense, it's a definite step forward in an election year in which the surprisingly well entrenched sexism of the liberal overculture was none too thrilled at the idea of female politicians from either party running for national office.

As he enters the fourth quarter of his life, O.J. Simpson's taking a well-deserved extended timeout at a state-sponsored training camp.

A year ago, Roger L. Simon described how the OJ trial changed his life. On Friday, he added:

History will see the original Simpson Trial as a turning point in the evolution of our culture into a media dominated spectator sport often devoid of moral compass. Will it now begin to right itself? Will OJ finally confess to the murders now that he has little to lose? What about what's left of the rest of the Dream Team? Will they confess to having participated in the distortion of justice? Will the pathetic Lance Ito surface?

Who knows?

For now: Congratulations to the Goldmans -- those who are still alive.

Indeed.^TM

I gave NBC a lot of grief last fall for their global warming stunt of turning a handful of overhead lights off in their studio as some sort of sophomoric global warming cheerleading when covering a Cowboys/Eagles NFL game, which itself burned megawatts of power from the stadium lights, the video electronics, and the satellite hookups. Not to mention the hundreds of thousands of gallons of fuel spent by those driving to the game, the network equipment trucks, the corporate charter flights, etc.

But NBC made up for it big time with this:

WTHR, the NBC affiliate for Indianapolis, reported from Beijing and described the NBC set used for the network's two highest rated news broadcasts, "NBC Nightly News" and "Today," as air conditioned - even though it is outdoors.

"The set is outside, but air conditioning vents make the weather bearable," Anne Marie Tiernon wrote for WTHR Eyewitness News on August 14.

Thanks, fellas. Everyone has that brief embarrassing fling with the teenage nostalgie de la boue Rousseauvian primitiveness of environmentalism, but it's good to have you back with the rest of us.

Kyle Smith on the New York Jets' acquisition of Brett Favre: "We Can't Beat Patriots, So We Might As Well Sell Shirts."

Isn't that Paul Anka's shtick?

For longtime fans of the NFL, there's a curious symmetry to this story--Joe Namath played his entire career for the New York Jets, except for that last year, where he just looked entirely out of place in an L.A. Rams uniform. With the exception of his very early days as an unknown Atlanta Falcon QB, Brett Favre played the vast majority his NFL career with the Green Bay Packers. And that Jets uniform he's going to wear for the last year or two of his career will no doubt look just as strange.

But this seems to be the least painful solution to what had deteriorated into a remarkably dysfunctional situation between a player and a team each thought to be amongst the classiest in the league until recent weeks.

Update: As seen in the Circuit City ad rotating in the sidebar, EA might want to update the artwork on Madden '09:

The Dallas Morning News notes:

FoxSports.com is reporting that the Giants have dealt disgruntled tight end Jeremy Shockey to the Saints for a second-and fifth-round pick.

More to come ...

UPDATE: The Saints are confirming the deal, which is pending league approval and Shockey passing a physical.

Elsewhere in the NFC East, the Washington Redskins acquire Jason Taylor in a trade with the Miami Dolphins, after more than a little bad blood was shed between Taylor and Bill Parcells.

Remember the carefree 1980s, when a team like the New York Jets could call themselves "Gang Green" and you knew it was only metaphorical? Welcome to the brave new NFL:

Hand signals captured on videotape are once again being scrutinized around the NFL. Only this time, it's not the New England Patriots studying them for a competitive advantage, but league officials in search of a more sinister message.

The NFL, concerned that some players might celebrate by flashing the hand signals of street gangs, has hired experts to examine game tapes and identify the gestures.

"There have been some suspected things we've seen," said Milt Ahlerich, the league's vice president of security. "When we see it, we quietly jump on it immediately, directly with the team and the player or employee involved to cease and desist. Period."

As I've written before on an unrelated NFL topic, the see-no-evil attitude of college athletics should share some of the blame as well.

As Ed Morrissey notes:

Al Sharpton may get another chance to distract everyone from the massive IRS investigation into his personal and professional finances by seizing on another Don Imus eruption.

And this time around, if Imus is ousted, no one can blame this on anti-Hillary forces engaged in battlefield prep.

Just off the NFL wire, Todd Archer of the Dallas Morning News writes, "Pacman Jones is a Dallas Cowboy":

More than a month after the teams first discussed a trade, the Cowboys and Tennessee have reached an agreement, according to a source, on a deal that will send the suspended cornerback to the Cowboys.

Terms of the agreement are not yet known.

Jones fills an immediate need, but the Cowboys will still consider drafting a cornerback with one of their two first-round picks in the upcoming draft, but there is a question of when he will actually be on the field.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell suspended Jones for the 2007 season for violating the league’s personal conduct policy and has said he will review a possible reinstatement before training camp opens in July. Agent Manny Arora is hoping Jones can be reinstated sooner, which would allow his client to take part in mini-camps, organized team activities and the conditioning program.

He'll have to be a model citizen with Dallas, or the Cowboys might want to consider reopening their infamous mid-1990s-era "White House".

"A rented sports utility vehicle is apparently involved in the November shooting of Washington Redskins star Sean Taylor at his Miami home."

Last year, the Orlando Sentinel actually ran a headline that read "SUV crashes into store, perhaps in attempt to steal guns".

Having gotten a taste for larceny, clearly, the killer cars have moved on to even more heinous crimes.

Ace has some thoughts on New England Patriots head coach Bill Belichick taping his opponents' defensive signals:

If the Pats had won the Super Bowl, I think it's clear that, human nature and corporate imperatives being what they are, this all would have been buried forever, for the good of all.

But 18-1? Now it's coming out.

BTW, Belichick says it's his belief that the taping of opponent teams' defensive signals was legal. Who knows, maybe the rules aren't clear on this point.

It certainly seems like it was a bit of a gray area at one point, as Jimmy Johnson recently told the Boston Globe:

“When I came into the NFL, back in ‘89, I talked to a Kansas City scout and he said, ‘Here’s what we do, we videotape the opposing team’s signals and then we synch it up with the game film.’ So I did it.”

Johnson admitted it was “borderline” but he ended up stopping because he didn’t think the team got much out of it.

Elsewhere in the world of sports, Roger Clemens is looking for "A Few Good Men"...

The Seattle Seahawks' first quarterback becomes Dan Snyder’s latest head coach.

But given Dan's Al Davis-style track record (without a similar level of pro football success as Al's great run from the 1960s through the 1980s), how long will Zorn last?

Tim MacMahon of the Dallas Morning News writes, "Wow, talk about anti-Cowboys bias":

Sports Illustrated's Dr. Z gave each Super Bowl a grade and accompanying comment. The following comment was so unprofessional that it even made me cringe.

XIII (1979) Steelers 35, Cowboys 31 -- Yeah, it was exciting, with a recovered onside kick at the end and then Rocky Bleier recovering the final one, but this was the heyday of the America's Team arrogance and I wanted to see the Cowboys crushed not merely beaten. Call it B-

So much for the golden rule about no cheering in the press box. But I'm sure Dr. Z is able to put that bias aside during Hall of Fame voting.

I stopped reading the 75-year old Dr Z., aka Paul Zimmerman, after his disgraceful comments following Pat Tillman's death. But at least you know where you stand these days with SI, and whether or not you're wanted as a reader. It's a bit like Spinal Tap going from an act with a mass appeal to one with a much narrower and "selective" audience, but as mass media dissolves into nothing but a series of small niche markets designed to cater to various ideologies, that's inevitable anyhow.

Michael Goldfarb of the Weekly Standard writes (and my fellow Blogway Boy--not to mention Bob Dole--agrees) that Rush has got it bad, and that's not good.

(Of course, MDS is merely a pale substitute for the new and remarkably virulent strain of BDS sweeping the lands--Belichick Derangement Syndrome...)

I hope the Boston Globe is planning to change the title of this Dewey-Defeats Truman book!

(H/T: IP)

Plaxico Burress gets the last laugh:

We're only going to score 17 points?" Brady said with a laugh. "OK. Is Plax playing defense?"

Turns out New England wished it could have scored 17.

Heh.

Chris Berman is better than you--or at least his cameraman and interns:

(Headline explanation here, flashback to Paul Anka meltdown with similar tone, here.)

Fox has wisely ruled that the Super Bowl will be a politics-free zone.

Unfortunately, someone didn't get the message, it seems.

He hasn't even gotten the gig with the Redskins yet, but there's already a "Fire Jim Fassel" Weblog.

Their motto? "Why waste time"!

Found at Theo Spark's:

In a news conference Deanna Favre announced she will be the starting QB for the Packers this coming Sunday. Deanna asserts that she is qualified to be starting QB because she has spent the past 16 years married to Brett while he played QB for the Packers. During this period of time she became familiar with the definition of a corner blitz, and is now completely comfortable with other terminology of the Packers offense. A survey of Packers fans shows that 50% of those polled supported the move.

Does this sounds idiotic and unbelievable to you? Well, Hillary Clinton makes the same claims as to why she is qualified to be President and 50% of democrats polled agreed. She has never run a City, County, or State.

When told Hillary Clinton has experience because she has 8 years in the white house, Dick Morris stated "so has the pastry chef".

Actually, I'd take Deanna and Brett in the White House over the return of Hillary and Bill, any day.

Daily Dollup blows the lid off Diebold rigging New Hampshire for Hillary.

(Don't let Kucinich see this--he might think it's real.)

Update: Don't tell Bill Maher this is a joke--it would be like putting a stake in his heart.

Geoffrey Norman suggests giving the Athlete of the Year award to one of Michael Vick's dogs: "Those dogs played for truly big stakes. If Peyton Manning had blown the Super Bowl, he would have been out a few commercials. The dogs got hanged. Or worse."

As the Vick and Barry Bonds stories indicate, along with Tom Brady fathering a child out of wedlock, and all of the lesser crimes and misdemeanors of the players who make up the NFL, NBA and MLB, professional athletics in general ended 2007 looking awfully tawdry:

And that, in fact, might be the big sports story of 2007: the end, not of illusions, but of disillusionment. After all, in order to be disillusioned, you need illusions. The kid who pleaded, “Say it ain’t so, Joe,” to Shoeless Joe Jackson after the White Sox had fixed a World Series for the benefit of gamblers was honestly dismayed. He believed, quaintly, in the integrity of the game.

The games are the back-story, now. The 2007 Super Bowl? Boring, but winning it did get Peyton some more endorsements. World Series? Red Sox and ho hum. NBA finals? Can’t even remember. But the Barry Bonds story? That baby had legs. And the Mike Vick saga? Hard to think of a case, since Icarus, where the fortunes of a single star have soared so high and then crashed so spectacularly. You could have said it was “tragic,” if it hadn’t been for the dogs. Those poor beasts made it merely tawdry; like just about everything else in sports in the unlamented year of two thousand and seven.

Meanwhile, Brent Bozell has some thoughts on the year in entertainment, where no further disillusionment is necessary.

Update: While I mentioned the Patriots' Tom Brady above, I forgot to mention his coach's win-at-all-costs predilection for illicit videotaping, yet another lowpoint for the NFL this year.

Well, after aiding the North Vietnamese and then being forgainst the Iraq War, Senator Kerry has finally found a worthy advisory to fight: the NFL's cable network.

Is Bill Parcells going to rebuild the post-Vick, post-Petrino Falcons? Sounds very likely, according to the Dallas Morning News.

Update: The Dolphins are also fishing for Tuna.

A recurring item in James Taranto's Best of the Web column is his "Wannabe Pundits" feature, which frequently catches sports journalists desperate to sound like the next Bob Woodward or Michael Kinsley by injecting politics into a section of the paper (or Website) where most readers normally go to escape politics and world events. Scroll to midpage for one example Taranto highlighted from a Sports Illustrated writer.

For another example, simply check out this passage from the latest column from Yahoo Sports' Mike Silver:

Yet after last season, Tom Brady actively wooed [Randy] Moss and, once the receiver arrived in New England, he began lauding him for being a "great teammate" and a "great leader." Very few people, outside of some judgmental wackos from the religious right, have anything negative to say about Brady, but it's disturbing to hear the greatest player in football praise Moss in such over-the-top fashion.

I guess if you're a conservative and religious sports fan, Mike doesn't want you reading his column. Does that hold true for Yahoo as a whole?

Of course, God forbid you actually are judgmental, causing you to have strong opinions about someone, based on your life experiences, education, philosophical beliefs and/or religious upbringing. That skill is apparently only reserved for reporters regarding their readers.

At least those readers whose politics and beliefs differ from theirs. And maybe their editors--or lack thereof.

(And in case your wondering, I think Brady's a gifted quarterback having an incredible season, but I could see where some could be concerned over his off-field activies, which involve fathering a child out of wedlock.)

Cause and effect:

I’m going to add that very few people now actually remember what it was like during the period of the feminist movement. Everything was up for grabs. No one knew what to do or how to do it. Betty Friedan ruined a Super Bowl party in my very own home by wearing a black leather miniskirt and swinging her (not bad) legs clad in fishnet stockings back and forth in front of the TV screen so that nobody could see the plays. She radicalized a sizable bunch of neutral men into committed anti-feminists that day.

"Cowboys-Packers game was the top rated cable show in 14 years."

We report, you decide:

The Brutally Honest Weblog believes that "Jason Whilock, a black columnist writing for The Kansas City Star" is being brutally honest in a way that will "piss off the modern day civil rights movement. He's provocatively telling the truth."

On the other hand, Jason Cole, who contributes to Yahoo's NFL coverage, praises Whilock's earlier efforts, but demurs at his latest column: "It's powerful, it's strong, it makes you think. But if it's wrong, it's dangerous."

Austin Bay writes shares his adventures in attempting to watch the Cowboys-Packers game, which was only available on the NFL Network, a channel many cable companies have yet to include in their line-ups:

Thursday around noon: Richard proposed we meet at a sports bar — Third Base, on Sixth Street near MoPac. Sounded fine to me, I’d never been there but I told him the place’ll be packed. We need an infiltration plan with a seize and hold objective. Richard said he’d get there at 6:30 pm. I said I could get there about 7:15 because I had to meet my wife downtown at a Rice University graduate get-together in our favorite Austin, Texas coffee shop, Halcyon. Cool deal.

Except Richard called me on my cell at 6:20 and said the line at Third Base already extended into the parking lot. Nix on Third Base (…a vague suggestion of Abbott and Costello…). My wife suggested I walk around the corner from Halcyon to a bar on Lavaca Street and see if that establishment had the NFL Channel. Indeed the bar did have the channel, but it also had a not-quite elbow to elbow crowd and no open seats or tables to seize and hold.

I phoned Richard and laid out a Yeats’ allusion: “This is no place for old men…who can’t stand up for three hours.”

Richard said to come by his house and we’d watch the game on his super Mac. I trundled in about 7:45 PM and we sat down to watch the game on the computer.

Internet stutter galore, occasionally interrupted by total freeze. Richard decided that NFL.com’s server was overloaded. We followed the game for a quarter-plus via the “game tracker” screen. For those who haven’t seen one, it’s a small football field where the line of scrimmage moves across the screen as the game progresses. You also get written commentary on the plays.

Well, you get what you pay for, or in this case don’t pay for.

Hopefully things will be easier when we move into a Web 50.0 world--rapidly becoming a necessity as total time spent online ratchets up exponentially. (Thus explaining the corresponding Red Queen's Race to the bottom that’s simultaneously occurring in several competing legacy media.)

"Bronco Fans: Honk If You Want To Go To Court!"

I think this would qualify as the legal equivalent of givin' 'em the business...

Video of a dim NBC Sunday night broadcast, here.

When George Bush was elected president, I was told he would usher in the new dark ages. And they were right!

As exciting a game on the field as the first half of tonight's Cowboys at the Eagles was, the program that NBC built around it sure did have its moments of strangeness:

NBC's "Sunday Night Football" officially will become a "green" show this weekend, as it kicks off an initiative that will see the broadcaster televise 150 hours of environmentally-themed content this week across its broadcast and cable networks, online sites and mobile platforms.

Green week will start one hour into "Football Night in America," at 8:00pm ET. That's when studio host Bob Costas will explain the initiative.

About 90 seconds before the end of the pre-game show, NBC literally plans to turn the lights out, having the pregame crew finish the show in the dark. The studio lights will stay off through the halftime and post-game shows.

I had to not see it to believe it. Whenever I've done videos, I've spent hours getting the lights just so. Who knew it all you had to do was say, "Hey man, we're going dark to be green", and no lights at all are necessary.

Television: It's like radio without pictures!

Seriously though, all religions have their rituals which seem strange, old-fashioned, and just downright rococco to outsiders, and this is yet another example. (But wouldn't turning off the 90 babillion kilowatts of power that light-up a night game at the "Linc" have saved a helluva lot more energy than turning off a handful of Lowel Omnis back at the studio?)

For decades conservatives have complained endlessly about the big three TV networks' biases, only to be rebuffed by television journalists and producers who would respond with a shrug, "Biased? Us? Huh--sorry, I just can't see it, myself." (CBS's Dan Rather, not surprisingly, was a master at this technique.)

But lately, NBC has really let it all hang out, even on a show as mainstream as Sunday Night Football. Pink, the rockerette who screamed the show's theme song last year is a PETA spokeshumanoid. (Happily, this year she was replaced.) Keith Olbermann, who routinely compares conservatives to Nazis on NBC's MSNBC cable outlet appears on the pregame show and at halftime. This week show featured ads for Al Gore's upcoming appearance on 30 Rock, beyond Obama's appearance last night on Saturday Night Live. And elsewhere on NBC, their flagship Nightly News show is hosted by a man who has compared America's founding fathers to terrorists.

Earlier this year, retired Army Col. Ken Allard, then a regular contributor to NBC, had enough:

It is, therefore, possible to argue that NBC is merely undergoing a delicate arabesque in anticipation of changing audience preferences and the long- hoped-for Democratic restoration (although journalists generally seem reluctant to raise the tough questions that should punctuate the 2008 campaign).

But has anyone else noticed the network's precipitous retreat from journalistic and ethical standards? Not only were no apologies given and no pink slips issued for Arkin's outburst, but on his MSNBC show last week, Keith Olberman went out of his way to defend this "valid criticism" of our military.

In January, Conan O'Brien was allowed to escape without apology after airing a particularly tasteless gay skit deriding Christianity: "Oh, Jesus, I love you, but only as a friend." (Just try doing that sometime using Mohammad's name!)

And only this week, questions have been raised about the cozy relationships between CNBC anchor Maria Bartiromo and the companies she covers as a supposedly objective journalist. The response by Jeffrey Immelt, CEO of GE and godfather of the NBC family: "Substantially, I don't think she did anything wrong."

Fine: Let's hope he's right. But sometimes the only way to show where you really stand is to vote with your feet. And so with great reluctance and best wishes to my former colleagues, with this column I am severing my 10-year relationship with NBC News.

At the end of the 2004 presidential election, Howard Fineman of Newsweek wrote:

A political party is dying before our eyes--and I don't mean the Democrats. I'm talking about the "mainstream media," which is being destroyed by the opposition (or worse, the casual disdain) of George Bush's Republican Party; by competition from other news outlets (led by the internet and Fox's canny Roger Ailes); and by its own fraying journalistic standards.

And if anything, that trend has only accelerated.

So thank you, NBC, for letting viewers know where you stand. After after 80 long years of pretending otherwise, doesn't it feel good to finally come clean with your audience?

You can read related thoughts from Sister Toldjah--asuming the lights are still on in your den. And The Sundries Shack would like NBC to disclose each show's carbon footprint--"so I can determine whether they have any grounds on which to criticize me for my lifestyle."

Finally, "I notice they didn't turn off the bright lighted Toyota sign." Heh.^TM

In Slate, Josh Levin offers some very good suggestions to fix it. But minimizing the number of what James Taranto would call "Wannabe Pundits" (an ongoing phenomenon which hit bottom when SI's writers used Pat Tillman's death in Afghanistan to let their BDS run rampant) would help enormously to make what holds itself out as a mass-media entertainment publication readable again to those of us whose worldview wasn't formed on the Upper West Side.

AP sports headline: “Jason, John Garrett coach against brother Judd when Cowboys meet Rams”

Wow, this could be one interesting game! To be fair, the Brothers Judd run a helluva Website, but I'm not sure how we'll they'll stand up against the Cowboys' high-powered offense on Sunday...

Back in November of 2004, after the horrific brawl in the stands of the NBA's Detroit Pistons game at their home arena (in "New Fallujah", as Rush Limbaugh dubbed the city after watching the incident), I compared it to footage of sporting events from what seems like centuries ago--the mid-1960s:

A few years ago, when NFL Films began running its Inside The Vault series on ESPN, I was struck by how conservative and dignified most mid-'60s fans looked. There was little or no team merchandise available, so fans arrived to stadiums on Sunday looking like they had just come from church (which many no doubt had), rather than wearing rainbow-colored wigs, Darth Vader Helmets, or cheeseheads. No doubt, the games had their share of hecklers, but I'll bet that in general, fans of the past were much more subdued than today's members of Raiders Nation, the Philadelphia Eagles' crazed fans, or...the courtside fans of the NBA's Detroit Pistons.

This isn't meant to exclude the players' guilt in Friday's incident: compare atheletes of the past with today's every-millionare-for-himself attitude. (Indiana's Ron Artest, the player who was banned for the rest of the season for being the pointman in the fight, actually asked for time off before the fight--to promote a rap album he was releasing on his recording label!)

But somehow, and without really thinking consciously about it, society has created the notion that sports arenas are a place for fans to go almost literally insane, rather than merely observe the hometown team in person and cheer for them. But the Pistons/Pacers rumble gives sports--and the public that watches them in person--a chance to hit the control/alt/delete keys and reset.

In "The Death of Sportsmanship", Brent Bozell writes that based on the crowds' constant F-bombing of the Navy's football team at a Rutgers home game, that reset button is nowhere to be found.

The week is far from over, but it's already been filled with deja vu all over again. And again.

Or as to paraphrase those parodies of 1930s-era Time magazine, Backwards ran the flashbacks until reeled the mind...

Want to relive 1945? The Washington Post makes Gerald Ford look like a brilliant Cold War historian.

Or maybe you'd like to revisit 1994? OJ's back in the police blotter once again.

How 'bout 1997? Matt Drudge has the dinosaur media p.o.ed all over again.

Or, why not something as recent as 2004! On National Talk Like A Pirate Day, avast maties, for the return of the Captain Dan the Newsman, swashbuckling his way back into the Blogosphere's hearts with a $70 million lawsuit against his former employer.

Or we can set the Wayback Machine back to the new Ice Age predicted by NASA in 1971; and way, way back--to 1492.

...Where it all will end, knows God!

Update: speaking of "a couple of week links", welcome readers of Jules Crittenden and Don Surber!

Roger L. Simon writes:

When people ask me about my relative soft shoe to the political center after decades as a dedicated left-liberal, they usually say something like: “You’re one of those 9/11 Democrats, aren’t you? Like your buddy Ron Silver.” I mostly nod. It’s hard to deny 9/11 altered my view of things considerably. But what I almost always don’t tell them is those views were already changing - because of the OJ Trial. In a sense, weird as this may sound, the Juice prepped me for 9/11.

Read the whole thing.

The NFL was one of the very few consistent bright spots in the otherwise dismal 1970s, as the league enjoyed one of its most memorable decades: the rise of the Cowboys (not to mention their cheerleaders) as "America's Team", the Steelers' four Lombardi trophies, the Dolphins' undefeated season, the "Luv Ya Blue" Oilers, etc. But it speaks volumes about the Decade From Hell and the blight that it cast upon everything it touched that professional football's most celebrated individual athlete during that decade was O.J. Simpson. And still is.

Just to follow-up on our NFL-themed post earlier today, Buffalo Bills tight end Kevin Everett is showing dramatic signs of early improvement after a brutal spinal cord injury which occurred during the Bills' opening game against Denver.

Well, here's one way to build a consistent NFL powerhouse:

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell has determined that the New England Patriots violated league rules Sunday when they videotaped defensive signals by the New York Jets' coaches, according to league sources.

NFL security officials confiscated a camera and videotape from Patriots video assistant Matt Estrella on the New England sidelines when it was suspected he was recording the Jets' defensive signals. Sources say the visual evidence confirmed the suspicion.

Goodell is considering severe sanctions, including the possibility of docking the Patriots "multiple draft picks" because it is the competitive violation in the wake of a stern warning to all teams since he became commissioner, the sources said. The Patriots have been suspected in previous incidents.

The Patriots will be allowed an opportunity to present their case by Friday, sources said, most likely via the telephone.

The league also was reviewing a possible violation into the number of radio frequencies the Patriots were using during Sunday's game, sources said. The team did not have a satisfactory explanation when asked about possible irregularities in its communication setup during the game.

Goodell is expected to have a decision no later than Friday but that is not set in stone.

The league refused comment but did confirm Monday that they were reviewing a possible violation by the Patriots.

Back in 2004, immediately after Super Bowl XXXVIII, and its infamous "wardrobe malfunction", when the Pats won the second of their third Super Bowls (so far), Paul Attner of The Sporting News wrote that Bill Belichick has helped the Patriots crack the NFL code. In hindsight, he had no idea just how prescient he was!

(Between this, Kevin Everett's horrific spinal injury, and the dog days of Michael Vick, the NFL is off to some start this year, huh?)

James Taranto wryly notes that "Life Imitates the Movies":

"You've proved to me that all this ultra-violence and killing is wrong, wrong, and terribly wrong. I've learned my lesson, sir. I see now what I've never seen before. I'm cured, praise God! . . . I see that it's wrong! It's wrong because it's like against society. It's wrong because everybody has the right to live and be happy without being tolchocked and knifed."--Alex de Large (Malcolm McDowell) in "A Clockwork Orange," 1971

"First, I want to apologize, you know, for all the things that--that I've done and that I have allowed to happen. . . . I was ashamed and totally disappointed in myself to say the least. . . . I want to apologize to all the young kids out there for my immature acts and, you know, what I did was, what I did was very immature so that means I need to grow up. . . . I feel like we all make mistakes. It's just I made a mistake in using bad judgment and making bad decisions. And you know, those things, you know, just can't happen. Dog fighting is a terrible thing, and I did reject it."--dogfighting conspirator and erstwhile NFL star Michael Vick, Aug. 27, 2007

As I've written before, it's Anthony Burgess' world, we just live in it.

(If it's Stanley Kubrick's world, I'd sooner live in this one than the one with the Korova Milk Bar.)

Update: Of course, sometimes the Ludovico Treatment fails...

ESPN reports that the NFL has announced that they're suspending Michael Vick "indefinitely":

The NFL has suspended Falcons quarterback Michael Vick indefinitely without pay following his admission of guilt in a dogfighting scheme.

On Friday, Vick filed his plea agreement in federal court admitting to conspiracy in a dogfighting ring and agreeing that the enterprise included killing pit bulls and gambling. He denied making side bets on the fights, but admitted to bankrolling them.

Friday afternoon, a letter to Vick from NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said, in part:

"Your admitted conduct was not only illegal, but also cruel and reprehensible" and regardless whether he personally placed bets, "your actions in funding the betting and your association with illegal gambling both violate the terms of your NFL player contract and expose you to corrupting influences in derogation of one of the most fundamental responsibilities of an NFL player."

Goodell freed the Falcons to "assert any claims or remedies" to recover $22 million of Vick's signing bonus from the 10-year, $130 million contract he signed in 2004.

A few days ago, Yahoo Sports' Dan Wetzel described Vick's recent travails as "Unique talent, inexplicable fall":

We've grown callous to the self-destructing rich and famous of sports and entertainment, be it from drugs or drink, divorce or gambling, even murder and mayhem.

But dogfighting? Did Michael Vick really blow it all – a $130 million contract and multiple endorsement deals – to pursue this barbaric hobby in the woods of Virginia?

"People are going to start looking at me with stupidity," Vick told ESPN during the NFL draft, when he was still declaring his innocence. "That's stupid."

It's beyond stupid. The NFL employs players who have been convicted of spouse abuse, involuntary manslaughter due to drunken driving and obstruction of justice in a homicide investigation, to name a few. It's not called the National Felon League for nothing.

In Hollywood, we've come to treat troubled actors and actresses as theater. In Washington, D.C., political sex and bribe scandals are met with a yawn.

Yet this one shocked America, in part because of the viciousness of the crime and in part because of its senselessness.

Vick isn't some talentless starlet or a hack politician. He was a true star with true ability, and in his prime at 27, set up to be a top player in America's top sport.

The key phrase there is "set up"; not in the sense of being framed, but being coddled by the NFL. For several months, Debbie Schlussel has noted that the NFL protected Vick's image on numerous occasions, including banning sales of Falcons' jerseys bearing his number and his two alter-egos, "Ron Mexico" and "Ookie", both infamous among NFL fans. The league magically caused a sure drug-related arrest at Miami International Airport to vanish. This may or may not be tied in with the NFL itself, but it's also worth noting that the senior Jim Mora lost his radio show after agreeing with a guest that his son's most mercurial player was a "coach killer", an otherwise fairly common phrase amongst sports fans.

Every year, the NFL invites veteran players to address rooms full of newly drafted rookies on the exponentially increased public exposure and off-the-field hazards associated with playing America's most-watched professional sport. And every year, by protecting players such as Vick, the NFL nullifies its own message. Perhaps if they had intervened earlier with Vick, his career wouldn’t have been put on indefinite hold with such a nuclear flameout.

Heh.

On Patterico.com: "Don’t Swallow Whole Just Yet What The Media Is Feeding You About the Vick Plea Deal".

The greatest running back who ever played QB may be about to enter the ultimate dog-eat-dog world.

Dan Wetzel of Yahoo! Sports looks at one Giant headache: Michael Strahan not showing up for training camp. "NFL coaches have spent years trying to figure out how to stop Michael Strahan from recording another sack. Who knew the secret just might have been a curly haired suburban mother of twins?"

The cliché is that famous deaths come in threes, but usually not this quickly:

Bill Walsh, the groundbreaking football coach who won three Super Bowls and perfected the ingenious schemes that became known as the West Coast offense during a Hall of Fame career with the San Francisco 49ers, has died. He was 75.

Walsh died early Monday following a long battle with leukemia, according to Stanford University, where he served as coach and athletic director.

Michael Lewis' recent book, The Blind Side documents the revolution in professional football that occurred in the 1980s, as Walsh's West Coast Offense dramatically changed the passing game, and the dominance of Lawrence Taylor had a similar impact on defense. While "L.T." was blessed with once-in-a-lifetime athletic brilliance, Walsh's strategies systematized the NFL offensive game, which is why so many of his protégés have had terrific careers themselves.

"Michael Vick has done something no politician in Washington ever accomplished", Brent Bozell writes. "The star quarterback of the Atlanta Falcons has united nearly everyone against him, indicted for being at the center of a gruesome spectacle of dog-fighting and gambling."

To be fair though, I'm not sure if Yahoo's Dan Wetzel would entirely agree with Bozell on the unanimity of Vick's detractors, though.

In "Racial Divide", Dan Wetzel gives us a snapshot of Michael Vick's day from hell:

Read More »

"California high court ends Raiders lawsuit against NFL".

CBS runs to daylight and makes victims out of aging former NFL gladiators. As an Opinion Journal piece back in February noted, look for more of these stories; "Noticeably absent from this debate is any discussion about the personal responsibility these players bear for their post-career conditions".

But if the networks truly cared, shouldn't they simply drop all NFL coverage? Sure, it would accelerate the speed of TV's ongoing ratings collapse a hundred-fold. But the money created by television advertising is what inspires NFL players to punish their bodies during what they hope will be long, multimillion dollar careers. Aren't the networks enablers themselves, if they continue to air their abusers’ video?

And if television doesn't put a stop to this voluntarily, then all I can say is: C’mon Congress: your next ban on free speech awaits!

(And yes, I'm taking absurdity to its natural conclusion; like a lot of guys, pro football is one of the few remaining network shows I still regularly tune into.)

AP reports, "Donovan McNabb had the same reaction most fans had when the Philadelphia Eagles selected quarterback Kevin Kolb with their first pick in last month's NFL draft":

"It was shocking," McNabb said Tuesday in an interview on WIP-AM radio.

Speaking publicly for the first time since the draft on April 28-29, McNabb downplayed the perception he's upset the Eagles selected his eventual successor.

The five-time Pro Bowl quarterback also said his rehab is going well following surgery for a torn knee ligament and he expects to play in the preseason.

"When you draft somebody at the position you're in, of course you have questions of 'What does that mean?"' McNabb said. "The most important thing for me is to make sure I'm healthy and 100 percent and get back out there competing and do the right thing on the field."

McNabb met with coach Andy Reid soon after the draft, but wouldn't reveal details of their conversation.

Fortunately, Jonathan Last has the exclusive--and rather salty--transcript...

Having only taken office in January, New York's Governor Elliot Spitzer has apparently already resolved every major issue facing the Empire State in record time. How else to explain this?

Normally it is Jersey fans who gripe that they don't get any respect from pro sports teams that play at the Meadowlands in East Rutherford but have "New York" in their names.

But three New York assemblymen recently sponsored a bill to stop football's Giants and Jets and soccer's Red Bulls from using the Empire State's name or abbreviation because they don't play their home games in New York.

"At the very least, the location of the place where a team plays should be accurate, and reflect where they actually play their home games," Assemblyman Ivan Lafayette, of Queens, writes in the bill, as reported by The Record of Bergen County in Saturday newspapers.

As Steven Den Beste writes:

How do you enforce this? If these teams are actually based in Joisey, then a New York State law can't be enforced in Joisey. And if the teams play in New York, then the law wouldn't apply. Besides which, wouldn't this be an infringement of the First Amendment?

And why would New York want to disassociate itself with two NFL teams with longstanding historic ties to the state?

Elsewhere, speaking of sports and naming rights, my wife has some thoughts on advertising and NASCAR over at her business law blog.

Dr. Sidney Theodore Freedman weighs in on the Randy Moss trade from Oakland to New England: "Ladies and gentlemen, take my advice, pull down your pants and slide on the ice".

Your next NBC's tilting far to the left Talking Points Memo has just written itself. AP reports: "Olbermann to work football pre-game show for NBC".

Update: Scott Whitlock writes:

Readers may recall that, back in 2000, radio star Rush Limbaugh auditioned to join ABC’s "Monday Night Football" broadcast, an act that horrified the "Washington Post" and other liberal outlets. MRC President Brent Bozell discussed the Post’s outrage in a column dated June 6, 2000:

First was Thomas Boswell, who on May 24 wrote, "This week, our trend toward the celebrity-as-universal-expert may have reached a comic peak. ABC thinks maybe Rush Limbaugh can become the next Howard Cosell." Limbaugh, Boswell sneered verbally, "appeals to the right demographic: divorced, couch-potato, gun-worshiping, angry white guys. Sorry, I mean patriotic American males ages 25 to 34."

All that was just the buildup to Boswell’s big cheap-shot finish: "Could [ESPN’s baseball coverage] use another voice in the booth? If Al Michaels gets Rush Limbaugh, maybe, someday, Jon Miller could be lucky enough to team up with John Rocker."

Will the Post and other liberal media organizations decry Olbermann’s selection?

Good luck--heck, Howard Kurtz isn't even sure that Olbermann's on the left.

The day after the death of Grambling coach Eddie Robinson made the news, AP reports that former New England Patriots wide receiver Darryl Stingley, paralyzed since the Oakland Raiders' Jack Tatum pummeled him druing a meaningless exhibition game in August of 1978, passed away today at age 55:

Stingley was pronounced dead at Northwestern Memorial Hospital after he was found unresponsive in his Chicago home, according to Tony Brucci, an investigator with the Cook County medical examiner's office.

The cause of death was not immediately available. An autopsy was scheduled.

Stingley, a star receiver with the New England Patriots, was left a quadriplegic after he was hit from behind by Oakland's Jack Tatum while trying to catch a pass.

The hit on Aug. 12, 1978 broke Stingley's neck, and he spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Stingley regained limited movement in his right arm and operated his electric wheelchair on his own.

Stingley's son Derek, on his way to Chicago, said he didn't want to talk about his father until he had time to be with the rest of his family.

Tatum's hit on Stingley ignited debates about the violence of the game and made Tatum, who had a reputation as one of the game's fiercest defenders, a subject of controversy.

The two players never reconciled. In 1996, they were supposed to meet for a TV appearance, but Stingley called it off after being told it was to publicize Tatum's book: "Final Confessions of NFL Assassin Jack Tatum."

Darryl Stingley was born and raised in Chicago. A star running back at John Marshall High School, he attended Purdue on a football scholarship. In 1973, he was a first-round draft pick of the Patriots.

Stingley's hit also significantly changed how injured players are treated on the sidelines. The story as I recall it is that an overzealous trainer or paramedic ripped Stingley's helmet off as he was lying there, which may have caused further spinal injuries. Today, if a player is so badly injured that he's removed from the field on a stretcher atop a golf cart, very often you'll see his helmet still on, and occasionally simply the steel facemask "cage" removed or flipped up via its soft plastic quick-release clips, which can be cut with a sharp knife.

The AP article also omits this passage from the obit on the Pats' official site:

But just as it seemed Stingley was about to hit his prime, Tatum delivered the blow that Patriots fans will never forget, and one that most will never forgive. Tatum made no secret of his desire to not just hit people but to hurt them. He said so in his book, “They Call Me Assassin.” So when Stingley was paralyzed, many felt Tatum’s act was deliberate. Stingley never felt that way.

“One person deliberately hurt another person. That’s the way the story was written by some,” he said in a Boston Globe piece in 2003. “I respect anybody’s point of view on it. I’m not in denial about it. There was an incident between us and he did write a book and in it he said he went out there to hurt and maim people. He said that and it hurt to read it.

“But for me to go on and adapt to a new way of life, I had to forgive him. I couldn’t be productive if my mind was clouded by revenge or animosity. Early on there were a lot of questions in my mind. Questions about life in general. Questions if I would even live. But I have such a strong faith in God.

“It’s hard to articulate. It was a test of my faith.

Huh--can't imagine why AP would leave something like that out.

Legendary Grambling coach Eddie Robinson passed away this week, at age 88.

Immediately after Tony Dungy, the head coach of the Indianapolis Colts was victorious in February’s Super Bowl, he gave a remarkable speech on the live CBS postgame show, in which he said, at about 2:38 into the above clip:

I tell you what. I'm proud to be representing African-American coaches, to be the first African-American to win this. It means an awful lot to our country. But again, more than anything, I've said it before, Lovie Smith and I, not only the first two African-Americans, but Christian coaches, showing that you can win doing it the Lord's way. We're more proud of that.

Such heterodox thinking was too much for a few of the guests at my Super Bowl party, and after witnessing their vaporous near-faints and splenetic responses, I wrote:

Unlike Janet Jackson's shopworn halftime routine a few years ago, think of this as the most radical example of Epater Les Bourgeois at the Super Bowl.

Certainly far too radical for the Washington Post, It seems. I guess this is more their speed.

(And once again, so much for "Mass With Class".)

Marty Schottenheimer took his team to a 14-2 record in 2006. His reward? The unemployment line.

Is Wade Phillips about to become the Dallas Cowboys' next head coach? That's what a source is telling the Dallas Morning News. Sure hope he brings his dad's ostrich-skin cowboy boots and ten-gallon hats to the games.

Jokes aside, Phillips does bring a sound record as a defensive coordinator, is a proponent of the 3-4 defense that Bill Parcells installed during his tenure as Cowboys head coach, and a 48-39 regular season record as a head coach. Apparently, if the Dallas Morning News' report is true, all of this helped him win the job over his closest rival, Norv Turner, a great offensive coordinator with poor-to-middling results as a head coach.

Tim Graham writes that network sports producers will have to make liberal use of sophisticated audio editing software to clean up Tony Dungy's shocking remarks on live TV immediately after the Super Bowl:

Victorious Colts coach Tony Dungy said to CBS sports anchor Jim Nantz on the post-game show last night that he and Bears coach Lovie Smith were proud to be successful black coaches, but more proud of being Christian coaches. How many media outlets will use the first half, and snip away the second?

I tell you what. I'm proud to be representing African-American coaches, to be the first African-American to win this. It means an awful lot to our country. [SNIP!] But again, more than anything, I've said it before, Lovie Smith and I, not only the first two African-Americans, but Christian coaches, showing that you can win doing it the Lord's way. We're more proud of that.

The interview aired right around 10:13 Sunday night. Nantz's "social significance" question was fine, but he might not have liked the whole answer. Colts owner Jim Irsay also explicitly praised God for the victory, so the ACLU's teeth must have really been on edge at this lack of separation of church and sport.

Every year my wife and I put on a Super Bowl party in our home just outside San Jose; about 25 people attended last night. So I got to observe this brief battle in the Culture War first hand; it was a true Bobos In Paradise moment.

Sitting in front of me in the den were two couples, both in their early 50s; clean cut, casually well dressed, and outwardly extremely conservative looking. But in the surprisingly conformist culture of the Bobo Bay Area, appearances aren't always what they seem. One couple, and the wife of the other, sneered in remarkable condescension at Dungy's remarks. "So he's thanking God for winning. I guess God doesn't like the losing team, huh?!"

Gee I dunno; if a man can keep his faith in something greater than himself through an incident such as this--and clearly Dungy has--then I think he, not to mention God Himself, can put the NFL's weekly rumbles into perspective.

"Why do they say stuff like that?" was the remark I heard immediately afterwards. Well, perhaps one subliminal reason is to generate responses such as yours. (I've heard sports anchor Gary Radnich of the local KNBR 680AM sports radio and former local NBC television affiliate KRON make virtually identical remarks whenever an NFL athlete has thanked God.)

Unlike Janet Jackson's shopworn halftime routine a few years ago, think of this as the most radical example of Epater Les Bourgeois at the Super Bowl.

Update: Give CBS credit--they left Dungy's remarks (which occur at about 2:40) in the clip they uploaded to YouTube of the Lombardi Trophy presentation, now at the top of this post.

Another Update: "Tony Dungy just committed a cardinal sin in the Church of the Left: putting religious identity over racial identity. Blasphemy!"

More Mary Katharine Ham adds:

Despite the fact that Dungy and Lovie Smith both emphasized their faith over their race, all you will hear about from sportswriters is Dungy's race. Sportswriters. Achingly predictable sometimes. Most of the time, in fact.

Indeed.^TM

Ed Morrissey writes:

Super Bowl commercials generate a lot of foolish analysis, perhaps as much foolishness as contained in the advertisements. This year provided plenty of that in several varieties, reflecting the efforts of ad agencies to make the biggest impression in their greatest competitive event. However, none of it comes close to matching the idiocy of the analysis provided by the New York Times, whose ad analyst blamed the war in Iraq for making commercials more violent.

One of my favorite lines by the Washington Post's Anne Applebaum from a different front in the culture war seems apropos here:

"Sometimes in the course of a great American debate there comes a moment when the big battle guns fall silent, the pundits run out of breath, and -- unexpectedly -- the long, bitter argument suddenly turns into farce".

Update: "I guess that for New York Times writers, everything, even ads for beer or a Snickers bar have the war as a subtext. I think the guy just took too many deconstruction lit classes in college".

Well, yeah.

Earlier this week, Variety reported:

Less than a week before the Super Bowl, only two movie ads are confirmed for the game -- a steep decline from last year, when eight pricey plugs yielded decidedly mixed results.

Do tell.

And speaking of the Super Bowl and its commercials, Allah has an open thread at Hot Air to discuss those very subjects.

For the San Francisco 49ers, 1981 was the year of "The Catch" and subsequent beginning of their Super Bowl run in the 1980s. Yesterday's San Francisco Chronicle had a scary but fascinating article on the physical pain virtually all of the players on that year's team endure today, including wide receiver Mike Shumann, who provided the quote in the above headline. The article notes:

This snapshot of one championship team reflects the harsh reality for most former NFL players. Stand on the sideline during a game and you might wonder why the toll isn't worse. Television does not begin to convey the extraordinary size of pro football players, the freakish speed at which they move and the bone-rattling brutality of their collisions.

"When you're on the sideline, and these guys go past you, it's almost like a herd of horses," said Marc Safran, director of sports medicine at UCSF. "You feel like the ground really shakes."

At the start of the film North Dallas Forty, Nick Nolte's character is barely able to get out of bed the Monday after a big game. And he was portraying a wide receiver in his early 30s. Add 15 to 20 years, and the physically degenerating toll on a former player's body is even worse.

As Bloomberg.com notes:

Bill Parcells retired as coach of the Dallas Cowboys, leaving the National Football League team with one year left on his contract and without a postseason victory.

Parcells's future had been in question since the Cowboys lost to Seattle in the opening round of the National Football Conference playoffs on Jan. 6. He had a 34-30 mark in four seasons in Dallas, never duplicating the success he had with three previous teams.

Parcells rebuilt the Cowboys' overall talent level after former head coach Dave Campo's three back-to-back 5-11 seasons. But as Bloomberg notes, he just couldn't produce a playoff victory, a massive disappointment from a coach with three Super Bowl appearances, two of which were victories. Parcells' four years with the Cowboys produced three out of four winning seasons, but during each of those years, his teams tended to fade in December, unlike his best Giants teams, which surged into the last month of the regular season--and beyond.

With 3:24 left in the NFC Championship Game and the score 39 to 14, to dig up and post this old chestnut:

Update: It's official.

The Sporting News' Paul Attner writes:

He arrives at the Raiders' practice complex, frequently at night, after most everyone has left. His driver opens the door for him and starts the laborious process of getting Al Davis out of his car and into his office. The driver takes Davis' weakened legs and turns them toward the pavement, then pulls him up so he can put his hands on his walker. Then Davis moves through the dark, slowly, methodically, until he disappears behind the doors at the center of Raider Nation.

The man who once would show off his vigor at league meetings by having workout equipment delivered to his room has seen his body fail him these past few years, just as his franchise, the one he has controlled and manipulated for the past 43 seasons, likewise has deteriorated. The once proud and arrogant Raiders -- winners of three Super Bowls, the self-proclaimed "Team of the Decades" -- now are contenders for another title: worst franchise in pro sports.

And at the center of everything wrong about the team is majority owner Davis, at 77 increasingly frail yet still firmly in charge of every aspect of the operation, unwilling to step aside, unwilling or unable to move out of the past and deal with today's NFL.

Davis and the Raiders exist in a world unlike any in the league. He surely must have been angered by this season and its 2-14 ugliness. Yet until he fired coach Art Shell on January 4, the most visible sign of displeasure from Davis over the past few months came after a perceived slight to his team's legacy. NFL Network ranked the top 20 all-time Super Bowl winners; it placed the Raiders' 1983 champions 20th. Davis was outraged; the organization sent out e-mails to national media questioning how the network could not rate the team as perhaps the best ever.

It's a damning portrait of once great NFL lynchpin far, far past his prime, who's dragging his franchise down with him; and it's a great piece of writing. Well worth reading the whole thing, if you're a pro football fan.

The National Football League has announced that they will play a regular season game in England next year:

London will hold the NFL's first regular-season game outside North America this year, the start of a campaign to take American football to a global audience.

"There's great history of NFL football in London, and British fans have been great fans of football over the years," NFL commissioner Roger Goodell said Tuesday. "We're confident that this game is going be a great success in London and will be a great foundation to play more games there going forward."

The opponents have yet to be announced, but the Miami Dolphins and New York Giants are believed to be front-runners for the game. The Dolphins, but not the Giants, are one of six NFL teams the league identified as potential home teams; they would give up a home game in Miami to host the contest in London.

"They are two of the teams that have expressed an interest and we'll narrow it down to which two teams will generate the most enthusiasm for the fans in London and the broader U.K.," Goodell said.

The most likely venue is the new 90,000-seat Wembley Stadium, which will open this spring after years of delays. The other candidate is 82,000-seat Twickenham, home of English rugby.

The other day, I happened to be reading the Wikipedia page on NFL Europe, and the concept of professional American football is not catching on across the pond. NFL's European league--which once boasted two teams in England and one in Scotland--has contracted to the point where, essentially, NFL Europe is now NFL Germany. And I would think a huge part of their audience are the American servicemen stationed there.

As for the NFL itself, the players in the NFL hate the travel involved in these sorts of overseas games. Years ago, I read The Boys, Skip Bayless's look at the Dallas Cowboys' 1992 season when they won their first Super Bowl after Jerry Jones bought the team. There's a section in the book about the Cowboys playing a preseason game in Japan that year. Then-head coach Jimmy Johnson and the players bitched endlessly about the jetlag from having to fly umpteen hours, play the game, and then fly back and prepare for next week's game.

I guess playing overseas gets the NFL good press, and good television images. I'm not at all sure it's a good business decision, however.

As Ed Morrissey notes, Bill Cowher is stepping down after 15 years as head coach of the Pittsburgh Steelers, and deliverer of the fabled "One For The Thumb"--their fifth Super Bowl ring. Ed writes:

As a lifelong Steeler fan, this comes as an expected but still tough blow. Cowher embodied the Steelers persona: tough, tenacious, and smart. Few coaches fit their teams as well as Cowher did, which is why he lasted 15 years after getting the job when most coaches are still carrying Gatorade bottles for the players.

At 49, he's much too young to hang up his clipboard. He wants to spend time with his family before time runs out, and he's close to being too late for that. No one could blame him; the head coaching position has become a 24/7/365 job during the time Cowher has coached the Steelers. After 15 years of that kind of grind, a couple of years as a sabbatical seems reasonable enough.

I expect that Cowher will not retreat from football entirely, though. He will probably find work as an analyst with one of the networks, a job that will take significantly less of his time. He will need to stay connected if he plans to return to coaching at some point, and given his consistent success in Pittsburgh and his youth, that seems assured. It probably won't be with Pittsburgh, though, unless Cowher's replacement bombs -- and you can bet that whoever succeeds him will feel that pressure from the fans, the players, and the head office.

This fan will miss The Jaw on Sunday afternoons, stalking the sidelines. I'll miss the passion that Cowher always has for the game, and the obvious joy he took in it. Thanks for 15 great seasons, Mr. Cowher, and we hope you enjoy the time off.

Don Banks of Sports Illustrated believes that the Rooney family may have their successor to Cowher--only their second head coach since 1969--already lined up:

But when the news of [Cowher's ] departure from the Steel City fully sets in, and we wrap our brains around the idea that he has coached his last game for Pittsburgh, it's going to become quickly apparent that the future of the Steelers has been right there alongside Cowher for some time now. And that future is either going to look a lot like Cowher, as Steelers offensive coordinator Ken Whisenhunt uncannily does, or it's going to coach a lot like him, as no-nonsense assistant head coach/offensive line coach Russ Grimm does.

I'm not basing this on anything other than my gut and a little early tea-leaf reading, but my money is on the Steelers having a Grimm future. And by that I mean anything but gloom and doom.

In an organization that values continuity and consistency, and in a city where it has always been important to remember who you are and stick to that identity, Grimm offers the Steelers the most seamless transition to the post-Cowher era. The Rooney family doesn't have to wonder if Grimm would continue the commitment to the power-running game that has been the calling card of Cowher's 15-year tenure, and the connecting strand that has run through nearly all of Pittsburgh's successful teams in the past 30-plus seasons. That style suits Grimm from head to toe.

With Grimm, an old offensive guard who thinks like an offensive guard, what you see is what you get. He's about as fancy as a thumbtack, and about as likely to fall for the next offensive fad as he is to shave his bushy mustache and streak his hair pink. He's as straight forward as a drive block, and almost as subtle.

Grimm's football principles are rock-solid: Winning and an emphasis on running the ball go hand in glove. With Grimm in charge, there wouldn't be any need to refashion the Steelers roster to fit a new system, or wholesale changes on his coaching staff. It would be let's buckle it up and keep on going. I'm fairly sure he'd keep Dick LeBeau in place as the team's defensive coordinator, and keep right on playing the 3-4 defense that Pittsburgh has featured for years.

While Grimm might look like one of those Chicago fans from 'Da Bears skit of Saturday Night Live fame, he's a Pittsburgh guy, through and through. You might think that doesn't matter in this case, but you'd be wrong. It does in that town (How else do you think Dave Wannstedt got the Pitt job?) Grimm was an All-America center at Pitt, and was born in Scottsdale, Pa.

More even than most NFL club owners, the Rooney family is very conscious of what the Steelers mean to their city and the surrounding area. They like a head coach who reflects the image and toughness of their city and their blue-collar fans. Grimm isn't slick or particularly savvy in the way that some head coaching candidates package themselves. But he's a known quantity in Pittsburgh, and that's going to count for an awful lot in this case.

Whoever ultimately replaces Cowher, I'm assuming the Rooneys will be as patient with him as they've been with Chuck Noll and Cowher through the decades. In an era where the coach is usually immediately yanked if his team delivers a sup-par season, that level of continuity is exceedingly rare, and it's definitely paid dividends for the Steelers.

The National Football League has long been known as a copycat league. When one team has enormous success, every aspect of its program is scrutinized by other NFL teams to see what worked, and what can be adapted to level the playing field.

After the 1985 Chicago Bears went 15-1 in the regular season and blew out the New England Patriots in Super Bowl XX, their ultimate team weapon was exposed by several other teams in the late 1980s, who would utilize it themselves for its talismanic powers:

Behold! The really, really, really cheesy team rap video.

WARNING: The management of Ed Driscoll.com, Pajamas Media, the National Football League, Ditka's Steakhouse, and Refrigerator Perry are in no way responsible for the psychic damage that clicking on the above link and watching all three videos back to back can potentially cause. Proceed at your own risk!

The Dallas Cowboys cut Mike Vanderjagt today, who is either "the most accurate kicker in NFL history", if you ask him, or "that idiot kicker", if you ask former teammate Peyton Manning. They're replacing him with Martin Gramatica, who's had his own cases of the yips in recent years.

The Cowboys enter the Meadowlands, Bill Parcells' old stomping grounds this Sunday, to play the New York Giants, which is known--not the least of which, to Parcells--as a temperamental location for kickers late in the season.

Driving around Philadelphia yesterday, KYW news radio (1060 AM) had two primary lead stories at the top of each half hour report around 5:00 and 6:00 PM: Donovan McNabb's season-ending injury, and Charlie Rangel's more-or-less annual going nowhere draft proposal. And on CNN's Headline News right now, this seems to be the dominant story.

Normally, journalism's silly season is in late August. But it looks like it's full force on the weekend before Thanksgiving. And while that doesn't speak kindly of Big Media or what it thinks its audience wants, there is a silver lining to it all, of course.

Update: Or as K-Lo puts it, "You Know It's Thanksgiving Week When In 2006, Seinfeld's Kramer gets a top Drudge link."

Another Update: Tammy Bruce adds:

Rangel is using the Kerry theory about our military--it's a bunch of poor, stupid people who have no other choice in life. He, like Kerry, simply cannot grasp the fact that you have raised children who love this country, that we have young people who join up because they care about this nation and want to serve. That notion is so foreign to the Left Elite they don't even consider it. The first lesson to draw from this is Kerry's attitude about our troops does indeed reflect the Dem Elite attitude in general.

Tom Maguire wrote that Kerry himself actually claimed that staying incognito after his infamous gaffe was the key to the Democrats' victory in 2006. And certainly their keeping Rangel under wraps as much as possible until after the election was wise as well.

First the good news: like lots of other people, the 49ers are fleeing San Francisco (though maybe the Pelosi pork machine will get them to reconsider), heading south down Route #101 to nearby Santa Clara, where they intend to build a modern stadium to replace the rapidly aging Candlestick Park. Naturally, local San Francisco officials are responding the only way they know how, by attempting to bully the team:

Democratic Assemblyman Mark Leno said he is looking into introducing a bill that would prohibit professional sports teams not based in the city from using San Francisco in their names unless authorized by the mayor and board of supervisors.

"The name San Francisco has cachet all over the world as a No. 1 destination spot," said Leno, who represents the part of San Francisco where the Niners play their home games. "I don't think San Francisco's name should automatically be able to be used by a franchise that is not located in the city."

Something tells me the NFL's team of lawyers will win that battle.

Now the horrible news: 74-year old ex-Niners legend Bill Walsh is battling leukemia:

"I'm positive, but not evangelistic," the 74-year-old Walsh told The (Santa Rosa) Press Democrat and The Sports Xchange Web sites. "I'm pragmatically doing everything my physicians recommend, and I'm working my way through it."

Walsh said the cancer first was diagnosed in 2004, but he feels better since a series of blood transfusions in the past month.

"The worst phase was three or four weeks ago. I've come back dramatically since, and I'm better," he said.

I hope he's right--and hopefully all football fans' thoughts and prayers are with him, whatever their thoughts on the Niners themselves are.

This Michael Lewis profile of Bill Parcells is a throwback to the good old days of the New Journalism--it's the sort of detailed, live with the subject seven days a week meaty profile that Gay Talese and Tom Wolfe regularly cranked out in their heyday. And it's proof that the New York Times and its writers are still capable of doing good work during those increasingly rare instances when they don't have an ideological axe to grind.

Albert Haynesworth, the Tennessee Titans' defensive tackle who brutally stomped and then kicked Dallas Cowboys center Andre Gurode in the head during yesterday's game has been suspended for five games without pay.

AP notes that this is the longest suspension for on-field behavior in NFL history, and that sounds appropriate to me--although I would have been tempted to disqualify him for the rest of the season. That was one of the worst cheap shots I've seen in the NFL: Haynesworth's first kick knocked the helmet off Gurode, leaving him totally defenseless for his second hit, which required stitches above his forehead and beneath his eye. As several sportscasters remarked yesterday, the game was played on a natural grass surface, and Haynesworth was wearing shoes with sharp metal cleats, not the low, blunt plastic cleats worn for Astroturf games. (Gurode returned to the sidelines, where he watched the rest of the game wearing an enormous bandage.)

Many NFL analysts posit that this is Bill Parcell's last year as a head coach. When he leaves the Dallas Cowboys, Hugh Hewitt has an excellent suggestion for his next career move.

(Hey, if Parcells can handle Jerry Jones and Terrell Owens, Helen Thomas would be a snap.)

Every year brings a raft of articles on the stars of the NFL and other professional leagues run amok; Terrell Owens and his did-he-or-didn't-he-suicide attempt is merely the latest and most high-profile. How much is college to blame for not preparing young men by infusing them with sufficient character to survive the high-pressure world of professional sports? Probably quite a bit, if the fictitious campus of Tom Wolfe's Dupont University is anything like reality:

Charlotte’s experiences at the fictional Dupont University shed light on these questions, as the ambitious girl from backwater North Carolina is transformed by her sophisticated and salacious surroundings. Far from being the path to higher civilization and refinement of character, Dupont is a toxic impediment to the yearning for higher things, built on a dogmatic denial that higher civilization and refinement of character are even possible. Where, in a former age, the impressionable young student might have aspired to religious salvation or genuine wisdom, today’s typical college student lives more for entertainment, sensation, and release, all the while demanding and largely getting immediate gratification. The individual still seeks status and recognition. But the marks of distinction are all too often inebriation, “hooking up,” expertise at sarcasm (“sarc one,” “sarc two,” and “sarc three”), and insouciance toward matters intellectual and moral. As students learn about and fall into this new ethic, the university not only fails to stand in opposition, it accelerates the process. Dupont, that composite of Duke, Stanford, Yale, and the University of Michigan, corrupts the promising young Charlotte. For revealing this disturbing truth, the author has been reviled by those who are thereby revealed.

More importantly, the teaching of Dupont University is precisely that the soul and the moral dimension of being are illusions. In the past, the university (at its best and in principle) sought to cultivate the human soul toward completion or excellence. The modern university, as Wolfe portrays it, denies that there are truthful distinctions between higher and lower; it teaches that the soul is not real, and that perfection of the soul is thus a thing of the past.

The setting of I Am Charlotte Simmons is truly “postmodern”—a world dominated by Nietzsche and neuroscience, a world which has jettisoned the moral imagination of the past. Not only is God dead, but so is reason, once understood as the characteristic that distinguishes man from the rest of nature. We now understand ourselves by studying the behavior of other animals, rather than understanding the behavior of other animals in light of human reason and human difference. We learn that it is embarrassing for any educated person to be considered religious or even moral. Darwin’s key insight that man is just another animal, now updated with the tools and discoveries of modern biology, has liberated us from two Kingdoms of Darkness. Post-faith and post-reason, we can now turn to neuroscience to understand the human condition, a path that leads to or simply ratifies the governing nihilism of the students, both the ambitious and apathetic alike.

* * *

I Am Charlotte Simmons is an indictment of the primary centers of higher education in America today. These institutions do not well serve the real longings and earnest ambitions of the young people who flock to them, at great cost and with great expectations, year after year. Instead of pointing students to a world that is higher than where they came from, the university reinforces and expands the nihilism and political correctness that they are taught in public schools, imbibe from popular culture, and bring with them as routine common sense when they arrive on campus. Of course, these two ideologies are largely incompatible: nihilism celebrates strength (or apathy) without illusion; political correctness promulgates illusions in the name of sensitivity. But both ideologies are the result of collapsing and rejecting any distinction between higher and lower, between nobility and ignobility, between the higher learning and the flight from reason.

Read the rest. Sports Illustrated's Paul Zimmerman has a column today about the problems of superstar athletes such as Owens, and bipolar former NFL players Barret Robbins, Dimitrius Underwood and Alonzo Spellman. While Zimmerman is clearly saddened by the self-inflicted tortures of these high-profile athletes, his prescription for preventing them in future players is as clinical as the white labcoat world that Wolfe depicted in his earlier "Sorry, But Your Soul Just Died" essay on neuroscience. He seems to think that if only the right medicine were available, troubled athletes would enjoy perfect living through chemistry. But it seems a safe bet that substantive preparation for the emotional rigors of their chosen professions from their alma maters would help as well.

Is it really any wonder that institutions that combine nihilism and narcissism produce athletes that exhibit the exact same traits when put under pressure?

When I saw the news reports on My.Yahoo page last night that Terrell Owens, the Dallas Cowboys' awesomely talented and awesomely troubled wide receiver was rushed to the hospital last night and had his stomach pumped, I thought, nahh...it can't be a suicide attempt, can it?

According to AP, it is. Or it isn't. Or it was, but now it isn't. Confused? Be glad you're not as confused as T.O. himself, who once again turns a team quietly preparing for its next opponent (the hapless 0-3 Tennessee Titans this Sunday) into The All T.O. All The Time Show.

In any case, so much for those fearless NFL prognosticators who wrote, "Terrell Owens will be on his best behavior this coming season", back in March...

Update (12:40 PM PDT): At a televised press conference, T.O., dressed in sweats, a blue Cowboys T-shirt, and earrings says "there was no suicide attempt--the rumor of me taking 35 pills is absurd". Claims that stories of his stomach being pumped are false. He certainly looks and sounds fine--he says that he was working out and catching passes from QB Drew Bledsoe before his press conference.

A reporter asked him if he was depressed: "I'm not depressed by any means. I'm happy to be here--I came here to help this team get on a roll and win playoff games", adding "It's absurd for [press] reports to go from an allergic reaction to a suicide attempt".

Update: Less snark, more substance, here.

Well, here's something you don't read about every day:

A burger joint drive-thru worker called police after Lions assistant coach Joe Cullen allegedly pulled his SUV up to the window and placed an order in the nude.

The worker, who took down Cullen's license plate number, told Dearborn officers after the late-night incident on Aug. 24 that "the suspect did nothing obscene, other than being naked at the drive-thru."

Cullen, a first-year defensive line coach, was arrested and charged with indecent and obscene conduct in the incident. On Sept. 1, a little more than a week later, he was arrested again and charged with drunken driving, also in Dearborn.

On Thursday, the Lions suspended Cullen for Sunday's season opener against the Seattle Seahawks, the Free Press has learned. Cullen, however, is expected to continue to coach the defensive line during practices.

All he'd have to do is claim that he's dabbling in performance art as a hobby, and he could probably arrange for NEA funding...

Debbie Schlussel is none too thrilled with NBC's choice of singer to get the party started on its new flagship primetime NFL Sunday night show:

Hank Williams, Jr.'s (a/k/a "Bocephus") rendition of "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight (Are You Ready for Some Football?)" was so popular that the one season ABC tried to replace it with popular acts like Aerosmith and KISS, it didn't work.

But now, ABC's Monday Night Football is gone (to ESPN). So the premiere prime-time football event on broadcast TV is NBC's new Sunday Night Football. You'd think that NBC would pick something on the level of Hank, Jr.'s legendary theme song. But you would be wrong.

Instead, NBC--in a bad attempt to attract more female fans (and a good attempt to turn off the majority male fans)--has recruited pop star Pink to sing the Sunday Night Football theme. Worse, Pink is remaking '80s has-been Joan Jett's "I Hate Myself for Loving You" in to "Waiting All Day for Sunday Night." (Memo to NBC: Actually, real football fans are not waiting all day. They're watching games all Sunday afternoon on FOX and CBS.)

And you won't just have to hear Pink every Sunday Night, you'll have to watch her, too. Says a press release:

As Pink's voice serves as the signature welcome to viewers each Sunday Night, the accompanying video features Pink.

Pink as the new Hank Williams, Jr.? What's next: frosted-hair Ryan Secrest as drooling NFL sideline reporter-babe?

We predict her theme song fails and only lasts the season . . . if she's lucky. A better choice would have been someone male and masculine, like Toby Keith or Sammy Hagar, to sing some sort of football theme updated from "All My Rowdy Friends Are Coming Over Tonight (Are You Ready For Some Football?)"

Thank God TiVO has a fast-forward button.

As the Beautiful Attrocities blog noted last year, "In the future, everyone will be Hitler for 15 minutes".

Including the second year coach of a struggling NFL franchise:

Jets running back Kevan Barlow apologized to 49ers coach Mike Nolan for comparing him to Adolf Hitler in a newspaper interview.

Barlow, who was traded from San Francisco to New York on Sunday for a fourth-round pick, made his inflammatory comments to the Contra Costa Times in Wednesday's editions. Jets coach Eric Mangini said Wednesday he has spoken with Barlow, and the player is sorry for what he said.

"I thought his comments were inappropriate," Mangini said. "After he said it, he wished he could have those words back. But he can't. Kevan has already called coach Nolan to talk to him about that, which I think is important."

Barlow was upset with the trade, mainly because Nolan assured him he wouldn't be dealt. He told the newspaper Nolan was a "first-time head coach with too much power."

"He walks around with a chip on his shoulder, like he's a dictator, like he's Hitler," Barlow told the paper. "People are scared of him. If it ain't Nolan's way, it's the highway."

After making the comments, Barlow called back to say he didn't mean to make the comparison, blaming his outburst on his emotions.

"I was kind of harsh on him, saying he's a dictator. That's bad. Saddam Hussein is a dictator," Barlow said. "I was speaking on emotion."

Gee, you think? Of course, Barlow's far from the only person these days to equate someone whose authority he doesn't respect with the very definition of absolute evil.

Roger Goodell, the son of former Sen. Charles Goodell (R-NY), replaces Paul Tagliabue:

"We've had the two greatest sports commissioners in the history of professional sports, Paul Tagliabue and Pete Rozelle, and I was fortunate to work for both of them," Goodell said. "I look forward to the challenge and thank them again for their confidence."

Tagliabue served 17 years, and during that time the league's revenues have skyrocketed. The NFL will collect about $10 billion in TV rights fees during the next six years, and enjoys labor peace with the players' association.

"Replacing Paul was not easy, and I think we've done a great job in selecting Roger," said Redskins owner Daniel Snyder. "The NFL is a complex business. Finding the right person to keep it on course was critical, and we did it."

It's tempting to say that he can continue the programs that Tagliabue and Rozelle pioneered, and keep them on auto-pilot. But as Pete Rozelle discovered in the 1980s, at some point, he'll definitely be challenged by forces within and outside the game.

Ben Roethlisberger, you just captured the Pittsburgh Steelers' elusive fifth Super Bowl, and their first in over two decades. Where are you going next?!

To the emergency ward after crashing into a car while riding a Suzuki motorcycle without a helmet:

Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is in serious but stable condition and underwent surgery following a serious head injury he suffered this morning when his motorcycle collided with a car on Second Avenue near the 10th Street Bridge, police said.
Roethlisberger lost most of his teeth, fractured his left sinus cavity bone, suffered a nine-inch laceration to the back of his head and a broken jaw, and injured both of his knees when he hit the ground, police said.

"He is right now in the (operating room) undergoing some surgery from injuries he received in this accident today," said

Dr. Larry Jones, chief of trauma and burns at Mercy Hospital, Uptown. "He was talking to me before he left for the OR. He's coherent. He's making sense. He knows what happened."

Roethlisberger, 24, who was not wearing a helmet, collided with a Chrysler New Yorker at 11:15 a.m. and was thrown off his motorcycle, flying head-first into the car's windshield "with a pretty good force," said a veteran city police officer.

"Roethlisberger was talking and moving his arms and legs after the accident", the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review article notes, but this is clearly a devastating beginning to a team looking to repeat their championship.

Update: No word yet if Roethlisberger participated in this event for two-wheelers before his crash.

Another Update: Boy, when I wrote "Cycle Of Stupidity Speeds Up" this weekend, I had no idea what an eerily prescient headline I had written.

Sports Illustrated's Peter King will be part of NBC's return to the NFL this year, as such, he was required to attend NBC's dog and pony show for advertisers at Radio City Music Hall this month. Here's a snippet of how it went:

Then we were ushered into the biggest green room ever, the bottom floor of Radio City, to wait to be taken out, show by show, to the stage. Saw Josh Lyman from The West Wing; Bradley Whitford's on a new show. Got a coffee next to the 40-Year-Old Virgin guy. Sat a row down from Regis Philbin and Donald Trump. Interesting world these guys live in. They sure do get cheered a lot.

The next day I was with Ebersol in an NBC seminar -- actually talking to my old pal Michaels -- when Ebersol got the news that floats boats in this arena. Grey's Anatomy, the Sunday-night ABC doctors/sex show (I'm sure that's not how it's referred to by the Hollywood press, though), was being moved to Thursday night. "To me,'' Ebersol said, "Grey's Anatomy is the only current hit show on TV that has the opportunity to be an even bigger hit. This is very good for us." Whatever you say, boss.

One other surprise: the emphasis on podcasts, the Internet, digital media. Seems like that's half of what NBC's doing, and I hear this network's not alone. "This is the year every major advertiser wants to know what you're going to do for them on the Internet,'' Ebersol said.

Blog away, world.

Nahh. I'd rather write articles on the subject.

O.J. Simpson, class all the way.

(H/T: Tammy Bruce.)

AP reports that Ricky Williams will sit out another NFL season, after violating the NFL's substance abuse policy for the fourth time:

The suspension represents a financial blow for Williams, who owes the Dolphins $8.6 million for breaching his contract when he retired in 2004. His return last season was motivated partly by the need for a paycheck, and that may be a reason for him to return in 2007.

Drugs versus millions of dollars and superstardom. It would seem like an easy tradeoff for most men, but Ricky apparently can't put the demon weed (and/or other substanced banned by the NFL) on hold until he retires.

"You've got to get up early if you want the scoop," Becky Stuart, a Favre family personal assistant is quoted by AP as saying. Favre will hold a press conference 8:30 a.m. EDT tomorrow morning at his charity golf tournament in Tunica, Miss.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if Favre announces his retirement. But that's just a pure guess on my part, based on the dreadful season he and the Packers had last year.

Update 4/8/06 8:07 AM PDT: Or not. Yahoo calls it a "Play-Action Faked": At his press conference Favre insisted that he still hasn't made up his mind yet.

Yahoo sports writer Charles Robinson discovers that many of his readers have nasty cases of what might dubbed Condi Derangement Syndrome:

If Condoleezza Rice ever decides to make good on her aspirations to be NFL commissioner, she might want to serve her term wearing a helmet.

After mentioning Rice's attraction to the commissioner's job, the mailbag was hit with a backlash rarely seen in the month of March. Readers were aghast that she was even mentioned in the wake of Paul Tagliabue's retirement announcement. And while it was noted that Rice wasn't considered a real candidate for Tagliabue's seat, that didn't stop fans from lobbing hand grenades into the mailbag.

He seems genuinely surprised. I can't say I am, after watching the wall of insanity that the Bush White House must deal with every day from the Washington press corps, and that conservative blogger Ben Domenech faced this week before any whiff of his plagiarism was discovered.

Somebody should write a book about this sort of stuff!

NFL head honcho Paul Tagliabue announces that he will step down in July.

I'll be interested to see how his legacy as NFL commissioner is viewed, especially as it follows the long reign of Pete Rozelle, who built the NFL into America's dominant sports league, only to endure endless battles with the NFL players' union in the 1980s. While Tagliabue wasn't the innovator that Rozelle was (who would be in comparison?) his tenure was, in comparison, much more free of dissention.

The Terrell Owens deal that we mentioned last night when the Dallas Morning News broke the story based on multiple sources panned out: he and Cowboys owner Jerry Jones had their press conference this afternoon. Somewhat surprisingly, the deal was for three years; which means get ready for the real off-the-field fireworks to begin next year--probably right around this time. AP notes:

Jerry Jones was finishing yet another explanation of why he believes Terrell Owens will be on his best behavior with the Dallas Cowboys when his new star receiver chimed in.

"Jerry, I know what's expected of me," Owens said. "I won't let you down."

The Cowboys sure hope so, especially since they didn't get it in writing.

The receiver who has proven he can wreak havoc on or off the field signed a three-year, $25 million contract with Dallas on Saturday. The deal includes a $5 million bonus and $5 million salary this season, but no added penalties should Owens pull any of the stunts that caused so many problems for his two previous teams, the San Francisco 49ers and the Philadelphia Eagles.

His relationship with the Eagles soured only months after he led them to the Super Bowl, leading to a bitter breakup that ended with his release Tuesday.

"It's more than his word, it's about logic," Jones said. "This is an opportunity for him to basically put it all together and come in here and have a very positive experience. ... Whoever got him after those two experiences was going to get a more knowledgeable and educated player."

Agent Drew Rosenhaus said Jones never requested anything beyond a standard NFL contract. He may not have wanted to bring it up considering Rosenhaus said there were six other teams also aggressively seeking Owens.

"There was so much interest in Terrell, there was no reason to do anything but that kind of deal," Rosenhaus said.

After his windfall this season, Owens will get salaries of $8 million in 2007 and $7 million in 2008. All told, it's a lot more than he would've made under the contract with Philadelphia that began his bad blood with the organization.

"All's well that ends well," Rosenhaus said. "He's a big, big winner and so are the Dallas Cowboys."

That remains to be seen: while the Cowboys' offense has taken a big step forward with T.O., their ability to deliver the T.K.O may be hampered by the several pieces of the puzzle they're still lacking. And their offensive line must be healthier this season than it was last year, or T.O. will rapidly resume his near-annual feud with his quarterback--just ask Jeff Garcia and Donovan McNabb.

The Dallas Morning News reports, "Sources: Cowboys, Owens have deal in principle".

The article doesn't yet list the terms of the deal; if it's for one year, fine: Terrell Owens will be on his best behavior this coming season (as he was--more or less--his first year in Philly), wanting to prove that he isn't as bad as his self-inflicted auto-da-fe last year made him out to be. But beyond that, he's a sure bet to crash and burn again. And it's Super Bowl or bust this season for the Cowboys, given Parcell's age and this deal. But I'm not sure if they have the supporting talent to pull it off, even with Drew Bledsoe pitching to Owens and Terry Glenn as his wide receivers.

It will be interesting to see how Owens is accepted by the Cowboys' hometown fans, after his infamous incident dancing on the Cowboys' star logo on the Texas Stadium turf during when the 'Niners played the 'Boys in 2000.

The Cowboys release wide receiver Keyshawn Johnson. Does this clear the decks for Terrell Owens to become a Cowboy?

If--and it's a big, big if--that comes to pass, stock up on Maalox, Bill. You're going to need 'em.

Things that make you go "Wow": The Arizona Cardinals nab nab star running back Edgerrin James (ex of the Indianapolis Colts) in what AP dubs "almost certainly the most significant free-agent acquisition in the history of the long-suffering franchise".

Wonder how much they miss Denny Green in Minnesota?

The man who called the first Super Bowl and the infamous "Heidi Game" a year later for NBC was 86. Gowdy died after a long struggle with leukemia.

Another quasi-religious icon gets slandered; will the Southeast street join the already bitter Midwest street in seething, riotous anger?

This just in: The seething Midwest street explodes after prominent quasi-religious icon slandered in cartoon!

Update The Jewish street just exploded as well...

While I've seen more exciting Super Bowls, Super Bowl XL became fun in the second half--and Jerome Bettis gets to end his long career with a win.

And it took them 26 years to get it, but Pittsburgh finally has its fifth ring--the one for the thumb.

Given all the hype concerning the fortieth anniversary of the Super Bowl, including numerous years' MVPs being introduced prior to the game (nice Jets logo sewn into the lining of your suit, Broadway Joe!), it seems appropriate that this game seemed more a throwback to the Super Bowls of the 1970s--not quite a shootout, but not a complete blowout, either. Even the razzle-dazzle reverse/wide receiver option pass that the Steelers threw for a touchdown in the third quarter was reminiscent of Robert Newhouse's fullback pass to Golden Richards when Dallas beat Denver in Super Bowl XII.

The ads didn't seem as crazy as previous years, putting more of an emphasis on the game. The best ad has to be the Fed Ex ad with cavemen and dinosaurs, with the Busby Berkeley-style Burger King ad a close second. And possibly the Godzilla-meets-Ultraman Humvee-inspired Humvee ad as third.

Meanwhile, as VodkaPundit writes, AP reports tomorrow's news today--reporting how empty the theaters were during the Super Bowl...before the game was played.

Way to go AP: Take two Laphams out of petty cash, boys!

Update: As Ed Morrissey explains, only one man is more excited for Pittsburgh's win than Jerome Bettis.

And that man is the ultimate Steelers fan: Hugh Hewitt.

I say! I think there's some sort of professional athletic competition taking place today!

Actually, talk about schizophrenia: in the den, where I'm typing this, I'm reading the latest cartoon-driven insanities as Western Civilization clashes with those who would topple it.

In the kitchen, as we get ready for our annual Super Bowl party, we're watching NFL Films' superb half-hour highlight films of the previous 39 Super Bowls on ESPN. Super Bowl III, which cemented both Broadway Joe and the Super Bowl's reputation as the most important game of the year, is on right now. (Incidentally, a couple of years ago, I did pieces on NFL Films for TCS Daily and Videomaker magazine, for which I interviewed Steve Sabol, its president. They're fun reads, if I do say so myself.)

I don't know how the news of the Great Cartoon Crisis of 2006 is playing out the Blogosphere, or if all that many in the US as a whole are aware of what's going on. But I suspect that for many Americans in the Blogosphere, today's Super Bowl will be a welcome relief.

And all I ask is that there are no escaping nipples from Mick Jagger at halftime.

Troy Aikman, Rayfield Wright, Reggie White, Warren Moon, Harry Carson, and John Madden, call your tailors--it's time to be fited for the canary yellow blazer with the NFL Hall of Fame patch on it.

It appears that Michael Irvin's drug-related arrest in November derailed his chances for his second year of eligibility.

The Eagles didn't make the Super Bowl this year, sitting this one out while the team at the other end of the Pennsylvania Turnpike will be representing the Keystone state. But they somehow have managed to dominate Media Week, traditionally the period when the teams actually in the Super Bowl should be getting the most ink. ResurrectionSong writes:

I’ve always liked Donovan McNabb and I don’t like Terrell Owens (and I really hope that all the talk about TO coming to the Denver Broncos doesn’t end up with TO in Broncos’ blue and predominantly orange), but today the balance shifted a little. McNabb’s reach for the race card in his feud with TO was unconscionable.

Read the rest, and the comments.

Hugh Hewitt explores Reuters' "Super Bowl as Class Struggle" story:

Perhaps the dumbest Super Bowl story of the week:

When the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Seattle Seahawks meet in Super Bowl XL on Sunday it will be a clash of American styles and cultures, blue collar verses white collar. Computer nerds verses steel workers.

Lining up at one end of Ford Field will be the Seahawks, the team with trendy teal uniforms [Trendy? They're butt-ugly. Bring back the old Seahawks duds--Ed] from the rainy north west famous for gourmet coffee and home for billionaire computer geeks.

At the other end, the Steelers, the four-times Super Bowl champions with the black helmets and a gritty reputation forged from the local mills and coal mines.

Sadly, what Arnold Kling recently described as "Folk Marxism" will be with newspapers for many decades to come.

(Don't tell Reuters that Seattle has a little folk Marxism of their own to offset their lack of industrial steel-forging street cred....)

Herm Edwards is officially the new coach of the Kansas City Chiefs.

Edwards has several ties to the Chiefs' organization, but Peter King of Sports Illustrated is none-too-happy about the way he was able to void the remaining two years of his contract: "The question now is not whether another team will be torn asunder by a coach who feels he's underpaid. It's when".

Two years ago, Bernie Lincicome, a sports reporter at the Rocky Mountain News began his look at the anti-youth movement in NFL coaching by quipping, "Hello, Marv? Buffalo Bills calling".

He was more right than he could have known: while at age 80, Marv Levy won't be returning to coach the team he took to four Super Bowl appearances in the early 1990s, he is being brought in as their new general manager:

Shortly after being introduced as the Buffalo Bills' general manager, Marv Levy decided to come clean about something that happened the last time he interviewed for a job with the team.

Levy acknowledged that he fudged on his age when landing the Bills' head-coaching position some 20 years ago.

"Mr. Wilson maybe doesn't know this, but way back when I was first hired in 1986, I was 61 years of age," Levy said Thursday, referring to Bills owner Ralph Wilson. "It sounded too old, so I lied and said I was 58."

The Hall of Fame coach had nothing to hide upon his return to Buffalo where he enjoyed his greatest success in leading the Jim Kelly-led Bills to an unprecedented four straight Super Bowl appearances in the 1990s.

Referring to himself as "an 80-year-old rookie," Levy eagerly accepted the challenge of resurrecting his beloved team that's coming off a 5-11 season and missed the playoffs for the sixth straight year.

"My enthusiasm is unbounded," said Levy, who becomes the NFL's oldest front office executive.

And then came the first of many jokes.

"They say two things happen when you get older. One is you begin to forget things," Levy said, before pausing. "And I can't remember what the other one is right now."

Later, when asked if he believed he had the physical stamina to do the job, Levy put his hand to his ear and said with a smile: "Would you repeat that question?"

But don't let his age fool you.

"The age factor means nothing to me," said Levy, noting he runs 3 miles five times a week. "I'm old enough to know my limitations and I'm young enough to exceed them."

That, however, didn't prevent the 87-year-old Wilson from getting into the act, introducing Levy by saying: "I'm very proud to bring some youth to this organization."

Smiling, Wilson added: "With me and Marv, you can nickname us in the pro football world, the Two Golden Boys."

Wilson and Levy -- with help from then-Bills GM Bill Polian, now the Indianapolis Colts president -- were golden once before. Wilson is betting it can happen again, hiring Levy a day after firing team president and general manager Tom Donahoe for failing to build a playoff contender during his five-year tenure.

Levy's hiring provides Wilson a trusted confidante and a respected presence to an organization that, at times, alienated fans under Donahoe.

"We're bringing Marv back so that he can bring a stability to the Buffalo Bills," Wilson said.

With a 112-70 record, Levy is the winningest coach in Bills history and was inducted to the Hall of Fame in 2001. Since retiring in 1997, Levy has worked mostly as an NFL broadcaster while living in his native Chicago.

Levy will be responsible for the Bills football-related decisions. He will also act as a mentor for coach Mike Mularkey, who was retained despite struggling in his second season.

As Lincicome's article implied, the NFL's an interesting place: while the average player's professional lifespan is quite short, those who can successfully make the transition to coaching and the front office can often work deep into their golden years. Witness the careers of Levy, Parcells, Schottenheimer, Vermeil, the late Sid Gillman and George Halas, et al.

At age 43, this may very well be Doug Flutie's last season, one that was spent backing up Tom Brady in New England. If so, how cool is this to go out on?

For 21 years, Doug Flutie's career has been defined by one play. Now the "Hail Flutie" has its historic bookend.

The 43-year-old Patriots backup converted the NFL's first successful drop kick since 1941, making an extra point in the fourth quarter of the Miami Dolphins' mostly meaningless 28-26 victory Sunday over New England.

"I think Doug deserves it," said usually dour Patriots coach Bill Belichick, who broke into a wide smile when his sprightly quarterback split the uprights off one bounce. "He is a guy that adds a lot to this game of football, has added a lot through his great career -- running, passing and now kicking.

"He's got a skill and we got a chance to let him use it, and I am happy for him. First time since '41," said Belichick, a football historian who last month brought out a leather helmet in his media session. "It might be 60 years again, too."

According to the Pro Football Hall of Fame web site, the league's last drop kick for points was on Dec. 21, 1941 -- two weeks after the bombing of Pearl Harbor -- when Ray "Scooter" McLean converted for the Chicago Bears to beat the New York Giants 37-9 in the NFL championship game.

"Flutie might have been there the last time it happened," placekicker Adam Vinatieri joked.

As Flutie said after the game, "if that ends up being my last play, it wouldn't be bad."

And how!

Tomorrow night's edition of Monday Night Football will mark its last broadcast on ABC, before it moves to cable's ESPN next year, which also owned by Disney:

From its inception, ABC's "Monday Night Football" was a risky experiment that defied American sports tradition. From Howard Cosell's pontification to Don Meredith's down-home songs to Dennis Miller's arcane analogies, it dominated TV viewing in homes and bars across the nation.

The broadcast was a hodgepodge of personalities and indelible images, defining moments and follies, eye-popping on-the-field performances and the kind of impromptu silliness that only sheer boredom can create.

In short, it was exactly what ABC Sports boss Roone Arledge hoped it would be.

It was theater.

Television sports reaches the end of one era and the beginning of another Monday night when ABC signs off on its prime-time weeknight coverage of the NFL for the final time and hands off to sister network ESPN.

The 555th Monday night game on the network is itself of little consequence: The dismal New York Jets play the New England Patriots, who already are playoff bound but have no chance to improve their position.

The series switches networks next season, when ESPN begins paying $1.1 billion per year for Monday night rights in an eight-year deal.

"'Monday Night Football' is the premier property in sports television," ESPN president George Bodenheimer said. "All the players get up for it. All the teams watch. It's a national showcase. To be able to transition it to ESPN is an honor."

There was no ESPN when ABC began its MNF run on Sept. 21, 1970, with the Jets playing at Cleveland. It was the beginning of 36 seasons of one of television's most valuable franchises, a compelling three hours that became the longest running prime-time sports series in TV history.

Read More »

The Indianapolis Colts are 13-1, won their division, will have home field advantage throughout the playoffs, and may very well advance to the Super Bowl.

But this story puts all of that into stark perspective:

The 18-year-old son of Tony Dungy, head coach of the top-ranked Indianapolis Colts football team, was found dead on Thursday in Tampa, police said.

A spokeswoman for the Hillsborough County Sheriff's Office said deputies were called to James Dungy's apartment at about 1:30 a.m. by his girlfriend. They were unable to revive Dungy and he was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead.

Dick Bailey, a spokesman for the Hillsborough Medical Examiner, said an autopsy to determine the cause of death will not be completed until Friday at the earliest.

The St. Petersburg Times quoted Bailey as saying that Dungy's death was "apparently a suicide."

Asked by Reuters about whether it was a suicide, Bailey said, "I know of nothing to conflict with that," adding that the cause of death would not be conclusive until the autopsy was finished.

Tony Dungy, in his 10th season as a National Football League head coach, directed the Tampa Bay Buccaneers from 1996 until he was fired after the 2001 season. He turned the Buccaneers from perennial losers into winners that made the NFL playoffs four times in six years.

After he was fired following a playoff loss in January 2002, Dungy was immediately hired by the Colts.

This season the Colts won their first 13 games before losing last Sunday at home to San Diego. They play at Seattle this Saturday.

Colts team president Bill Polian said that assistant head coach Jim Caldwell has temporarily stepped in for Dungy:

"The thoughts and prayers of everyone in this building are with Tony and (wife) Lauren, their children and their extended family, and for the repose of James' soul," Polian said at a news conference at the Colts' training facility in Indianapolis. "This is a tragedy for the Dungy family and by extension his football family here with the Colts."

Owner Jim Irsay and Polian met with team officials and players to break the news.

"It was not easy, and it was somber, to say the least," Polian said.

Caldwell will take over "for however long Tony will be away and however long he will be away is entirely up to him," Polian added.

Chaplains were brought in to talk with the team.

"I don't think there's anyone here that would wish to play a football game under these circumstances, but it's our obligation and we'll fulfill that obligation because that's what Tony wants us to do," Polian said.

The recent Super Bowls have had some surprisingly close action on the gridiron, but let's face it: the ancillary "entertainment" is invariably craptacular, even when it doesn't involve a wardrobe malfunction.

Breitbart.com reports that this February, the Rolling Stones will be getting the nod to perform there:

The Rolling Stones will take a brief break from touring to perform at the Super Bowl halftime show.

The rock 'n' roll greats will go on stage during the game Feb. 5 at Ford Field, the NFL said Tuesday.

"We are thrilled to perform for millions of fans at one of the most exciting and highly anticipated sporting events of the year," the band, which earlier in the day announced its European tour dates, said in a statement.

The Rolling Stones are currently touring North America to promote their latest album, "A Bigger Bang."

The NFL has a history of getting top acts for its halftime show.

Last season, the primary entertainer was former Beatle Paul McCartney.

That followed Janet Jackson's "wardrobe malfunction" in the 2004 game during a performance with Justin Timberlake.

Considering that Mick is 62, that's one nipple (well actually two) that I hope we won't be "accidentally" seeing in a couple of months.

The role of Howard Cosell will be played...Arlen Specter?!

PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Sen. Arlen Specter has accused the NFL and the Philadelphia Eagles of treating Terrell Owens unfairly, and might refer the matter to the antitrust subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Specter, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said at a news conference Monday in Harrisburg it was "vindictive and inappropriate" for the league and the Eagles to forbid the star wide receiver from playing and prevent other teams from talking to him.

"It's a restraint of trade for them to do that, and the thought crosses my mind, it might be a violation of antitrust laws," Specter said.

The Eagles suspended Owens on Nov. 5 for four games without pay for "conduct detrimental to the team, and deactivated him with pay on Sunday after the suspension ended.

Arbitrator Richard Bloch said last week the team's actions were supported by the labor agreement between the league and the NFL Players Association.

"The arbitrator's decision is consistent with our collective bargaining agreement, and it simply enforced the terms of the player's contract," NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

Some legal experts disagreed with Specter's view.

"To have an antitrust violation, you have to have a contract or conspiracy in restraint of trade," said Robert McCormick, a law professor at Michigan State University.

Matthew J. Mitten, director of the National Sports Law Institute at Marquette University, said, "We're in the labor arena, not antitrust."

Specter emphasized that he was "not a supporter of Terrell Owens."

"I am madder than hell at what he has done in ruining the Eagles' season," the Pennsylvania Republican said. "I think he's in flagrant breach of his contract and I believe the Eagles would be within their rights in not paying him another dime or perhaps even suing him for damages."

But Specter said, "I do not believe, personally, that it is appropriate to punish him (by forcing him to sit out the rest of the season). He's not committed a crime, he's committed a breach of contract. And what they're doing against him is vindictive."

Jesse Jackson and Ralph Nader also jumped on the publicity gravy train earlier this month.

I don't recall any similar sort of kerfuffle when Tampa Bay imposed the same basic decision on Keyshawn Johnson two years ago. What makes Owens' situation any different, except that, if anything, his disruptive hijinks have been that much more bizarre?

Update: Power Line also notices the strange troika that Senator Haggis finds himself in.

Another Update: "Specter backs off threat to investigate Terrell Owens' treatment". Pass the Glenfiddich!

With a 4-7 record this year, it's not all that surprising that the Detroit Lions fired head coach Steve Mariucci and some of his assistants today. "Mooch" is the first coaching casualty of the season--no doubt several more will be joining him by early next year.

On Saturday, Cris Carter wrote that if Mariucci was to get the axe, team president Matt Millen should join him:

Everyone is talking about Steve Mariucci being fired as the Detroit Lions' head coach, but team president Matt Millen should be mentioned in the same breath.

Millen hired Mariucci, who was Millen's second hire since taking over the franchise in 2001. He also drafted the talent, selecting a wide receiver with a first-round pick the last three years. So Millen has to shoulder some of the blame, too, for the Lions' disappointing 4-7 season.

I don't see Mariucci keeping his job after the season. But if he goes, Millen doesn't deserve to stay, either.

He's still there for now--it will be interesting if that holds true 'til next September.

Don Banks of Sports Illustrated has an exceptional piece on that dark day ten years ago when Art Modell announced the Browns were leaving the football-obsessed town of Cleveland:

Ten years ago this week, the unthinkable happened in Cleveland, and Ozzie Newsome still can't quite fathom it. In that sprawling football-crazed city of a half million, there was nowhere to hide from the blast of the bombshell news that Cleveland's beloved Browns were moving to Baltimore.

It was an experience that Newsome wouldn't wish on anyone. There was no escaping the story night or day. The specter of the franchise's relocation to Baltimore -- announced by team owner Art Modell on Nov. 6, 1995 -- and the anger it engendered in Cleveland loomed over everything the Browns did in the second half of that season.

The team complex was picketed by jilted and angry fans almost daily, and it became a fortress of sorts for the bewildered Browns employees, who knew little more than the fans did about what came next and how the team had wound up in this position to begin with. Delivery men refused to even drop off soda and snacks and other vending supplies at the team complex anymore, and Newsome found himself hesitant to risk a trip to the grocery store, the gas station or the post office, lest he venture into a community that was nearly blind with rage.

"Moving the Cleveland Browns was just unheard of," said Newsome -- who was the Browns director of pro personnel and is now Baltimore's vice president/general manager.

And what was it like to be the lightning rod head coach of a contending NFL team consigned to franchise purgatory at midseason, soon to lose both home and hope?

"It was terrible,'' said New England's Bill Belichick this week, in his first extensive comments on the tumultuous closing chapter of his five-year Browns coaching tenure. "To walk into that building every day and have everyone in the entire organization wondering what are we going to do?"

Belichick's role in the Browns' sad saga seems like a couple lifetimes ago, but he's still struck by the chaos and uncertainty that reigned in those early days, and just how helpless it felt to be a Cleveland Brown in November 1995.

"There's no situation I've been in, before or since, that even would remotely approach that one for negativity and affecting the overall focus of the team," Belichick said. "Not within 100 miles. It touched every single person in the building, every secretary, every ball boy. I felt badly for everyone involved."

With the Baltimore Ravens now in their 10th season, and the "new" Browns seven years into their expansion experience in Cleveland, time has dulled some of the intensity of the painful events surrounding the franchise's shocking departure for Maryland.

But not for Belichick, who you'd have to say has landed on his feet with the Patriots. The long, strange trip that was the Browns' '95 season remains vivid in his memory, and it will always hold a singular place in his coaching career when it comes to the art of weathering the storm.

The Browns were 4-4 and tied for first place when news of the team's relocation plans began seeping out. They went into a 1-7 death spiral at that point, ending the season 5-11 and finishing a game out of last place in the AFC Central. Belichick was fired over the phone by Modell on Valentine's Day 1996, a conversation that lasted maybe three minutes, and didn't surface as an NFL head coach again until 2000 in New England.

"The first few days were kind of a shock," Belichick said. "Your wheels were spinning. Everybody was kind of dizzy. But after about a week, when there was nothing coming our way in the way of support (from ownership) or even factual information about what was ahead, you felt just like a flag on a pole. You were just blowing with the wind, with no control over which direction you went."

If you're a football fan--even if you're not particularly a Browns fan yourself--read the rest; it's a pretty classy piece of writing.

As a recent headline dubbed Terrell Owens, "Open Mouth, Insert Bench"; from all reports, it sounds like the Eagles are taking the same stance with Owens that the Tampa Bay Bucs did a few years ago with Keyshawn Johnson:

The tempestuous star receiver won't return to the Philadelphia Eagles this season -- or probably ever -- ``a result of a large number of situations that accumulated over a long period of time,'' coach Andy Reid said Monday.

Owens was suspended for Sunday night's 17-10 loss at Washington, and will remain suspended for three more games without pay. After that, the Eagles plan to deactivate him for the rest of the season.

Read More »

The Dallas Cowboys' Website reports that renowned Middle East expert Sheryl Crow will be performing the halftime show during the Cowboys' nationally televised (on CBS, no less!) Thanksgiving game against the Broncos this year.

Back at the start of the season, in a post titled, "The NFL's All-Star, Bush-Hating Line-up", Michelle Malkin looked at additional examples of how tone-deaf the NFL can be when it comes to half of their audience.

Or maybe it's because that's the only talent the league and its teams can draw upon. Because we know that when it comes to verbally attacking the president and the country, there's a price to be paid. And that price is millions of dollars in concert revenue, Hollywood contracts, and apparently, fees from professional sports as well.

Over at The Weekly Standard, Ed Morrissey has some thoughts on the symbolism of zillion dollar sports stadiums and the implications of his hometown Minnesota Vikings' Love Boat scandal.

(Disregard any ironic implications of the accompanying ads for the Weekly Standard's upcoming cruise; I think it's relatively safe to assume that Fred Barnes and Bill Kristol won't recreate North Minnetonka Forty...)

Found via Ed's own Captain's Quarters. For my rather tenuously-related thoughts on sports arenas and the audiences inside them, click here.

New Orleans Saints owner Tom Benson has been looking for a reason to leave the Big Easy for years; has the combination of Katrina and sell-out crowds in San Antonio created the Perfect Storm for Benson?

SAN ANTONIO (AP) -- Mayor Phil Hardberger reiterated his resolve to bring the Saints to San Antonio permanently, saying he wanted to close the deal before next season begins.

Hardberger, part of a sellout crowd at the Saints-Falcons game Sunday in San Antonio, said Sunday that Saints owner Tom Benson agreed to serious talks with him, probably at the end of this season.

Benson ``understands that we will sit down and talk,'' Hardberger was quoted as saying in a story in Monday's San Antonio Express-News. ``That is his desire as well. I'm pretty comfortable in saying he wants to be here.''

Attempts to reach Benson by telephone Monday were not successful. Team spokesman Greg Bensel declined comment.

The Saints are under contract to play at the Louisiana Superdome through 2010, but certain provisions allow them to opt out before a Nov. 29 deadline.

Gov. Rick Perry watched Sunday's game with Hardberger from Benson's suite and said he agrees the Saints should relocate to the Alamo City and is open to the state offering some type of financial assistance.

Damage to the Superdome by Hurricane Katrina prompted the Saints to practice in San Antonio and play three games in the city's 65,000-seat Alamodome. Four other games were moved to Baton Rouge, La., where ticket sales have been sluggish.

Can Texas handle three NFL teams? California and New York certainly manage to.

Minnesota Vikings head coach Mike Tice trades perpetual bad boy Randy Moss to the Oakland Raiders this off-season, only to find that his own team has become the Raiders of the Midway. Don Banks of Sports Illustrated outlines the Vikes' current woes:

It's only a guess, but after the news that 17 Minnesota Vikings were aboard two charter boats on which sex parties allegedly were held on Oct. 6, I'm assuming no more United Way spots for the Vikings for the time being.

Just when you thought it couldn't get any more embarrassing for the team that gave us Onterrio Smith and "The Original Whizzinator'' and the Mike Tice Super Bowl-ticket-scalping affair, the Vikings may have hit a new high for lows.

I've heard of team bonding excursions, but never one in which almost one-third of the roster potentially had to post bond. But then, these are the Vikings, and they are adept at making the wrong kind of news off the field. In August, Minnesota All-Pro defensive tackle Kevin Williams was charged with domestic assault against his wife. (He has pled not guilty to the fifth-degree misdemeanor charge and has a mid-Oct. court date). In September, Vikings offensive linemen Bryant McKinnie and rookie guard Marcus Johnson were arrested in connection with a late-night fight at a Twin Cities-area gas station. (Both have pleaded not guilty to disorderly conduct and obstructing the legal process; preliminary hearings are scheduled for Nov. 4)

Even if the current allegations of prostitution and lewd behavior on Lake Minnetonka don't result in indictments, the controversy-plagued Vikings might still see their bid for a new stadium derailed by the avalanche of bad publicity. How's that for bottom-line impact?

As bad as a Jim Marshall tackle could feel, in the good old days before the Vikings decided to write their own version of North Minnetonka Forty.

Obviously, Joe Namath, at age 62, is entirely too old to quarterback. But evidently, at age 41, Vinny Testaverde isn't. Broadway Vinny spent last season in a stopgap role at the Dallas Cowboys after Quincy Carter was released, and is apparently poised for similar service back at his old team, the New York Jets, to replace Chad Pennington, who's out for the season with a shoulder injury.

Duane Patterson looks at a DVD of college football highlights produced by the dyslexic folks at the University of Southern California:

The History USC Of Football

(Oh, like you've never made a mistake like that!--Ed. Rarely in the title...)

Sure, ESPN hiring Rush Limbaugh in 2003 brought them heaps of scorn from liberal sportswriters. Does that mean that the NFL has to swing in the polar opposite direction for the halftime entertainment at this year's season opener?

Originally, the New Orleans Saints planned to have their home opener against the Giants in the Superdome, where they play all of their home games. Katrina changed all that. The Giants already agreed to allow the game to be played in the New Jersey Meadowlands. And in an effort to bring greater publicity to ongoing flood relief efforts, the NFL has decided to play the game on Monday night along with the previously scheduled Cowboys-Redskins battle, turning the night into a football fanatic's dream, as AP reports:

The Giants-Saints game, driven from New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina, will be played as part of a nationally televised doubleheader starting at 7:30 p.m. EDT on Monday, Sept. 19.

The game, already moved to the Giants' home in the New Jersey Meadowlands, will begin on ABC, then be switched to ESPN at 9 p.m., when ABC goes to the regularly scheduled game between Washington and Dallas in Irving, Texas. In New York and Louisiana, as well as other parts of the Gulf Coast, ABC will continue to carry the Giants-Saints game, switching to Redskins-Cowboys when the Saints game ends.

NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said other details, such as ticket sales, will be announced soon.

``We appreciate the leadership of ABC and ESPN in helping us turn this particular Monday night into far more than a prime-time football doubleheader, making it part of the overall Gulf Coast relief effort,'' commissioner Paul Tagliabue said in a statement released by the NFL. ``The New Orleans Saints know the importance of rising to help meet the Gulf Coast's extraordinary challenges, and we salute them, too.''

The NFL said fund-raising efforts for hurricane relief will be intertwined in the telecasts of both games.

The Cowboys/'Skins game is scheduled to include the induction of the Cowboys' famed "triplets" at halftime.

There's no joy in Bay Area football households today: Jerry Rice calls it a career, rather than face the ignominious status of being listed fourth on the Denver Broncos' depth chart of receivers. AP reports:

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We've been tracking this week where the New Orleans Saints will be playing their upcoming NFL season. AP reports that the rest of the season is still up in the air, but the game that was originally scheduled to be their home opener, against the Giants on September 18th (after opening the season in Carolina), will be on the Giants' home turf, the New Jersey Meadowlands:

The New Orleans Saints, driven from the Superdome by Hurricane Katrina, will play their home opener against the New York Giants at Giants Stadium.

It is not clear, however, when the game will be played.

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue said Friday the game, scheduled for Sept. 18, is being moved to the Giants' home in East Rutherford, N.J.

The New York Jets, who share the stadium with the Giants, are scheduled to play at home against Miami on Sept. 18. As a result, the Giants-Saints game most likely will be played Saturday, Sept. 17, or the following Monday.

The league said it was possible the game could be played as part of a doubleheader Sunday, with the one game at 1 p.m. and the other at night. The Jets are now scheduled to start at 4:15 p.m.

``We are in the process of working out the specific arrangements, including the day and kickoff time and plans for television coverage,'' Tagliabue said. He added that information on tickets will be announced in a few days by the Giants.

He said the Saints and Giants had agreed to donate part of the gate receipts from the game to the hurricane relief fund.

The Saints, who spent the past week on the West Coast, are moving their headquarters to San Antonio for the immediate future. The Alamodome in San Antonio, which holds 65,000, had been considered a strong possibility for the game.

From AP, this news isn't very surprising:

NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue says it's unlikely the Saints will play in New Orleans this season after the devastation Hurricane Katrina and its aftermath inflicted on the city.

``At this point you have to proceed on the assumption ... that they may be unable to play in New Orleans at all for the entire season,'' Tagliabue said Thursday in an interview with CNBC.

``If things evolve in a positive way, then that would be something that we could adjust to. But our assumption is that for planning purposes, we should assume it will be difficult if not impossible to play in New Orleans at all this year.''

The Saints will move into a hotel in San Antonio, Texas, this weekend and practice in San Antonio in preparation for their regular-season opener at Carolina Sept. 11. They have spent this week in San Jose, Calif., and played their final exhibition Thursday night in Oakland.

But it still hasn't been decided where they will play their regular-season opener Sept. 18 against the New York Giants or play the rest of their games.

Tagliabue says that one possibility is the Alamodome in San Antonio, which seats 65,000. He also noted that the NFL would be donating one million dollars to the hurricane recovery effort.

For New Orleans residents, the plight of their football team is the absolute least of their worries. However, nationally, they'll receive quite a bit of attention this fall: as ambassadors for their devastated city, their presence on television this season could do quite a bit to keep the city in the spotlight--and additional relief funds coming in from both viewers at home, and those who attend their games in person. However, where the Saints will play their home games is still very much up in the air:

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As Terrell Owens deigns the Eagles with his presence at training camp today, Max Boot ponders why so many talented wide receivers are such malcontents, and then contrasts them to the anti-Terrell. Who--probably not coincidentally--has four Super Bowl visits, from which he's earned three very heavy diamond-encrusted gold rings, during his amazingly long career.

In March of last year, Terrell Owens was traded first to the Baltimore Ravens, but then decided he'd rather be with the more competitive Philadelphia Eagles. Skip Bayless, then still with The San Jose Mercury (he's now with ESPN) had covered Owens' hijinks with the 49ers. (Which included the Sharpie Incident, the Pom-Pom Incident, the dancing on the Dallas Cowboys' Star Logo at Center Field Incident, etc.) He predicted that that Terrell would cause a fair amount of headaches and sleepless nights for Eagles head coach Andy Reid:

Shortly into a Tuesday news conference that felt more like a Super Bowl celebration, Philadelphia Eagles Coach Andy Reid made the mistake of calling his new savior Ter-RELL.

Sitting next to Reid, perhaps for the last time, Terrell Owens interrupted his new scapegoat -- sorry, coach. ``It's TERR-ell,'' said Owens, playfully slapping Reid on his back.

As tough a disciplinarian as Reid is, the man has no idea what he has gotten himself into. Neither, for that matter, does his ``savior.''

Be careful what you wish for, Philadelphia. You, too, T.O.

Bayless was right on both counts, but a season too soon. After a relatively benign first year that saw Owens become QB Donovan McNabb's primary target, Owens has demanded that his contract be reworked.

Why? For his family, which seems like a rather odd argument (but definitely of the moment, as S. T. Karnick recently noted). Owens and his family currently live in the attractive south Jersey suburb of Moorestown. It's a nice era (and an old stomping ground of mine), but it's a safe bet that the average working man can eke by there on $49 million (which includes a $7.5 million roster bonus that kicks in next off-season) that Owens will receive under his current contract with the Eagles.

So should he get a raise? Right now, the Eagles, who have become the dominant team in the NFC thanks to their shrewd handling of the salary cap, are having none of it. As Rick Gosselin of The Dallas Morning News wrote in late July (subscription may be required):

If the Eagles redo Owens, what’s to stop Donovan McNabb from marching in and demanding that his contract be reworked? Then Jevon Kearse? Then Brian Dawkins? If you renegotiate the contract of one unhappy star, you’ll soon have a bunch of unhappy stars on your team who are going to want their contracts redone as well.

That’s why the Eagles are drawing the line with Owens. He agreed to a seven-year contract last summer and received $9.16 million from the Eagles in 2004 in salary, signing bonus and roster bonus. There are no such bonuses in Year 2 of his contract, so he stands to receive just his base salary of $3.25 million in 2005.

Owens liked playing football a lot more when he was receiving $9 million a year. Who wouldn’t? But Owens knew the terms of the contract when he signed. He knew there’d be less money in the second year. If he wasn’t prepared to live up to the terms of the contract, why sign it?

The Eagles didn’t win a Super Bowl before Owens arrived. And they didn’t win one last year with him. In fact, the Eagles won two playoff games to reach the Super Bowl without Owens. The Eagles were a good team before Owens arrived and they’ll be a good team after he’s gone.

This is a franchise that knows how to run a successful business. There’s no one better at the salary cap than Joe Banner, and Philadelphia does a great job of drafting to keep young players stacked in the queue.

The Eagles allowed four Pro Bowl players to leave in the last three years: pass rusher Hugh Douglas, cornerbacks Troy Vincent and Bobby Taylor and guard Jermane Mayberry. They had one thing in common: all were over the age of 30. That’s Salary Cap 101 – do not pay age. Owens turns 32 this season. So don’t look for the Eagles to back down on this one.

As a result, Owens has been, needless to say, a tremendous distraction to the Eagles in training camp this year. How bad? Well, in the story's latest twist, Reid sent him home for a week yesterday, as Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports writes:

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I caught the last quarter of the Dolphins/Bears NFL Hall of Fame Game yesterday (I TiVoed it, but I'm not sure if I'll watch the rest, as it's tough to get too worked up over preseason football). Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports says that despite the return of Ricky Williams, and a new head coach, the Dolphins' offensive line could be keep its offense stalled this year:

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The battered Raiders quarterback is trading his cleats for a microphone:

Rich Gannon is leaving the NFL after missing most of last season with a broken vertebra in his neck, and ready to move to the TV booth.

The 39-year-old quarterback for the Oakland Raiders was to officially retire Saturday at an afternoon news conference at the team's training facility in the California wine country. The announcement had been expected for months.

Gannon, the 2002 NFL MVP, already has signed with CBS Sports as an NFL game analyst after playing 18 seasons in the league. He guided the Raiders to the 2003 Super Bowl before spending much of the last two seasons injured.

He injured his neck in the third week last season in a helmet-to-helmet collision with Tampa Bay linebacker Derrick Brooks.

Gannon threw for 28,743 yards and 180 touchdowns in his career with Minnesota, Washington, Kansas City and Oakland. He won his MVP award while leading the Raiders to the Super Bowl in the 2002 season, passing for 4,689 yards and 26 touchdowns while completing more than 67 percent of his passes.

Gannon tried to help any way possible last season, attending meetings and games while wearing a bulky, plastic brace. He consulted with four of the country's top neck and spine specialists, and they advised him not to play last season. Gannon held out hope of playing this year though he knew it was unlikely.

Meanwhile, the first NFL preseason game of the season was played very early this morning if you're in an American time zone: Falcons 27, Colts 21 in the American Bowl, played this year in the Tokyo Dome.

The 2005 NFL season--or at least its preseason--gets under way this weekend, with two preseason games to kick things off. On Sunday is the American Bowl, featuring Indianapolis versus Atlanta, playing in Japan's Tokyo Dome. (Players hate the umpteen hour flights across the Pacific, along with the ensuing jetlag and disruption to their internal clocks, which is why Edgerrin James, the Colts' superstar running back threatened not to play.)

And Monday is the Hall of Fame game, pitting Chicago against Miami, and the return of the Dolphins' prodigal halfback, Ricky Williams.

The Hall of Fame is also where 1920s quarterback Benny Friedman will be inducted posthumously, along with two modern, and very much living counterparts at that same position, Dan Marino and Steve Young. AP notes that also joining them posthumously in enshrinement in Canton this weekend will be Fritz Pollard, the NFL's first black head coach:

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Late last night, I started to post about the Arizona Cardinals' new uniforms, but then decided to sleep on it. My first take was that they were hideous--but really, it's just the all blood-red bodysuit-style rig that's included in the mix; the all-white uniform and white pants with red jersey variant aren't that bad.

But like the Cincinnati Bengals' recently updated dated uniforms, they're certainly no breakthrough in NFL sartorial standards, which peaked in the late 1970s, it seems. On the other hand, both teams' uniform designs place an additional emphasis on the two oft-beleaguered franchises: as Chris Collinsworth once said when the Bengals adopted their striped-helmets in the early 1980s, you'd better be winners when you look like that!

Charles Robinson of Yahoo Sports says that the freshness date may be expiring soon on the Kansas City Chiefs:

Even the tools of greatness fade. Chisels dull, paint brushes fray and hands become arthritic. The trick of the creator is to grasp the last moment – to not wake up on a Monday morning with the realization that he slept through Sunday's last hurrah.

It's a cruel lesson in the NFL, where franchises, coaches and players are notoriously absent-minded about the expiration date on dominance. So maybe it's a surprise to see the Kansas City Chiefs so self-aware, with a head coach unafraid to make his own retirement seem imminent and an offensive roster that doesn't kid itself about a bottom-heavy hour glass.

The window is closing on one of the league's most prolific scoring creations, and the Chiefs are determined to enjoy every waking moment.

"There is an air that if they don't win it soon that it might be too late," coach Dick Vermeil said, reflecting on the urgency felt in the Chiefs' training camp. "Will Shields may not be not here, Willie Roaf may not be here, Eddie Kennison, too. … We talk about it. There's nothing that generates effort in training camp better than a sense of urgency, a sense of purpose and a focus to win."

Not that Kansas City didn't have all those things last season – or back in 2001, when Vermeil brought together quarterback Trent Green and running back Priest Holmes and laid the foundation to an offensive line that would become the team's central nervous system. The Chiefs felt the need to be great then, too.

Yet, here they are, entering the 15th anniversary of training camp in River Falls and seeming like parts of the roster have been around exactly that long. Shields and Roaf, the anchors of an offensive line more stifling than the Great Wall of China, have pondered retirement and likely won't be back in 2006. Kennison will be 33 in January, and even relatively low-mileage stars like Green and Holmes enter the season at 35 and 31, respectively.

Without a doubt, time has crept up on an offense that has packed the league's most impressive scoring punch over the last three seasons.

"We like to say we're not one of the older offensive teams, but we're one of the vintage teams," Vermeil said. "If you study the history of the National Football League, some of the finest offensive teams in the league were very experienced."

Likewise, many were also remarkably close to falling off a ledge. One need only look at AFC West rival Oakland, which had its own impressive "vintage" offense earlier this decade.

Much like Vermeil, former Raiders coach Jon Gruden hitched his wagon to stars late in their prime, lifting the team to prominence on a mixture of talent and experience. But the same Raiders team that rode a geriatric wave to a Super Bowl in 2002 saw a dropoff soon after, as Pro Bowlers like offensive tackle Lincoln Kennedy, quarterback Rich Gannon and wide receivers Jerry Rice and Tim Brown began to retire or decline.

The Chiefs aren't to that point just yet. Watching practice for five minutes is enough to see the hallmarks of greatness are still there.

But it sounds like the window of opportunity is closing fast. And like the post-Triplets Dallas Cowboys, post-Gruden Raiders, and post-Mariucci 49ers, their next phase could be painful to watch.

Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin and Emmitt Smith, were the famed "Triplets" who brought three Super Bowl trophies to the Dallas Cowboys in the 1990s. (And thanks to Irvin's antics, a fair amount of infamy as well.) Fittingly, they're being inducted into the Ring of Honor that circles the luxury suites at the Cowboys' Texas Stadium on Monday night as a trio, September 19th, at halftime.

That game is the Cowboys' home opener against the Washington Redskins, the Cowboys' historic nemesis, against whom the Triplets wreaked such havoc in the mid-'90s. Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is giving up three separate very big paydays by inducting them as a group, rather than risking that one man being seen (especially by the NFL's Hall of Fame committee) as more deserving than the others by going in first.

No word yet if the Triplets will come running out at halftime from a tunnel with a bobbing inflatable Cowboys helmet festooned with Levitra ads and oozing dry ice...

Don Banks of Sports Illustrated welcomes Ricky Williams back into the NFL, after his year-long disappearing act, and explains to Ricky what he's missed during his hiatus:

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Sad news from the football world, as NFL Hall of Fame head coach Hank Stram died today, at age 82:

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Even the Russians, I guess. AP reports that "Russian President Vladimir Putin walked off with New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft's diamond-encrusted 2005 Super Bowl ring, but was it a generous gift or a very expensive international misunderstanding?":

Following a meeting of American business executives and Putin at Konstantinovsky Palace near St. Petersburg on Saturday, Kraft showed the ring to Putin -- who tried it on, put it in his pocket and left, according to Russian news reports.

It wasn't clear if Kraft, whose business interests include paper and packaging companies and venture capital investments, intended that Putin keep the ring.

Patriots spokesman Stacey James said Wednesday that Kraft was traveling and he hadn't talked to him in four or five days, despite e-mails and calls. ``He's still overseas, I can't even tell you where. ... He's not due back until next week.''

``It's an incredible story. I just haven't been able to talk to Robert Kraft to confirm the story,'' James told The Associated Press.

However, a Kremlin official who spoke on condition of anonymity out of fear of compromising his position told the AP the ring was a present. ``Such a present was made,'' the official said.

He said Putin had given the ring to the Kremlin library where other foreign gifts are kept.

James said the ring's worth was ``substantially more'' than $15,000, as the value had been reported. He refused to be specific, but noted that the ring has 124 diamonds.

Kraft handed out Super Bowl rings to players and coaches at his home two weeks ago.

Bob--let him keep it. It'll be better for your health that way.

Update:The story quoted above was its first draft. If you click on the Yahoo link above (and what the heck, here, too), here's how it now reads:

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There's big changes afoot in terms of network NFL coverage starting next year: ABC's Monday Night Football will be going to cable's ESPN; NBC returns to broadcasting the NFL with a Sunday night football package, which of course, used to be the exclusive domain of ESPN (and TNT prior to that). It sounds like ESPN may be using their existing Sunday night crew for Monday Night Football--because John Madden is jumping ship to NBC, thanks to what is presumably, a lucrative new contract:

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In a piece on the Weekly Standard's Website titled "Disaster by the Bay", Bill Whalen asks if the current moribund state of San Francisco sports is "some kind of cosmic payback":

Perhaps this is a case of Californians at long last getting what we deserve. Our fellow Americans view us as narcissism personified--a nation-state more interested in self-esteem and self-tanning than self-defense or self-sustaining economic growth. Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that a me-first population does so poorly at team sports.

It makes me nostalgic for my younger days in the nation's capital, where the worst they could say about the lousy baseball team--the one that ditched us for Minnesota, before the other one that left us for Texas, before the current one that came to us from Montreal--was "first in war, first in peace, and last in the America League". Here's hoping Northern California sees a turnaround, before they start calling us "first in anti-war, and last in pretty much everything else."

Heh.

In the Weekly Standard, Dean Barnett writes that with three Super Bowl rings on his fingers, Tom Brady has gone from a no-name sixth round draft choice by the New England Patriots in 2000, to that rarest of professional sportsmen: a role model for others.

I haven't football-blogged in a while, but there's a story via AP about big changes in TV's NFL coverage, starting in 2006:

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In God's Coach, his 1990 tell-all history of the Tom Landry-era Dallas Cowboys, Skip Bayless wrote that Randy White, the Cowboys' Hall of Fame defensive lineman, started bulking up on steroids in the mid to late 1970s. He quotes White as saying he started using them after lining up against the Pittsburgh Steelers' hulking offensive linemen. "Man", White said, "I'd look across the line at those Steelers with their sleeves rolled up on those huge arms, and well, I had to do something. I figured they were using steroids too."

Former Buffalo Bills linebacker Jim Haslett, who's now head coach of the New Orleans Saints said yesterday that it was actually the Steelers of the 1970s that introduced the rage for 'roids into the NFL:

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This is pretty cool! The Kansas City Chiefs' official Website runs a piece quoting from the 2002 article I wrote about Weblogs for SpinTech and Catholic Exchange:

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Most sports fans remember Lynn Swann from his days as a Pittsburgh Steeler, where he helped his team win four Super Bowls in the 1970s, before retiring with a bust in Canton. But since he's recently announced that he's considering running for the governorship of Pennsylvania, Carpe Bonum looks at Swann's political views, and dubs them radical chic ultra leftwing surprisingly conventional, with the exception of the "vicious attack on bloggers" he once made:

The computer is a wonderful tool, but it should not be a way of life for everybody where you sit in front of the computer and you do nothing else.

He'll never earn the respect of the Blogosphere with an attitude like that!

(Via Betsy Newmark.)

Well, not exactly. However, Reggie Fowler, the multimillionaire entrepreneurial tycoon who is planning to buy the Minnesota Vikings from its current owner, the multimillionaire entrepreneurial tycoon Red McCombs, is currently having a bit of a fuss with the press concerning his resumé--which contains, shall we say, several items that have been slightly exaggerated:

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The Pittsburgh Steelers' hall of fame wide receiver Lynn Swann is entering a new competition: running for governor of Pennsylvania.

He's certainly got a huge leg-up on name recognition, but I'm not sure how well he'll sell to Iggles fans. Fortunately, the Steelers and Eagles are in different conferences in the NFL, and rarely play each other, except in the preseason.

(Captain Ed notes one immediate upside: Cleveland Browns fan Hugh Hewitt "will have to learn to love the Pittsburgh Steelers. A perfect world will truly have arrived!" Heh.)

And this seems like as good a place as any to hang news about current NFL players: Randy Moss is apparently headed to Oakland, where his bad boy image makes him a natural. And Drew Bledsoe is definitely heading to Dallas, where he'll be reunited with Bill Parcells. The Dallas press have been loathing the idea (even before it was officially announced), but Bledsoe, at 33, probably still has a few decent years left, and is familar with Parcells' tough Lombardi-era style of coaching.

I say! I think there's some sort of professional athletic competition taking place today!

Actually, I haven't been NFL-blogging as much this season as in years past, I guess because the election and its aftermath dominated my blogging up until the end of November.

But this is an amusing story from AP: Chuck Bednarik, who was the last real two-way player in football (I know Deion Sanders and other modern defensive players have played a little on the offense, but Bednarik played both sides of the ball for 60 minutes) and was on the Eagles' 1960 championship. He doesn't want the Eagles to win today. He wants his team from 45 years ago to remain the Eagles' last championship. Apparently, it's largely because he's miffed that today's plays make millions, and that Eagles' owner Jeffrey Lurrie didn't buy $1,500 worth of Bednarik's biography to distribute to the players.

I had no idea Concrete Charlie was such a sore winner.

Five years ago, the Internet bubble peaked, and the lights would soon go out on hundreds, if not thousands, of ill-conceived Internet-based business ventures. But not before more than a dozen of them spent an average of $2.2 million for 30-second spots during Super Bowl XXXIV, which featured the St. Louis Rams and the Tennessee Titans.

Forbes has an amusing slide show of the ads that ran on that halcyon day--and where the companies that paid for them are today.

I'm watching the NFL Channel's Game of the Week, last week's Chargers/Jets game from the first round of the playoffs. I didn't deliberately program it; it just happened to be on the TiVo box because how I initially set it up.

But that's OK: watching this NFL Films presentation is a reminder that when they're clicking on eight cylinders, they're capable of producing visual poetry. Even forgetting what they're doing--showing highlights from a football game--it's dazzling filmmaking: perfectly matched cuts, rhythmically edited montages, great overlays of multiple sound sources (the announcers from the AM radio broadcast of the game, the mic'ed up players, the background score, crowd sounds, etc.) and on and on. The fact that they can get this stuff on the air in less than a week, as opposed to the weeks and weeks and weeks that many Hollywood films take for editing is also amazing. (I profiled NFL Films last year at Tech Central Station, incidentally.)

And that the NFL basically created their own cable channel to run these shows is the icing on the cake.

There's been a lot about pro football that's been frustrating these past couple of years, very little of which has anything to do with the games themselves (including, but not limited to Rush Limbaugh's controversies; NippleGate; the T.O./Nicolette Sheridan towel incident; the endless Levitra ads; Randy Moss's simulated mooning and butt wiping, etc.). But in terms of the quantity--and at its best, the quality of the content that's available, it's really a golden age for NFL fans.

In a just world, Fox would garner universal praise for nixing this wardrobe malfunction.

Andrew Peyton Thomas has a moving tribute to Reggie White at NRO.

Brian Baldinger writes that owner John York has driven the San Francisco 49ers into the ground:

Near the end of my playing career, the 49ers flew me to San Francisco for a physical. This was in 1994, when the 49ers were a powerhouse and every player in the league would have loved to wear the red and gold.

I remember walking into their practice facility in Santa Clara. There were the Vince Lombardi trophies. There were lockers belonging to Steve Young and Jerry Rice. There was Bill Walsh on the practice field, no longer a head coach, but still The Man in the model organization in the NFL. I felt like I was on hallowed ground.

I felt much different when I visited the 49ers last week. From the fading "SF" on the awning atop the entrance to the practice facility to the absence of star players to the presence of a head coach who isn't wanted, it's a whole new atmosphere -- an atmosphere of defeat, despair and hopelessness.

Baldinger suggests that York finds the next Bill Walsh to run their team; Larry Beil goes one better: "Other NFL owners have encouraged York to sell the team, but he refuses".

An NFL team is the most elite franchise in the world to own, and if some of the other 31 members of the club are suggesting that you sell, you know you're really doing an awful job. Take their advice John.

Darren Copeland has a modest proposal to curb Detroit-style violence in the stands.

Ricky Williams has apparently decided to hang it up for good, rather than try to return to the NFL after retiring a nanosecond before flunking a league-mandated drug test. AP writes:

The 1998 Heisman Trophy winner needed to let the league know his decision by Thursday so he could be moved from the retired list to the suspended list by the deadline. He would have served the suspension for the Miami Dolphins' final four games, starting Dec. 12 at Denver.

"Ricky Williams has declined to accept the terms of his reinstatement,'' NFL spokesman Greg Aiello said.

Those terms included a promise Williams would play next season and re-enter the NFL drug program immediately. He would have been tested on a regular basis.

"The NFL sought assurances that Ricky is indeed committed to playing,'' said Cornwell, who would not disclose exactly why Williams decided against the deal.

Dolphins spokesman Harvey Greene wouldn't comment, saying the matter is between Williams and the NFL.

Williams, 27, stunned his team by retiring shortly before Miami opened training camp in July. The Dolphins filed a lawsuit in federal court against the running back, seeking the $8.6 million an arbitrator ruled he owes the team for breaching his contract. Williams is fighting the decision.

He gave up the $5 million he would have earned this season, which would have been his sixth in the NFL, amid reports he faced suspension for substance abuse. He is now enrolled in a 17-month course at the California College of Ayurveda in Grass Valley, Calif., studying holistic medicine.

Williams has social-anxiety disorder and was a spokesman for an anti-depressant. He said marijuana helped him after he stopped using the anti-depressant.

He who flunks multiple drug tests should not be spotted spending time in Grass Valley...

Matt Towery writes that it could turn its sagging fortunes around by taking some lessons from the NFL.

As I mentioned a couple of days ago, I spent much of last week visiting the great state of Texas. My only previous visits had been stopovers at D-FW Airport while I changed planes; but last year for Christmas, my wife gave me two tickets to see the Cowboys play the Bears on Thanksgiving.

While at the game, we witnessed two anecdotes--a silly one before kickoff, and another more serious example after it was over, that help illustrate the atmosphere surrounding the Cowboys' home turf, Texas Stadium.

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