I guess the Larry Johnson petition worked…
The inevitable happened today, LJ has been ousted.
The KC Chiefs running back has been handed his pink slip.
Could not be a better topper to an already horrific season for the Chiefs franchise.
Losing record and a long rebuilding road ahead…again?
I found a photo that captures Larry Johnson nicely. This one can be hung on the “Dad, I wanna to be a running back like LJ wall”.
So long…I’m sure the Eagles will pick him up.
Brett Favre turns 40 !
Well you had a good week indeed. Favre garnerd offensive honors as he completed 24-of-31 passes for 271 yards and three touchdowns to lead the Vikings to a 30-23 win over his former team, the Green Bay Packers, on Monday night. Favre, who became the first quarterback to defeat all 32 NFL teams, had a 104.7 passer rating to reach the 100.0 mark for the 96th time of his illustrious career, which ranks first in NFL annals.
Green Bay fans wish you a happy birthday Bert !…err Bart…er Brent…Brett !
Vick and Burress will play by someone else’s rules
I have to admit that I seem to garner more confidence in the leadership of the NFL in comparison to MLB.
I have always thought Bud Selig was a blowhard pushover who let players get away with murder at the same time telling the media how rules need to be followed, blah blah blah…
Vick is done with his jail time on July 20th and Burress royally pissed off the NFL by not accepting jail time for his plea bargained nightclub gun possession charge.
NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is planning on leaving Burress and Vick sidelined indefinitely until they can prove they are remorseful and their legal matters have been resolved completely. These two boneheads will not get a free pass back into the NFL until Goodell says so. Vick and Burress will be back in the league, that’s a given. However, it appears to be on someone else’s terms which is good.
I applaud his effort to lay the basic foundation that rules must be followed, even in the multi million dollar circus of professional sports.
Dohhhhhh! Plaxico Burress…Giants say cya!
What’s up yall !! I don’t have a team anymore cuz I act like a ding dong off the field, he he. So I’m gonna sit right heya…drink some more of my drinky drink…and think about who’s gonna pick me up for next year. Apparently, I’m facing more charges for my antics, imagine that. A football player acting like a fool…haha not me, I’m having a good ole’ time in this here cluuuuuub…so I don’t get in trouble later.
Now where is my my Courvoisier??? Maybe the Cardinals are looking for someone since Bolden is a big, super bowl crying baby.
Ryan Moats incident probably could have been avoided with a 911 call
This scenario is playing itself out in the news way too much lately. On March 18th, NFL player Ryan Moats was speeding through Plano TX en route to take his dying mother in law to the hospital. As of press time today, there is not much more information aside from the officer involved, Robert Powell, apparently held Moats and his wife at gun point at sometime after the pursuit had ended in the Baylor Regional Medical Center’s parking lot.
The video is pretty convincing that Moats was acting rationally and was not trying to cause a scene with Officer Powell. Pardon the link as I do not have the actual You Tube video.
http://www.dallasnews.com/video/?z=y&nvid=345818&shu=1
What is not clear is if Moats or his family called 911 ahead of time. There has been no mention of a 911 call or a 911 transcript so I’m gonna assume that is a no. I know that in a moment of crisis, the body is acting on adrenaline and the brain is high on emotions and quick thinking. A simple call to 911 might have adverted what Moats and his wife had to experience, the dispatchers could have relayed the information to field officers, and maybe he could have been escorted, or followed, or whatever…well we know he was followed. Either way, this officer’s handling of the situation was poor and inhumane.
On the flipside, the other issue is that police officers get this way when influenced by a pursuit. Their bodies begin to act on adrenaline and pure heated emotion from the chase and their ultimate goal is to end the chase and apprehend the suspect. It doesn’t matter if a suspect is going 95 or 35, in the eyes of the cops, this is a fleeing car. Again, I am not making an excuse for an officer acting like a jackass but come on, this is how police act in the heat of the chase. It’s human emotion and their primary objective is to stay alive and end a potentially tragic situation when a chase starts. I know people who are police officers and 99.9% of them are not inherently bad people who consciously go on duty to harass and mentally brutalize people who are breaking the law. Powell was wrong….but I feel Moats and his family were equally “unwise” to have handled it the way they did and not realize what could have resulted from it.
It’s clear by the video that Moats was stopping at cross streets and wasn’t really speeding. He simply ignored the police officers lights all the way to the hospital. I just wished that he or someone else would have called 911 before all this started and explained what was happening. We have a system for emergencies, granted it’s not perfect, but it’s all we have and we have to make it work and use it to our advantage. This is the risk that a common citizen runs when trying to act on behalf of emergency personnel and our law enforcement system. Moats had good intentions and was only breaking traffic laws, but when he did not stop for Officer Powell, this is where the trouble starts whether he wanted it or not.
Officer Powell had no clue what was going on inside that SUV and how could he have known? He would have known had the call been made by Moats and I can’t stress this enough, why was a call not made? You can’t get in your car and ignore the police and not expect something to happen, that’s the way it is people, whether or not someone is dying in the backseat. On the flipside of that coin, the minute he heard Moats say it was a medical emergency, he should have instantly changed from apprehender to protector. Powell stayed in angry cop mode too long and Moat’s payed the price and Powell may pay with his job or career.
Changing the Pro Bowl is a waste of time…leave it in Hawaii
- Only dude that watches the game
The news of the NFL Pro Bowl changing venues does not surprise me. Why? Knuckleheads thinking that moving a meaningless game to the mainland states will make the game more viable? No. It’s a waste of the players time right now and it will continue to be.
First of all, moving out of Hawaii does suck since it’s a nice trip for these players…but why the hell has it always been played after the Super Bowl? The hype of the Super Bowl is like no other and once it’s over, it’s over. The players are nursing injuries, talking to agents, and making plans for the spring and summer. None of them care about a game in Hawaii! It’s a free vacation, a chance to act dumb on camera wearing a lei, and play in a worthless glorified high school all star game. I’ve always thought the Pro Bowl was boring, never got excited about it, and usually changed the channel by halftime.
The only reason they don’t have the game mid-season is that players could get hurt, or whatever. Honestly, nobody really get’s all pumped about a game that means nothing and the players half ass it. You know they do, each running back gets the ball like two times and sits down… never to be seen again.
So…the plan is to have it moved to Miami in 2010 and be played the week before the Super Bowl. Brilliant idea, I’m sure if one of the starting QB’s happens to be playing in the big game the following week, we can expect a stellar effort. You bet that starting running backs and receivers will be playing in this game like it’s a backyard flag game, come on! This isn’t baseball where they have a sweet home run derby and an old timers game to liven up the weekend leading up to the game. What I find ironic is that the baseball season drags on for 162 games – however the all star activities are very popular and the all-star game gets a huge audience. Football has a short 16 week season, but nobody gives a crap about the Pro Bowl because of when it’s played, after the season. Well, either way, it won’t be a popular game to watch.
…And now a PSA from Plaxico Burress:
Poetry in the NFL
As a life long Dallas Cowboys fan I want the Cowboys to win. But I must say, one quarter into today’s awful game I started getting a little excited about how ugly it was getting for the ‘Boys. I know tomorrow the talk shows here in dallas will be howling and I must say I am happy to see the contrast of the Miami Dolphins making one of the great turnarounds in NFL history and making the playoffs while the Cowboys complete one of the great collapses in NFL history. Coming into the season they were ordained in the press. The hype provided by the HBO series, 12 pro bowl players, the apparent genius of Jason Garrett.
It all proved to be just that: hype. I do not think the Cowboys were ever as good as billed.
On top of that I think the combination of Garrett and Romo caught the NFL off guard in their first full season, but after the league got a taste of what they had they adjusted. And the not-so-dynamic duo did not have anything in reserve.
Romo is not capable of being a great NFL quarterback. I switched over to the Miami game after half time and saw Chad Pennington make precision, deep passes that I just do not think Romo can make. Ever.
Someone needs to pull the stats and look at Romo’s distribution of passes. I think if you exclude all the easy dump off passes to Jason Witten and to the running backs you will not see the kind of consistency to the receivers that you want in an NFL quarterback.
Romo seems like a nice guy and I think he makes an excellent back up quarterback, but enough is enough.
So today was a day of poetic justice:
Pennington beat the Jets.
Parcells and Tony Sporano proved what a manager / coach working with a plan in mind could do if empowered by the owner.
I think Jerry Jones is a good owner, he needs to prove that now by making the changes needed to fix the Dallas Cowboys. Dare I suggest that at some point the chronic mediocrity of the Cowboys will fade the star and the “America’s Team” status that has gone with it for so long.
A lot of people like to compare the Cowboy’s franchise to the New York Yankees. Jerry needs to prove that he is an owner comparable to Steinbrener by making ruthless moves to get this team back on top.
This Cinderella story did not have a happy ending.
Go Miami!!!!
New York Giant’s receiver Burress heading towards not so jolly holiday season
The saga with Plaxico Burress is spiraling downward quickly. As you recall, he was recently caught in the middle of a nightclub shooting. Well, he actually shot himself which is humorous, but the fact that an NFL player is walking through clubs with a gun (anyone for that matter) is repulsive.
Once again, we have another NFL player in the middle of a nasty off the field dilema and again involves law enforcement. As you also recall, I talked about my old pal Micheal Vick in an earlier article, well folks, are we starting to see an odd pattern here? I don’t like to hear that this is an “isolated incident” or he was “in the wrong place”…bullcrap.
The NFL is getting soaked to the bone with teams ridden with thugs and losers. They live a phony celebrity life with their only attribute being “soft hands, speed, and hard to tackle”. There are a lot of reputable players in the league too and I am not classifying them all as tarnished. This is not a case of the media being too hard on these guys, or sports writers making these incidents and accidents seem worse than what they are – bologna, it’s becoming a fact of the league. These are guys who don’t take their professional status seriously. They have a god given gift that apparently isn’t enough to keep them satisfied. They have millions of little boys that watch them on Sunday mornings in living rooms across the country- emulating them- dreaming and pretending that they too were NFL football players. You have millions of people who wear their jerseys in admiration, draft them for fantasy teams, purchase thousand of dollars worth of season tickets, and stand in lines to meet them at public appearances. WHY? Because they have a recognizable name? Jeffrey Dahmer was a public figure but I wouldn’t wear his line of cologne (if he had one, ode de severed head?)
The list of NFL players getting in trouble is just absurd. Remember- I typically take the stance of giving these guys second chances, but my positive outlook on “giving everyone a break” is beginning to run very thin. Look at the other knuckleheads who have been in trouble this year, Chiefs running back Larry Johnson, Larry Johnson again, Broncos receiver Brandon Marshall, Steelers receiver Santonio Holmes, and the list goes on and on, there are reports of DUI arrests, drug offenses, weapons charges, money laundering, and god knows what else.
Hey owners! Strap on a set of chestnuts and do some housecleaning! Put a quality product on the field and I don’t mean wins and ticket sales. Sadly, that’s all you care about. I’m sure if the NFL doesn’t pan out for these guys they can always get hired by one of the big three automakers. They both have unions which serve no other purpose than to drag the name down.
NFL players get big money…but you may be better off
I should have been a dentist
There is no escaping the news of NFL players getting into trouble, violating substance abuse policies, or even recently the violations against the new NFL Personal Conduct Policy. Be it unacceptable end zone dances (which by the way are friggin’ hilarious and they should do them more often), drinking too much, or not keeping their hands off young ladies…stuff happens and it gets shamelessly smeared across the media channels and falls right into our lap. (about five inches from the remote) What also frequently occurs are the comments that are made by the general public (that’s us) in regard to these incidents either it be “athletes have it sooooooooo easy” or “dude, if I had a drug problem, I’d be so fired.” Well…would you really?
An unofficial and unscientific examination provides some comparisons between the work life of an average Joe, and a rich NFL player.
Employment…
YOU:
At-will employment – this sounds like a raw deal when thinking about it, but the majority of American workers fall into this category. The company hires you because they like what you bring to the table, you sign a piece of paper which may be construed as a very weak and hassle-free contract. It explains what they expect from you and what you may expect from your employer, this is typically referred to as the “Employee Handbook” (but most don’t even read the silly thing). It covers the most basic of topics, as well as some more detailed subjects, for example if you get hurt you probably have a reasonable amount of time to recover, commonly within FMLA requirements of course, and your job is there when you come back (unless you’re worthless and they were dying to fire you anyway). Yeah, the company can sack you out of the blue for any reason, (although it can not violate your civil rights or discrimination laws) however, the employee has a very powerful and liberating privilege, you can quit, no questions asked, and take your salary requirements with you without an agent.
NFL Player:
Oh god, there is not enough room to exploit this calamity that a player faces. First of all, an NFL team is not bound to keep or remain faithful to a player even if they are “performing”. Most NFL rookies sign with a team because there is a short term need to fill a position with the lure of guaranteed money up front and normally a signing bonus. Granted, the dollar amounts of the offers are astronomical compared to you and me, but it’s not guaranteed. Some of the money can be guaranteed but the contract isn’t! Look at it from this perspective, you take a job right out of college making $40,000 a year, however it’s gift wrapped and presented to you as a five year deal worth $200,000 with a guaranteed $1,000 bonus up front. What do you have…a thousand bucks and a chance to earn the rest over five years, that’s if you don’t destroy your knees, neck, back, most major ligaments, or suffer a life altering injury walking back and forth to the water cooler. Additionally, your employer can theoretically demand money back from you in court if the deal turns sour down the road. Which is exactly what NFL owners often do. If you are injured, you face the risk of losing your job to a number of young backups waiting in the wings, drooling to take your spot. Why do you think most NFL players are forced to act like owners and demand so much up front? You and I don’t need that much lucrative prodding to accept a nice salary with good benefits.
Substance abuse and conduct policy…
YOU:
Nobody is immune from a slide into crackville or sipping back on grandpa’s cough medicine a little too much. The main difference is how it’s handled when someone admits there is a problem and seeks out help, or the adverse, getting busted with something you shouldn’t have. Most workers in the US have a benefit called an EAP (Employee Assistance Program). In short, an EAP is designed to provide employees a confidential outlet to receive services for issues ranging from alcohol abuse to depression. If you divulge to your employer that you can’t put down the ganja most employers will refer you to a rehab program without jeopardizing your job – granted you complete the program successfully. Or, it can be confidential and kept outside the scope of your employer (unless like just mentioned, you go to them first) which for all intents and purposes, protects you from your peers ever knowing you have an issue (unless you’re the moron who consistently drops his pants doing the hustle at the holiday party) Don’t be the idiot that pushes the limits of the EAP and starts ’slinging the rock’ on the street corner, because you will get arrested and inch yourself ever closer to violating a conduct clause in your employee handbook – remember that form you signed long ago? If you break the law, it’s broken and the consequences are up in the air from that point.
NFL Player:
The major differences are very obvious. There is an NFL drug policy and players do frequently break it because they’re young men thrown into a world of big money, surrounded by not so influential people. It’s difficult to determine if individual cases are handled the way WE think they should be, but you know what, a second chance (for some it becomes a third, fourth, etc) is a perk we all desire, so don’t be quick to bash. Big deal, you and your friends do the same thing, but not in a stretch Hummer limo under the limelight. What’s worse, many of the players have clauses in their contracts that address conduct and they do pay a price if broken, although maybe not financially, but reputations are put on the line everyday. All in all, there is too much attention, too much focus on the act itself, and too much obligation to “behave in public”. Barring a true felony conviction that shows up on a background check, most average employers are not privvy to what you do behind closed doors or in a nightclub for that matter. (All bets are off if you post videos to a Facebook page, if you didn’t know that employers are now checking, God help you).
For an NFL player, every move is media fair game and the bumps along the way follow them until the day they hang the mouthpiece up to dry. Big, big money, but an uncertain future. You be the judge. There is always golf.
I heard that !
Heard It In A Bar RSS Feed- Texas – what the hell is wrong with you!? September 3, 2010I’m going to be honest with you, it is going to be very difficult for me to be calm about this. First, we had the Rep. Barton apologizing to BP for the Obama “shakedown”. Even his own party rolled their eyes and popped their Tums. I was up in arms over this and even got [...] […]She
- Lost is over and I actually miss it… September 3, 2010Six years of roller coaster loop de’ loops, dozens of undeveloped characters, and a story line that was as easy to follow as a chicken in a barnyard. If you didn’t watch Lost, you missed a show which challenged the fan to no end. Season after season of questions, theories, hypotheses’, cliff hanging plots, and a [...] […]kansasview
- Teetering on the edge…how does Bret Michaels do it? September 3, 2010I have to give Bret Michaels credit, he has battled a life of disease and he keeps bouncing back. At the age of six, he was diagonosed with Type I diabetes and has struggled to maintain his health all the while becoming an 80’s glam metal rock god, a history of hard hard partying, and what [...] […]kansasview
- A softball player who just happens to know the law, sign her up… September 3, 2010Does this woman really matter to you? If you look deep into the background of a possible supreme court justice, do you want actual bench experience or do you prefer someone who knows the law and has written a few hundred papers on well…the law? Princeton graduate, Harvard Law Dean,…on the surface at least Elena Kagan [...] […]kansasview
- When it rains for Tiger, it pours… September 3, 2010The muscle of this man has shrunk and shows more sign of atrophy as each new story surfaces. This blog did a pretty good job of leaving Tiger alone and I have to say after the recent events, I still stick to that credo. The bomb of the last couple months has dropped, the shrapnel has [...] […]kansasview
- Where have we been? September 3, 2010Well, a few good men and an even better woman started the idea of this blog and we owe it to someone to unspill the contents of our head, or at least mine. The time has come to once again say all the things I want to say and it’s an invitation for you as well! It’s [...] […]kansasview
- Brittany Murphy’s death is troubling September 3, 2010Not that it’s another tragic celebrity death, not that it’s another young life taken so early…these are all troubling and sad in their own right. It’s another tragic case of someone getting caught up in the web of drugs…the legal type! It truly saddens me that so many of these stars seek out more and more prescription [...] […]kansasview
- Internet fun for the weekend… September 3, 2010By far one of my favorite websites of late is called GraphJam.com. Essentially, the website attempts to break down the world and how we interact with it in a series of graphs. It is hilarious when you see how the world around us can be so easily summed up in a pie or bar chart. [...] […]kansasview
- So why are more companies not yet hiring? September 3, 2010U.S. Workers are still filing a large amount of unemployment claims and this is after five weeks of declines in this area. Where are the culprits and which industries are still hurting? It’s apparent as we have seen over the last year is that a gradual stabilization of the economy does not naturally translate to a increase [...] […]kansasview
- Facebook is down…Facebook is down…5:42 (cst) September 3, 2010This website is not a help desk for Facebook but it’s a civic duty to keep the American public aware of all possible natural disasters!! Facebook is down! Facebook is down! Don’t toss your Iphone in the river or hurl it at your wife and complain that it doesn’t work worth a s***. Here is the current [...] […]kansasview
- Texas – what the hell is wrong with you!? September 3, 2010
