Sometimes I hate being right

As I've feared from the beginning of this Brett Favre fiasco, he's going to wind up playing in Tampa. Favre will have an incredible amount of playbook to learn in a very short time. (By the way, can you imagine how stagnant the Bucs offense would have looked the last few years if Gruden didn't have all these brilliant, ultra-complicated plays? There must be more names for a one yard run right into the pile in that book than anywhere else in history.) Tampa Bay opens with a critical divisional game against New Orleans, and Jeff Garcia is a vastly better choice to QB that game than Favre since he actully knows the playbook and his teammates names. That won't stop Chucky from using his new toy, though. Maybe for his next move Gruden can get Andre Rison to come back to the NFL like he tried to a couple of years ago.

The NFL has issued a Fan Code of Conduct, which it hopes will tone down the intimidating atmosphere at some venues. I'm all for anything which will keep people from going to games and winding up next to some screaming, cursing drunk. Having said that, good luck enforcing this in places like Buffalo.

Turns out the Chinese Olympic Games won't be a way to expose their population to the sunshine out of outside ideas. The most recent embarassment: a gold medal winning speedskater's visa has been revoked as a result of his support for increasing awareness about human rghts issues in Darfur. There will be many more stories like this before the Games are over. Lots of issues have already arisen about blocking access to internet sites and not keeping promises made to broadcast partners. The IOC never should have given the event to China in the first place, and all the happy talk about their government opening up to outsiders as a result of the Olympics has proven to be complete nonsense.

I've received an email asking me about comments made by a host in Gainesville claiming that UF won't credential him for events because he is critical of the Gator program. I will not name the host because I did not hear the comments and it was not attributed in the email as a direct quote. I can say that statement, as it was relayed to me, is nonsense. The reason I can say that is very simple. UF does not credential individual radio people for games, they grant credentials to stations. Other people on the air there now have come to football and basketball games on the credential issued to the station. If someone else already has a credential, UF won't give another person from the same station one. That has nothing to do with whether the host and/or station is pro Gator or not - the policy is very clearly spelled out in the school media guide. No idea where this whole thing got started but while UF is not known for being helpful to media, they aren't guilty of banning radio hosts based on their views.

While we're on Gainesville specfic stuff, I was pretty surprised while I was down there recently to see that the two Sonics had closed down. The 39th Street one was a regular stop for me to grab a tea before the show on my way in to the Star 99.5 studios. Lots of places are going out of business right now, which isn't shocking given the economy but is still jarring when you see it. It doesn't look like the economy is the sole reason Whaley's in Tampa is closing, but it's still hard to imagine it won't be there the next time I drive down Howard Avenue.