Wednesday, October 1, 2008

The victim didn't get a look at their faces for some reason


Was September "Obvious Month"? First we had that stunner about Clay Aiken being gay, and as a closer we find out Tony Mandarich was on steroids in college. In Rick Telander's outstanding book
The Hundred Yard Lie, he chronicles how his disgust with what the game of college football had become in the late Eighties led him to stop covering it for Sports Illustrated. The story that finally pushed him over the edge was the cover piece about Mandarich you see next to this. I remember when Mandarich was talking about fighting Mike Tyson while he was holding out from the Packers. I wanted it to happen just to see this egomaniac clown get destroyed. It didn't happen, but as soon as he reported to camp considerably less bulky than he was on draft day it was clear Green Bay hadn't gotten what they paid for. Eventually Mandarich turned out to be an adequate NFL guard for the Colts, but he was always the biggest NFL Draft fraud ever. Now he's just acknowledged it.

On the subject of frauds, how much longer will the Oakland Raiders be able to call themselves an NFL team? Yesterday's fiasco, with Al Davis again firing a coach while trying to weasel out of paying him, only reinforced that the team will never be relevant again as long as Davis is in control. Tom Cable, a guy who went 11-35 at Idaho, is now an NFL "head coach". Good luck with that.

Trouble could be brewing at Southern Cal. It's been amazing to see the way their staff has been able to stack elite talent on top of each other three and four deep at positions. Eventually, that has to become an issue. Some kids transferred last year, including Emmanuel Moody, and now one who didn't is complaining to the press. Mitch Mustain's mom hasn't weighed in yet, but history says that might not be far behind. Eventually this has to have some effect on their program.

Sometimes I can tell as soon as I see a headline that the news story will be from my home state. A man says he was robbed of a hundred dollars by a gang of attractive women wearing overalls and no shirts? Well of course he was, and that has to be a Florida story. I knew it.

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Quite possibly the gayest sports magazine cover of all time. (No offense Aiken fans.)