Wednesday, August 4, 2010

At least Forbes didn't pick Manchester United

While Brett Favre appears determined to treat us all to another helping of his "will he or won't he" BS after all, another quarterback is showing how to retire the right way. Kurt Warner cracked a joke about returning in the wake of the morning's Favre "news", but made clear he's still done with pro football. The Washington Post reports he's going to be a part of Dancing with the Stars next season. While both QBs have a single championship, Warner went to three Super Bowls to Favre's two. Warner's career QB rating is seven points higher as well. Yet Warner stepped away from the game when he clearly could have chosen to continue, and did so with no lengthy period of drama. He was ready to call it a career, and he did. If Favre had shown one tenth as much class as Warner over the past half dozen years, he wouldn't be a joke right now.

Florida basketball released its nonconference schedule yesterday, and I love what Billy Donovan has done with it. Last year SEC commissioner Mike Slive challenged his schools to do better than serving their fans up garbage for the first two months of the season, and now Florida's not doing that anymore. Ideally more of the quality games like Ohio State would be in Gainesville, but having teams like Kansas State and Xavier on the schedule is miles better than what the defending national champions saw four years ago. Beyond that, while Florida will beat UNC-Wilmington at least it's a team with a pulse as opposed to the Florida A&M and Bethune Cookman squads that had no chance even if UF started its managers. South Carolina's also going to have some good games on their schedule when it comes out this week, including Michigan State and Ohio State. There's no reason this shouldn't have been the norm the last few years, but I'm glad the change has finally come.

Not sure why Forbes magazine has been sports list crazy on its website in recent months, but they seem to do a lot of them. When they rank the value of teams or the wealthiest athletes, that makes some sense to me even though there are usually arguments with the accuracy of their numbers. For Forbes to try and rank America's best sports fans was taking things a little too far. Don't believe me? Check out the eleventh best group of American sports fans - the supporters of the Montreal Canadiens. I know some people regard Canada as our 51st state, but perhaps the name CANADIENS might have indicated to Forbes that Montreal fans shouldn't be on this list? (Although that still makes more sense than Blackhawks fans being on there - assuming this list is based on anything before this past May.)

If there wasn't already enough reason to wonder whether Michigan was ready to rebound in year three under Rich Rodriguez, one of his seniors has raised serious questions about the team chemistry in the locker room. Senior cornerback Troy Woolfolk wasn't content just to say good things about quarterback Denard Robinson. He criticized last year's starter Tate Forcier for not being at enough offseason workouts and added...

"The only reason he's not really labeled as diseased is because of the way he was able to carry the team last year before we started losing. People still trust him a little bit, but he's starting to lose that."

Michigan opens up with a solid UConn squad. If they don't get everyone unified behind a leader on offense, they'll lose that game. Should that happen, Rodriguez will be highly unlikely to reach the kind of record it will take to save his job (especially if the NCAA hits them hard later this fall).

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Still harping on the Favre thing?? Maybe the 'sportstalkers' should look in the mirror. If you STOP bringing up the subject, no one will care & it will go away.

It never ceases to amaze me how the sports media complains about an athlete's overexposure when THEY are the ones who KEEP BRINGING UP THE TOPIC. If you dislike this practice, quit participating by stoking the conversation.

I guess we all know the (not so)'little secret' that it keeps your audiences tuning in--so keep on manufacturing the debate. But you can't complain when you are actually part of the machinery that propagates this stuff..lol

Heath Cline said...

If you want to level "you're driving the story" charges at ESPN, be my guest - although the never ending "will LeBron go to the Knicks talk" seems a more realistic example. No one in the media made Favre send "I'm done" text messages to teammates yesterday.

On the local level anywhere other than some NFC North cities, the idea that having to talk about Favre's "retirement" when it becomes a story again is a plot to get listeners to tune in is ridiculous. Here in Columbia it didn't make up more than ten percent of yesterday's program, but it's still annoying.

Anonymous said...

The fact that ESPN ran w/ the "I'm done" text message w/ no identifiable sources basically goes to illustrate that 'the standard' for sports news these days is simply titillation & speculation without validation (yes, I'm channeling Jesse Jackson). :)

Btw, didn't mean to lump you in w/ the obvious suspects -- it's just that the whole thing appears to be media driven, that's all..