I would have pushed for "Guerilla Radio" instead

Brett Favre was good last year until December, when he melted down. It may be happening again, although it's too soon to tell. What can now unquestionably be stated is that Favre is proving to be a disruption to Minnesota the same way he was in New York. Sunday night he blew off Brad Childress when the Vikings head coach planned to take him out of the game, and now it turns out he's pulled the same stunt three times. Favre's also audibling whenever he feels like, making it very clear that he considers Minnesota his personal team and Childress merely an annoying middle manager he has to listen to occasionally. The Vikings are going to the postseason, but Favre isn't giving me many reasons to believe they'll do much once they're there.

The Cleveland Browns are getting Mike Holmgren to take over the leadership of their franchise. This is being perceived as a good thing, and in the sense that he's not proven incompetent jerk Eric Mangini I suppose it is. Still, can someone explain to me what's so great about people who were excellent coaches taking jobs that don't involve coaching? Bill Parcells has the Dolphins back to being watchable, but they aren't special. Holmgren showed in Seattle that personnel decisions weren't his best suit, to the point he had to give them up or he would have lost his job as coach too. Now personnel will be his primary focus and that's going to raise Cleveland's franchise from bottom dweller to contender? Why would anyone believe that?

Sports By Brooks reports that TMZ is starting a new version of their website devoted to sports. It's hard to tell how big a deal this will be without knowing how many people and how much money is committed to the project. Will they focus on all sports equally, or pay more attention to pro stuff and glamorous names? If TMZ wants to muckrake every salacious rumor about goings on with college programs and things happening during recruiting, it could make things very interesting. If a kid like Matt Barkley of USC is out past curfew or breaks up with his girlfriend, is that the kind of the story TMZ Sports will do? I'll be curious to find out.

I used to believe on some level when I was a kid that it mattered what the first song played on the radio at the start of a new year was. When Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round (like a Record)" was first on Q105 one year, I took it as a sign it was going to be a pretty crappy year. Apparently British folks have a similar fixation on which song sits at number one for Christmas week each year. This year's number one? "Killing in the Name Of", Rage Against the Machine's tune from the early 90s. The story of how that happened is pretty cool.