Character means very little in the NFL

Twenty-four states in our country use some form of the Three Strikes Law to prosecute criminals. In the NFL, it usually takes that many incidents for a guy to pop up on anyone’s radar. Until then, players are just labeled as having “character issues” while owners turn their heads and pray no one gets killed.

The greatest farce in sports is that moral makeup matters. It doesn’t. At least not initially. A team won’t give up on a player capable of producing on the field until he’s exhausted the use of his get-out-of-jail-free card, the pass every athlete with any kind of ability receives the minute he goes pro (and usually, long before that).

Even when one franchise decides to sever ties with a player, another one will bite the bullet. They don’t see felons; they see finds. Bargains. That’s why the New York Jets were right there to offer a fifth round pick to Pittsburgh in exchange for Santonio Holmes this week. Holmes, who has admitted to selling drugs as a teenager, has been arrested three times since entering the league in 2006 and was only dealt following accusations that he threw a glass at a woman in an Orlando nightclub in March. Following the trade, the NFL suspended him four games for violating the league’s substance abuse policy.

Holmes isn’t the first player with off-field issues the Jets have acquired this off-season. Last month, the team sent a third round pick in 2011 to San Diego for Antonio Cromartie. Cromartie, who would be even money to get the Virgin Mary pregnant if he were alone in a room with her, has seven children by six women in five different states.

It should be noted that the Jets will be featured on HBO’s “Hard Knocks” series during training camp this year. Maybe the goal is to produce a reality show with more drama than “Jersey Shore.”

Or maybe they just don’t care.

Character flaws aside, the Jets recent additions will almost certainly make the team a trendy pick to represent the AFC in the Super Bowl this season. Holmes will return from suspension to join Braylon Edwards (currently facing assault charges) and Jerricho Cotchery to make up one of the top receiving corps’ in the league. Comartie will be a major contributor in what might already have been the best defense in the league.

Why should it matter if the team is on track to become New York’s sixth crime family by the time the season opens? Winning trumps all.

Of course, the Jets aren’t the only team following that motto. The Steelers may have had enough of Holmes, but it’s clear that quarterback Ben Roethlisberger still has a few swipes left on his get-out-of-jail free card.

Because they have a crush on the Steelers’ do it right persona, some media members decided that the Holmes trade was supposed to serve as some kind of message to Roethlisberger. False. A message to Roethlisberger would be to suspend him even before Commissioner Roger Goodell got involved. Make it clear that if his name so much as appears in the news for anything other than football, his career in Pittsburgh would be over.

That didn’t happen because Big Ben is still worth big bucks in the eyes of the Rooney family.

Now he’ll get yet another chance to correct his behavior.
And that, as we head into the NFL draft, will be the lasting message to everyone entering the league. As long as you can get it done on the field, you can do what you want off it.

It takes an awful lot to strike out in the NFL.

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Goodell should suspend Roethlisberger immediately

This is where I get to write about Ben Roethlisberger, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback who displays incredible poise in the pocket every Sunday yet allegedly can’t keep his hands in his pockets anytime a young woman comes around.

It’s time to stop tiptoeing around what we don’t know and focus on all that we do know. Of course Big Ben is innocent until proven guilty. But that doesn’t change that he now has more sexual assault accusations than playoff appearances in the last two years and it doesn’t mean NFL commissioner Roger Goodell should take a wait-and-see approach when it comes to taking disciplinary action.

When Goodell chose to suspend Pacman Jones for the entire season three years ago, he talked a lot about how it is a privilege to play in the NFL and said “players, and all members of our league, have to make the right choices and decisions in their conduct on a consistent basis."

In a letter to Jones, he wrote, “Your conduct has brought embarrassment and ridicule upon yourself, your club, and the NFL, and has damaged the reputation of players throughout the league. You have put in jeopardy an otherwise promising NFL career, and have risked both your own safety and the safety of others through your off-field actions. In each of these respects, you have engaged in conduct detrimental to the NFL and failed to live up to the standards expected of NFL players. Taken as a whole, this conduct warrants significant sanction."

Now it’s time for Goodell to be consistent. I’m not someone who necessarily believes the same punishment should apply to everyone every time. If this were Peyton Manning, a guy with an immaculate record off the field, facing similar accusations, then it would be completely okay for the commissioner to wait for more facts to come out before making a decision on whether to take action. But because of Roethlisberger’s previous poor decisions, he has lost the benefit of the doubt.

And don’t think for a second there won’t be plenty of people waiting to pounce on Goodell for suspending a black guy named Pacman even though he had never been convicted of a crime and not taking similar action against Roethlisberger.

Let’s see. Has Roethlisberger put in jeopardy an otherwise promising NFL career? Has he risked his safety and the safety of others? Has he engaged in conduct detrimental to his team and the league? Two sexual assault accusations along with a motorcycle accident that nearly cost him his life and a budding reputation as a guy who likes to party too much suggests the answer is yes.

The trouble with sexual assault allegations is that in the wake of the Duke Lacrosse scandal, no one wants to drag the accused’s name through the mud for fear of a lawsuit and the chance of being disbarred. In Goodell’s case, it’s that he doesn’t want to get it wrong and give the Player’s Association another reason to despise him heading into labor negotiations.

But what we all conveniently tend to forget about the Duke Lacrosse situation is that while those players may have not committed a crime, they also weren’t acting like model citizens that night. At the very least, they verbally abused the stripper who accused them of raping her. And if down the line, if one of them happens to be running a Fortune 500 company and gets accused of sexual misconduct or discrimination, get what’s going to be brought up in court?

Same goes for Roethlisberger, who is at least guilty of putting himself in a bad situation for the second time in less than a year. Goodell gave him a pass the first time he went through this, but there’s no way he can let him go clean this time around.

The commissioner will do whatever he can to protect quarterbacks on the field.

The same shouldn’t apply off of it

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Maintaining the integrity of the game may have cost Pats, Bengals

Everyone has been around the fraudulent liberal. The type of person who quotes the Kennedys in everyday conversation and loves the idea of President Obama, but then turns into Glenn Beck the minute they hear about the slightest tax increase. I’m convinced there are more of these people in this country than anyone else. They’re the people who feel bad for the starving children they see in commercials, but will never contribute a penny to help them eat. In general, these aren’t bad people. They like progressive ideas. They know we need big changes. But when reality sets in, they realize they don’t want to do with being effected in the short-term.

We’ve got a version of these people in sports too. They’re easiest to spot during the final two weeks of the NFL regular season. Usually they’re ticket holders upset about paying all that money only to see second stringers get the majority of the playing time or they’re fans enraged over losing a fantasy football championship because their best player sat out. Typically the media jumps aboard, claiming any team who chooses to rest its players is damaging the integrity of the game. This week, some writers even compared it to the NBA teams who tank for draft lottery purposes.

They’ve got a point, of course. I would be pissed off too if I paid to see Peyton and got Curtis Painter instead. This year was particularly controversial because Indianapolis Colts head coach Jim Caldwell chose to rest his starters for the second half of week 16 against the New York Jets and it cost the team a shot at an unbeaten season. The ethical debate over Caldwell’s decision was only magnified by the fact that it put the Jets in the driver’s seat to reach the playoffs.

The uproar lasted the entire week. We were finally talking about something other than Tiger Woods. It seemed like everyone agreed that it’s bush league for a team not to put forth its best effort. Even NFL commissioner Roger Goodell seemed concern, suggesting that the league will look into finding a way to reward a team who plays its starters when it doesn’t have to.

Everyone was on board. Everyone liked the idea of playing all out no matter what.

And then reality set in.

Now someone should ask a fan in New England or Cincinnati how they feel about how hard their teams played in meaningless games to end the year. ESPN is reporting that Wes Welker suffered the same injury that cost Tom Brady his entire season in 2008 and Chad Ochocinco needs an MRI after a knee injury forced him to leave Sunday’s game in the third quarter.

Just like that, the Patriots’ chances of winning the Super Bowl have vanished. Mr. Reliable is gone –probably for some of next season too—and now Tom Brady has to hope the anti-Welker, Randy Moss, will show up ready to become the main contributor again. The Bengals face a similar situation. They are unlikely to put up much of a fight against the Jets if Ochocinco isn’t 100 percent next week.

Following the Patriots loss to Houston, the players who did talk to the media (Brady was not made available) gave the standard “this is football; this is what happens” statements. But how can they not be troubled by Bill Belichick’s decision to play his starters?

The fans certainly are.

Now we have to ask if maintaining the integrity of the game was worth it. Because it sure doesn’t seem like it. The bottom line is that because they chose to play their starters, both the Patriots and Bengals are weaker than they would have been had they rested everyone.

And the Colts?

Well, they’re just fine.

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Vince Young is the comeback story of the year

If not for the Fall of the Cablinasian Empire, the story of 2009 would be redemption. If Tiger could have found a way to squash the Nov. 23, National Enquirer story the way he did a few years ago or if he never gets into that car wreck on Thanksgiving or if, you know, he wasn’t a serial philanderer, we would be talking about Kobe finally winning a title without Shaq or Alex Rodriguez and all he went through and then accomplished this year.

And then maybe, just maybe, we’d make some time for the best comeback story of all -- Vince Young.

Young’s story isn’t nearly as salacious as Kobe or ARod’s. He has never been accused of sexual assault or admitted using performance enhancing drugs. But no one in sports has faced more scrutiny since he entered the NFL in 2006. Since that time, he has been called dumb, thickheaded, unrefined and has generally been labeled a bust by most of the people who cover football.

It started with his Tiger-esque fall from grace following Texas’ national championship in 2006. In what was the most exciting championship game in any sport of this decade, Young singlehandedly led the Longhorns past USC and what many were calling the greatest college football team ever. Then came claims that he scored a 6 out of 50 on his Wonderlic Test at the NFL combine. This led everyone to question whether or not he could read (a score of 10 is considered literacy) let alone handle the complexities of an NFL playbook.

Suddenly the world turned on Young. He became the butt of every joke from the blogosphere. We all took practice Wonderlic Tests so we could compare our scores to his and feel better about ourselves. The mainstream media generally wrote him off as just another black athlete with a ton of natural ability but as missing the brains to get the job done.

But he continued to prove that he could win. His first year, after Tennessee made him the third pick overall in the NFL Draft, he won the Offensive Rookie of the Year and made the Pro Bowl. The following season, he helped lead the Titans to playoffs. That didn’t change the media’s perception of him, however. He was still considered too flawed to ever be successful for an extended period.

Last season, an injury forced him out of the first game and he disappeared for a short time the following day, causing some to believe that he was contemplating suicide. His mother suggested that he was hurt by the taunting of fans and he might not want to play football any longer. Before long, his head coach Jeff Fisher had named Kerry Collins the starting quarterback for the rest of the season.

Fisher’s decision would normally have been controversial because of the age-old theory in sports that suggests players aren’t supposed to lose their job due to injury, but most people agreed with it. Young was called too-sensitive and the talking heads began to gloat about how they were right about him all along.

Then it all clicked for Young.

Collins went back to being Collins and the Titans were 0-6 when Young became the starter this season. Since that point, the team has gone 7-1 and is still alive in AFC Playoff race following yesterday’s victory over Miami. Young had his best game of the season against the Dolphins, throwing for 236 yards and three scores.

Now he’s thriving and it couldn’t have come at a better time. Aside from the constant criticism, Young also had to deal with the murder of his mentor Steve McNair in the offseason. McNair, another black quarterback who ran just as well as he threw the football, helped pave the way for more athletic quarterbacks like Young. In September, Young surprised McNair’s two kids by accompanying them to a father-son breakfast.

"Those are my boys," he said. "I wouldn't say it was to pay anyone back; it was just out of love. Steve would do it for me. He pretty much did it for me when I was growing up. I have a history with the boys and I want to do anything I can. I am their big brother."

Now Young has to do what he can to lead the Titans to the playoffs, something McNair always seemed to manage to do. But while he still has more work to do this season, one thing is clear:

The Vince Young comeback is complete.

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Manning needs a perfect season

We are now 13 games into the final year of the decade and the debate over who should join the Dallas Cowboys of the ‘90s, San Francisco 49ers of the ‘80s, Pittsburgh Steelers of the ‘70s and Green Bay Packers of the ‘60s as the team of the decade remains unsettled. Prior to the start of this season, most people seemed to agree that the New England Patriots were the front runner, but that the Steelers could pull ahead if they were to win another Super Bowl.

Right behind them, serving only as a cautionary tale, was the Indianapolis Colts. Oh right. Peyton’s team. The best regular season team led by the best regular season quarterback in history only made the conversation because of what it should have done rather than what it actually did. One Super Bowl appearance. One Super Bowl victory. A franchise that would be remembered in the history books the same way the Ravens, Buccaneers and Giants would in the 2000s – as having one good team.

But now the Colts stand as not only the winningest team of this decade, but as the winningest team of any decade in NFL history. 114 wins in the 2000s. And their 22 consecutive regular season victories is also a record.

So is there any chance Manning could lead his Colts past the Pats and Steelers so they can be remembered as the most dominant team of the decade?

Yes. But he needs to be perfect.

That’s the only way. If Indy can withstand Mercury Morris’ attempts to hex them and a San Diego team who seems to always enter the playoffs looking great before choking and then a possibly unbeaten New Orleans Saints in the Super Bowl, then you could make the argument that they are the most accomplished team of the 2000s.

It’s not just the team of the decade talk that matters here. In a lot of ways, Manning’s legacy is on the line. Another Super Bowl victory would be nice, but an undefeated season would push him to the very top of another elite list: the greatest quarterbacks of all time. 19-0 would be the unique accomplishment of his incredible career, something none of the other great ones could say they managed to pull off. Not Elway, not Montana, not Marino and most importantly, not his biggest rival, Tom Brady.

The media and fans tend to make a bigger deal of rivalries than they should. We’re long past the days of players refusing to talk to each other because they play for different teams. Free agency can be blamed for that. Now they all dine with each other, attend the other’s charity events and judging from those Monday Night Football introductions, most players pledge far more allegiance to their college program than any professional team they play for.

But on a strictly competitive level, Manning can’t like the fact that most people consider his friend Brady more accomplished than him. To make matters worse, most would say that Brady won three Super Bowls with less talent than Manning ever had and it would be difficult to argue otherwise. Until Randy Moss, Brady never won with an elite wide receiver, much less the two Manning has seemed to always have. It has to irk Manning to know that the Colts have wasted so much talent.

And unbeaten season could change that. He would finish the job Brady could not a few years ago, and if he were to do it against an unbeaten Saints team led by the league’s next great quarterback, Drew Brees, it would only add to the achievement. To add icing to the cake, there Colts and Pats could clash in the playoffs in a rematch of one of the great regular season games in history earlier this year.

Unfortunately, with that opportunity comes the chance to fail, which Manning and the Colts have done more often than not when it matters the most. The truth is they have been so good in the regular season that there should be no argument as to who the best team of the decade is. But up to this point, Brady has been more consistent and to be fair, Big Ben Roethlisberger has been more successful.

All the pressure is on Manning.

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Randy being Randy in a place that allows it

This one’s for all the New England sports apologists out there. For you, Mr. I’m still waiting for David Ortiz to get to the bottom of his positive steroid test. And you, Mr. Manny Ramirez actually works a lot harder than people think. And especially you, Mr. Spygate was all a conspiracy to end the Patriots’ dynasty.

If you’re one of those people who refuses to believe your favorite player or team can do any wrong, then you deserve everything you get with the most disgraceful player in the NFL, Randy Moss.

New England won Sunday afternoon, as it always seems to when playing at home, but the victory was overshadowed by reports of Moss quitting on his team following a 16 yard catch that concluded with a fumble in the first half. According to the Boston Globe, two Carolina Panthers said the game plan was to get in the star wide receiver’s head early because they knew he would give up if he became frustrated.

"We knew he was going to shut it down," cornerback Chris Gamble said. “That's what we wanted to do him. That's what we did. He'd just give up a lot. Slow down, he's not going deep, not trying to run a route. You can tell, his body language."

Moss finished the game with only one catch and then like a petulant child, gave the media the silent treatment following the game. He has refused to speak since being sent home last Wednesday morning for being late to practice.

Of course, this isn’t the first time, or the second or third, that Moss has been accused of not running his routes properly or just giving up entirely. In fact, quitting on the Oakland Raiders is precisely what landed him in New England in the first place. His otherwise brilliant career has been plagued by these reports dating back to his days in Minnesota, where he once claimed, “I play when I want to play.”

It’s sickening when you think of the beating his more reliable teammate, Wes Welker, seems to take each and every week. But don’t expect anyone to get on Moss about it. He plays in New England, after all. This is the same group of fans who wanted to place a statue of their lazy left fielder outside Fenway Park until his final month with the Red Sox. Randy being Randy is just par for the course.

The media is just as pathetic. Nowhere else in the country will you find a group of local writers, radio hosts and television reporters lining up alongside the fans to get autographs from their favorite players. Most of these guys are more in love with Tom Brady than Gisele is. Earlier this season, Mike Freeman of CBSsportsline wrote an article criticizing Moss for –you guessed it— quitting on certain plays against the Atlanta Falcons. He charted every single play and found that “on a significant number of them, Moss either didn't block or generated a lackluster blocking effort. On other plays, when the ball wasn't going to him, Moss jogged some of his routes.”

You know what the collective response from NESN, Comcast SportsNet, WEEI, the Globe and the Boston Herald was? “Freeman is a hack.”

This is what happens when an entire culture goes from anguished to arrogant. Suddenly Bill Belichick’s decisions can’t be questioned, Theo Epstein is infallible and Doc Rivers is Red Auerbach with a more expensive suit. And the excuses extend to the field, which is why Moss can act like Manny in July 2008 but still be treated like Manny in October 2004.

Now with Belichick’s boys staring at a possible playoff matchup against the Denver Broncos and their much tougher wide receiver Brandon Marshall, I can’t help but think about the past. New England sports teams used to be defined by players who deserved to finally win a ring.

But these Patriots are defined by a guy who doesn’t.

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Football can work in England. I'm sure of it.

It’s that time of the year again. The time when England 2.0 invades the motherland and tries to force our version of football on the unsophisticated British, who don’t much care for the booze, breasts and broken bones we root for every week each fall.

Oh wait. The Brits are human too?

That’s not what American sportswriters are telling us across the ocean. Almost unanimously, the media is against the NFL going global, mostly because they believe the rest of the world has no interest in the forward pass or our silly penalties, which result in a watered-down version of rugby.

I call bullshit.

What’s not to like about making an all-day event out of a two-and-a-half hour game? Aren’t the British as proud of their drinking ability as they are of their healthcare system? So you start with the tailgate and go from there. By the time anyone heads into the stadium, you’re so drunk you really don’t care what you’re about to watch. Ask the majority of college students over here who only attend football games so they can play beer pong for breakfast. The actual game is secondary.

Or maybe thirdary. We also run half-naked women out there just in case you get bored watching giant men run into other giant men. The benefits are two-fold. The men in the stands get to watch a live peepshow and the women get to watch acrobatic excellence. Both sides enjoy the performance.

Of course, you can also appreciate the game if you’re so inclined. What’s better than seeing some nancy boy quarterback getting crushed as he tries to run away from the defense? You can enjoy both sides. The hitting, which all men love, and the retreating, which the British know a little something about.

We haven’t even got to the best part yet. The gambling. The sole reason football has become the most popular sport in the United States. This is right up any Englishman’s alley, seeing as how there are more betting parlors in London than medical marijuana shops in Los Angeles.

You can pretty much bet on every aspect of a football game, including the score. See that’s where Americans get a bad rap. The rest of the world thinks we are obsessed with points, but that is only partially true.

Half of us like to bet the under.

And just wait until fantasy sports takes over the rest of world.

I’m convinced this football thing can work anywhere and everywhere. As it turns out, there are far more heavyset people throughout the world than there are seven footers, yet everyone still seems to have taken kindly to basketball. Football is far more inclusive.

Just don’t mention the head injuries…

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Is the NFL really against Limbaugh?

Remember when Major League Baseball started testing for performance-enhancing drugs and it seemed like every player was in favor of taking down any and all cheaters? Even the dirtiest guys in the game were out there talking about cleaning up the sport. Well that was your classic union play, the ultimate political maneuver. The players were forced to react that way because they had no other option. Coming out against drug testing was a PR nightmare. But do you really believe all those guys who made millions thanks to steroids were happy to see that money disappear? Me either.

NFL players are now facing a similar situation – not quite as large, but just as controversial. Rush Limbaugh, a man who reminds most minorities of the Cameron Alexander character in American History X, is a member of the ownership group interested in purchasing the St. Louis Rams. Of course, the very idea has brought out all of the usual suspects. Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson are in a tizzy. Jason Whitlock is against it. MSNBC has pounced on Limbaugh.

But while liberals everywhere are ready to stand up and unite against the controversial radio host, you have to wonder if the sentiment within the league is similar. Mathias Kiwanuka of the Giants and Bart Scott from the Jets said they would never play for a team owned by Limbaugh and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay claimed he wouldn’t vote to allow Limbaugh into the league. But is this small group really speaking for the rest of the NFL?

The risk of acknowledging a willingness to play for Limbaugh is enormous. White guys would be labeled racists. Black guys would be called sell-outs. But that wouldn’t be true at all. Most of these guys are desperate for money, no matter who is writing the checks. The numbers don’t lie. 78 percent of NFL players go broke within two years of leaving football. I’ll repeat that so it really sinks in. 78 percent of NFL players go broke within two years of leaving football.

All things considered, it doesn’t seem like a smart financial move to alienate a possible employer because he thinks Donovan McNabb is overrated.

Not to mention, St. Louis is an attractive place to play for a lot of guys. Sure, right now the Rams look like a pee-wee football team, but we’re only a few years removed from the greatest show on turf. The ability to play eight games in perfect weather conditions is pretty appealing to offensive players. As numbers soar, so do contracts.

It all goes back to the money (just ask any player who has been involved in a contract holdout) and if Limbaugh and his ownership group have enough, I’m pretty sure 78 percent of the league would be willing to play for the Rams.

And I’m damn-near positive 75 percent of the owners would be willing to allow Limbaugh in if it means more money in their pockets. That’s what it takes to gain acceptance in the NFL. Yeses from 24 owners. For Limbaugh, winning over a group of mostly-conservative owners will be even easier than the players. He’s probably already won most of them over. That is what he does for a living after all.

In the end, it comes down to public relations versus looking in the mirror. The players and owners can all say one thing, but chances are they aren’t being honest. If they were, this wouldn’t even be an issue.

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Random Rumblings: 10/15

• I was at Fenway for game four last night and will have more on that later... Not that there's much to say.
  
  
• He's as good a businessman as any commissioner in professional sports, but that doesn't make David Stern the best human today. With the country facing as bad an economic crisis as it has ever seen, the head of the NBA has decided to cut 9 percent of the league's US Staff, meaning about 80 people will be laid off.
  
  The announcement came Monday, just after wire reports that said the NBA is looking to play regular season games in London leading up to the 2012 Olympics and will partner with the Anschutz Entertainment Group to design around a dozen arenas in China with the first expected to be finished in 2010.
  
  Stern said the league would continue to hire in other countries.
  
  Of course it will. Stern clearly believes, and has for a while now, that the NBA has milked this country for all it is worth and needs to further its international reach in order to maintain basketball's status as the second most popular sport in world. The league will continue to spend millions to promote itself in China every year and even more in an attempt to gain relevance in the UK.
  
  It's a savvy, cost-cutting move to layoff people in this country, the one that has helped the league go mainstream, but Stern is sending a message that will undoubtedly be sent by many businesses in the coming months:
  
  In a recession, the first thing that goes is decency.
  
  
• It's amazing how popular it has become to trash Penn State because its coach is older than me and the four people who read this site combined.
  
  But the main difference between the Nittany Lions and so many other programs this year is the age of the actual players. Joe Paterno's squad seems to put a lot more juniors and seniors on the field than anyone else, and that will make a difference late in the season.
  
  
• Look, nobody wants to forget about the Isiah Thomas era in New York more than I do, but anyone who thinks Chris Duhon is a better point guard than Stephon Marbury is out of their mind.
  
  Let's make this clear: When healthy, and he apparently is, Marbury is the best basketball player the Knicks have.
  
  
• You know who has figured out its place on the internet? WEEI.com. New England's top sports radio station's website realizes that people aren't going there to see scores or updates, so it has hired all kinds of writers to provide excellent daily columns, as opposed to game stories.
  
  
• For some reason, I thought New Haven's Chad Dawson might finally get some respect in the sports world (he already had it in the boxing world) if he could beat a big-name opponent for a title. Well, he absolutely thrashed Antonio Tarver to remain unbeaten, and probably didn't gain a single new fan.
  
  That's how said a state boxing is currently in. When more people care about MMA, a sport that has more one hit wonders than the pop music industry, than they do about a dominate boxer that actually wins the fights he is expected to win, something is clearly wrong.
  
  Too much parity can be a bad thing, just ask the NFL...
  
  
• Maybe it's just because my fantasy football team is winless, but pro football just doesn't seem as fun this year. There seems to be more big-name injuries than in the past which is causing a lot of teams to underachieve.
  
  And I'm sorry, a Tennessee/Tampa Bay Super Bowl doesn't seem too exciting. In fact, the way it looks now, there is only one team that could make the Super Bowl as exciting as it should be:
  
  The Saints, led by Reggie Bush, who looks every bit as good as he was in college.

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Random Rumblings: Time for the Rays to get serious

• Maybe, as SI’s John Heyman suggested on WFAN yesterday, the Tampa Bay Rays didn’t actually believe this would be their year. Maybe the team wasn’t prepared to negotiate deadline deals because it thought a .500 record was the ultimate goal in 2008.
  
  But now, everything has changed and the Rays need to make a move. The team is still in first place, two games ahead of the Red Sox and four in front of the Yankees, but it is in desperate need of a bat. The Rays have scored more than four runs in a game just three times since it completed a sweep of Kansas City on July 6.
  
  Jason Bay, a player I love, might be the guy the team is trying to trade for, but he isn’t the best player available. That honor goes to none other than Barry Bonds, the guy whose OBP last season was almost 100 points higher than anyone in the Rays lineup today.
  
  Even if Bonds has regressed, he is still going to be on base 40 percent of the time and will undoubtedly put butts in seats. And if you’re telling me he isn’t more valuable than any of the players the Rays currently stick at DH, you’re out of your mind.
  
  The Rays considered Bonds an option before the season; now it’s time to make the Home Run King a priority.
  
  
• The Angels had a perfect night in Boston, acquiring Mark Teixeira before its game and then watching John Lackey no-hit the Sox for 8 1/3 innings. Already a World Series favorite, the trade puts the Angels in a league of its own, far ahead of the Red Sox, who they seem to dominate every time they meet.
  
  
• ESPN ranked UConn Men’s Basketball the sixth best program of the last 20 years, which is a testament to how Coach Jim Calhoun transformed a regional program into a national brand. But you have to wonder if he is proud of the current state of the program.
  
  His players have had off the court problems dating back to the laptop incidents, which have resulted in a couple arrests and even more transfers. Most recently, he brought in Nate Miles, a red flag guy who took the spot of the academically ineligible Stanley Robinson.
  
  Calhoun is an old school guy and it seems like he has figured out in a hurry that you have to be willing to compromise integrity in order to remain sustainable as a big time basketball program. It will be interesting to see how much more of this he can take.
  
  
• I’m always amazed by the people who complain about the length of the baseball and basketball seasons. They’re almost always the same ones who get all jazzed up about who is going to report to football camp in July.

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Random Rumblings (On Favre, college basketball and Calhoun)

• Like all the legends in sports that have retired before him, Brett Favre used family as one of the main reasons why he retired from football this week. And we accept it–maybe more than we did from Michael Jordan- because of who he is and all he’s been through.
  
  But what if the Packers were able to sign Randy Moss? Would Favre have walked away then?
  
  The answer is no. Despite the success the team had this season, Favre didn’t believe he had the right pieces to win a Super Bowl, and he said as much when he talked about how getting there in losing wouldn’t be good enough.
  
  Family might have been the reason he retired. But he wasn’t talking about his wife and children. He was talking about Greg Jennings and company – his second family.
  
  The one he didn’t believe in.
  
  
• The NCAA Basketball Tournament might be the greatest event in sports, but it is going to be hard for most of the country to get excited about players they just don’t know, and that’s why the NBA forcing players to attend school for a year is going to hurt the college game in the long run.
  
  Last year, Kevin Durant and Greg Oden became household names because of the success their teams were having. This year’s best player, Michael Beasley, plays on an average Kansas State team that is barely ever on national television.
  
  The same goes for a lot of the big-name freshmen. O.j. Mayo’s USC team still needs to do work in order to qualify for the Big Dance. Eric Gordon at Indiana has been overshadowed but the Kelvin Sampson situation. And most people probably don’t even know what team Jerryd Bayless plays for.
  
  And the trend isn’t going anywhere. As long as the freshman classes are more talented than the juniors and seniors, the average fan will not get a chance to learn about the stars they are watching come tournament time.
  
  And interest will fade.
  
  
• Speaking of college basketball, The Big Lead asked who the coach of the year was going to be and didn’t include Jim Calhoun.
  
  The guy has won a National Title has a huge underdog (1999) and as an overwhelming favorite (2004), but if he can get Connecticut to the Final Four this season, it has to be his best coaching job.
  
  And he should be rewarded.

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