The Bus Arrives - NFL Black Monday, 2012 - Updated

The annual tradition of bloodletting in the NFL is upon us again. No, not the playoffs, but Black Monday.

This is the day when a passel of losing coaches must stand on the curb and be shoved under the bus by team ownership.

Was it their fault that their quarterback stank or their star players got injured? Who cares? We didn't make the playoffs. Start your engines!

Chan Gailey: his team won 16 games in the 3 years he was coach, and the Bills missed the playoffs for a 13th straight season. The pain Chan Gailey is feeling is offset by the fact that he no longer has to live in Buffalo.

Romeo Crennel: a 2-14 season spelled the end for Crennel after just one season as head coach. I've heard it said a few times that everyone likes the guy. Crennel even watched one of his own players commit suicide in the team's practice facility parking lot. After the suicide, here's what the team chairman said, emphasis mine: "I wanted to be there with the team, with the coaches, to let them know I love them and support them and know what they’re going through, and particularly the guys who were present in the parking lot when Jovan took his life. I know this has to be incredibly difficult.” 1 month later: Boo-hoo. Take a hike, Romeo.

Andy Reid: In 2011, backup QB Vince Young called the Eagles a Dream Team. Michael Vick, fresh from a stint in prison for killing dogs, said the Eagles could become a dynasty. Fast forward less than 2 years and Vince Young is broke and out of football entirely, Michael Vick finished yesterday's game on the bench, and Andy Reid has tire tracks on the back of his shirt.

Lovie Smith: There was one person in America watching Minnesota Viking's kicker Blair Walsh closer than anyone else yesterday, and that was Bears head coach Lovie Smith. Walsh had to kick a field goal at the end of regulation in a GB/Minnesota tie game. If Walsh missed the 29 yarder, the game could have gone to overtime, keeping the Bears' - and Lovie's - hopes alive for a playoff berth. Alas, Walsh nailed the field goal, sending the Bears to the golf course and Lovie Smith to the unemployment line.

Pat Shurmur: Who? I know, I know. Okay, it's like this: there's a team in Ohio called the Cleveland Browns. They play football on weekends sometimes. They had a coach named Pat Shurmur. He is no longer their head coach. But he has company: the team also fired their general manager. Happy days around that head office, huh?

Stay tuned, likely more to come.

Update:

And just like that, we have another victim, compliments of the San Diego Chargers:

Norv Turner: I've always thought that he is the quintessential NFL coach. He doesn't win much, doesn't lose much, he's just very good at staying on the NFL coaching merry-go-round, either as a head coach or a coordinator. Every once a while a camera will point at the sideline and you'll go, "Hey, there's Norv Turner." This was Turner's third team as head coach. Watch for him on a sideline near you soon. Incidentally, the team also canned the GM.

You can't turn your back for a second. Here's another one:

Ken Whisenhunt: Football is a harsh, harsh mistress. The Arizona Cardinals were 4 - 0 at the start of the season. This means head coach Ken Whisenhunt must have thought he'd be employed on January 1st, 2013. Nope. The team lost their next nine games in a row. Whisenhunt and GM Rod Graves got canned a few minutes ago.

The National Felony League

Bear with the quotations for a minute.

Me, on July 24, 2007: The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.

Me, on May 28, 2009: The sports shows are slowly leaning towards a reinstatement of Michael Vick.

He was released from prison a couple of weeks ago and has given no press appearances, but the sycophants that make up the sports media are already bending. Funny, that. He doesn't even have to say "whoops" or "prison sucks," and already they're kneeling.

Yahoo! Sports writer Jason Cole, July 27, 2009: In short, how many people could commit a crime punishable by prison or jail time, lie to their boss and the owner of the business repeatedly, continue to embarrass the employer and somehow think they could return to their job as soon as the sentence ends?

Realistically speaking, that’s a very unrealistic notion.

To be clear, this is not an argument that Vick, who repeatedly lied to Atlanta Falcons owner Arthur Blank and NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell two years ago, shouldn’t play football again. On the contrary, Vick deserves another chance.

Just not right away.

That's a sports writer. Once he has his nose in the backside of an athlete, there's no way he's going to pull it out again.

Cole goes on to say, "In this case, Vick brought more punishment on himself by how he treated his employer along the way."

Cole's either an idiot or insane. Only in the strange world of the shameless sycophant will you find a man describing big pay checks as punishment.

The National Felony League has now proven to be a complete joke and a great home for liars and lowlifes. League commissioner Roger Goodell says Vick will only be reinstated after 5 weeks of good behavior. 5 weeks. What a test of character. Does anyone seriously think Goodell is not going to reinstate Vick once those 5 weeks are up?

It's a thumb in the eye of every hard working fan that goes to work, does his job, and tries to live a decent life. Michael Vick ran a dog fighting enterprise on his own property, admitted to strangling and drowning dogs himself as well as watching his friends electrocute them, broke several laws, lied to the league, and lied to the cops. Outcome? Business as usual and big bucks, baby. Hell of a lesson for keeping kids from wandering off the straight and narrow.

Vick disgusts me, but sports "journalists" and Roger Goodell disgust me more. Roll over and beg, boys.

Bending to Vick

The sports shows are slowly leaning towards a reinstatement of Michael Vick.

He was released from prison a couple of weeks ago and has given no press appearances, but the sycophants that make up the sports media are already bending. Funny, that. He doesn't even have to say "whoops" or "prison sucks," and already they're kneeling.

On Fan 590 I heard a DJ say, "I'm a dog lover, but..." He went on to ask his listeners if they didn't think that everyone deserved a second chance. A man called in to say Vick should be banned from life let alone football. The DJ repeated that he was a dog lover - "I've had my dog for 17 years and I'm quite attached to him" - and then used the old magic word: "but."

Vick's a scumbag, but...Vick's a criminal, but...

This afternoon on another radio show, I head two DJs interviewing a guy from Sports Illustrated. They asked him if Vick might find a place in the NFL. The SI guy demurred, unsure of anything, but then asked if Vick might find a place in the CFL. The DJs told him that it depended if Vick was suspended from the NFL, since the CFL now recognizes suspensions in any other football league (read: the NFL). So the CFL gambit is a non-starter as far as Vick is concerned, but doesn't it speak volumes that the three men were even discussing it?

Sports "journalists" have no shame. None. They'll forgive anything, no matter how immoral, to kiss a professional athlete's ass. Here's what I had to say about the Vick dog killings a while back. It pertains to the asinine "second chance" comments that sports "journalists" trot out whenever they need to give an athlete a moral makeover:

Remember that this was going on at his kennel, not in some parking lot on the outskirts of town. Vick wasn’t "caught up" in anything. He was chiefly responsible for it. The dead dogs are buried on his property. The kennel, incidentally, was bought by Vick in 2001 for a little over $34000. With a flair for prophesy, these clowns named it Bad Newz Kennels.

The sycophantic sports writers are in quite a dilemma over this. Dog beats athlete for America’s heart every time, and the sports writers are in a pickle. They are, after all, writers, not reporters. There is no such thing as a sports reporter. Like me, emotions run their version of typing. They have steadfastly refused to investigate steroids in baseball (have you seen Jason Grimsley’s name lately?), or football. While Barry Bonds cheats his way past Henry Aaron, the sports writers go whistling through the locker room as if nothing’s amiss. Now they have a problem: America likes dogs.

But sports journalists like players.

Let's read again what Michael Vick did to wind up in the joint:

In the most disturbing account yet of Michael Vick's dogfighting operation, a federal investigative report details how the disgraced athlete killed pit bulls by hanging them from a nylon cord nailed to a tree and drowned others in a five gallon bucket of water...Purnell Peace, who was convicted along with Vick, told federal agents how he, Vick, and a third man had to drown one dog after it did not die when they tried to hang the animal. After Vick agreed last year to plead guilty to a conspiracy charge, he was interviewed by federal agents and claimed that he "never actually killed a dog," though he admitted watching his friends hang, shoot, and electrocute pit bulls. But after failing an October 2007 FBI polygraph test "as it related to the killings of the dogs," Vick recanted his denial and "admitted taking part in the actual hanging of the dogs."

The "second chance" philosophy as it applies to Vick is an obscene lie. Second chances are reserved for people who do something once, regret it, pay for it, and get on with their lives. If Vick had wandered into a room, seen a dog fight for the first time in his life, and been caught there, I would be all in favour of a second chance. But that's not what happened. Instead, he bought a kennel for the purpose of setting these dogs on each other. He watched them be electrocuted. He saw others shot. Some he hanged with a nylon cord. One that we know of he helped drown in a barrel. He watched small dogs get used as "practice" for the fight dogs. Then he and his friends buried the bodies on his property.

Vick has had a hundred chances to change his ways. The only reason he didn't get to 101 is because he got caught and put in prison.

Former QB Jim Kelly was on the radio the other day and said that he would leave it up to the NFL to decide Vick's fate, but in no way would Kelly want Vick to be a member of the Buffalo Bills. Other teams should feel the same way and say so.

The NFL needs to decide if it is a truly a "league," and what kind of league it wants to be. If they allow Vick back onto an NFL football field, they will truly be the National Felony League. Their reputation won't be fit for dogs.

Will He Be Worth It?

It's simply coincidence that I'm doing doing two dog posts in a row, but this story caught my eye.

The other I day heard pundits on a halftime show saying that Michael Vick will end up with the Dallas Cowboys next year. Vick's due to be released from prison in July, 2009, after a stint for dogfighting charges.

Yesterday, more bad news about Vick. From The Smoking Gun:

In the most disturbing account yet of Michael Vick's dogfighting operation, a federal investigative report details how the disgraced athlete killed pit bulls by hanging them from a nylon cord nailed to a tree and drowned others in a five gallon bucket of water.

Apparently Vick lied about killing dogs, saying he had only watched it happen. But then he flunked a polygraph and had to come clean with the FBI.

Will any football team think this guy's worth having around, whether for moral or PR reasons? The signs in the stands, the booing and jeers, and the negative interviews are going to be intense, with good reason.

Photo: AP