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.

Enough with Dave Hodge and The Hacks

Tim Thomas is still taking his lumps for not visiting the White House the other day.

Here's Billy Courtice trying to keep the non-story alive: While Boston Bruins goaltender Tim Thomas set off a firestorm on Monday for refusing the White House’s invitation to visit, the team was not surprised by his absence...."[Expletive] selfish [expletive],” the source told the Globe.

It took me a while to figure out what [Expletive] selfish [expletive] could mean. Hint: if you end with jerkoff or asshat, you'll have an easier time of it.

Over-the-hill hockey commentator Dave Hodge decided he'd throw in his two cents by Tweeting: Don't know if it's fair to point this out, but Tim Thomas has three children named Kiley, Kelsey and Keegan.

What a simple, old hack. You don't know if it's fair to point out that you think Tim Thomas named his kids after the KKK? Then again, it's been so long since anyone cared what Dave Hodge thought about hockey, that's it's probably good to see him wander off into linguistics and race baiting.

But let's be fair to old Hodge. Here's what he had to say in his own defense, as quoted by the CBC: The tweet — and what some saw as a reference to KKK — drew plenty of social media attention and Hodge subsequently tweeted: "To clarify, yesterday's tweet was simply a satirical, tongue-in-cheek observation meant to be humorous and not intended to be offensive."

C'mon. What else could he have possibly meant?

I was watching Pardon the Interruption last night, where two of sports' mature broadcasters reside. Tony Kornheiser thought Tim Thomas should have gone to the White House, while Mike Wilbon didn't care one way or the other. They both said that goalies are like place kickers: they're off in their own world and they're probably a little weird or crazy. Then Wilbon went on to point out just how many people have skipped going to the White House, such as Manny Ramirez, James Harrison, and Larry Bird - Manny because he probably didn't know there was a President or a White House, and Bird because, as Bird himself said, "If the president wants to see me, he knows where to find me."

I have to figure that this story is big only because Tim Thomas is a hard righty who wears Tea Party stuff on his helmet, and therefore he's an easy target for the lefties that tried to make it in journalism, failed, and somehow wound up at the sports desk.

Letter to Dave Hodge: can you and your buddies get over it and get back to reading final scores? Thanks.

Down Go the Packers

And that's that.

Looks like we'll have to wait until next year's "Can they go undefeated?" story. There always seems to be a team that flirts with it.

Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images

Chris Pronger and The Answer to the Concussion Epidemic

NHL defenseman Chris Pronger is out of the Philadelphia Flyers' lineup for the rest of the season due to concussion symptoms.

I'm not a doctor, but if they're ready to declare the rest of the season a bust, then he must be a wreck.

I've only had what I think were two concussions in my life, both when I was a kid. One hurt like hell and left me dizzy for more than a day. Another left me with a headache for a while, but not much more. I can't imagine what it must be like to stumble through several months with a scrambled head.

The Twitterverse is going bonkers right now, with thousands of tweets discussing a concussion epidemic in the NHL, and what to do about it.

How about: stop playing hockey? And football?

I'm sure any hockey fan or football mom would accuse me of being trite with that answer, but I really don't know what else to say when I see tweets like this:

Expert neurologist Dr. Charles Tator suggests 95% of hockey concussions are preventable. Now let's hear all you hockey doctors make excuses!

That's from a hockey writer named Adam Proteau, who has penned a book called Fighting The Good Fight: Why On-Ice Violence is Killing Hockey.

Here's another tweet from sports agent Adam Walsh: But there is no concussion epidemic in the NHL. RT@BComptonNHL: #Flyers confirm Chris Pronger's season is over. Awful.

If you're not hip to Twitter yet, the "RT" means Walsh was re-tweeting somebody. His own "But there is no...." is tongue in cheek.

I'll give you one more, from Senators reporter James Gordon: Anyone else tired of seeing every good player get a concussion?

I could list dozens of them, but you get the idea.

I wrote many years ago that tens of thousands of concussions are reported in high school football in the United States each year. From little league on up to the pros, guys are getting their heads bashed in all the time. (I also wrote that in 1905, football was almost banned because 18 college students died playing it. In 1908, 33 more were killed. You want to talk epidemics?).

Here's the pertinent part:

What's incredible is that our forebears stood for it, and that college students still wanted to play the game. Helmets, pads, and various rule changes throughout the years have made the game safer, but only safer in the quotation mark sense. Today, about 8 players a year get killed playing football. That's from all levels combined, making it small potatoes compared to the old days, though a staggering number of injuries flood the locker rooms each weekend.

Concussions, for one. 40 000 of them are reported annually among high school players alone, and those are only the kids that get treated. Concussions are such a certainty that NFL teams have a chart for each player. If a player gets nailed in the head, they know what questions to ask that particular man in order to find out if he's still got all his marbles. And even if he does, that's not to say that he'll have them later on. Former players report nausea and forgetfulness well after they retire, a chronic symptom of having your head kicked in. It will be with them for the rest of their lives.

What now strikes me as strange about that football piece is that I never heard anyone talking about a "concussion epidemic" back in 2006. Indeed, the paragraph I wrote about concussions was just that: a paragraph. More or less a footnote. I took it for granted that people get concussions while playing contact sports. It came with the territory.

It still does, but the epidemic label is very recent. I am not convinced that more men are getting concussions, only that it seems like more men are getting concussions. I can't prove that. Yet. But I suspect that a) we see it more because we're looking for it. b) a rash of concussions have affected star players, with the bigger pay cheques bringing a greater focus. c) concussions make good copy right now, and sports reporters talk about it endlessly. d) teams are now ordered to look for a concussion and keep a man off the field/ice if they remotely suspect that he has one.

That last one is critical. A 'dinger' that you shook off ten years ago is now a 'concussion' that gets you pulled from the game. When's the last time you heard the words "mild concussion?" You don't hear them anymore, because our whole perception of concussions has changed.

I'm not arguing that the new perception is a bad thing. Concussions are an awful injury. But when I hear people talk about the brutal nature of the game in such broken hearted tones, I am reminded of the scene from Cinderalla Man where Braddock says, "What are you going to tell me? That boxing's dangerous?"

In the scene, several people are showing Braddock a film clip of his opponent, and telling him that there's a good chance he's going to get killed in the ring. His attitude is, "When did this become news?"

When I read the sports pages, I'm sometimes left to wonder if someone is taking a gun, putting it to a player's head, walking him out to center ice, and ordering him to stand still while someone else smacks him in the temple with a sledgehammer. The concussion stories read like reports of innocent people getting hit by lightning.

Nothing could be further from the truth. These men are going onto the ice to do one of two things: score points, or hit someone. When they are hoist on their own petard, the least surprised person in the arena should be that player (and make no mistake, if you Google Chris Pronger now, you'll find a lot of heartfelt stories about concussions; Google him a month ago, not so much; a bunch of suspensions and being booted out of playoffs games kind of ruins the tragedy narrative, so you can read up on your own time).

So yes, concussions are bad for a player's health, and seemingly everyone in North America wants to make sure that no one suffers another concussion ever again. But what to do?

Simple. If you want to play professional football and hockey, but do not want to receive a concussion, then you cannot play professional football and hockey. If you want to make hockey and football safe from concussions, then you must completely remove hitting from the games, or ban the games outright.

There. Problem solved. Until you do either of those things, there will be concussions in the game. You might as well get used to it or turn off the TV.

The men that play these games know the risks. They just do it anyway. That is why they are the toast of the town, have massive bank accounts, and get to meet pretty girls. Physical danger is the price of doing business.

If the NFL was flag football, nobody would give a damn about it.

Pronger Photo: Andre Ringuette/Getty Images

The Bus Arrives: Bruce Boudreau

Black Monday was pretty dark for a couple of NHL coaches. Bruce Boudreau got tossed under the bus in Washington DC, and Paul Maurice got his pink slip from the Carolina Hurricanes.

The Boudreau dismissal is getting more press, and the talking heads are saying things like, "Ovechkin had his best season under Boudreau, but..."

The Washington GM said, “[Boudreau] pushed every button he could push. … You make the change and hope that a new voice and a new way of doing things and a new focus gets the best out of these players.”

That's a laugher. Just a couple of years ago, Ovechkin inked a 13-year, $124 million contract extension. His teammates Semin and Backstrom currently make $6.7 million/year each, and Mike Green pulls in $5.25 million. If that kind of money doesn't get the best out of somebody, nothing should. General Managers must want to send desks through windows when they discover that a player isn't "motivated" by Fort Knox.

Best for the Capitals means the Stanley Cup. The Capitals have won their division for the past four years, but always got booted out of the playoffs early. Nothing short of a Cup will be enough for the management and fans.

It's axiomatic that if you own an expensive player, then they own you. You aren't going to fire somebody worth $5 million to send a message to the team, and everybody knows it. And so: bus meets coach.

"It's Not Every Day They Get To Hang Out With Actual NFL Athletes."

The Detroit Lions haven't won a game this season.

If that has a familiar ring to it, it should. They didn't win a game last season, either.


NFL Players Mentor Troubled Detroit Lions

Get The Net. A Sports Guy Thinks He's A Journalist Again (II)

Uh-oh. Another sports "journalist" thinks he's a journalist.

Mike Lupica used to appear on ESPN to talk like a know-it-all and come off like same. For all I know, he still does. But in this piece for the NY Daily News he decides to go deep, then get outraged:

Across from the World Trade Center site there were more flowers than usual outside Engine 10, Ladder 10, the legendary New York firehouse known as Ten House. There are always more flowers, and signs, and photographs and flags, when there is another anniversary of Sept. 11.

OK. Good start. But wait...

We promised ourselves we were going to be a better city and a better country because of what happened. We told ourselves that we knew what really mattered now. In the aftermath of the worst day the city and the country had known, we promised to find the best in ourselves, and in each other.

And on this most recent anniversary of Sept. 11, the country seems as full of hate and noise as it has ever been. This is an America where Rep. Joe Wilson, whoever he is, thinks he can call the President of the United States a liar, Wilson talking to the President the way he would the help, or some waiter who was supposed to bring him another drink.

Ah, get bent. Screaming about politics has been going on forever. It took a break for a few weeks after 9/11, and then it came back. Did anyone think it wouldn't?

Human being are a political animal. We like to scream about politics, and sometimes we say outrageous things. Lupica's only upset because after a half-dozen years of Bush being called Hitler, it's now his guy that's getting yelled at.

There's a danger in sarcasm. You need to be good at it or you look kind of stupid. Lupica's words, with my immediate thoughts: "This is an America where Rep. Joe Wilson, whoever he is [you just said who he is], thinks he can call the President of the United States a liar [he doesn't think he can - he can, and he did], Wilson talking to the President the way he would the help [Mike would know?], or some waiter who was supposed to bring him another drink [so that's how you're supposed to ask waitresses for another round - you yell "Liar!"]."

Sports "journalists" are good for a laugh. In this case I got a double dip: amusing sanctinomy with a side dish of bad metaphor.

Get The Net. A Sports Guy Thinks He's A Journalist Again.

You know how I like to make fun of sports "journalists" all the time? I rest my case.

I caught this via Hot Air. They call it the worst piece of sports writing in history. They're right.

The sports "journalist" is named Mark Whicker. He tells Jaycee Dugard what she's missed while being imprisoned in the backyard of a maniac for almost two decades. A taste:

It doesn't sound as if Jaycee Dugard got to see a sports page.

Box scores were not available to her from June 10, 1991 until Aug. 31 of this year.

She never saw a highlight. Never got to the ballpark for Beach Towel Night. Probably hasn't high-fived in a while.

Uhhh. Okay. Got a bad feeling about this. He continues:

•Michael Jordan did indeed win the big one, and five others.

•Yeah, this golfer really is named Tiger Woods.

•Stock car drivers now marry international models and are invited to the White House.

•Domed stadiums, like the ones in Houston and Minneapolis, are considered obsolete, or at least unfit for baseball.

He goes on with his sports retrospective for a while and finishes with a flourish:

•And ballplayers, who always invent the slang no matter what ESPN would have you believe, came up with an expression for a home run that you might appreciate.

Congratulations, Jaycee. You left the yard.

As I was reading this piece I was saying aloud, "What the hell is this?" I thought The Onion was putting me on.

Whicker issued this apology after readers flipped out:

For Tuesday's Register, I wrote a column that clearly offended and outraged large portions of our readership.

It was not my intention to do so. But it's obvious that I miscalculated the effect the column on Jaycee Dugard, and the events that she might have missed during her captivity, had on those who read, buy and advertise in our newspaper.

Would someone please remind the sports "journalists" that they aren't journalists?

"He Floated Over On His Carpet, Looked Me In The Eye, And Said No."

The Onion's on a roll. This piece endears their writers to me more than any other from the past year. The elephant in the room, the genie in a bottle, it's all in there. Gorgeous.

Here, they skewer the bogus sports "journalists" that have covered for baseball's juicers over the past decade. Replace the word "genie" with the word "steroids" and there's virtually no difference between the below "senior baseball analyst" and the hacks from ESPN, TSN, Yahoo Sports, Fox Sports...


Baseball Superstar Accused of Performance-Enhancing Genie Use

The National Felony League Makes It Official

Hang, shoot, electrocute and drown dogs, lie to your bosses, lie to the Feds, lie to everyone in sight, go to jail, come out during a recession and...welcome to your 2-year contract worth $5.2 million, baby.

The NFL has now confirmed its garage league status beyond all doubt.

Photo: AP

The Bus Arrives - Rios

I was listening to JP Ricciardi, general manager of the Blue Jays, a few days ago. He had just put Alex Rios on waivers and was telling a reporter, "It happens all the time. We're just testing the waters."

Sure. And have I got some stock to sell you.

Rios is gone because of his own underperformance, but more importantly the underperformance of the whole team. The Jays spent big bucks on Rios and Vernon Wells. Result? Another .500 season. Somebody had to be jettisoned in order to make some financial space for next year. Scott Rolen went last week, and then it was Rios' turn. Enter the White Sox, who scooped Rios up this evening.

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.

Perfection

I'm still not sure what a perfect game means. Sure, sure, no hits, no walks, but is that all the pitcher's doing?

In last night's Sox/Rays game, Larry Wise caught a would-be homer in the ninth inning to save Mark Buehrle's perfect game. As with any pitcher's "win," a perfect game depends a lot on the other eight men on the field. So did Buehrle pitch a perfect game or did the White Sox win a perfect game?

When you get down to it, the only way a pitcher could possibly claim a perfect game for himself would be to throw 27 strikeouts, making the rest of the team not players but bystanders. (Take the 27 strikeouts at face value for argument's sake; it is possible for a pitcher to strike out 4 guys in an inning if the hitter swings, the catcher misses the ball, and the hitter beats the throw to first. The hitter still "struck out," and the pitcher has to face the next guy. But the perfect game would be shot, too).

Roger Clemens came close twice: he struck out 20 batters apiece in two separate games. Kerry Wood and Randy Johnson both struck out 20 guys in a single game. The only pitcher to ever strike out 27 batters in a single game was a guy named Ron Necciai. He played minor league ball back in the '50s. It wasn't a perfect game, but a no-hitter, and Necciai needed to strike out four men in the ninth because of a catcher's passed ball.

So has there ever really been a "perfect game" by a pitcher? Depends how you look at perfection.

You can argue it till the cows come home. A perfect game is either a fantastic feat done by a very good pitcher, or a statistical anomoly (there's only been 18 perfect games in the history of baseball) compliments of a good - and lucky - team.

That Was A Wimbledon

Two great players. Roddick gutted it out to take Federer to the brink, and Federer came out on top to become the winningest Slam tennis player of all time.

The best part: neither of them needed to grunt and scream like an idiot every time they swung the racket, something which has driven me away from tennis over the past ten years.

Congrats to Federer and Roddick both.

Photo: ADRIAN DENNIS/AFP/Getty Images

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.

Fade to Black - Peter Zezel

I was watching Zezel last year when he was filling in as a co-host for the Hockey Central show on Sportsnet. I remember thinking that he sounded like a gentleman.

I don't know if I ever heard a bad word about Zezel from anybody. He was a good player (underused as a Leaf, but I'm not a Leafs fan, so what did I care?), and a class act. After retirement he ran a hockey camp for teens and he did a lot of charity work. The only knock I had on him back in the day was the hockey hair mullet he carried around.

I remember the controversy surrounding his retirement. His niece was dying of cancer and he asked to be traded from Vancouver to an eastern team so he could be closer to her. Instead, the Canucks traded him to Anaheim, as far west as the NHL can get. So he retired. I like that story.

It's hard to believe that the disease he was diagnosed with was still with him. Last year on the TV shows he looked healthy, with the post-retirement fat of an athlete that's found the joy of not working out three hours a day. Alas, hemolytic anemia had kept its grip on him for a decade. Recently it took a turn for the worse. He had surgery a few days ago and ended up on life support. He died on Tuesday, aged 44.

More here.

Thank you...Sir?

I was watching the highlights of the Memorial Cup's opening game and saw an interview with the kid that scored the OT game-winner. His name's Maxime Frenette, a fresh faced kid who probably couldn't grow a decent beard if he tried (and he's trying). Here's TSN's take:

The 18-year-old from Boisbriand, Que. was only in the lineup because star forward Chris DiDomenico was injured, but he backhanded in the game-winner 8:56 into overtime to lift the Voltigeurs to a 3-2 victory over the Windsor Spitfires on Saturday at the MasterCard Memorial Cup.

At the end of the TV interview, the interviewer wished Frenette luck the rest of the way. Frenette replied with a sincere, "Thank you, sir."

Refreshing. Cool to see. A couple of years of pro hockey and a free agent contract will knock that kind of talk out of him in no time, but for now we can enjoy it.

Wings Win Round 2

It was a close one. I know my Wings well, so when they were up 2-0 over the Ducks in the second period, I thought, "This is going to overtime."

The Wings often have trouble maintaining a lead against tenacious teams. I can see what mood they're in from the TV screen. Some nights they feel like keeping their foot on the gas. Others, they get lazy and allow a team back in. Sure enough, it was 3-3 late in the 3rd, until Dan Cleary sewed it up in the last three minutes to make it 4-3.

Now, it's Chicago's turn. They're infamous for coming back when down two or three goals, so the Wings will have to be merciless.

Photo by Gregory Shamus/Getty Images

The Bus Arrives - Man Ram

It looks like Ramirez is going on a 50-game road trip. Solo:

Manny Ramirez was suspended for 50 games by Major League Baseball on Thursday, becoming the latest high-profile player ensnared in the sport’s drug scandals.

The Los Angeles Dodgers star said he did not take steroids and was given medication by a doctor that contained a banned substance. The commissioner’s office didn’t announce the specific violation by the 36-year-old outfielder, who apologized to the Dodgers and fans for “this whole situation.”

Strangely enough, "this whole situation" helps highlight how much players like Ramirez are paid. Since players aren't paid while on suspension over drug use, Ramirez will lose a little over $7 million. What's astounding about that number is not how much money it is, but how little. $7 million is only a third of his salary. He'll still come out of the 2009 season roughly $17 million richer than he went in.

If Ramirez is crying, then he's crying himself to sleep in a big bed full of money.

Robbed? Sure. But What's New?

Were the Red Wings robbed of a chance to win the game in overtime?

Sure, but what's new? I don't mean for the Wings, but for teams everywhere. Officiating in most sports is terrible, and bad calls happen on a regular basis (this is the negative side effect of Super-Duper-All-Sports-All-The-Time packages: you get to see a ton of games but also get to see a ton of bad officiating).

In The Red Wings' case, a loose puck was inches from the goal line, sitting there like a big black pancake. Marian Hossa reached out and knocked the tying goal into the - tweet - net. Oops. The ref "lost sight of the puck." No goal. A minute later the game was over.

It was a terrible call with a terrible excuse. Refs lose sight of the puck all the time. Show me a scrum in front of the net and I'll show you an "out of sight" puck. Refs usually wait about two seconds before killing the play. In this case, the ref lost sight of the puck for maybe a millisecond before blowing the play dead. Even so, the video shows the puck over the line before the sound of the whistle.

Or does it? And here's another funny rule in the NHL: the sound of the whistle doesn't matter. It is the referee's intention to blow the whistle that counts. So if his hand is halfway to his mouth, and he's a little late in tweeting his little toy, the play might still be dead. And it's not reviewable.

So robbed, yes. But bad officiating in the NHL is a proverb. You have to play through it. Every team in any sport is playing against two teams: their opponent, and the officials. Both must be overcome in order to win a game. Maxim: officials are not unbiased - they just want all teams to lose.

I thought the Wings looked flat out of the gate. The Ducks wanted it more. But around the halfway mark the Wings picked up their game and skated with it. They outclassed the Ducks at every turn in the 3rd period and doubled the Ducks' shot production. Hiller was on his game and made some good saves, but the Wings - and this is worrisome - had a lot of trouble giving puck support in the offensive end.

Still, the Wings looked good in the third period and should be able to carry that over into game 4. Whether an official feels like deciding the outcome of that game as well is, of course, up to him. To overcome that, the Wings have to do what you're supposed to do to win games: score more.

Photo: The Freep