Fan Mail

It’ been a while since I’ve gone through the emails and responded to your questions, but to be frank, I just haven’t given a damn.  The Rangers are on a roll, sometimes good however more recently bad, the Cowboys are about to kick off the regular season under new leadership but the same old crappy management and the NBA is still locked out. 

I could really care if the latter really comes back but it would give me another sport to complain about and more athletes to criticize.  But I digress.  Fantasy leagues are back in full swing and the college football season is about to take off.  And with the exception of the Miami Hurricanes, this season should be one to remember.

So without further ado, lemme reach into the ol’ grab bag and see what intelligent questions we got.

-What do you think the Dallas Cowboys chances are this season?  They appear to have a tough schedule with the Jets in week 1, the Pats in week 6 and the rest of the East that seemed to improve while the ‘Boys sat idle.

Milt Thomas, Pantego

They have a chance…a chance to be awful.  They also have a chance to be good but I put that right there with a snowman completing a marathon in Hell.  Look I have said this all along; I am not a big believer in the so-called Red Headed Savior, Jason Garrett.  He comes off to me as another cookie cutter, wannabe coach that, much like Josh McDaniels, wants to be the guy they used to work for and we see how that worked out for McDaniels and the Broncos and the mess they are working with now. 

Garrett wants so bad to be Jimmy Johnson that it makes me wonder why Jerry didn’t ask him to come back to coach.  These days, the Bill Parcells types of coaches don’t last long.  Players tune them out too fast because who are you going to really get rid of—your franchise player or some coach the entire team has stopped listening too regardless of their “toughness.” The Cowboys lack the talent and the front office intelligence the team needs to be successful again.  And it’s going to be a while before they are relevant again—that while being when Jones is in a nursing home or in the ground.

-I read your post on the controversy surrounding Tim Tebow and Kyle Orton and I think the only reason you pick on him is because everyone else is piling on.  He’s a fine young man and should be given the opportunity lead the franchise because he deserves it, not to mention he was a 1^st rounder.

Carlos Sepulveda, Plano

Look, I think I’m a decent guy but that doesn’t mean I should just walk in and run a Fortune 500 company just because the boss’ friend likes me.  That is the equivalent of the Tebow situation in Denver.  Yes he was a first rounder, but in the eyes of an imbecile.  An imbecile that ran out Jay Cutler and Brandon Marshall and then turned around and got rid of the Mike Alstott 2.0 in Peyton Hillis all because he thought he was going to spark a revolution or something in Denver.  I don’t hate Tebow; I just think he is unprepared to be a quarterback at the NFL level.  I don’t have to have played or watch incessant amounts of film to know when a guy has horrible mechanics.  Just because a guy throws one great pass doesn’t mean he should be the starter.  Just because one gives great speeches in college and motivates the team doesn’t mean that will translate to the NFL.  These guys have accomplished their goal and most will make ridiculous amounts of money so having a guy yelling at them up and down the sidelines doesn’t work like it did in college.

If you want to win, and I mean the team and not the fans, you play either Orton or Brady Quinn.  If you want to mount up concussions and lose your football team, you go with Tebow.  Fans aren’t in the locker room after a loss; players are.  Fans don’t take devastating hits for three hours; players do.  Fans don’t work out relentlessly to get better at their craft and earn multi-million dollar contract; players do.  Tebow may be good down the line, but I wouldn’t risk screwing my franchise any more than it already has been.

-Do you think the NBA lockout will go into the regular season and possibly cancel games or do you see this getting resolved relatively quickly?

Trent Broyles, Fort Worth

The short answer is I really could care less.  I am so out on the NBA it is ridiculous.  David Stern has turned the league into glorified streetball where the slightest touch earns star players trips to the free throw line.  The referees have too much power and the same teams suck and have no incentive to get better.  I think the best thing going is if the players do go overseas and get stuck in some of those contracts they cannot get out of because to be honest I’d rather watch the WNBA than the pre-planned WWE-styled garbage we see run out there between November and June.

-The Rangers’ pitching staff has fallen off a cliff making it hard for me to keep watching these games.  I’m afraid the team is going to be in second place after the Angels series and done by the last week of the season.  Should I still have hope?
-Phil Tanner, Waco

Hell yeah you should still have hope!  This is what late season baseball is all about.  Every game means something now and there is no time for complacency from anyone on the team.  We are still in first and just like the Angels this could be the series that galvanizes the team again.  I think when the series is over; the Rangers will be up by four games.  The problem is what they do after the series.  Do they stay hot or do they fall back into a funk against the Rays and Red Sox?  Who knows?  But I’d rather be in a tight race than in no race at all.  What they need is for Sept. 1^st to come as quickly as possible so they can get Beltre and Blanco back on the field and Quintanilla can go away and Young can go back to DHing.

   -The Cowboys will lose this year not because of the offensive line or the defense or even coaching.  They will lose because Tony [Romo] is the worst quarterback in the history of the franchise.  You can take that to the bank.

-Starry Lanley, Las Colinas

Again with this?  How in the hell do you keep getting emails in?  I thought I had you blocked.  Even though the Cowboys will be terrible this year it will not be from the QB position.  It will be coaching.  How can a guy that has presided over the offense the last four years all-of-a-sudden be the franchise savior?  It’s akin to asking the fox too watch the hen house because he knows the neighborhood.  When the Cowboys were good offensively, it was because of Garrett.  But when they were bad, and they have been terrible, it has also been under Garrett.  He has made questionable calls and substitutions dating back to when he snaked Wade and took over as head turd.  And as much as I hated the fact that Owens was brought here, he was a weapon and Garrett’s ego couldn’t make it work either.  His play calling is mediocre at best and had Jerry not given him this job or had let other teams really get a chance at him, who would have really had an interest in his services?  No one.

And you can take that to the bank!

-I saw where former Tennessee basketball coach Bruce Pearl claims the NCAA was making an example of him by placing a show-cause penalty on him until 2013.  Did the NCAA go far enough and will this deter others who abuse the rules?
-Jerry Reynolds, Saginaw

I don’t think it went far enough, but it is a good start.  The only way the NCAA cleans up college athletics is by establishing clear, concise, concrete rules across the board and enforcing them to the letter regardless of the institution.  Pearl can still be hired by a school to evaluate talent but cannot contact recruits or actually coach.  As a matter of fact, teams can be penalized for hiring Pearl and any of his former assistants before their bans expire. 

I have said for the longest that coaches should be punished for their transgressions.  Pearl, Jim Tressel, Lane Kiffin and others should have to deal with the consequences of their actions and just not the institution.  I like Randy Shannon, but if the University of Miami should receive the death penalty, Shannon and even Larry Coker should get an equal if not greater fine or penalty.  Every school should be on notice that deviant behavior will not be tolerated and the NCAA should be allowed to become involved with either terminating coaches contracts or “encouraging” them to leave should coaches cross the line.  They are the leaders of men and should be held to higher standards and it’s time they were dealt with accordingly. 

Stupid is as Stupid Does

So let me get this straight to make sure I’m not missing something. 

The NFL has just surpassed day one-hundred plus days of a lockout, the NBA had one of the best playoff runs in recent memory capitalized by a fantastic win by the Dallas Mavericks whom everyone thought they would be just a historic footnote to the Miami Heat’s impending dynasty and the game’s best Euros led the leagues best squad to a team victory over a cast of individuals. 

The National Basketball Association hasn’t seen the popularity of its game rise to such levels since the last disastrous lockout and they are willing to tank all the goodwill they have amassed over the last 10 years for what exactly?  The owners want a bigger piece of the pie and want the players to take less?  They want a hard salary cap and a rookie pay scale in place among other things because they say they are losing money.

And how exactly is that the players’ fault?

The last time I checked, the Knicks, Heat, Lakers and Mavericks pay whatever they can to get whomever they want and not one player has stuck a gun to their heads demanding this or that.  They just exercise their options to go elsewhere to get the money they want or feel that they are worth.  It is not their fault that these owners will pay big dollars for players they should be cautious about (Eric Dampier, Allan Houston, Tariq-Abdul Wahed) and then complain when they barely get the production they were expecting but everyone was warning about. 

It’s not their fault the owners overpay sometimes out of spite to keep someone else from getting another player even though they know in their heart they do not need them let alone they barely fit into their system.  It’s not the players fault that these owners throw money around like candy and then look for someone else to blame when they go in the red.  And it’s definitely not the players’ fault when owners like Donald Sterling barely cares about keeping their franchises afloat, could care less about the fans and are only in it for the bottom line and nothing else.

So because of their stupidity and willingness to run through money like coke heads, they have decided to lock the players out until they can come to a resolution that will save them form themselves.  And in the process they have decided to punish the fans, their employees and their respective cities as well all because they do not know how to manage their finances and expect others to make sacrifices for their sake of their revenue.  Please!

What I truly find ridiculous in this particular situation is their inability to read the environment that they have haplessly forged their way into.  You already have the country’s most popular sport on hiatus for the exact same reason and if they were to look closely the fans are none too pleased about the bickering between the two.  There seems to be no resolution in sight and the season is in danger of being delayed because the sides cannot agree on the difference of a few hundred million dollars (I know it sounds ridiculous).

And instead of learning from the mistakes the NFL made and try to seriously negotiate before the season ended, the powers that be decided they would rather take this to the mat at the last hour.  And in my opinion, this is what makes the NBA the worse run establishment in the sports world.  Do they remember what happened the last time there was a work stoppage in their sport because I do.  College basketball saw viewership increase because fans soured on the both players and owners. 

Same thing happened with Major League Baseball.  Remember how long it took to get fans to go back to those games?  Hell they had to run a league full of cheaters in order to get attendance back to respectable levels and it still took at least eight years for people to really give a damn and attend consistently. 

However, what those interruptions didn’t have was the ever presence of a terrible economy looming overhead.  And there is nothing more devastating than having regular people spending what little hard earned money they have only to be  stuck in the middle of a slap fight between millionaires and billionaires while they are wondering how they are going to buy groceries, pay a bill or buy medicine.  It doesn’t make sense to the common fan that wants to take their kid to their first game and the only thing they can afford is parking and tickets because two groups of wealthy individuals are wondering how in the world they will get by with one-hundred thousand less dollars in their pocket when they are already making tens of millions.  Explain that when attendance suffers and remains stagnant for a long time.

They can’t and that is the real tragedy of this fight.  All of these leagues have failed to see what MLB and the National Hockey League had to learn the hard way; you cannot lose the fans and claim victory for anything.  They will suffer and suffer mightily all because of arrogance, selfishness and stupidity because in the end the real losers will be the fans who will ultimately foot the bill to pad the pockets of greedy individuals claiming to have our best interest at heart somewhere in these negotiations.        

All of the talking heads have claimed they expect the lockout to be protracted and there is the possibility there may not even be a next season which would be a tragedy on two fronts.  The first being the longer the fans are denied the game, the more interest wanes and David Stern will not be happy about that.  The second is the longer the lockout is in place the longer the Mavericks would be champions and Mark Cuban continues to walk around with the O’Brien Trophy and David Stern will definitely not be happy with that. 

Faced with those two options, Stern might want to get on the phone with Bud Selig and get some pointers, stat!