Mister Faded Glory | misterfadedglory.com

Wow, we’re all quick to judge, aren’t we? Tonight, ESPN becomes the mouthpiece – or enabler – for the cap-off to LeBron James’ farewell or recruitment tour or constant fete.

No matter the sentiment, however, James’ weeklong will-he-won’t-he-why-is-he junket is testimony to the power of viral marketing, public relations, and the zeitgeist surrounding sports. For someone cultivating his own brand – even the negative judgments rendered by sports media, bloggers, et. al, is actually a good thing. Believe it or not.

Bad public relations is better than no public relations. Designed solely to self-promote, LeBron’s tour hasn’t seemed to win him any more fans – but maybe that’s the point. He’s earned opinions and judgments and pity and disgust. He’s relevant, no matter what shape he takes in the top of your mind. Today, we all know LeBron James. We don’t know him any better or any worse than we did before, we just know that he immediately spurs a reaction.

Sports media shudders at the notion that a popular player views himself as brand, rather than people’s champ. Where was this outrage, however, when Nike helped Michael Jordan launch the Jumpman?

No matter how self-aggrandizing Lebron’s tour might be, there’s no question he’s commanded the storylines, fueled interest in the NBA, and fueled reaction, evaluation and enthusiasm for the rest of his career. Is he what’s wrong with the NBA? Is he really out of control? Is he just a total douchebag? Well, probably, maybe, and no. Slice it any which way, but he’s on everyone’s mind.

Besides, this isn’t going to ruin LeBron James. If LeBron can count on one thing, he can count on popular opinion swinging behind him eventually. Kobe allegedly committed sexual assault, and sportswriters lauded him for jetting to and from Lakers games to Vail, Colorado. Allen Iverson took furious root in the counterculture, drawing ire for his sarcastic “Practice” speech. Neither Kobe nor Iverson are rubber-stamped Americana like Cal Ripken, yet each enjoyed immense popularity aided by a backlash, not in spite of.

Fast-forward to only three weeks ago – and Tiger Woods, replete with scandalous past, furious media antagonists, and requisite drama, earned thunderous applause during his third round at the US Open. We don’t care. We never did. And if we did, it was only for that one minute. Greatness, apparently, survives.

Division over a public figure is actually healthy – James is no longer just a boring extension of sportswriters’ Michael Jordan fantasies. Instead, he’s LeBron. He’s great, he knows it, and he doesn’t care how he has to prove it. If that irks you because it doesn’t fit in your idealistic box, then great: he’s caused a reaction.

The reaction today features sportswriters, casual fans, and Clevelanders lining up to take potshots. Some think the Bulls are a better chance to win now. Some think no one should ever leave their original team. Some are a little uncomfortable with joining a star-laden team, rather than leading one. Some still want LeBron to thrive for a storied franchise, under the brightest lights. To some LeBron will always be a scumbag, his self-aggrandizement totally incoherent to middle-class lifestyle. Yesterday, for example, some argued against college players leaping to the pros. We’d never do that. Today, some imply that in LeBron James’ shoes, they’d gladly accept whatever menial check the Cleveland Cavaliers would provide, simply exuding gratefulness they got to play basketball for ridiculous amounts of money.

The implication is that LeBron’s next move should be totally defensible. But nothing’s ever that simple. No matter what he does, he’s failing someone, if not several. The reaction tonight will castigate him for any of this.

The reaction tomorrow will be a further devoted base, a gnashing backlash, and those in the middle. Some even react to the backlash, and develop a grudging admiration. (Check the archives for Mr. Faded Glory’s own 10 years of Kobe Bryant examination.) But everyone reacts. But that’s the point.

Tomorrow the reaction differs. Most of us will forget. Some of us will start looking forward to his time in New York, just because it’s excitement injected into humdrum NBA basketball. Some of us will gnash our teeth in hate, assuming LeBron a frontrunning punk. But we’ll all forget, and we’ll realize that things are the way they are. In the end, most of us just like to watch great basketball. When someone excels, we all forget.

LeBron James has gone viral. He’s a basketball player, a brand, and a conglomerate, like Jordan before him and Julius Erving before that. His legacy is fifteen years down the road, and his career is in its prime. To act as though anything else is within his control – or within our knowledge, mores, and values is futile. That’s our deal. Not his.

But we talk about it. We judge today, we’ll judge differently tomorrow, but his marketing team reviews hits and scores and clicks, and knows this whole ordeal has been a success. Brand level boosted, no matter the location, no matter the message. And you thought that stuff mattered?

Instead, LeBron’s saga is a case study in public relations. It doesn’t matter what your opinion is.

Only that you have one.

From The Big Lead, I clipped and pasted evidence of the conventional wisdom surrounding one of Lebron James’ oft-discussed landing possibilities: The Chicago Bulls.

Why would LeBron go to a franchise where he has no chance of being the best ever? Chicago will always be Michael Jordan’s city. The Bulls drafted him, he won six rings, became the best player of all-time, is considered the ultimate competitor, blah, blah, blah. The comparisons to Jordan will haunt LeBron forever. Misses a game-winning shot? Jordan would have made it. Doesn’t win three titles in a row? Jordan did.

I don’t mean to rail on TBL – they’re not alone. After all, the dueling legacies is a popular refrain among sportswriters. The logic appears sound: The only way the King can truly rise to status of icon Michael Jordan is to escape Michael Jordan’s shadow completely. The last thing he’d want to do is ink a deal in the city Jordan owned. Right?

Unless this notion is completely counterintuitive.

Lebron James is a unique basketball player: freakishly athletic, amazingly skilled, possessing a sublime mental, genius gift for the game. He has repeated successes and failures, and he is 25. these things are all true.James already is regarded as peerless – the best player in the game. He already is regarded higher than Kobe Bryant, a Jordan imitator to the point of surpass. He is perhaps otherworldly, unlike any other player except, perhaps ,Jordan.

James, more than most, is fully aware of his legacy. He is fully aware of his potential to rank in the game’s Pantheon. He is fully aware, also, of his legacy’s keepers.

Who are these guardians?

Who do you think?

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I swear Tony Kornheiser reads this blog. OK, he doesn’t. But he would appreciate our stance on soccer fans. He would – it mirrors his; not by imitation, just by coincidence.

If he read, he’d likely chortle, yet wonder how this place can be so freaking funny, even though each dispatch comes from (sigh) my mother’s basement. (Ha! My mom doesn’t even have a basement.)

Anyway, Tony’s been frustrated with soccer during the World Cup just like us, with aggravations strikingly similar, increasing his radio show from must-listen to practically appointment tuning.

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Seriously, someone else has to have thought of that? Cup-date?!

Believe it or not, I’m enjoying the World Cup. That’s right, I am.

Oh, sure, I’m in the middle of Kansas, and people here are obsessed with the nouveau-Big 12. The Cup barely registers. At least that’s what I assume; I don’t really talk to anyone not on the Internet.

The point is, I like the World Cup. Like I said, it’s a tournament, and I’ll watch. It’s an improvement over Mike and Mike or the Today Show as morning prep background noise.

(By the way, the network morning shows have been showcasing this guy who was trapped behind a furnace for 12 hours and subsisting on trickles of rusty water, before he began sawing his own arm off. You think you’ve got problems! This guy cut off his own arm! Believe it or not, I’m not complaining about the morning shows.  I’m fascinated and disturbed by this. Totally worth competing stories on four networks at 7:15, 7:21, 7:24 and 7:46.)

Anyway, I was all set to take to task friend of the blog (Well, not really a friend. I just enjoy his book A Few Seconds of Panic. I assume he’s a friend.) Stefan Fatsis for his column, tweeted on Saturday, about a 50-year-plan for soccer adoption in the U.S.

I assumed this was the typical tripe (Why doesn’t the US like soccer and WHEN WILL THEY?) and whining about American culture’s refusal to embrace soccer. Instead, it’s a great read about FIFA and the U.S. Soccer Federation actually planning for the future of soccer in the U.S.

Got me to thinking – Soccer really has come a long way. Think back to the World Cup when I was 10 (Maybe you also were 10. Maybe you were 8. Work with me.). No one could possibly have cared less. Now, here it is, prime-time sports news; whether owing to a 24-hour sports cycle, a global economy, or the rise of hipsters. Soccer is a veritable niche sport, co-existing along the lines of tennis, and maybe even hockey. So what if it’s largely supported by pretentious eggheads consciously choosing to follow an unpopular sport in hopes of appearing supremely intellectual? Hockey, after all, is supported by fanatical lumberjacks who eat moose for breakfast and brush their teeth with maple syrup. This really isn’t any worse, right?

There’s your appreciative post for the day, the gargantuan revelation:  Soccer is good. We like it fine, as long as soccer phonies aren’t wasting my time wondering why more people aren’t as smart as they. It’s even grown to the point of the phonies’ chagrin – as they try and reconcile a yearning for popularity with the disdain for anyone horning in on their racket. I mean, should soccer rise to the level of baseball, then where do they go? Water polo?

But that’s enough for now. Time to return to sports I comfortably inject with my own self-loathing. Not only is this Tool-in-Kansas-City week, it’s also the NBA Draft. That’s right, by Thursday, you’ll see, once again – NBA Daft – my exercise in making fun of 19-year-olds I’ve never heard of, and rudely abusing struggling business entities. Where petty happens.

I’m hardly through Joe Posnanski‘s latest bow to supposed “genius GM” Billy Beane, and I felt compelled to post. Check this out:

Fans write in every few days to complain that [Athletics] GM Billy Beane, the man who for better and worse helped stage a baseball revolution, the man Brad Pitt will play in the movie, the man who threw the chair through the wall, the man has become bored with baseball.

They say he only cares about soccer these days.

Now, I’ve thought this was probably overstatement — though it is undeniably true that Beane has become a full-fledged soccer fanatic. You could see that passion growing through the years. I remember distinctly reading this story three years ago where Beane referred to his love affair with Tottenham Hotspur of the Premier League and how he spent five hours a day listening to soccer podcasts and how he fought for the remote with his wife because, “She wants to watch the baseball highlights on SportsCenter. I want to watch Fox Soccer Channel.”

Can’t make this up, can you? Will wonders never cease! The Sabermetricians’ chosen one, mediocre general manager Billy Beane, is fascinated with soccer. But how could he leave Eric Chavez (“He’s better than Barry Bonds“) behind?

Truly a match made in heaven: The world’s most pretentious baseball mind now gravitates to the world’s most pretentious sport. Maybe Beane can help spur a “revolution” in soccer!

Honestly, the laudatory praise heaped at Beane by the Sabermetric community is laughable. As Moneyball detailed, Beane effectively exploited market inefficiencies to maximize the Oakland A’s budget … in the early 2000s. This was admirable. Principles of statistical evaluation are now part of mainstream analysis.

But stats and trends don’t govern all. And they never will. As Beane’s A’s proved, you can totally build a divisional winner based on long-term trends, market inefficiencies, and statistical analysis. When “games to play” shrinks from 162 to only 19, well, then luck and intangibles actually do play a larger role, much to Sabermetrician chagrin. (In a related story, Aaron Schatz just screeched into a telephone that the ’07 Colts and ’08 Giants are the worst Super Bowl winners ever, for the ten thousandth time.)

Sabermetricians routinely argue against luck and intangibles, even though they have already won. They routinely react with horror should a champion, MVP, divisional winner, or series winner emerge in any way at all inconsistent with their statistical trends. This is preposterous. Their methodology is part of the practice. It never was, nor will it be, gospel. Beane’s sycophant writers forget that – and continue fighting some imaginary battle.

After all, Beane persists in Oakland, selling his properties high on the dollar without actually realizing a return. Rich Harden, Danny Haren, Mark Mulder – for the A’s, everyone reaches a preliminary ceiling before their actual peak, then they’re shipped off for yet more untouchable prospects. Sportswriters compliment Beane for “selling high,” even though all he did was restart his treadmill, running away from accountability. That’s how Beane “wins” approval – he’s constantly recycling young, fresh talent that seems to be a can’t-miss, until it does. In the cases of Harden and Haren, Beane actually was fleeced by the Cubs and the Diamondbacks, respectively.

(Speaking of which, the Beane in Moneyball consistently eschews traditional “blue-chip” prospects. So why is he now always trading his proven studs for the blue-chippers?)

If Billy’s off to soccer because he’s bored with baseball, that’s totally fine. Maybe he can build a team in the Premier League that’s barely competitive, forever stuck on a similar prospect treadmill, and enjoy the drool and salivation from pompous soccer writers and elitist fans who want nothing more than to prove their intellectual superiority. If that’s true, it’s a match made in heaven.

In fact, it already sounds like a great book. Someone page Michael Lewis. As we saw with The Blind Side, he’s used to making shit up based on a crony’s story. Actually, come to think of it, maybe that explains the myth behind Moneyball after all.

Yesterday ESPN senior baseball blogger Rob Neyer used his Twitter feed to point out his condescending response to an aspiring blogger’s letter. I confess I didn’t pay much attention at the time, just rolling my eyes. But I’ve taken a closer look today, after a quick-hat-tip to our friend The Big Lead.

Sure, it’s no new trick for a writer to be condescending – particularly Sabermetricians, who are quite certain you do not appreciate Tim Raines enough.

In Neyer’s case, he’s visibly frustrated with the difficulty in recruiting team-specific bloggers to ESPN’s network of TrueHoop-style baseball writers. Apparently Rob is in charge, sort of a “senior editor.” Apparently this network you never heard of is called “SweetSpot.” Apparently nine teams still have spots to fill.

What’s interesting to me, is that Neyer’s whining is not just petty, but revealing. He claims:

The sad truth is that even if you’ve got the time to write about your favorite team every day, you probably don’t have the analytical skills or the writing chops we’re looking for. You might, someday. But writing, like most things, takes a fair amount of practice. If it were easy to write (and analyze) well, we wouldn’t have nine openings in the SweetSpot Network …Sometimes I worry that my standards are too high … but that’s better than the alternative, right? If I’m going to err (and I will, inevitably) I would rather err on the side of good writing and analysis.

Weirdly provocative, I know. First of all, the bar clearly isn’t set very high, because the Cubs blog Neyer hired is View From the Bleachers. Christ, I think they’re still waiting for Ronny Cedeno to blossom. Seriously, I’m not even linking to that shit.  But more to the point, Neyer seems to be relying on his subjective analysis to find the right guy.

But how can this be? How can a dyed-in-the-wool Saber guy justify hiring bloggers just based on his own whims and subjective opinions? I know, I’m gasping, too.

But realistically, what’s our criteria here? Shouldn’t prospective SweetSpot writers understand what’s expected of them? Should they not be aware of the VORP they’re required to have? (Or VORW – Value over replacement writer.) And what about words-per-minute? Posts per day? And, really, isn’t it important just to thrust phoned-in content out to your page? Rather than swinging for the fences with one great post among sparse content, shouldn’t a new writer just toss crap out on the page, like a base on balls? Shouldn’t page clicks and clickthroughs be disassociated from browser or CMS or home laptop factor?

Instead, Neyer informs applicants that he’ll just know it when he sees it, an assertion at least as specious as evaluating a player based only on anecdotal evidence, or claiming you’ll know a Hall of Famer when you see it. In fact, Neyer and his Sabermetric cronies routinely (and gleefully) excoriate this practice.

I mean, there’s absolutely no way I’d claim that Bert Blyleven was actually a mediocre pitcher, or call the Sabermetric poster boy a totally forgettable oddity, decidedly not a Hall of Famer, irrespective of certain statistical milestones.  CLEARLY I DO NOT UNDERSTAND YOUR NUMBERS.

(And, if you think this post partially exists just because I’m glad to have another blogger – yes, even TBL – join me in repudiating this Bert Blyleven nonsense, you’re partially correct. I also don’t have good things to say about Mr. Raines.)

But it cuts both ways. If I want to lash out at Rob Neyer for being a gaping hypocrite, that’s fine. But actually, it’s me who finally has the built-in excuse! This is exactly why I haven’t gotten a break as an ESPN blogger. Just like Bert, I’m a victim of bias. Because, can’t-you-see, their choices are entirely subjective! It’s me and the Dutchman, and our decks are both unfairly stacked. What an unlucky break for me.

We give up. Where’s dinner?

People tend to ask Mr_FadedGlory, they say, Mister, what have you got against soccer?

And my answer is: nothing. I have nothing against soccer. It’s fine. It’s tolerable. It’s a great sport. It’s especially a great sport for kids. I played it myself, back on wistful autumn Saturdays* in Clear Lake, Iowa. I was normally a defender. (It’s true. Even back then,
I couldn’t score.)

(*I have fond memories of finishing up soccer games on Saturday mornings. After 2 hours of running around in Parks-and-Rec soccer league t-shirts, I would walk the few blocks to my Dad’s office supply store on busy Highway 18. I don’t know what people thought when they saw a kid walking along the highway; it clearly wasn’t safe. But I’d get to the store, and of course my Dad was working, it was his store and he usually worked Saturday mornings. And I’d get to choose a soda from the machine, relax in the office-chair-of-the-month and listen to Iowa State attempt to play football. See, these are the memories that attack you later when you don’t expect them.)

Anyway, I have nothing against soccer. I even watched U.S. vs. England on Saturday. No sport is helped by HD as much as soccer. Practically gorgeous. Unwatchable in regular definition, it now surpasses football, golf, and even hockey on the tube.

I follow the World Cup extremely casually (I’m in a pool!) and yes, I understand its appeal, as well as its mammoth importance. Each time the Cup rolls around, stories pop up to testify that soccer is “catching on.” These occasionally cite phantom statistics of kids playing soccer. Which is stupid – soccer has been the popular kids sport for more than 30 years. Kids play soccer because it’s safe, easy and cheap. There’s no equipment. Eleven can play at a time.

Still other writers detail their personal unfamiliarity of the game, or find an excuse for patriotism. Some just spout excitement, urging all sports fans to watch, bordering on a threat. My Twitter feed is dotted with familiar writers and bloggers extolling the World Cup – and that’s all well and good, I guess. Still, it feels fairly hollow. (I mean, isn’t the typical soccer fan reading High Times?) And this isn’t rocket science – hockey and soccer are basically the same sport. If you like one, chances are the other isn’t too far off your radar.

But the fact is, we’ve come full circle. While columnists used to take potshots at soccer, within the last 12 years it’s become fashionable to acknowledge the sport, rather than sneer. It’s even become fashionable – even if you don’t really like or know the sport – to make sure you assert soccer’s virtue, going out of your normal way to feign excitement. But the question is, why?

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On Thursday, Tony and Mike opened PTI wondering why the NBA even attempts to cast its Hall of Fame inductions during the opening weekend of football season. Tony counted it as stupidity, Mike simply deflected, probably thrilled to land ESPN’s interview with Michael Jordan, reprinted and re-aired nearly a billion times Thursday.

Then Friday night’s induction speech happened.

Didn’t like that link? Try this one.

And, with that, I’m sure the NBA is actually relieved its benchmark delivered a speech only slightly classier than a Sean Hannity diatribe.

I’m not going to offer much more than a snide comment. I have hated Michael Jordan for years, as a figurehead, as an egomaniac, as the foil to my Blazers, as simple Goliath. And now, that hate is legitimized.

Though it’s sad.

Michael Jordan has accomplished nearly everything he set out to do in his basketball career. He loves the game. And in return, as steward for that game, he chose to spend several minutes lambasting anyone and everyone who even thought to prove him wrong, decry him, or suggest they might like to compete against him.

He bullied former employers, teammates, and even threw his own children under the bus; yet another attempt to remind us of his own greatness. He invited the high school coach who would not let him onto the varsity team as a sophomore; never mind that the coach simply followed school policy – no sophs on the team. He eviscerated Bryon Russell, a foul as cheap and offensive as the push-off that fills his legend. He made fun, and made sure to tell us all what was so carefully guarded by Nike and a sycophantic media – He’s a jerk.

Sure, Jordan’s legions of defenders will characterize his petty tirade as refreshing, or honest (See: Wilbon, Mike. Whitlock, Jason. Kornheiser, Tony). Please. In no other profession or discipline are people allowed petty diatribes and a sheer lack of class; for someone who has his own brand, the lack of professionalism is hopeless. For Jordan to repeatedly characterize his petty bullying as his competitive legend does not cut it. He is a prick, he is a douchebag, he is petty, he is perhaps the best basketball player we’ve ever seen, and he insecurely cannot bear the thought of you not remembering him just as such.

And tonight, he’s in the Hall of Fame. But fear not, he’s more bitter and jaded than any of you. He’s alone, with trophies, women, sometimes both, millions and billions of dollars, legions of admirers, and several grizzled old guys who laud this “honest” speech (Read: PTI).

But he’s a shell. He’s not professional. He’s obsessed with his end in the limelight, and his end of relevance. He’s bitter, he’s jaded, he doesn’t know how to get old, and he’s stuck in his own life. He’s a bully and a pretentious jerk. And he knows it.

Now we know it too.

Each year our enthusiasm for the return of football season is tempered by reality once the games start. And we realize we didn’t miss NFL announcers, college announcers, nor few football announcers at all.

The games start, and our ears bleed. So before we descend into petty diatribes against forgettable football announcers – let’s take a quick moment to recognize two profound, perfect passages – penned by two blogger, no less. Passages so great, I wish I would have written them myself. So succinct, I know that I could absolutely not have written them myself.

First, Mike Tanier points out exactly why we have so many horrific announcers. In his Walkthrough, he describes the evolution of football fandom – but no corresponding evolution among football broadcasting.

You get the idea. You watch more football, read more about football, ingest more data and opinion about football than it was possible to absorb just 25 years ago. High level experts and analysts of that era could easily gain an edge over the common fan: they could get their hands on out-of-town papers or game tape, interview a player or telephone a colleague, go to the basement to search the stacks.

Those advantages barely exist anymore. You can watch a press conference or download the transcript. You can read the out-of-town blogs. The marginal knowledge that separates the extremely passionate fan — and that’s what you are if you are still reading at this point — from the professional football analyst has grown very small, and it’s shrinking constantly.

That’s why you find your local columnist frustrating, the television color commentator unlistenable: you know too much, and they probably haven’t changed with the times.

Amen, brother. We’ve all outgrown John Madden’s explanation of a forward pass, and Joe Theismann making up some leadership intangible just doesn’t cut it anymore. With football analysis, networks and writers need to focus on the high-road, the professional, the minute. We’ve said before, schedule upward, and the masses will follow. Will Cris Collinsworth and Jon Gruden let us down?

Today at Deadspin, culture editor Big Daddy Drew offered spot-on insight into national differences.S topping midway through his scathing Jamboroo, Drew encapsulates the difference between Midwesterners and the East Coast. The stereotypical East Coast anger really isn’t anger at all – but a manifested inferiority complex assumed by Midwesterners. He says Minnesota for example, but it could be Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Illinois, Wisconsin, and especially Nebraska. Those fuckers.

If you want more reasons why Minnesota sucks, take it from someone who lived there for seven years. Minnesotans are reputed to be the nicest people in America. They are not. They are only pretending to be nice. Underneath all those smiles and “you betchas” are the most passive aggressive race of people mankind has ever known. On the East Coast, people are far more upfront about their assholishness, which is far better. Minnesotans coat every gesture in a fake, cloying glaze of insincere pleasantness. You just want to shake the shit out of them and give it to you straight.

My Midwestern audience recoils in horror, and my East Coast transplants nod silently. So true. Now that’s a culture editor.

That’s it. Two shout-outs. Now, back to ESPN’s NFL Live, just in time to catch Mark Schlereth not abbreviating “NFL” for the seventy thousandth appearance in a row. JFC.

Three competing – but tired – stories still plague our airwaves, hurting our ears and frustrating sensibilities. Not so for sports media, however, which demonstrates irrelevance with each character study. Let’s deliver our backhanded compliments and be gone from these topics forever:

I. Vick.

So Michael Vick signed with Philadelphia, probably because of a Donovan McNabb connection. This occurred late last week, after rampant speculation swirled around the Bills, Packers and Panthers, and really no one else. No one mentioned the Eagles, not even as a remote possibility. Previously, I wondered how precisely zero of the hundreds of columnists and reporters assigned to the Vick circuit could even speculate on an Eagles connection? None. Nice reporting.

Still, it’s tough for me to see the relevance. Sure, Vick may fit the prototype of the Wildcat or whatever cockamamie scheme the Eagles might uncork, but does anyone really believe he’ll return to his ultra-athletic ceiling? Jamal Lewis hasn’t been the same runner since he served time in the house – he was particularly abysmal immediately after his return to the field – and he only did four months! Vick may be an NFL player, but alas, he’s 29, and now probably just a marginal one.

And, of course, how he merits only a quick 6-game suspension for a cruel, knowing, and complicit crime is beyond me, especially while Donte Stallworth earns a full year for an accidental crime, replete with contrite, no-contest settlements. I’m fine with the NFL issuing strict deterrents. I’m not fine with its capricious and arbitrary rendering of justice.

II. Favre

And a nation is not surprised. I’ll spare you any lecture wondering if Brett is diva or douchebag. (He’s both.) Once again, however, Favre and Childress‘ earlier denial – issued three weeks prior, fully deterred Brett’s media lapdogs. Once again, the NFL’s cadre of meathead reporters bolted at the first denial, and didn’t even sniff this until today, when, hello, they were contacted. This after two years of speculation! Even Chris Mortenson‘s stupid bus didn’t stop in Bumfuck, Mississippi or wherever King Hayseed lived.

But here Favre is, finally showing up in St. Paul basically alongside a press release, with the Vikings stroking Brett’s ego and lauding the opportunity. Some opportunity – Minneapolis pays $12 million for a paltry QB Rating upgrade of 1.5 over Sage Rosenfels.

Congratulations, Minnesota, you’ve purchased the NFL’s version of Toronto Raptor Hakeem Olajuwon. I cannot be the only person on Earth who thinks Brett Favre circa 2009 is a downgrade from Sage Rosenfels. Can I?

III. Strasburg

Each story I read about Steven Strasburg, new Washington National wunderkind, I cannot help but feel pangs of memory, evoking Mark Prior. Sigh.

Maybe Strasburg‘s a bust, maybe he’s not – but throughout the media today, you could practically sense sportswriters chortling at Scott Boras “failing” to earn his initial $50 million contract demand. Which just goes to show – sportswriters toil outside the business world for a reason.

All Boras does is represent a client to the best of his ability – throwing out a pipe dream number, and negotiating downward to a workable solution that, oh by the way, turns out to be the best rookie contract in history and allows Strasburg to escape after a scant 4 years – well before he even sniffs his prime. Wow, what a failure!

Boras aside, I’ll never understand the tendency of fans and media to side with big labor. In Strasburg‘s case, and in the case of Michael Crabtree, we watch two youngsters with virtually no leverage simply asking for the best deal they can get, respective of their market value. Yet the zeitgeist scolds each for not rushing into camp, or inking a bad deal quickly – when each has little leverage to do the opposite.

Basically, Crabtree is in a pickle – he needs to get to camp in a hurry to validate his expectations and ease his transition. This is a huge bargaining chip for every behemoth corporation football team – Crabtree needs camp to play and to develop his image. The team has no such obstacle.

It’s similar with Strasburg - each writer practically scolds the kid, assuming his agent coerced him into making a demand simply to avoid signing with the Nats. But what’s the incentive for Strasburg to return to school or go play in the Independent League? He doesn’t want to do that – it could at least harm his market value and at worst decimate that value. So once again, the team has additional bargaining chips – there’s certainly more incentive for Strasburg to sign than to hold out. No matter the portrayal, it ain’t the other way around.

But nope – we scoff and snort and castigate these kids; sitting on the precipice of the only thing they know how to do, and perhaps the only chance they’ll have to make a living doing so. We hope they’ll rush to the aid of these behemoth corporations – sports teams with no real care for the player nor the audience, and scold the players for worrying about their own bottom line. And we can’t scold the corporations for the one-sided negotiatiing, strong-arming, and worrying about the same?

And we assume we’d be different how?