The Dilemma of First Round Money: A. J. Hawk and The Green Bay Packers

First, he has a name fans love: HAWK, HAWK, HAWK.

He played on a college team always in the mix and in the running.

But Green Bay Packer linebacker A. J. Hawk just does not have the sideline to sideline speed and instincts demanded of a top linebacker.

Hawk, drafted No. 5 overall by the Green Bay Packers in 2006, and given a $37 million contract, doesn’t have the abilities required of a first round draft pick. He is another of Packer GM Ted Thompson’s draft mistakes on defense.

Hawk should not start for Green Bay this year because current backup linebackers Brandon Chillar and Desmond Bishop are far superior in coverage, speed, instinct, and smack power.

Thompson appears to draft defensive players purely on stats. Like many average football fans, Thompson looks at tackles made and seems to translate that into ability.

The problem, of course, is understanding how more talented teammates can crush a pocket or blow up a running play while not being the player who makes the tackle. The most talented defensive player on a team may not even be in the top five tacklers on the defense, particularly in college where defenders may face odd offensive schemes seldom seen in the NFL.

A. J. Hawk benefited greatly in college when he played on an Ohio State team with a great defense. Hawk has never had great sideline-to-sideline talent: he made tackles because they were there for him to make. Defensive lines that can stop or slow a running back are setting up tackles for linebackers. Linebackers who chip and slow a running back or who can cover tight ends and receivers out of the backfield set up tackles for other linebackers.

Why Thompson drafted Hawk fifth overall in the 2006 draft is a question astute Packer fans have been asking since the pick was made. A. J. Hawk is a good player: getting him in the third round would have been a steal. Drafting him in the second round would have been a good value pick.

But there are other linebackers, namely Chillar and Bishop, who deserve to start in Green Bay over Hawk. If Hawk starts, it is only because Thompson believes he has to start Hawk to justify Hawk’s draft choice and salary.

Hawk could be a stellar starter on another team who has a front four that can rush the quarterback and stuff the line of scrimmage. Green Bay does not have defensive linemen who can rush the QB. Green Bay will rely upon a lot of blitzing and stunts from linebackers and defensive backs this season, meaning the players on the field who aren’t blitzing will need to have speed and instincts to cover running backs and wide receivers. Hawk does not fit that mold.

Thompson’s defensive player drafts have been horrible. Hawk does not have the talent to have been drafted fifth overall. Justin Harrell, another of Thompson’s first round draft picks, had a history of injuries but Thompson selected him as the first overall pick of the Packers in 2007. One of Thompson’s first round pick this year, USC linebacker Clay Matthews, is injured.

Thompson just doesn’t know or understand defensive players.

Green Bay fans are all excited about the Packers 2-0 preseason record. The Detroit Lions went 4-0 last preseason and look where that got them.

Ted Thompson is a general manager who believes in building by the draft. He is not active in the free agent market. I agree with his philosophy as long as the person making the final decisions on the draft knows what he/she is doing.

Thompson has failed on most of his first round draft choices. He also failed to understand the revenue stream Brett Favre meant to the Packers: whether you love or hate Favre, he generated bucks for the franchise.

Generating revenue dollars for a small, publicly-owned franchise like Green Bay is imperative. Thompson failed to understand whether Favre was a superstar, a dickhead, or a superstar dickhead diva, he generated bucks. Had Thompson resigned Favre, thePackers might have gone 6-10 with Favre, instead of Aaron Rodgers, at the helm and still generated lots more dollars.

For the good of the Green Bay Packers, someone needs to take control of the franchise and understand sports is about generating dollars. The Packers need new voices in marketing and public relations. This old Ted Thompson grumpy, bad PR crap is killing a franchise that must be front and center in terms of marketing and PR, if not winning, every single year to survive.

 

 

 

Brett Favre Makes It Official: Sports are Only a Business

Looking for a hero for your kids? How about yourself?

Looking for a great charitable cause? United Way, Goodwill, your local food pantry, your local school district.

Looking for something to cheer? A high school football team, a cheerful grocery store checkout person, a doctor who saved your child’s life?

Looking for new clothing? Goodwill, a t-shirt you designed for your family reunion, a United Way t-shirt that says “I gave to my Community”.

Whether all the pundits, the sports fans, the celebrity followers, the sometimes football fans want to admit it or not, the Minnesota Vikings’ signing of Brett Favre was like the final nail in the coffin of folks who believed there are heroes still left in pro sports.

Pro sports consist of team owners who enjoy special monopoly laws endorsed and enforced by the U.S. congress. Pro sports team owners and players don’t give a crap about who wins the championship this year: they just want to get paid.

No pro athlete or team owner (except publicly owned teams) cares about you. As long as the team and athletes are raking in the money, they wish you would go away: they want to live in their gated communities, buy shoes and cars, and spend more on jewelry in one day than you make in a year.

Most pro athletes hate fans. After all, you might recognize them on the golf course, or in the grocery store, or at a team facility, and ask them for the dreaded autograph or an opinion on the team. Just because they make more than the president of the United States and play in publicly-funded stadiums or reach their locker rooms via publicly-funded infrastructure, or played at your publicly-funded university in preparation for their million-dollar pro careers is no reason to think they should deign to speak with you.

Brett Favre needed to do what his family needed for perhaps another pair of shoes or a new refrigerator: he went to yet another team willing to pay him $25 million. His new team, the Minnesota Vikings, is hoping to parlay Favre’s play into $700 million in taxpayer funding for a new stadium.

Favre’s old team, the Green Bay Packers, got taxpayer funding for stadium renovation. (The difference between the Packers and Vikings must be noted, however: the Vikings are a private, for-profit corporation; the Packers are not.)

Favre is not to blame here. He is just a mercenary: a pawn for far richer men. He’ll play if you pay. But isn’t that what we all do? You bought all those things at discount stores who outsourced all the manufacturing and jobs to other countries just to save a few dollars. You paid but, of course, fewer U.S. citizens can play because there aren’t as many jobs as there used to be. If a country whose economy is based on buying things doesn’t make anything, how long does that last?

Favre is just like you: he goes where the money is.

Of course, in Favre’s situation, his profession is covered by special U.S. anti-trust and monopoly laws which include very prohibitive employee laws. In your case, tough luck: Congress allows your manufacturing or service job to be outsourced. While Congress will honor and protect the restrictive employee laws for major sports teams, they don’t care about the sports fan. Your jobs and profession are not protected.

Good luck trying to find health coverage and job protection like Congressmen get.

The Favre situation is a microcosm of life in the United States: if you work in a profession specially protected by Congress, you will thrive. If not, it’s time to eat your young or at least feed them your Favre jersey.

Looking for a hero? Probably outsourced: after all, the U.S. only buys and pays for things. We don’t really manufacture anything anymore, including heroes.

Brett Favre and Minnesota Vikings: A Pass From the NFL To the Taxpayers

What’s the Internet for but great conspiracy theories? Like whether the NFL got involved in negotiations for Brett Favre to become the new Vikings quarterback so taxpayers jump on the bandwagon for a new stadium?

We know from the Michael Vick situation the NFL will get involved in helping players sign with new teams. NFL commissioner Roger Goodell’s involvement in appointing an official NFL mentor for Vick and then allegedly being involved in getting the Eagles to sign up Vick says for the integrity of the game must be left for another time.

We know the NFL is a business whose primary goal, like all other businesses, is to reap profits. In the NFL’s case, the business is entertainment in the form of football.

So we have the interesting case of the Minnesota Vikings: a franchise frequently mentioned as a candidate for moving out of Minnesota unless state taxpayers pony up part of the money for a new stadium.

Does the NFL, a league who has repeatedly tried and mostly failed to expand into foreign countries, want the Vikings to move? Hell, no. The NFL wants to expand, not contract, the number of teams.

So how does the NFL attempt to aid the Vikings in their pursuit of taxpayer money for a new stadium?

 

1. Award the team one of the easiest schedules in the league despite the fact the Vikings won their division in 2008 and made the playoffs.

The Vikings’ schedule is skewed because they play in the same division as the 0-16 Detroit Lions. However, ESPN’s Kevin Seifert points out that even if one throws out the Lions record, the Vikings still play the 24th easiest schedule in the NFL. How does a division winner/playoff team get rewarded with the 24th easiest schedule in the NFL?

 

2. Award the team two Monday Night Football Appearances.

The Vikings appear on ESPN’s Monday night schedule twice. The two teams in the last Super Bowl, the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Arizona Cardinals, are slated for just one appearance a piece on Monday night.

 

3. Disallow tampering charges made by the Green Bay Packers.

The Packers filed tampering charges against the Vikings last year—alleging Vikings’ coaches improperly contacted Brett Favre while he was under contract to the Packers.

Of course, the Vikings denied the charges. Last month, Vikings head coach Brad Childress said Favre was going to stay retired. Yeah, those Viking coaches always tell the truth—just ask Tarvaris Jackson and Sage Rosenfels.

 

4. Assist a team who often has vacant seats.

Earlier this year, the Vikings were in danger of a local TV blackout for their PLAYOFF game against the Eagles. Getting Favre immediately gives the Viking franchise a buzz and more ticket buyers.

 

The NFL is a business and not a sport. Big-pocket owners, especially those looking to finance new stadium deals, are extraordinarily important to the NFL.

Brett Favre is a businessman whose primary business is playing football. He gets $12 million guaranteed if he takes one snap for the Vikings—what else do you need to know?

When a big business can help a businessman and vice-versa, it’s all good. Favre owes nothing to the Packers.

The Packers and their fans owe nothing to Favre. Favre owes just one snap to the Vikings. The Minnesota taxpayer bill: who knows?

Caveat: Packer fans might want to avoid the Favre restaurants in Green Bay. Who the heck knows whether he’s serving up old pigskins or baked excuses to unsuspecting patrons.

Gambling and the NFL: Permission Granted! Welcome Back, Mike Vick

The NFL purports to be adamantly opposed to gambling, even going so far as to try to stop U.S. states, like Delaware, from allowing betting on single NFL games.

In essence, the NFL embraces gambling as long as they control their part of the gambling game and the gambling revenue distribution.

Admitted dog abuser, strangler, electrocutor, and torturer Michael Vick was welcomed and escorted back into the NFL this week by Commissioner Roger Goodell, Vick mentor and former NFL head coach Tony Dungy, and the Philadelphia Eagles’ owners. The former Atlanta Falcons quarterback was convicted of financing and abetting an interstate dog fighting ring and served nearly two years in custody, starting in prison and ending in house arrest.

A crucial part of the interstate dog fighting ring Vick financed, supported, participated in and cheered on was the gambling.

Vick not only admits to killing, strangling, hanging, drowning, and violating dogs, he also admits to being the venture capitalist of the whole sorry interstate gambling affair.

Way back in 1963, the NFL suspended Green Bay Packer running back and NFL MVP Paul Hornung and Detroit Lion All-Pro Alex Karras, a defensive tackle, for an entire year for betting on NFL games.

Players who bet on games in the very league they play in, are inherently dangerous to the pure joy and entertainment of all sports and should be suspended or even banned permanently. Why? Because most so-called professional sports teams in the U.S. are really quasi-public teams, financed with taxpayer money in stadium and infrastructure costs and protected by special antitrust laws which are designed to prevent competing leagues from establishing a foothold.

Vick, a gifted athlete and scrambler—although a merely pedestrian passer—supposedly excites football fans. Ticket sales and revenue drives the NFL, just as revenue drives any business.

But the question is why the NFL fights against state government-regulated betting on NFL games, but spreads arms wide for a convicted felon who financed not only an illegal activity but gambling on that activity?

Folks say even convicted felons deserve a second chance after they have “paid their dues to society;” those dues often being prison time.

Yes, but if a medical doctor intentionally killed patients by administering lethal doses of a drug, was convicted, and served prison time, should he have his license to practice reinstated and get his job back immediately after getting out of prison?

Give Vick his second chance—by starting him out as a ball shagger or snow shoveler at minimum wage.

The NFL closely monitors and is allowed to run a monopoly in which football players are prohibited from being drafted by any NFL team until three college football seasons have passed since their high school graduation.

Yes, the NFL is allowed, via special antitrust laws, to prevent any player playing NFL football under anything other than NFL rules about age.

Apparently, the NFL also wants special antitrust protection regarding gambling. While NFL lawyers are paid millions to fight state-governed gambling on games, the NFL believes it is a moral, ethical, and financial imperative to give all sorts of love to a man who started his own gambling ring.

The message sent to NFL players is pretty clear: As long as it isn’t a betting ring on NFL games, you will have a place and a multi-million dollar contract in our league.

NFL players: You have a few weeks to get your bets down on college football. Georgia Bulldogs anyone?

 

Steve McNair Is Dead: Lower Your Voice an Octave

We all know the routine by now: Prominent athlete dies, ESPN anchors must lower voices, somber music plays with a photo of now deceased athlete with birth and death year dates.

TV Anchors speak in hushed tones, pretend to be grieving, and then trot out all the “he said, she saids” as reported by some other “news” source and, therefore, we can quote it legally as long as we mention it was FIRST brought up by that media, NOT, in any way, shape or form, by us.

“Us” are too way too cool for that: we just reach for our “someone got killed today so we have to use our “hush” voices and find some somber music and his stats.”

Until, of course, 12 or 18 hours pass, we get the salacious and exceedingly juicy details from local newspapers or national celebrity gossip sites, and then we can get on with our gleeful reporting of all the crap. Except, we will certainly lower our voices an octave and speak in soft voices as we go to the photo and, once again, birth and death dates of the beloved athlete right before the commercial break.

Print journalists are about the same. Mike Lupica, New York Daily News reporter, uses McNair’s death as some manifesto against gun violence.

And yet Lupica admits when he tried, in January 2000, when McNair made it to the Super bowl, to find out where McNair came from. Lupica called the town hall of Mount Olive, Miss.

Mount Olive was McNair’s hometown. Lupica obviously thought calling up the Mount Olive town hall would give substantial insight to McNair’s youth.

“When I called the town hall that year, I asked the woman who answered the phone how long downtown was in Mount Olive,” Lupica wrote.

“Eight blocks,” she said. “Ten if you stretch it.”

This somehow constitutes understanding where an athlete grew up, according to many sports journalists. You don’t actually have to visit the town. Just call up the town hall and get an opinion from someone who answers the phone.

There are places in the U.S. where, if you own a tiny dog like Paris Hilton does, and it takes a very tiny crap in a very tiny yard you don’t own, you could be facing a beating or worse.

Journalists love Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan because, so far. Knock on wood and be hushed, and could you get it to that low of an octave would your voice have to be—Woods and Jordan haven’t gotten into a major scrape.

Journalists love the stories about the homeless kid or the gang kid turned great athlete. Then, when guns or drugs or domestic violence enter the story, the journalists are surprised or pretend to be surprised, or use the opportunity to practice low-octave voices or protest against gun/domestic/drug violence.

Stop the phony TV and newspaper stuff.

When an athlete gives the old “One day at a time” or “I gave 110 percent”, sports journalists get all upset because they heard it all before. But, given a popular athlete’s death, it’s the same old, same old at the networks and newspapers: “Oh, how did this young athlete die?!!!” “Oh, how could someone who seemingly had everything to look forward to do this?”

The real reason most sports journalists don’t ask the hard questions is because the extraordinarily wealthy owners of most sports franchises won’t countenance those questions.

The owners want fans to buy into the continued concept that sports are just games. And they are: The reason people love sports is because, in the end, the score of any sporting event is meaningless. You can love sports, and sports scores, and sports events because, in the end—all such things basically have no real impact on the world.

Except, of course, if you are a sports franchise owner, then you get cities and states to enact taxes, build infrastructures, and do favors for you.

For his next hundred columns, Lupica could be exploring and explaining the financing of the new Yankees stadium instead of calling some town hall to, wink, wink, illustrate what a podunk town some athlete came from.

Easy to say an athlete’s death is due to a gun culture. Harder to explore the culture of rich men building stadiums on the backs of working people.

It’s time for sports journalists to explore the rarefied air rather than concentrate on the mean streets. In the end, only men can stop other men from being enslaved.

Brett Favre and Chad Ochocinco: Bad As Mike Vick?

So when did indecision about retirement or legally changing your name become equated with manslaughter charges, felony convictions and prison terms?

Today.

Mike Florio, that talented and snarky attorney who has given lots of NFL fans years of great entertainment and opinions on his website ProFootballTalk.com, lists his NFL offensive and defensive “NFL Bad Boys” on the Sportingnews.com website.

Florio lumps together former Packer/Jets quarterback Brett Favre, Chad Ochocinco (formerly Chad Johnson) the Bengals receiver, and Bears quarterback Jay Cutler with the likes of recently released prisoner Michael Vick, and Donte Stallworth who has pleaded not guilty to DUI manslaughter charges, and former Jaguars wide receiver Matt Jones who has spent time in jail.

PFT gained a fair amount of its fame from a meter tallying the days without an arrest of an NFL player and appears to have a lot of prosecutors and cops as tipsters.

Curious, though, this jumble of players as offensive and defensive bad boys named on Florio’s Sporting News list.

Florio writes, “In past years, my primary online hangout has grouped together the NFL’s bad boys under a distinctive name that isn’t quite ready for the main stream.

“This year, we’re exporting the list to SportingNews.com, under a more palatable title.

“But the spirit is the same—guys who create trouble off the field, on the field, in the locker room, or some combination of the three.”

He then goes on to deride Ochocinco for creating a team distraction, Favre for “imploding his legacy,” and Cutler for, among other things, “refusing to sign autographs.”

Florio believes Cutler, Favre, and Ochocinco are to be criticized and labeled as “bad boys” and put on a list with Vick, Stallworth and Jones. The PFT pundit also has an NFL defensive Bad Boys list with some of the same egregious labeling.

Patriots Wide Receiver Randy Moss and Baltimore Ravens Linebacker Ray Lewis are left off the lists.

Florio does mention 2008 NFL Defensive Player of the Year Pittsburgh linebacker James Harrison as a bad boy, in part because of domestic abuse charges but mostly because of “one of the all-time dumbest quotes when explaining the decision not to accompany his teammates for the traditional White House trip taken by the Super Bowl champs.”

How does the NFL, who has advertised on Florio’s website and employed him as an NFL Network analyst, explain this type of list from one of its partners?

Hey, I’m just one of those Joe-average NFL fans who sometimes complain about the million dollar salaries and the NFL guys “who just don’t get how good they have it.”

But not signing autographs or trying to complain enough to get traded or unretiring an infinite amount of times is not the same as driving drunk and killing someone. Or even raising dogs so you can bet on whether they can kill another dog, or lurching around so inebriated you can’t even keep yourself out of jail, even with a million dollars in your pocket.

Poor James Harrison.

Here is a man, an NFL player, who said he didn’t believe the invitation to visit the White House because his team had won the Superbowl was “all that special.” Harrison said if the Arizona Cardinals, instead of the Steelers, had won the Super Bowl, they would have had the meet and greet with President Obama.

Harrison was not only right, he was speaking a truth few admit. Why should a president take the time to exchange lame jokes and arm pit sniffs with a professional sports team who just won a championship?

How about take that time to meet with 52 soldiers who just got home from Iraq? And do it time after time after time for each plane load of soldiers?

Of course, no networks or media are going to televise or write about the guys who play the game of war for the U.S.

Old hat—been there, done that and what if the guy had his arms or legs blown off?

How could he present the President with his “game jersey” and give the old pat on the back?

As far as pats on the back, Florio gets a big cuff on the back of the head to knock some sense into him.

Lawyers who goof around with ludicrous NFL bad boys lists are a distraction to the judicial system.

 

The King is Dead, Long Live the King

When the Eastern Sports Programming Network twitters a Brett Favre fart, who can blame them? Though they might want to check their spelling – a bonafide superstar’s fart is spelled Phooowmmm, right? – those major-network media guys know that if you attach a few words to superstar’s fart and then yank it out into day-to-day stories of thousands of words, you’re safe for another day.

To stay employed, most NFL media types must mention Favre every 48 hours or so. Otherwise, their bosses will think those danged reporters are going out and actually gathering news.

The latest twist in the Favre farts-and-we-write, -tweet, -talk, -blog, -text, and -smell it-saga is to criticize Green Bay Packer fans.

The current clichéd story is Favre owes nothing to Green Bay Packer fans and, in fact, raised a once moribund franchise into glory, glamour and a Superbowl winner. He gave the fans the best days of his life; played every down like it was his last; played like a kid out there; and played until he puked.

Green Bay fans have somehow become the villains in the ‘Favre Farted Frenzy’. Green Bay fans are said to “have made it personal” or “turned on the old gunslinger” or “fail[ed] to realize what they had in the future Hall-of-Famer.”

How can the Packer fan base not understand what they owe to Favre?

Yes. Favre doesn’t owe the fans anything, but according to the reporters who must file Favre stories or probably lose their jobs, the fans owe Favre.

Apparently, Green Bay Packer fans owe Favre their undying devotion, adoration, and worship. No longer can a fan root for a community-owned team in the smallest market in professional sports or for the team their parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents paid for and nurtured.

Nope. You have to root for Favre no matter which team he suits up for. 

Part of this attitude by most of the major NFL reporters, particularly those Boston Red Sox fans who now work for the biggest monopoly in sports, is because they want, seek, beg, and pant for Favre in a Vikings uniform.

What else would they write or talk about? Whether the President of the United States should earn less than the third-string quarterback of an NFL team? How much money each taxpayer pays in infrastructure costs for each new NFL stadium? Why the majority of so-called expert NFL reporter/analysts can’t ever pick the right Superbowl winner? Why the NFL, an entity supported by the ticket, tax, and buying power of the U.S. fan for more than a century, can even think about moving the penultimate game of the league to a foreign country? Are NFL stars given harsher or lesser sentences than the average citizen? Would any NFL star ever consider entering the U.S. military like Pat Tillman did? If Brett Favre farted in the woods and no one twittered about it, would it still make a sound?

Lust is too puny of a word when it comes to the image of Favre in purple and gold as envisioned by certain reporters and certain television networks. If a network could soil itself, it would do so in purple boas, leather, limbo contests, and “He Looks Like a Kid Out There” tattoos. (Mandatory for all employees.)

Figuring out Favre owes nothing to Packer fans while not figuring out Packer fans owe nothing to Favre is like saying Boston Red Sox fans must hoist the banner for Babe Ruth as the greatest that ever was, like writing French folks have to cry Viva Le Lance every day, tweeting Chicago Bulls’ fans must dye their Jordan jerseys Charlotte Hornet blue, and no one should care about their local high school football team because the players puking into the spit bucket are not ranked on rivals.com.

Somehow, because some Packer fans will jeer and sneer if Favre treads on Lambeau Field ground in a Vikings uniform, Packer fans will be called unfaithful, unworthy, bad, unknowing fans who don’t understand Favre was and is the best thing that ever happened to Green Bay.

Nope.

The best thing that ever happened to Green Bay was a bunch of folks who got together and said we are gonna have us a football team and, when money gets tight, we are gonna pony up among ourselves and keep this ol’ football team going. And we are gonna believe. Hell, and high water, and wars, and free agents, and big pocket owners in cities a hundred times our size aren’t going to smite our faith.

Kings in sports are like kings in history: praised while they live and reviled as soon as they fall or are perceived to fall. Remember the summer of Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa in baseball? Remember the stories about Michael Vick as a quarterback who would forever change the essence of NFL football? Remember the proclamations of this man or that man as the greatest sports player ever, until he proved to be a mere man?

As a Packer fan, I owe nothing to Brett Favre. He was paid an extraordinary salary, his family—especially Big Irv—were embraced, cherished, and nourished by Packer fans, his charities supported, his completed passes cheered, his interceptions explained away.

Favre was the most prominent Packer for a lot of years, beloved, in part, because he was like us: he had great days and bad days, good and bad habits, had to take care of his family, liked being the life of the party, and liked being wanted.

If I root against him if he becomes a Viking, it is not because I’m unfaithful, or turncoat, or disloyal or don’t understand football. 

In fact, just the opposite is true.

I support my community-owned, tiny-market Green Bay Packers like a rock against time.

I don’t root for individual players, I root for my team. It’s sort of like the U.S. — I might not always like it, but I’ll always love and stand by it, no matter the president. 

Former Packer General Manager Ron Wolf, the man who made the trade with Atlanta to bring Favre to Green Bay, said, after the Packers lost the 1998 Superbowl, the team was a one-year wonder, “a fart in the wind.”

Favre’s moved on. He isn’t a Packer anymore. To me, he’s just a Ron Wolf metaphor.

 

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