Kurt Warner is on a mission from God.

2009 will be a significant year for many reasons. The world and the country face several daunting environmental and economic challenges. But 2009 holds another significance that may be overlooked. It marks the ten year anniversary of an event that came on so quickly...and then seemingly vanished just as hurriedly only a few years later.

In the NFL preseason of 1999, St. Louis Rams quarterback Trent Green suffered a season-injury. Such was life for NFL fans in St. Louis. The Cardinals left town and then the crappy L.A. Rams brought their show to town and promptly took to losing easily. As a burly 28 year-old Arena Football League veteran and former grocery store shelf-stocker name Kurt lumbered out onto the field to take Green's place, nobody really noticed. Even most Rams season-ticket holders probably didn't think to much of the fact that the season would be lost before a game is even played.

But what happened next for the Rams and the deeply religious Kurt Warner (he wears 13 to show that no superstition is more powerful than God) should be nothing considered short of a miracle: The St. Louis Rams became the best team in football. Guys like the name of Favre and Manning and Young could do nothing but stand by as Warner and his loaded offense put up unheard of numbers.

For three consecutive years the Rams started 6-0 and were routinely the team to beat. Injuries to his hand would cost him some time, but when healthy he had the uncanny ability to make throws that almost seemed like he was dropping the ball to receiver 40 yards down field.

The amazing run for Warner and the Rams ended after the 2001 Super Bowl when an equally miraculous QB by the name of Brady and the New England Patriots upset the Rams with a game-winning field goal as time expired.

Warner was never the same. His hand injuries made him turnover-prone and his ball speed declined dramatically. When the dust had finally settled, though, Warner had two NFL MVPs and one Super Bowls MVPs and he and the Rams had shred the offensive record brooks.

For those of us who saw him tear through the NFL in 1999, his quick fade in 2002 and subsequent years was perplexing. Maybe teams just figured him out, maybe he got slow...sometimes an NFLers prime is brief if for no other reason than the pressure and beating they subject themselves to every weekend.

But now Warner, ten years older and as unwaveringly faithful as ever, has worked another Super Bowl back to the Super Bowl. He has taken a 9-7 Arizona Cardinals team (that's right, the Cardinals team that left St. Louis in '88) from playoff afterthought to the final two.

It is not like Warner has had to carry this team, much like he didn't have to carry those Rams teams with talent at every skill position...Larry Fitzgerald and Isaac Bruce, Boldin and Torry Holt, Steve Breaston and Az Hakim, Edge James and Marshall Faulk. Is Warner as good as the numbers he put up in St. Louis show or has he just been blessed with some of the best talent around him ever seen in the game, twice? Is it just coincidence? Or is it something...a little more...higher up?

John Smoltz's career is a reflection of my life. Seriously.

Shortly before I turned three years-old, the Atlanta Braves traded 36 year-old Doyle Alexander to Detroit for a young, balding fastballer by the name of John Smoltz. Since that fateful day a lot has happened in the world:

George Bush became president. America attacked Iraq. The Berlin Wall fell. The Braves went from worst to first. The Soviet Union fell. Atlanta lost an NHL team. Lightning struck twice and the Braves went back to the series. Greg Maddux came to Atlanta. The Braves won the division again...and baseball went on strike as Tom Glavine betrayed us. After three championships, Jordan tried to play baseball. The Bills lost four straight Super Bowls.

The Braves won the Series! The Browns left Cleveland. The Olympics came to Atlanta. The Braves won the division again and 18 year-old Andruw Jones tried to upset the Yankees. Jordan came back to win three more. The Falcons did the dirty bird all the way to the Super Bowl and Smoltz won the Cy Young. The Braves won four more division titles. Smoltz won the Cy Young. The Browns came back to Cleveland.

I went to high school. Another George Bush got elected. Everyone in baseball did steroids. Pro hockey returned to Atlanta. The World Trade Centers fell. Tom Glavine betrayed us, again. The Falcons drafted Mike Vick. Georgia Tech went to the Final Four. Smoltz came back from surgery to become the best closer of all time. I graduated high school.

I went to college and Smoltz returned to the rotation as the Braves won two more divisions. Lance Armstrong won six consecutive Tour's de France. The Braves ended their division win streak at 14, the longest record in any sport ever. Smoltz got divorced. The Hawks returned to the playoffs. Brett Favre retired and unretired. Smoltz got strikeout 3,000. Michael Phelps won eight gold medals.

I graduated college. Chipper Jones won his first batting title. The Tampa Bay Rays went from worst to first. Tech stopped UGA's football win streak at seven. The Braves lost 90 games for the first time since '90. I got a job.

And then, on January 8, 2009, a few months before my 24th birthday....



...John Smoltz left.

How the Ball State AD Stole Christmas

Merely weeks ago, college football fans—myself included—were up in arms that the athletic director at undefeated MAC power Ball State was refusing to allow his team meet Boise State, also undefeated, in a bowl game citing “prior responsibilities to bowl partners” of the conference. This just became one in a long line of college football postseason (or lack thereof) travesties. The two best teams not to make a BCS bowl to play in a normally meaningless bowl game? This would have made too much sense.

And the college football fans of America were furious. Clearly the business interests of the Ball State athletic department became more important than giving the fans the best game possible.
Fast forward a few weeks. Ball State, amidst all the discussion of missing out on a chance for a mini national championship, didn’t show up to the MAC Championship game and got blown out by Buffalo(?). Turner Gill cried and briefly epitomized the black man’s plight in the South while remarkably being denied the Auburn job in favor of 5-13 Gene Chiznik.

The San Diego County Credit Union Loaded Potato Soup and Crackers Poinsettia Bowl went on smoothly. The game managed to draw TCU, which was probably the second-best team not in a BCS bowl. And what happened then? Well, in Whoville they say that TCU’s small heart grew three sizes that day. And then the true meaning of Christmas came through, and TCU found the strength of ten TCUs plus two.

Or was it that Boise State was still feeling the snub and realized that, no matter how much those annoying ESPN commercials tried to convince them otherwise, the San Diego County Credit Union Poinsettia Bowl is NOT the game they have looked forward to and played for all year?
The actual truth may be somewhere in between. Either way the fans got to see a good game as TCU squeaked out a 17-16 victory, but it wasn’t the game we wanted. The athletic departments that run the NCAA bought themselves one more year of justifying the bowl system while we can do nothing but wait until March to watch an actually fulfilling postseason.

I agree with Rob.

Here are two undisputable facts: (1) the Detroit Lions, coached by Rod Marinelli are 0-15 and are historically awful, even for a franchise that is historically bad and (2) Rob Parker is a columnist for the Detroit News.
My feeling has always been that if you can’t laugh at yourself then you have no business complaining about anything. The worst thing someone can do in this world is take themselves too seriously.
Now, I do not know Rob Parker. I have no idea what kind of person he is. I also do not know anyone can speak on his behalf. He could be a huge jerk that kicks kittens or he could be the guy shoveling out soup at the neighborhood homeless kitchen.
What I do know is that Terry Bradshaw thinks Parker is “an idiot” (which is funny because Bradshaw may or not be one himself, but he certainly plays one on television) and that Michael Strahan wants him fired.
(On a side note, normally I would get terrifically angry when a multi-millionaire who works a few days a week calls for the firing of someone who makes significantly less than him/her merely on principle, but I have no idea how much Parker makes and since he is on ESPN occasionally, I’ll assume he isn’t pulling some shabby paycheck.)
What did Parker do to incite so much anger among the football minds? Well, during a press conference with Marinelli, Parker asked:

"On a light note, seriously, do you wish your daughter had married a better
defensive coordinator?”

Oh yeah, Marinelli’s son-in-law is the defensive coordinator. Hmmm….
It isn’t only the Sunday morning talking heads that have taken issue with Rob Parker. Chris Chase, a Yahoo! Sports writer has a condescending article up airing out his grievances with Parker. This article has 931 comments as of right now, and after reading about 30 of them, I think it is safe to assume that over 90% of them are all helping Chase hold Parker under the bus.
I can sort of understand why Bradshaw and Strahan, former players, can take issue with some joke a journalist cracked at the expense of the coach…but as for Chase…it just doesn’t make sense.
It seems to me Parker was making a light-hearted joke in the midst of an 0-15 going on 0-16 season. I’m sorry Marinelli can’t get his shit together, but he did appoint his son-in-law second in command and his team is crapawful. Marinelli gets paid a lot of money to excel at nothing. I think a joke at his expense is occasionally in order.
Journalists these days seem to think the only way to save the profession is by weeding out the bad ones and distancing themselves as far from them as possible. As soon as public opinion of Parker was swayed by Tweedle-Dum and Tweedle-Dumber on FOX, then people, like Chase, started lining up to show their disapproval.
I mean…what else is Parker supposed to ask? Coach, do you think Daunte Culpepper is the long-term answer at QB? How nice is it to have Calvin Johnson scoring meaningless touchdowns? Is this a 2-14, 3-13 team with Charles Rogers still in the lineup? How do you feel about the Iverson acquisition?

A few interesting unrelated reads...

Stop blaming bad journalism for the downfall of the industry...wait...what?


And here is a little romantic social commentary.
I'd like to point out one of the comments at the bottom of the page:

"I had a boyfriend unexpectedly fly across the country to be with me on
V-day, without telling me. He planned the whole thing in romantic-movie style.
I dumped him a month later."

I am neither in the mood nor do I find it appropriate to point out all the angrily glaring issues that any slightly moral person would have with this little anecdote (especially as it coincides with the article). The anger should not be directed so much at the commenter, but that this behavior isn't totally surprising. Men will continue to go at great lengths to satisfy every romantic sense they think a woman will have, only to have those efforts thrown in their face and laughed out the door (not all the time, but often enough for it to be discouraging). Obviously there are extenuating circumstances that remain to be scene with this story, but it is more the principle of it all.

At any rate, I will stop arguing against "them" and "society" for making us all horrible people. Sports are the only chance we've got to maintain any sort of optimism in the world.

Trouble In BelieveLand

What else could possibly go wrong in 2009 on Lake Erie?
C.C. Sabathia and the Indians stumble out of the gates in the ultra-competitive AL Central and quickly lose any playoff hopes. Cliff Lee puts together a Cy Young year but a inconsistent C.C. is shipped out with a massive payday looming in the offseason. Then he proceeds to put up ultra-Cy Young numbers in Milwaukee, willing the Brewers into the postseason.

The Browns expect big things coming off a 10-6 season (7-1) at home. They are on national TV six times (3 MNF, 1 Thursday Night, 2 Sunday Night). But now, with five weeks left, head coach Romeo Crennel and GM Phil Savage may be lame ducks. Cleveland is 2-2 on national TV and have handed the World Champion Giants their only loss. Hell, they're undefeated (2-0) on Monday Night. But they are 4-7 overall and reeling. If it's not the defense (three straight games blowing leads of two touchdowns), it's the offense (losing 16-6 at home to the lowly Texans.
Oh, and the snow is coming down in record amounts.

Thank God for the Cavaliers. They are in first place in their division and Lebron is leading the league in scoring. But even the golden child is not immune. The power-playing New York Knicks have already begun clearing space to add Lebron in the summer of 2010. That gives the Cavs less than two years to win a championship that the city so desperately wants, no...that it so desperately needs.

The most inept city in the history of sports is about to add to its own legacy of failure and near-misses. "Lebron Was Here"

Mike Vick Doesn't Want to Kill Your Family Dog

Michael Vick was back in the news today, as he played guilty to state dog-fighting charges. This plea doesn't carry much significance, except it means maybe Vick will get out of jail a little earlier than expected or whatever. His sentencing really isn't all that important. What is important is how this man is being treated by a bunch of holier-than-though critics who enjoy having the chance to judge someone without feeling badly about it. Let me give you a few examples:

John Kincaid (sp) of the Buck & Kincaid Show on 680 The Fan (great show, tune in everyday) maybe a very snide comment--in a way only he can--when mentioning the Vick news today. He mentioned the fact that Vick may now get out of prison early and moved to a halfway house.
"I hope that house isn't in my neighborhood, Buck. My family has a dog."

That remark was classless, unnecessary and totally out of line. This is the type of remark that should not be voiced by someone reaching thousands of listeners. It is pretentious, sarcastic and insulting.

Also, there is show about the Michael Vick "Rescue Dogs." I mean, really? And now they have wines that feature the faces of all 23 or so "Vick rescue dogs." Seriously? This is bordering on cruel and unusual punishment. It is essential a "dog"pile of people trying to stick their face/name/voice into the Vick condemning party. The guy screwed up and he is paying dearly for it. Have you ever made a mistake? Does it feel good to be reminded of it at every turn?

Michael Vick did some things that may be unforgivable. This is a given. But the man has also lost work, money, friends, property and any sort of security. He has gone from the top of the world to the very bottom. He has no one to blame but himself.

But here is a few things people do not consider:
1) Thousands of people in this country and millions around the globe, participate in dogfighting (this doesn't make it right, it is just a fact; Vick didn't come up with the idea of torturing puppies for his amusement).
2)Thousands, if not millions of dogs are killed each day (you can call it "put-to-sleep" if you want, but until you've felt lethal injection we will call it what it is).
3) Pitbulls are not like poodles, bulldogs, terriers, collies or retrievers. They violent by nature and are often bred to be even more so. Pitbulls can and have KILLED children.

These three things are indisputable facts. I am not saying that they justified Michael Vick's behavior in any way whatsoever. They are just facts that people seem to conveniently dismiss as the condemn Vick.