On his radio show today, Jim Rome interviewed former Green Bay Packers offensive lineman Jerry Kramer, whose “Gridiron Greats” initiative means to help retired NFL players who face financial and medical problems.

Kramer is a legend for a reason. He’s also a great interview and, from what I can tell, a very sincere, very charitable and very honest man. But his heart, and his facts, are totally misplaced in his criticisms of the NFL Players Association, as well as the NFL itself, for what he perceives as their inaction, indifference and, seemingly, enmity on the issue of helping out players who helped build the league.

I’m not going to get too specific on that in this post. Rather, I want to address Kramer’s main argument against the NFLPA in his interview: the notion that the current Collective Bargaining Agreement should have given something to the retired players.

Read the rest of this entry »

In my never-ending quest to find even the flimsiest excuse to post pictures of hot women in this blog, here’s the latest news from Mandy Moore, who’s pimping her film, “License To Wed“:

NEW YORK (AP) - Mandy Moore, the angel-faced actress and sometime singer, interrupted her recent concert in Manhattan to grumble for a moment about the men who did her wrong.

“You know, guys suck,” she proclaimed, her sweet facial expression diluting any post-breakup bitterness. “I don’t want to make a sweeping generalization, but some guys suck! And I’ve come across a few.”

That might well be because pigs like me can’t help but noticing first, and happily, that Moore doesn’t like wearing bras, and second, and even more happily, that she doesn’t need to.

Or maybe it’s the deluge of male critics who cannot find enough bad things to say about “License To Wed.”

In fact, the piling-on is so intense and creative, it’s hard to choose which is the best slight: “The sort of lobotomized, condescendingly lazy movie that leaves you resentful of Hollywood” is pretty brutal; “bad from top to bottom, front to back, and start to finish” is both repetitive and succinct, which is impressive; “the attempts at humor are hideous. They get hideouser” actually makes up words to plumb how awful it is, which should tell you something.

But producing good work — or even making wise choices when it comes to men — is hardly the measure of whether a celebrity female is worthy of attention; witness Pamela Anderson, Paris Hilton, Jessica Simpson or Denise Richards.

Read the rest of this entry »

Two news items got me to thinking about rich man’s justice: The federal takeover of the Michael Vick dogfighting investigation, and Paris Hilton’s probably short-lived release from jail.

I have no idea what Los Angeles County Sheriff Lee Baca was thinking in allowing Hilton’s transfer to house arrest — for “medical reasons,” which the entertainment sites were saying was either a severe rash or a near-breakdown — after she spent only three days in jail.

And I have no idea what Virginia Commonwealth Attorney Gerald G. Poindexter was thinking in criticizing the federal government’s takeover of the Vick investigation, when he’s the one who prevented a search warrant taken out by local authorities from being executed.

What I do know is it’s nice to see that a little public backlash against otherwise popular celebrities knock some of the rust off the wheels of justice.

Read the rest of this entry »

A recent participant in the Denver Broncos cheerleading tryouts:

There are a number of reasons why I’m not a cheerleader. Principal among them is that I’m an ugly tub of lard. So why wasn’t that reason good enough to keep this horrific fatty at home on the couch with a box of doughnuts?

Now, I’m all up for a goof. It’s funny that Sanjaya Malakar is still on American Idol; that there’s an active effort to keep that kid on the show, butchering songs, is a great laugh; that it is so widly successful is even better.

A quick aside on Malakar: Since pop music sucks and American Idol produces the B talent in that awful genre, anything that makes American Idol interesting or, better yet, expedites its demise, is welcome. Malakar is doing both at once, which clearly makes him the greatest contestant of all time.

The best part of Malakar’s sustained run is that people actually treat it like it matters. Not only that, they bemoan the idea that someone might want to sabotage American Idol’s voting process, when the entire effect of public voting, from Day 1, was to marginalize “judges” Simon Cowell, Randy Jackson and Paula Abdul to little more than commentary.

But the absolute best thing about it is the Associated Press’s ham-fisted attempt to explain why Malakar has stuck around. Their theory: pre-teen girls think he’s cute. That’s amusing. The truth: Howard Stern and all the other efforts pushing to ruin that awful show. Yet more proof that the press does, indeed, make up facts to support their premises and make up stories to push agendas.

Anyway, back to the ugly beast pictured above.

Read the rest of this entry »

Many thanks to Jack Arute and Dan Leberfeld of Sirius satellite radio’s NFL Rewind show for noting this story in The New York Post, heralding the end of Joe Theismann’s presence on Monday Night Football:

Several sources told The Post yesterday that Joe Theismann has called his final Monday Night game for ESPN, and will likely be replaced by current network analyst Ron Jaworski. …
A possible explanation for Theismann’s removal is ESPN’s desire to find an analyst more compatible with Tony Kornheiser, who seemed reserved last season in his banter with Theismann.

(Mind you, it’s interesting this story was referenced on NFL Rewind, considering that Arute and Leberfeld have about the same chemistry as Theismann and Kornheiser: They bicker all the time. That’s mostly Leberfeld’s fault. He’s not nearly as smart, clever or mannered as Arute, and that’s consistently demonstrated each Sunday.)

Let me make this clear before proceeding: Which analysts you like and which annoy you are largely matters of opinion; some people hate John Madden, and some like Michael Irvin. I thought Theismann was bad. I don’t think there’s anyone who will work well with Theismann, be him an intentional clown, like Kornheiser, or an elder statesman of the game, like Jaworski. If you want to use Theismann in your booth, he’s the only analyst, period.

But I couldn’t agree more with Arute, who had two basic takes on the firing during Sunday’s show:

• As insufferably ostentatious as Theismann was, not many people would agree with ESPN that he was the one who should go. And to judge from the callers on his show, Arute called that one right.
• ESPN has strong feelings about what it should be producing and will stick with losers far longer than it should — be it Cold Pizza or Kornheiser — because they can and because they suffer from the same tunnel vision that affects all corporate giants.

Read the rest of this entry »