Don't Let the Door Hit You on the.......

All I can say is it is about time. The town of Green Bay can finally celebrate their freedom from the tyranny of one Brett Favre. The man that single-handedly robbed the nation of the Superbowl matchup everyone wanted to witness has mercifully decided to hang it up. Sure, there is going to be a portion of the Cheeshead nation that will miss his errant lame duck bombs every Sunday but the Packer organization can finally have a game plan that doesn't involve the quarterback running around like a chicken with his head cut off before closing his eyes and throwing the ball up for grabs. Now, I recognize that the man was one of the best quarterbacks for a 3 to 5 year period but since then he has been little more than a juiced up Don "Magic Man" Majkowski riding on the good will of a single Super Bowl victory (same number as the immortal Trent Dilfer and Brad Johnson). During that time he has built up numerous reasons to forget that period of above average-ness and come to see him as overrated and object of scorn. Here are my personal top 6 list of reasons I never want to see him mentioned as one of the game's best.

6. The last play of his career perfectly summarized his career.
5. John Madden's Man Crush
4. Making a mockery of Micheal Strahan's sack record by giving him a fake sack.
3. Addicted to drugs and an alcoholic but noone seems to care
2. His joke of a consecutive games streak record where he would sometimes play a single play and then come out (also hopped up on pain pills).
1. All-time leader in career interceptions just above luminaries like John Hadl and Vinny Testaverde

Update : The fine minds at ESPN see the truth about the overrated career of Brett Farve. At least those people at ESPN that weren't hosting a three hour retrospective/deification of the man.

The one good thing about Brett Favre...best wooden acting by an overrated Quarterback in a comedy classic. (The embedded video appears to be non-functional, so go here to view it)

More Complaining

Old business - Please make Who's Now go away. Everytime I turn on Sports Center, there it is. I just want to see highlights. I don't want to see this pointless drivel. Is it really that slow of a news period that they have to fill the airwaves with this brain killing nonsense? One top of it all, there is the distinct feeling that the fix is in. According to the "rules" of this pseudo-competition, 30% of the vote belongs to ESPN. Meaning that unless there is a landslide in the popular vote (another aspect that you can't have much faith in being handled with integrity), the final "winner" is determined by the talking heads. And we already know who their favorite players are. We hear about them nonstop as it is. Not surprisingly, all the athletes that ESPN installed as higher seeds have "won". The only thing more startlingly surprising than some TV professional green lighting this channel changing nuisance is that there are numerous chat room yakkers who actually debate the outcome of Who's Now bracket. Can there really be people whose lives are that empty?

The Real Winner of Who's Now

Who's Now

Pardon the Interruption is my favorite sports-related show. It is immensely entertaining with two likable hosts (I also enjoy Tony Kornheiser's radio show although it just went on hiatus while he is doing his tour of duty with Monday Night Football - Even though he is a contrarian, I am also a fan of PTI fill-in Dan Le Batard). But PTI has also wrought an unspeakable evil on us. Although PTI was an original at the time it premiered, it has spawned a number of truly awful, unwatchable knock-offs featuring annoying sports writer talking heads spewing meaningless opinions about sporting minutia and pop culture. Now comes what looks like the absolute worst of the lot, this one featuring one of our beloved PTI guy's. I am talking about the worthless piffle that is new Sports Center feature Who's Now.

I am, of course, not the first person to complain about the awfulness of the idea of Who's Now, never mind the execution. But this is the lamest excuse yet to have fill 10 minutes of air time. It doesn't provide information that we don't know. It isn't entertaining or interesting. We are simply treated to three or four ESPN empty suits telling us which sports celebrities they like best. That is it. They talk about some nebulous criteria like endorsement dollars and on field success but that is a smoke screen. But really, the only thing that we get out of this exercise is the knowledge that Keyshawn Johnson prefers Dwayne Wade over The Flying Tomato. And the nation takes a collective sigh of relief. Structuring this sham popularity contest of overexposed athletes as a tournament or adding the Web 2.0 feature of internet voting doesn't make it any better. I won't be seeking out the voting aspect but if I stumble across it on ESPN.com, I plan to vote for the lowest seed. The best result I could envision for this mess is a finals matching Amanda Beard vs. Kelly Slater. That should make for some riveting TV. Boo-yah.