Baseball Free Agency: Favre to let teams know he is available if he doesn't retire.

In a bit of unexpected news, Brett Favre, in an attempt to be a bigger distraction to his football team announced that he will be available as a free agent pitcher this baseball off-season. Favre, furious with speculation that Cal Ripkin Jr. may hold a more impressive consecutive games streak, is convinced his gritty gunslinging style that just wins football games will be just as effective in the game of baseball. This does not mean retirement is out of the question for Favre who says he will spend some time to contemplate his future down at his Mississippi ranch this off-season. 

Chris Mortenson of ESPN, who has been living and reporting live from Favre's rectal region the past 5 years, initially reported this story and thinks Favre has what it takes to be a successful pitcher in the MLB. Mortenson reported, "You see Brett's a competitor, his teammate’s love him, and he's just a kid having fun out there. If he doesn't retire you can bet he'll be as big of a distraction for a Major League Baseball team as he's been for the Vikings this year."

The MLB seems to be a perfect fit for Favre who likes the idea of a longer season allowing him to spend more time cheating on his wife. If Favre decides to pick up the glove it is unlikely he will take part in spring training because he fully expects his retirement speculation to last at least until then. If someone wants him this off-season it will take more than the begging strategy the Vikings and Brad Childress used last off-season.

Many MLB teams are already willing to offer Favre a contract and have reached out to his agent regarding his available. Peter Gammons reports that among potential suitors, the Red Sox appear to be favorites. According to Gammons, Favre is a perfect fit for the Red Sox who are looking to acquire more white baseball players this off-season. The Red Sox owner John Henry worries if his small market team has the resources to sign the veteran Favre however. When reached for comment he said, "We just don't have the resources the Yankees do being in the small sports market of Boston. We will make Favre a generous offer, but 4-5 huge contracts are all we can spare this off-season with our limited resources.”

For now, Favre says he will just help the Vikings win football games and let the off-season work itself out when it happens. Expected to have his hip, shoulder, elbow, and ankles replaced after the NFL season, one can rest assured that if Favre does play for a contending team this upcoming MLB season, it will be entirely his decision. Will he retire, play baseball, or be a cast member on Survivor? We will just have to wait and see.

Troy Aikman is an Idiot

Alright, so you probably already realize that Joe Buck and Troy Aikman are one of the worst announcing teams ever. Joe Buck has such a dry and elitist tone to his announcing that it's really unbelievable that he announces every big game on Fox. Troy Aikman is no better and some of the stuff he says makes me think he has serious brain trauma from the amount of concussions he's received. Normally I wouldn’t comment on his inepitude but at the end of the first half in the Giants-Vikings game he even managed to amaze me with his stupidity.

The Giants had the ball on the Vikings two yardline and there was thirteen seconds to go in the half. It was second down and the giants had no time outs and Aikman suggested that maybe the Giants should consider running the football. Obviously, this is a stupid decision because if the Giants run and fail to get into the endzone time would expire, and they would not have an opportunity to kick a field goal. This is an obvious football decision, you throw the ball twice and if you don’t get in, you settle for a field goal.

The Giants threw the ball as any competantly coached football team would in this situation and the result was an incomplete pass. Aikman, still convinced that running the ball was a viable option, again stated that he wouldn’t be surprised if the Giants ran the ball. It would have been a stupid decision on second down and still would have been an obviously stupid decision on third down.

The Giants were then called for a foul start penalty putting them around the six yardline and Aikman still suggested the Giants could run the ball here and that he had seen them do it in this kind of situation before. Really? I find this statement quite surprising considering I’ve seen every Giants game in the past several years and do not remember a single circumstance when they did this. I’m also sure I would have remembered it because I’d most certainly be bitching about it if it did happen!

I mean what the hell is Troy Aikman talking about here? The Giants of course passed the ball in the end zone for a touchdown as every other team in the NFL not coached by Andy Reid would have done. This is a Hall of Fame quarterback and he really doesn't know the situation here? Also, shame on you Joe Buck for not telling him, “Hey Troy you sound like an idiot here.” It was one of the craziest rants I’ve heard in recent memory and even after the Giants scored the touchdown, he was still surprised they didn’t run.

I guess this is the kind of coverage we get from announcers making millions of dollars a year. I think they purposely put nearly retarded broadcasters alongside Joe Buck so he seems intelligent and knowledgable about the games he covers. Come on Fox we deserve better analysis than this.

J.A. Adande does not know what the word cancer means

I've been wanting to write about the Charlie Villaneuva Kevin Garnett feud that occurred last week but there is so much stupidity involved in this story it has been difficult. To summarize the story, Charlie Villaneuva posted on Twitter that Garnett said he looked like a cancer patient. Garnett responded and said that he told Villaneuva he was a cancer to his team and the NBA, not a cancer patient. My brief opinion on this is Charlie Villaneuva is a big overpaid baby who should have never taken Garnett's “cancer” comments so seriously. Besides, Villaneuva is a cancer and looks like he has cancer so there is no story here or any disrespect to cancer patients because who'd honestly do that?

The topic of this article is related to this event and looks at a short article titled "Time to rid the sports lexicon of 'cancer.'" (It can be found here here.) In it, just as the title suggests, author J.A. Adande argues that this Villaneuva Garnett incident should be a sign that we need to take the word cancer out of anything that's not regarding the the actual disease or the zodiac sign. Why you might ask? Because the other common use of the word cancer that has nothing to do with disease and is offensive to those with the disease. Let Adande explain.

We use cancer in the most casual ways. Locker room cancer, clubhouse cancer, on and on, as if anything an athlete does to disrupt team harmony is the equivalent of mutating cells that attack bodies from within and take the lives of our loved ones.

No, we use cancer in the “most casual ways” because it has multiple definitions. One of those definitions happens to be, “something evil or malignant that spreads destructively.”(Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary) You are taking the medical term and saying another use of it is offensive to those with the disease? How? It gets worse.

I typed "Terrell Owens cancer" into Google's search engine and received 165,000 hits. I didn't have the time to go through all of them, but I'm pretty sure none referenced a diagnosis of the disease or a visit to a children's hospital. Shouldn't Owens take offense? As bad a teammate as he's been at times, he's never killed anyone. More importantly, we should be offended by constant misuse of such a serious word.

This is probably because they were using the definition of the word that is not associated with the medical term. We know he's never killed anyone, but he's a dick and thus cancer to his team. This is a correct definition that nobody should take offense to. You appear to be the only one who has a problem with it.

So let's drop "cancer" from the sports lexicon -- unless the topic is the zodiac sign. Can you just imagine Garnett yelling, "You embody the worst aspects of a Cancer; you let your emotions override rational judgment"?

So let me get this straight, you only recognize a couple definitions of the word cancer? You find one definition to be offensive to people who have the disease even though it has nothing to do it besides having the same name. What is wrong with you? Did you go to school?

Also, no, I cannot imagine Garnett yelling that, because it would be a retarded thing to yell. I don't even have anything else to say. J.A. Adande, this has to be the stupidest thing I've ever read and has nothing to do with sports. You can continue to think that the type of cancer that is associated with Terrell Owens as a teammate is the same as a life ending disease, but it's not, and you're the only one who thinks it is.

Why Do We Defend Brett Favre?

Something terrible that happened to me this year is missing the first 3 rounds of my fantasy football draft. With the first 3 picks the automated draft tool picked Adrian Peterson, Brett Favre and Beanie Wells. I won’t get into how angry I am that Beanie Well’s was my 3^rd pick. (Who thought the pass first Cardinals were going to be able to run the ball all the sudden?) The real plight of this whole situation has been having to cheer for Brett Favre and therefore the Vikings week in and week out.

Favre through week 7 has completed less than 60% of his passes, thrown 10 interceptions compared to 7 touchdowns, and has been sacked 14 times. All of this has equaled a far less than pedestrian 68.00 quarterback rating, good for 30^th out of 33 eligible quarterbacks. The Vikings as a team are literally one of the better teams in every statistically category besides the passing game. To put this in even more perspective his play has been worse than Oakland’s Jason Campbell, who was benched for Bruce Gradkowski who’s also outperformed Brett Favre. So in other words it’s been very ugly.

Instead of addressing just how truly terrible Favre has been this year, we’ve made excuses for him. This was understandable at first because of his incredible performance last year, questionable wide receiving core, and history as an elite NFL quarterback, but now Favre has to be on the bench at this point. How can Vikings coach Brad Childress legitimately let one of the worst quarterbacks through 7 weeks play on a broken ankle while also dealing with a harassment scandal that may have involved him texting pictures of his god damn penis?

The truly disgusting part of this whole thing is that there’s no way if Brett Favre didn’t have 291 consecutive games played he would he even be considering playing. He has a serious ankle injury and amidst an NFL investigation where he has already admitted to some of the allegations so wouldn’t the best thing for him be to avoid the limelight and try to let this thing blow over? I mean we understand Brett, you’re 41 with a broken ankle sit this one out.

The thing I can’t understand about Brett Favre is over the last 4-5 years his outrageously selfish behavior has not only been tolerated, but defended. The Packers were blamed for moving onto their fantastic young quarterback in Aaron Rodgers after two offseasons where Brett Favre unprofessionally jerked the team around regarding his retirement. Look the NFL is a business and a team needs to know who the hell their quarterback is going to be so they can plan accordingly for the next year.  The Packers were made out to be criminals for just sticking to a mentality that no one player is bigger than the team. It was sickening the Packers were expected to tolerate such unprofessional behavior from an athlete they paid millions of dollars to play a game.

We know the story from here on, Favre instead of retiring went to play for the Jets and had a hugely disappointing season. However, instead of retiring with any kind of dignity at this point he again made a fiasco over whether he’d retire or come back and rumors linked him to signing with the Minnesota Vikings, arch rivals to the Packers. Of course Brett Favre showing no dignity or respect for the game, his former fans, or the former franchise that made him into a superstar signed a huge 1 year contract to play for the Vikings.

Favre after a great year came up short again and another offseason was spent debating whether Favre would retire or return. Note that in all of these offseasons there was a point where Favre said he was leaning towards retirement and came back to actually play. This time however the story was that Favre’s teammates and coach came down to visit him and Brett so selflessly came back to play for another gigantic sum of money.

He’s been terrible this season as I have shown before. His numbers don’t even describe how bad his play has been. He has made crucial interceptions, held on the ball too long, and flat out looked like a 41 year old trying to play a 25-29 year olds sport. He has clearly been a detriment to the Vikings and now with a broken ankle he’s supposed to play better?

Unbelievably enough is the media continues to defend this guy who over the past 5 years has put himself above everything. How can the media murder guys like Alex Rodriguez and Tiger Woods with half as much justification as they would have to tear apart Brett Favre? Tiger Woods cheated on his wife, that’s it. Outside of that he’s been the utmost professional in every single other aspect of his professional career. Yet we know that there has been adultery misconduct by Brett Favre who is a totally and publicly unprofessional and the story next week is about whether Favre will play or not.

Am I supposed to really believe that if Favre does play next week he’s going to do so for his teammates or for his stupid personal accolades? This guy’s ego has gone unchecked for a long time and it’s time we stop worshipping the ground he stands on and recognize him as the unprofessional selfish jerk he is. Favre’s not even an average quarterback right now and Brad Childress needs to take this team over and show this kind of play isn’t acceptable. If Childress does bench him however, is there any doubt to who’s side the media is going to take?