By now, you have to have heard about Michael Vick and his “adventure” at the airport. I’m not going to get into the debate about whether or not marijuana should be legalized or any allegations that Vick was singled out for scrutiny at the airport by the TSA inspectors because of his celebrity status or his race. Those are topics for orators and emoters. I want to examine this event from the standpoint of stupidity.
Michael Vick has a contract with the Atlanta Falcons, which has a total value of $128M if the press reports are correct. I know he’ll never see all of that money because the balloon payments in the final year or two will make his cap number astronomical, but he’ll see well more than half of it if he can just stay with the team. So let’s examine what he’s done recently to stay with the team:
When some hometown fans were on his case after a losing effort at home, he flashed them a double-barreled single-finger salute. This is to the hometown fans mind you.
As the Falcons were tanking at the end of the season, he complained about his teammates and his coaches.
Now he gets caught trying to get a water bottle with a secret compartment past airport security and onto a commercial flight.
I don’t care even a little bit whether or not the “secret compartment” in the bottle contained marijuana. Having a bottle with a secret compartment is sort of like having The Original Whizzonator with you; having it in your possession means that you intend to deceive someone somewhere. Whatever story his lawyers/publicists concoct to explain how this was all a misunderstanding will be nonsense because they will not include the pertinent information here. What he did was stupid beyond belief; what he did jeopardized his long-term contract with the Falcons and his value as an endorser of products and the celebrity status he so clearly needs and enjoys. Let me say it again, he was/is stupid.
How will all of this end? I don’t know, but I can envision one grand crescendo that would rivet the attention of the football world for a year. Next season, Michel Vick, Terrell Owens and Randy Moss join forces to play for the Oakland Raiders; Jerry Glanville – the original man-in-black – coaches the team and Al Davis keeps Glanville happy by going to the games in full regalia as an Elvis impersonator. That gets the Raiders on MNF at least twice, no?
An awful lot of attention has focused on the Miami Dolphins’ coaching search. I guess that’s because of the elongated and mendacious set of events surrounding Nick Saban’s decision to leave the team, but I wonder if it is really worth all the attention. The Miami Dolphins are team on the edge of returning to the abyss. The Dolphins have lived on the excellence of their defense for more than a couple of years now; their offense has risen to the level of mediocrity once in a while but normally has been a boat anchor for the team. It’s been a while since the Dolphins have been relevant. And the key players on the defense that has been carrying the team are getting long in the tooth. If you identify the core players on the defense as Jason Taylor, Zach Thomas, Keith Traylor, Vonnie Holliday and Kevin Carter, then Vonnie Holiday at age 31 and going into his 10th season next year is the “youngster” of the group. I’m not saying that the Dolphins’ defense is about to come apart at the seams because these guys still played at a high level of efficiency in 2006, but any five year program that a new coach implements ought not to have any of these folks as lynchpins at the end of the program.
Some attention is focused on the Raiders’ search for a new coach probably because the team set new standards for dysfunctional last season and because, well, you never know what Al Davis will do. At the moment, if you were in a “word association game” and I said “Weird Al”, you would probably say “Yankovic” if you are old enough to remember his great song parody Another One Rides The Bus. However, it won’t take more than a few more strange moves by the Raiders for “Davis” to be the common response to “Weird Al” in word association games. Last season they had an offensive coordinator who had been running a bed and breakfast for the last umpty-doodle years. What will Al do for an encore? Maybe he’ll hire a medium to channel “The Tooz” as the new defensive coordinator? Maybe he’ll think he’s getting Snake Stabler to be the QB coach but mistakenly hire Jake the Snake to do the job? Any word on whether or not Richie Kotite and/or Jerry Faust have reservations to fly to the Bay Area any time soon?
I’m glad to see that the Chargers did not fire Marty Schottenheimer and that is not because I have any particular affection or attraction to him. It’s just that I would have been very worried for the people of San Diego had they fired him. I would have suspected that there was something in the water supply out there that was interfering with logical processes. The Padres just fired Bruce Bochy after three straight winning seasons and two AL West divisional championships. Prior to this run of success, the Padres had five straight losing seasons but the kept Bochy on board. Had Schottenheimer been fired, I’d have begun to wonder if successful seasons had become the criterion for getting canned in San Diego.
There is one NBA note that demands attention. Kwame Brown had another run in with the police this week; fortunately, it did not involve any charges against him. It seems that he and teammate Ronny Turiaf were out at a club around 2 AM. [Aside: Isn’t this how all of these police incident stories begin?] There was another man at the same club who was celebrating his 30th birthday. This man left the club around the same time as Brown and Turiaf carrying his birthday cake. At that moment, Kwame Brown grabbed the cake and threw it at Turiaf but wound up hitting the birthday boy too. Brown then left in a limo. Just a few comments if I may:
1. If Kwame Brown did what is alleged here, that’s probably the first steal of his career.
2. Given his hands, it’s amazing he didn’t drop the damned cake.
3. He threw it at Turiaf – for whatever reason – and hit the birthday boy. If that doesn’t summarize his NBA career, I don’t know what does.
4. At least he was smart enough to have rented a limo to get home that night. From these actions, I’d not be surprised to learn that some adult beverage consumption preceded these happenings.
Finally, a note from Greg Cote in the Miami Herald:
“Cavaliers center, Zydrunas Ilgauskas dedicated a team-funded reading center in Cleveland. Suggestion: Limit enrollment by requiring students to correctly spell or pronounce “Zydrunas Ilgauskas”.
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…