Matt Birk Pens Monday Morning QB

by | Jul 7, 2009 | NFL Media

Peter King is currently on his annual four-week vacation–because apparently penning a 4,000 word essay each week about coffee and travel annoyances [along with a few football tidbits], tweeting up a storm, and appearing on NBC sports means you need four weeks off–and is having some NFL players guest write his regular columns while he’s out.

First up was Matt Birk, who posted his Monday Morning QB column yesterday.  Our advice to Birk?  Don’t quit your day job…although not because it’s bad writing, it’s just that making millions to drive people into the ground is probably a lot more glamourous (and financially rewarding) than penning a regular football column (or penning a football blog, for that matter).

While not nearly as long winded as King, Birk provides a couple of solid pages, including a full on ’10 Things I Think I Think.’  He touches briefly on the Brett Favre/Vikings saga, leading that into a topic near to Birk’s heart–current players needing to take care of former players financially and medically.  While it’s a bit deeper than your average King column, and maybe a bit more of using the column as a forum to further his own agenda on the matter than a regular columnist would be ok with, it’s something we actually agree with Birk on.  He also touches on the Steve McNair situation, without going into too much detail.

In fact, the only area that we think Birk really missed the mark on is with his #1 on his list of 10 Things He Thinks He Thinks, where he says:

“I think Favre will play for the Vikings this year. This will start a civil war between Minnesota and Wisconsin. A truce will be reached in this epic border battle after it is discovered at a tailgate party that Johnsonville Brats (Wisconsin) and Grain Belt Beer (Minnesota) are perfect complements for each other.”

As a true native of Minnesota, Birk should know better–there is no way that Wisconsinites would give up their paint thinner and Miller Lite for the goodness of Grain Belt Premium, and while I acknowledge that Johnsonville makes a decent brat, if it really came down to it, I’m sure that Minnesota’s own Hormel must make a line of brats that is as good (or better) than anything Wisconsin could provide.

One of the worst columns ever written

by | Jul 5, 2009 | NFL Media

People have lost their jobs and their houses. The country has been at war for what seems like an eternity. The news is filled with reports of international threats from North Korea and Iran.

So what exactly were we supposed to feel when “MJD” posted this column about how NFL players are “poor” compared with other professional athletes?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m a capitalist, just like the next guy. But I’m not going to feel sorry for Peyton Manning or Tom Brady – or any NFL-er making today’s NFL minimum wage – because they get paid less than basketball players, baseball players, golfers and whoever else happens to hit the jackpot.

And I don’t think Manning or Brady would ask us too either, … if they are as reasonably intelligent as they seem to be most of the time. Seven figures, eight figures – at some point it becomes just a number or to the exclusive restaurant where you can try to one-up your buddy who also makes seven figures.

MJD has written some interesting, informative stuff in the past. But this was one of the most pointless columns I’ve ever seen published. MJD, I think even though they are making less than the NBA-ers of the world, unless they snort it up their nose or find some other way to piss it down their leg, they are going to be alright.

I guess one of the downsides of the Internet is that there is room for almost anyone to write almost anything they want.

Madden hanging it up

by | Apr 16, 2009 | NFL Media, NFL Random Thoughts

Somewhere kicking around my basement I have a videotape of the 1981-82 Super Bowl between San Francisco and Cincinnati. John Madden and Pat Summerall called that game from the Silverdome in Detroit.

Both were quite a bit younger then … 27 years younger, I guess, as I do the math. And I believe it was their first Super Bowl as the announcing tandem – the first one I had seen them do, anyway.

While broadcasting teams come and go, Madden and Summerall from their early days remain the best duo I can recall. Summerall had this quiet, understated approach to play-by-play that perfectly complemented Madden’s enthusiastic color, which was often accompanied by a “BOOM!!!” or a telestrator pen marking up the screen in 32 different directions.

Summerall mostly hung up his microphone several years ago. Madden, 73, announced today, according to USA Today, that he’s now retiring as well.

Madden, a Super Bowl winning coach and Hall of Famer for both his commentary and his coaching, had slipped in recent years. He wasn’t as sharp and he sometimes seemed to be seeing different things than I was seeing on the television (not that he hasn’t forgotten more about the sport than I will ever know). But his legendary enthusiasm for the sport and for telling stories about the players and the coaches who partook in the NFL never disappeared.

Troy Aikman, Phil Simms, Cris Collinsworth – all of them have good points as analysts on NFL broadcasts and all will likely do credible work into the distant future. But even in the end Madden remained my favorite broadcaster.

I wish him a happy retirement.

Cowboys resembling Dallas nighttime soap opera

by | Jan 27, 2009 | Business of Football, NFL Media

It’s becoming fitting that the Dallas Cowboys play their games in the same city that was featured in one of America’s once-popular night time soap operas.

This is fantastic – just too good to be true.

Not a week after Michael Irvin announced that his former team would save one of its 80 preseason roster spots for the winner of the former receivers’ reality show, another Dallas Cowboy is getting into the mix.

This time, current wideout Terrell Owens and his entourage announced that VH1 has green-lighted a reality show during which his friends and publicists Monique Jackson and Kita Williams try to help Owens find success off the playing field.

Banyan Productions, producers of Trading Spaces, will produce the show, which is at this point untitled and unsold.

It’s probably a perfect opportunity for Owens to begin this quest. While his 2008 numbers were still good, he disappeared for a chunk of the season, though in fairness, the Cowboys’ entire offense did the same.

And while he continued for the most part to be a solid receiver he is getting up there in age. He also continued his career-long trend of behaving himself for a year or two with whatever team he happens to be on before helping to stir up some controversy with whatever quarterback he happens to be playing with at any given time (see Garcia, Jeff and McNabb, Donovan prior to this season’s tiff with Romo, Tony).

So this reality show will help keep him in the public eye as he ponders whether to patch things up with Dallas teammates or create enough of a distraction this offseason to get himself cut again.

Should be yet another entertaining offseason for T.O. – and thus for the rest of us as well.

USAToday.com broadcaster poll: Hmmmmmm

by | Jan 21, 2009 | NFL Media

One of the publictations I read (okay, scan) religiously is USAToday Sports Weekly. They’ve got decent fantasy sports advice and I will read anything that has weekly updates on each individual team – and they cover the two sports Tony and I write about in our current collection of blogs (www.brushbackpitch.com is the other, for the uninitiated).

The Web version of USA Today decided to ask fans who the best NFL broadcasters are and I found the results interesting.

NBC’s team of John Madden and Al Michaels was voted the best game announcers, getting more than 39 percent of more than 13,400 votes. My own first place vote probably would have gone to Jim Nantz and Phil Simms, though I can live with the Madden/Michaels duo. Both are on the downsides of their careers, but I remain a bigger fan of Madden than most. He’s a bit goofy these days, but still insightful. And Michaels is consistently solid.

Madden then tied with Troy Aikman for best NFL analyst. I don’t necessarily disagree with this. Along with Simms (despite his alleged knack for reguarly inserting homoerotic statements into his work, which I think is overblown but my wife insists is present in all NFL game broadcasts) , in my opinion, all three are insightful. I would add Ron Jaworski to the list. While I think he has good camaraderie with Mike Tirico and Tony Kornheiser on Monday nights, I’m always even more impressed with the job he does breaking down film during pre-game shows and the NFL draft.

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Inevitable Favre talk starting already

by | Jan 3, 2009 | NFL Media, NFL News

There was no question that it was going to happen but did it have to start already?

We managed to watch one solid playoff game this afternoon during which Arizona upset Atlanta without a mention of New York Jets quarterback Brett Favre. But at halftime of the second game – which is shaping up to be another barnburner between Indianapolis and San Diego – Peter King of CNNSI.com was asked by the NBC Football halftime crew about Brett Favre’s future.

King had spoken with Favre and Jets General Manager Mike Tannenbaum and come to the conclusion that he believes Favre will hang up his cleats during the offseason, this time for good.

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