Newz Forum: OTHER: The Sports Curmudgeon on Mickey Rooney's butt, Randy Moss, Brett Favre, Drew Bree

For some reason, there is a brouhaha over FOX refusing to air an ad for a product during the Super Bowl because it shows the bare buttocks of 84-year old Mickey Rooney. The rhetoric has gotten hot and heavy on this one very quickly. I don't see this as a victory for censorship; I don't see this is as some kind of knee-jerk overreaction to last year's Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction; I don't see this as anything of longstanding importance.

Here is what I worry about. Some person in the creative department of some ad agency ran out of ideas for how to explain the competitive advantages of the product he/she was trying to advance and came up with the idea that it would be attractive and positive for the American public to stare at a naked 84 year old ass thereby moving sales in a positive direction. That can't be good!

Randy Moss' end zone celebration was in sufficiently poor taste that it casts him squarely into the same zone with Ron Artest as a gifted athlete who has no social proficiency at all. I fear this event will be blown up into something a lot bigger than it is; and by doing that, Randy Moss will get more attention than he deserves. Perhaps, in addition to an absence of social proficiency, people like Randy Moss suffer from attention neediness? Maybe he and folks of his ilk are publicity sluts?

I know that Brett Favre tossed 4 INTs yesterday and that kind of performance in a playoff game is hardly the stuff of legends. But what I noticed in that game was that the Packers defense seemed to have forgotten a couple of the basic tenets of defensive football for the first three quarters of the game. In pass coverage, the defenders were often 5 to 7 yards away from the receivers as the ball was being thrown; even when the defenders were in the same zip code with the receivers, the tackling was atrocious and more than half the hits were at the shoulder pad level; pass rushing seemed to mean not allowing Duante Culpepper to eat the fries that came with the burger he had just ordered before throwing the ball. Not even John Madden could concoct a storyline making out Favre's performance to be a good one yesterday, but the Packers' defense was a no-show for most of the game too.

Drew Brees had a breakout season this year and he was a major reason why the Chargers finished with a 12-4 record atop the AFC West. Nothing I am about to say is a criticism of his performance this year. I was, however, a bit surprised when Brees won the "Comeback Player of the Year" award. What did he come back from? This award usually goes to people whose careers had been at a high level and then had sunk to a low level often as a result of some major injury. That happened to Garrison Hearst twice; it happened to Doug Flutie once although no injury was involved. In the case of Drew Brees, he never performed at any notable performance level in the past and so I'm hard-pressed to understand how he made a comeback of any sort – let alone one that was the best of the year. The runner-up in this voting was Mark Fields of the Carolina Panthers who resumed his career this season after missing last year because of a bout with cancer. Now that is a comeback...

Not all is happiness in the Oakland Raider locker room. That is not unusual but after the Raiders laid an egg in their final game against Jax, Charles Woodsen, Joey Porter and Phillip Buchanon let it be known that they would prefer to be elsewhere. Porter is a free agent; Woodsen played with the franchise tag and Buchanon is under contract. This could be an interesting soap opera because Woodsen has not had a really great year since he was a senior at Michigan; Porter is inconsistent and Buchanon's greatest strength is talking about his football prowess and not demonstrating it on the field. Buchanon said that there were things about the organization that were wrong and, “I'm not feeling too good here.”

Memo to Buchanon: If you aren't feeling too good, let me suggest a Pepto Bismol tablet and some bed rest.

Believe it or not, Warren Sapp managed to find the grace and common sense to keep his mouth shut about all of this presumably because he understood that nothing he might say would make any of these situations any better and because he realized that the year he had was embarrassing enough without him finding a way to call attention to it. Never fear, Raider Nation; Al Davis will find a way to bring harmony to all of this chaos...

Despite the resurgence of the Cincinnati Bengals under Marvin Lewis, the franchise last posted a winning record in 1990 when Sam Wyche was the coach and the team made the playoffs. Since 1990, the Bengals are a cumulative 69-153.

Over approximately the same time frame, the St. Louis/Arizona Cardinals have lost 10 or more games 11 different seasons since 1989. However, long term Cardinals' fans - there have to be two or three of them somewhere, right? - can take solace in the fact that during that time span, the team won its only playoff game in the last 56 years. A lot was made last weekend of the fact that the Seattle Seahawks had not won a playoff game in 20 years. That team is less than half the way to the Cardinals standard of going 51 years between playoff wins.

The Cowboys' "other tight end", Jeff Robinson has caught 4 passes in the last two seasons and those 4 catches have produced 4 touchdowns. I think I might try to find a way to get the ball to him a bit more.

Sometime last month, the Orlando Magic had a promotional night where ticket holders received a marionette - instead of a bobblehead doll - in the likeness of Magic rookie, Dwight Howard. Maybe this will start a new trend and get people off the silly bobblehead doll nonsense? We can only hope. Here is an idea to gather momentum for the "marionette movement" if anyone cares. The next giveaway should be by the Phoenix Suns and it should be in the likeness of Shawn Marion. Get it? The Marion marionette? Hey, it's a better promotional idea than looking at Mickey Rooney's permanent vertical smile!

Finally, here is an item from Greg Cote's column in the Miami Herald from 12/28/04.

"Parting thought: Bulletin. The NHL season may be cancelled when the league meets Jan. 14. That means you have only 17 more days to not give a damn about the sport before your utter disinterest becomes moot."

But don't get me wrong, I love sports...

Copyright The Sports Curmudgeon






[Edited on 1/13/05 by SportzWriter]