"I think we're going to Deutschland,'' club president Carl Peterson told me last week. "All teams are eventually going to play a game outside the United States under the league's current plan. Our stadium's going to be under renovation for a couple of years, and if there's a good time for us to play a game overseas, it's probably next year.'' Plus, says Peterson, "My head coach is one-half German, and my defensive coordinator was born in Germany.'' Hmmm. Never knew that one-half-German part about Herman Edwards.
Kansas City über alles. One, I didn’t know that Herman (henceforth and forevermore “the German”—at least to Chris “the German” Berman) Edwards was “one-half German.” Two, why would someone say “one-half” and not just “half”?
One other important factor here: No other NFL exec is as into NFL Europa (nee World League of American Football, nee NFL Europe, nee NFL Spring League That No One in America Gives Two Hoots About) and the idea of a developmental league as Peterson. He loves the concept of pushing football to a European audience, and he knows there's some significant fan interest in Germany -- Frankfurt drew 38,125 partiers for its opener with Amsterdam in April.
I hadn’t realized that NFL Europa had gone through so many name changes. Plus, maybe the proximity of Rhein-Main Air Base to Frankfurt has something to do mit dem Popularitat von Frankfurt Galaxis.
Which brings me to the point of this column: Roger Goodell is very quickly putting his mark on the sport, and he's doing it by having an open mind.
Except about the NFL’s ridiculous drug policy. The doors of perception are closed.
You've seen the trial balloons floated in the past few weeks. A league official mentions the idea of a 17-game schedule to an Associated Press reporter, and soon it's the hot talk of every NFL blogger in the business. A Minneapolis reporter broaches the chance of the draft starting on a Friday night, with the first half of the first round possible for prime time. (Imagine the intrigue, by the way, of next year's Brady Quinn not being drafted in the first half of the first round, and ESPN and NFL network cameras trailing him out to a cry-in-his-prix-fixe dinner Friday night at midnight. Must-see TV!)
And watch Peter King cry about Quinn’s ruining an otherwise acceptable meal.
ESPN.com's Len Pasquarelli reports the first stuff about the snail's-pace first-round timing likely being reduced from 15 minutes to, possibly, 10. (And hallelujah for that. Shorten the second round to five while you're at it, competition committee, and every other round to three minutes.) I'm writing the NFL-in-Germany likelihood. And Goodell loves it all.
We get it, Peter. The NFL is very popular, and you’re part of the buzz.
First: It is late May, and none of us who have covered the NFL have seen the Hot Stove hotter at this time of year. Everywhere you turn -- from the bad news (Mike Vick, Pacman, Tank Johnson) to the wheeling-dealing news (Randy Moss) to the innovative (17-game schedule, Friday Night Draft, European football, Chinese football) -- there's an NFL story in the hopper.
First, you just mentioned the last three things on the first page. Second, don’t act like you didn’t present the Moss deal as anything but bad news. Third, I thought that the hot stove referred to off-season deals and stuff, not dog-fighting rings and paralyzed Vegas bouncers.
Second: By virtue of the floated stories, Goodell gets to read the tea leaves from the NFL machine. Players, coaches, GMs, the media and fans can respond and react, something that often didn't start until after meetings like the spring session the league will convene Tuesday in Nashville.
Right, the NFL is very good at insinuating itself into the sports media all year, but “read[ing] the tea leaves” makes the whole process sound a bit haphazard and mystical, which it most certainly isn’t.
Third: Goodell is doing what he promised owners he'd do when he was quietly pushing for the job a year ago. He stressed three things in the search process -- keeping the game strong, keeping all 32 franchises competitive, and making sure everyone in the league was focused on the innovations that would keep the league one of the strongest entertainment entities in the world.
Maybe the Raiders suck just because Al Davis wants to spite Goodell and to foil thing number two.
Stat of the Week
This is how idiotic the trend toward re-doing perfectly good contracts is getting.
Fourteen months ago, New York Jets guard Pete Kendall, a serviceable but not Pro Bowl guard, renegotiated his contract into a four-year deal, through 2009. The Jets gave him a $3.9 million signing bonus and salaries of $1.3 million, $1.7 million, $2 million and $2.4 million. That's four years and $11.3 million.
A few months after earning the last of the $5.2 million his first year called for in salary and bonus, Kendall wants a new contract because of the insane money guards got in the free-agent market this offseason.
Right, it’s not like the Jets can simply undo a perfectly good contract on a whim and at any time.
Let's extrapolate. The salary cap has gone up $24 million over the last two years. If all the players who signed four-year contracts in the last two years suddenly felt they were grossly underpaid, and said they weren't playing football again until their contract was fixed, what do you think would happen? I'll tell you what: There'd be 250 players skipping mini-camps and offseason programs right now, and there'd be a job-action crisis unlike any we've seen in this league in years.
So every other position in the NFL saw the boon that guards did in the offseason? And what kind of asshole threatens to skip mini-camp? This kind.
Oh, and one other thing: Kendall will be 34 in July.
Sounds as though he knows his time is limited, and Peter, for someone who is so frequently sympathetic to the plights of older, crippled NFL retirees, doesn’t seem to be putting two and two together on this one.
Some contract causes are just. Kendall's is insane.
So some guys who just signed those four-year contracts are getting screwed—do they get to complain, and should we extrapolate to the entire league again?
FotWtMIOPK
In 1976, Cornell football coach George Seifert, in the midst of a disastrous 3-15 two-year run at the Ivy League school, prowled the sidelines during a 28-12 loss to Brown in upstate New York. He was fired after the season.
In the Cornell radio booth that day, as he was for every game of the Big Red's debacle of a season, was student broadcaster Keith Olbermann.
In the visitors' radio booth that day was Brown student broadcaster Chris Berman.
The next season in which Seifert was a head coach (1989), he won a Super Bowl with the 49ers, while Berman and Olbermann critiqued him for ESPN.
No shit. Do you think that Brown students were as tired of Berman’s shtick (which is about the nicest way possible to refer to what that guy does) as we are now?
Oh, but this factoid isn’t of interest just to PK. The caption on an accompanying picture of a grinning Olbermann reads, “Keith Olbermann will co-host NBC's 'Football Night In America' on Sundays this fall.” And now we have the Official GE >> pk Moment of the Week. (Make it your OGE>>pkMotW, potential sponsors.)
A/ETNotW
Aggravating doesn’t begin to cover it for one motorist.
Eyewitnessed at the Pilgrim Shopping Plaza, Verona, N.J.:
Woman in late-model minivan, just in front of me, begins to turn right into a row of parked cars, looking for a parking space. She slams her brakes suddenly, causing me to slam mine. The reason: Another woman, this one in a tan Audi, is driving slowly down the row, right in the middle of the row, with a cell phone pressed to her ear. The Audi women is not paying attention, until the minivan woman leans on her horn continuously for a full five seconds. Now the minivan woman puts her car in park and, with her van cutting off the Audi, gets out of the car. I've never seen this before. Audi woman looks steamed.
As I am fond of saying, the biggest asshole is the asshole who forces someone else to be an asshole. Here’s a classic example. Minivan woman is the aggrieved party, but Audi woman is angry when she is called out for her inconsiderate behavior. Fuck you, Audi woman. Fuck you straight to hell.
"GET OFF YOUR *&%#ING PHONE! GET OFF YOUR &^%#ING PHONE!'' minivan woman yells while walking to the window of Audi woman. Audi woman's window is closed. Good thing. Minivan woman would slug her in the jaw if the window were open.
So what does “*&%#” sound like, anyway?
I find myself cheering on minivan woman. Where's the enforcement of the cell-phone laws in some states, the ones that mandate users not be holding the phone while driving?
Regular readers of PK’s MMQB should know why this is so funny, but I’ll explain anyway. One, Peter routinely decries violence in the media (except for the violence that occurs in The Sopranos—and how about A. J., hunh? Also, word to the wise: do not lewdly proposition Meadow Soprano with crude double-entendres about cream on her face). Two, several times, including just last week, Peter has noted the total awesomeness of chatting on the cell phone while driving.
I can’t wait to find out what happened.
Minivan woman yammers some really good Jersey language at Audi woman, and I never hear Audi woman because she never opens her window. She looks like one of those people in a Southwest Airlines commercial. (You know, the ones that ask, "Want to get away?) Minivan woman gives her a middle-finger salute, shakes her head angrily, and I back up to give her room to back up and let Audi woman slink away, phoneless.
Go get her, minivan woman!
While minivan woman is a modern-day hero, we should all remember that sometimes the minivan women of the world end up like this.
That is, buried in a cemetery with big barrels in it.
QotW II
"I want to go on record. Charlie [Frye] is our guy. With our new offensive system, Charlie could be looking at a big year.''
-- Cleveland wide receiver Braylon Edwards.
Romeo Crennel and Phil Savage will be surprised to hear that, after spending next year's first-round pick and this year's second-rounder on Brady Quinn.
Don’t blame Braylon, PK. He’s just operating by the Official Brett Favre Rules of Players-as-General-Managers. Phil Savage needs to get on the same page with Braylon.
QotW III
"It might cause some friction. If you're going to be part of the team, you should be there always. To be a part of the team, you have to be there with the team.''
-- New York Yankees relief pitcher Kyle Farnsworth about the prospect of Roger Clemens coming and going as he pleases when he joins the team later this month.
It certainly will cause some friction now.
QotW IV
"Say good-bye to that high moral ground, Bob. The Patriots ... put their standards on the shelf in the quest for victory. They might be the best team in football, but the Patriots are no longer 'different' from all the other NFL organizations.''
-- Boston Globe columnist Dan Shaughnessy, to Patriots owner Bob Kraft, in the wake of the Patriots trading for serial loafer Randy Moss and drafting safety Brandon Meriweather in the first round. Meriweather fired gunshots at an assailant last year, and also stomped on a Florida International player during the infamous Miami-FIU brawl.
When did the New England Patriots become a cross between Teach for America and the Peace Corps? Their coach is a huge asshole and a known adulterer who plays guys with post-concussion syndrome after threatening their careers. And Moss isn’t really that bad. He’s had one encounter with the law that was overblown. And why does any sports figure in Boston talk to Shaughnessy ever?
Onward: I may not know much, but I know what I think I think.
1. I think this is the sign that Peyton Manning is not satisfied with winning one Super Bowl, courtesy of Tony Dungy: When he reported to the offseason program, Manning was told three veterans had not reported to the voluntary workouts and did not plan to report. "Give me their phone numbers,'' Manning said, and he called them, and he got at least two of them to come in for some of the workouts. "He hasn't changed a bit,'' Dungy told me. "His love of the game is so great to see.''
I am two-thirds impressed by that story, which is one-sixth more impressed than how German Herman Edwards is.
2. I think the evidence mounts, Mike Vick. If you've got anything the authorities are going to uncover, it's always better to come clean before you're forced to. Remember Luis Castillo? He was about to get embarrassed by a positive steroid test before the 2005 draft, and he contacted all 32 teams with a pre-emptive strike, explaining why he tested positive and how he'd never use steroids again. He got picked in the first round, hasn't had a whit of a problem since, and has been an Eagle Scout off the field. We forgive in America, most often when a person who is truly sorry appears before us.
So Michael Vick was holding dog fights to recuperate from an injury suffered his senior year of college that could have tanked his stock in the draft? Also, why is cheating to enrich one’s self okay?
Think-I-Think 3 is a 349-word bit on the NFL Network cable stuff that PK mentioned last week, 265 of which are by NFL Network shill Seth Palansky. Yeah, I don’t care either.
5. I think in six months, the New York Giants are going to be wishing they had changed coaches last January ... and hired Mike Tomlin.
I think that, if one polled the Giants players, they’d wish that right now.
6. I think the reason Keyshawn Johnson is a great fit with Tennessee is simple: He is Drew Bennett, only with two years left instead of five.
Noteworthy because Peter makes the rare cross-racial sports comparison—well-done. PK > latent racism.
7. I think I'm late in praising a superb story by Ron Borges in the Boston Globe eight days ago regarding Randy Moss and what he has left.
Borges quotes former Raiders offensive coordinator Tom Walsh as saying: "Randy Moss is a player whose skills are diminishing, and he's in denial of those eroding skills. Randy was a great receiver but he lacked the work ethic and the desire to cultivate any skills that would compensate for what he was losing physically later in his career. He told me last year, 'I'm too old to practice on Wednesday and Thursday, but I'm not too old to play on Sunday.' Did they start a senior league?' ''
Peter is clearly determined to make sure that we know his opinions about Moss, but hasn’t Steve McNair pioneered the no-practice-during-the-week-play-on-game-day move? Did any of his coaches accuse him of wanting to join a senior league?
The skeptics among us would say that Walsh should have stayed retired in Idaho instead of being brought out of mothballs by Art Shell. But the skeptics among us did not work alongside the mysterious Moss every day for six months either. So while I think Walsh was a ridiculous hire by the Raiders, a prehistoric hire, I also think he knows 20 times more about Moss than everyone reading (and writing) this column. So I trust his opinion.
However -- and this is an important however -- people can change when they have to change. And Moss knows he has to change. He has talked with Bill Belichick, and I'm pretty sure the Randy Moss who attends his first official team function -- the Patriots' full-squad mini-camp the first week of June -- will be on his best behavior, and he'll be running hard when training camp starts in late July. If he's not, we'll find out soon enough. And remember the one thing I've said about Moss all along: The Patriots still have the next three-plus months to make a determination on Moss without it costing them anything other than a fourth-round draft choice and some very bad publicity.
People can change? What? I thought that the deal was bad no matter the outcome. And more bad publicity than the deal has already received in the e-pages of MMQB? Randy Moss must envy W.’s approval rating.
8. I think the rookie who's made the worst first impression in the three weeks since draft day, easily, is New Orleans wide receiver Robert Meachem. How on God's green earth can a rook be 19 pounds overweight at the team's first mini-camp? And what kinds of red flags must that send up to the coaching staff and front office about to make the man a jillionaire? "I think I had like nine [pre-draft] visits to teams,'' Meachem said after injuring an ankle at the Saints' minicamp last week. "And every visit they gave you a big old meal. I tried to work out when I could, but I don't think I got enough workouts in.'' Uh-oh.
Again with the jillionaire stuff? The biggest uh-oh is that Robert Meachem thinks that nine meals can make him nineteen pounds overweight. Get this guy a personal nutritionist now. Also, Robert Meachem always seemed to be an underachiever to me when he was at Tennessee.
And now to the dessert (or desert, probably), the non-football think-I-thinks.
a. It's quite possible that I am a loon, but I love that AFLAC goat commercial.
Is that a pun on loon/crazy/waterfowl-like-a-duck? That commercial is terrible. Maybe ABC will develop a pilot about it.
b. Eric Hinske's the kind of guy you really want to root for.
Eric Hinske’s the kind of guy Boston fans really want to root for. Fixed.
c. How great would it have been to see the look on George Steinbrenner's face when he opened up the Tampa Tribune Friday morning and noticed that, after 39 games, his Yankees were 9.5 games out of first place?
Historically great if that’s the first time that Steinbrenner noticed that the Yankees are getting their asses handed to them. And I know that Big Stein is old, but does he really get this type of info from his morning newspaper?
d. In their first 40 games the Red Sox were 14-6 at home, 14-6 on the road.
That’s almost as eerie as the fact that the Pennsylvania turnpike has an equal number of Starbucks on either side. Spaketh Abraham Lincoln: “My personal secretary is named Kennedy? What a coincidence.”
g. Speaking of NBC, we had some Football Night in America meetings last week in New York, and my guess is that Tiki Barber is not going to be afraid to say about 80 percent of what he thinks. That's a compliment. Everybody has a filter. Former athletes on TV have biiiiggggg filters. I think Tiki will be anti-that. We'll see, but he's made a very clean break with the NFL and has zero regrets.
More kissing of Tiki Barber’s ass. And speaking of filters, maybe run that biiiiggggg and anti-that through the Professional Writer 3000 next time.
h. Christopher deserved it.
Then what does Tony deserve?
i. Coffeenerdness: Can't go wrong on an 83-degree spring day in New Jersey by ordering a Grande Light Java Chip frap, no whip, with a shot of espresso mixed in. Not only does it get the nerve endings jangling, but, as Kramer said in the Junior Mint episode on Seinfeld: "It's very refreshing.''
And, if offered to me, I would push it away, spilling it into a surgical patient’s open abdominal cavity. By the way, should so much of that drink order be capitalized?
j. It pleases me to have gotten 10 or so e-mails on the Mr. Ed episode with people recalling how Ed slid into home plate under the tutelage of Leo Durocher. Not sure if it's true, but I'd always hears the ASPCA didn't like that episode because, allegedly, Ed was sedated and had his hooves tied together, and he was dragged across home plate. So it just looked like he was sliding into home.
Now it is sounding like this clip does belong in the running (or the being-tied-up-and-dragging) for funniest thing in the history of television.
k. How'd I ever get on that tangent?
Your trainer put peanut butter under your lips and your hands started typing? (That’s pretty much how I operate.)
n. Next week, I'll be skipping my first Monday column since last July. Off to Italy for a recharging family trip. I'll be filing the Tuesday column tomorrow as usual, then skipping Monday and Tuesday next week. I'll be back in this space on June 4.
Just for good measure, HPP will be touching down in da Vinci airport early next week to file his usual reports on PK’s madness. By the way, I cannot wait to read his stuff about Italy. I hope to Cristo that his A/ETNotW live up to their potenziale.
