Five mini-columns

In this in-between time at the start of football and late-but-not-that-late in the everlasting baseball season, there's not any one topic that stands out, so I thought I'd give you my well thought out opinions on five things in sports (originally ten, but I let No. 3 run so long that I thought I'd cut it short (having now finished this, I realize the word short is out of place here)). This probably means I'll have nothing to write about for weeks, so enjoy.

Keep in mind that a) I came up with this list at 2 a.m. this morning (I couldn't sleep and I'm not kidding; you have no idea the kind of pressure that comes with running this website) and b) I'm still not making any money off this, so if it makes no sense, blame yourself (which, interestingly enough, also makes no sense).

And we're off!

1) Maurice Clarett vs. Ohio State: Before you skip down to No. 2, which I would certainly do in your position, hear me out. There is actually a little timeliness to the whole "Is Maurice is a big crybaby tattle-tale?" issue.

First of all, I'm not very happy with people who tell right now, as I got in trouble for messing up the big conference this week at work by not showing up on time to help. The person who complained/told on me missed three salient points: First, everyone got started on time; second, everything worked just fine; and third, I actually was there.

Second, this was a topic up for debate on the local sports radio station (AM 950 THE FAN!) as I was driving home yesterday. One guy, whom I assume must have been a caller (I didn't listen very long), assured us that Ohio State and society at large had actually failed Clarett by coddling him at a young age and then later revoking those privileges. The host, meanwhile, argued that Clarett turned his back on his teammates and threw the Ohio State football program under the bus when he went public with all the under-the-table dealings he'd been part of.

Fools! First, I seriously doubt that Clarett had been taken care of so well that it warped his entire of sense of right and wrong to the point where no one should hold him accountable for his actions. Second, if Clarett really was the only or one of the very few to accept extra benefits in violation of NCAA rules, yes, he did kind of screw over his teammates, but I really doubt that was the case.

I have two points. One, while I've been ragging on Clarett since we drafted him, there's no need to make him out to be worse than he is years after the fact, and second, you don't have to assign blame: both sides obviously messed up.

2) The Avs sign Brad May: Is this a "slap in the face" to Steve Moore, who's still trying to recover from Todd Bertuzzi's heinous attack?

For anyone who doesn't know, May was a teammate of Bertuzzi who said before the cheapest of all cheap shots, "There's definitely a bounty on [Moore's] head. Clean hit or not, that's our best player and you respond. It's going to be fun when we get him."

Keep in mind two things: one, he was talking about retaliating for a hit Moore had laid on Markus Naslund. Not that that makes Bertuzzi's attack acceptable at all, but hockey players are constantly going after each other for stuff that happened in previous games (or have we all forgotten the height of the Avs-Red Wings rivalry?). And second, May said it before the attack. He said they'd get Moore back and it would be fun (and I imagine it probably is fun to dish out vengeance on the ice, most of the time), not, "I wholeheartedly endorse any bad thing that ever happens to Steve Moore."

I still wouldn't have signed May if only due to the PR ramifications, but the Avalanche as a franchise have been, overall, very supportive of Moore.

The real slap in the face, of course, is that Bertuzzi got off pretty easy, serving a 20-game suspension for the rest of the 2004 season and then staying home all of last year like every other player, which apparently was all justice demands.

3) The Eagles and Terrell Owens: (if you're not sick of this already)

Let there be no doubt: The Philadelphia Eagles are a bunch of cheapskates. In the several years before the Owens and Jevon Kearse signings, the Eagles finished seasons with millions of dollars of cap room but were too cheap to sign the players they needed to get to or win the Super Bowl (and this is a team that had free agent visits from backs like Antowain Smith and Priest Holmes early in their run).

Granted, with the big Mormon's clock management skills and Donovan McNabb's dry heaving, they may well not have won a Super Bowl either way, but at least they should have tried. Owens might be home from camp for skipping an autograph session, but it's the Eagles organization that has been truly awful to its fans. Say what you want about the effectiveness of the Broncos' decisions, but you can't say they're not trying.

I was solely in Owens' corner after reading an article by Michael Silver of SI.com which said the Eagles forced him to sign an injury waiver realeasing them from liability before letting him play in the Super Bowl. I'd link to it, but they took the article down, as this accusation proved to be, ahem, completely false. Yet I'm still with Owens.

Please don't give me the "he's only one year into a seven-year deal he signed willingly" garbage. First of all, no NFL contract of that length lasts the whole way. Second of all, it's not guaranteed, and without salary cap ramifications, the Eagles would cut him in a second (as they, like many NFL teams, have proven with heartless cuts in the past).

Spare me the even worse, "Let this guy try pouring concrete fifty hours a week, then we'll see how he complains" argument (and it's cousin, the "What about the guys in Iraq?" comparison, to which we all fall short). First of all, if you're at all a part of unionized labor, I don't see how you can look down on the guy. Second of all, shouldn't working stiffs be glad that one of their own (in the loosest sense, I know) might get more money out of the very corporation that still employs him at a profit?

Yes, he should be grateful just to have a job. Why do we assume he's not? If you could get a salary increase by skipping work, wouldn't you do that? If you pass on that opportunity, well, you're an idiot.

Of course, I stand up for Owens and put down Peyton Manning. Here's the difference: the Eagles have the cap room to pay Owens, whereas Manning's deal is so mind-numbingly huge that it affects everyone else on the roster. And second, Manning has pretty much the most off-the-field earning potential of anyone in the NFL, and none of those endorsements count against the cap, so he has an opportunity to take a little less, do something for his team, and still be richer than everyone.

For all we know, Owens' career basically ended last year. He may never come all the way back from his injury, so I understand the Eagles' hesitance to pay him as much as I understand why he wants all his money now. As much as he showboats and demands the spotlight, it's not like any of this is new. The Eagles should have seen this coming. The easiest way to take care of it is to pay the man; but I doubt they'll do that.

I love Andy Reid's "we can win without him" statements. What does Reid know about winning? For all I can tell, he's coached a ton of teams that didn't quite live up to their potential. He could use all the help he can get.

4) Rafael Palmeiro's a dirty cheater. Hall of Fame? Discuss: I know, I know, another "yes, we get it" topic.

If you can't guess, I'm a little skeptical about his assertion that he just started accidentally taking steroids the year testing came into effect. Silly me, that just doesn't add up. I do miss the days when Palmeiro and his Viagra endorsement were the butt of every performance-enhancer joke-I honestly never got sick of those.

And I agree with Frank Deford (who is probably my favorite sportswriter, by the way) that the punishments are still absurdly weak.

But I disagree with Rick Reilly (I'd link but you have to be a subscriber to see it anyway), who wrote this week that baseball writers who don't keep steroid users out of the Hall have no guts. This seems to imply that voting against Palmeiro in a few years takes some kind of moral courage, when it does nothing of the sort.

Personally, while taking steroids is something I'll never understand (I don't think "doing whatever it takes to win", by the way, is a respectable sign of competitiveness; if anything, it's an acknowledgement that your own legitimate best would never be good enough), the fact remains it wasn't against the rules until now. It is against the law, however, but frankly I don't know how the Hall of Fame bylaws treat that.

Besides, if the horrific side effects are true, Palmeiro's already going to get what's coming to him (in the long run, who really cares if he makes the Hall of Fame?), while, on the other hand, if Dr. Canseco is correct, then years from now we'll all wonder what the fuss was about.

5) The release of Madden 06: Count me out among those who embrace both this game's cultural significance and its quality. While it's cute when writers from ESPN.com praise the series, it's also a little ironic, considering that the dominance of Madden spelled the end of the ESPN NFL series.

Of course, I'm also bitter, because my favorite modern football video game (I say modern because Tecmo Bowl will always be the bomb as far as I'm concerned) was ESPN NFL 2K5, and the NFL's and NFLPA's exclusive licensing arrangements with Electronic Arts, the company that publishes Madden, ensure there will be no ESPN NFL this year. (Not that Madden's totally awful...I, ahem, played more than a hundred games of Madden 2003.)

In all seriousness, though, EA is a company that seems to employ some questionable business practices, such as buying up every videogame developer in sight (which I don't like, but can't really argue with) and allegedly forcing a lot of employees to log unpaid overtime (a scandal close to my heart, as it became public thanks largely to a blog posting).

Here's my question: how many of the football fans lining up to buy the newest Madden and stuff EA's pockets are the same people accusing Terrell Owens of unfettered greed?