For every negative story in sports this year, there is also
something to be celebrated
Andrew Matheson and Josh Koehn
Like a championship contest, the biggest stories in sports always have winners and losers. This holiday season, we’ve decided to give gifts to those that truly deserve them: The people that got the raw end of a deal.
Here are five people/organizations/leagues that had a rough 2007. Chin up, though. Better to be notorious than a nobody, right?
Atlanta Falcons
Everyone knows the sad story of the Atlanta Falcons this season.
But if you don’t know the story of Falcons running back Warrick Dunn, well, sit down by the fire and let us tell you a story. Dunn is the rosy glow on the cheek of the Falcons’ face. (Take a guess who’s the black eye?)
Dunn essentially raised his siblings after his mother, a police officer and single parent, was brutally murdered when he was 18-years-old.
Since then, he’s established the Warrick Dunn Foundation and recently challenged NFL players to donate money to help with rebuilding a post-Katrina New Orleans. That challenge has already netted more than $5 million in contributions.
Through his foundation, Dunn has also set out to help single-mother families, as he himself came from a single-mother household. In fact, Dunn’s “Homes for the Holidays” program, which helps purchase houses for single mothers in need, has already placed 69 single mothers and 181 children and dependents into homes in Tampa, Fla., Baton Rouge, La., and Atlanta, Ga.
Leading by example, Dunn’s charitable work has spurred other NFL players, most notably Kurt Warner and Shelton Quarles, into action.
Two gifts will be sent to the Falcons – one for Dunn and one for owner Arthur Blank. After having his best player betray him (see Michael Vick), as well as his new coach quit midseason (see Bobby Petrino), the owner probably needs a hug, too.
Mitchell Report
When the report was released last week – just in time for the holidays, no less – Sen. George Mitchell was immediately crossed off the Christmas List of 90 or so baseball players. Not our list, though.
Mitchell’s popularity plummeted after the release of his 400-page document, which named players who were connected in some way to steroids or performance-enhancing drugs. And while the short-term effects of the report seemingly gives a black eye (there’s that term again) to Major League Baseball, the Mitchell Report will no doubt do wonders to the national pastime down the road.
Few players are a fan of George Mitchell, but the senator was right in naming names. The gift-giving department believes Mitchell couldn’t have done it any other way.
If you want results, if you want action, if you want baseball to clean up its act and start actually doing something about the drug problem within the sport, well, someone needed to stir the pot to get it there, right?
One gift will be sent to Mitchell’s office for his outstanding service to the baseball community, despite how difficult it may be for some to see just how outstanding his service is right now, and will be in the future.
We also thought another gift should be sent to the offices of Randy Hendricks, Roger Clemens’ agent. He seems to be working overtime this holiday season, releasing statements on his client’s behalf, and we thought we’d give him a break. Now if it was Scott Boras…
Boston Sports
The fans of Boston and/or New England sports are receiving their gifts right now in the form of what is probably the greatest and most dominant collection of sports teams, in one area, at one time, of all time.
Leading the NFL in terms of record and dominance, the Patriots could find themselves called the greatest football team of all time when the season is over. And to pinpoint a single player who may deserve more credit than any other individual on the Patriots’ roster, the gift-giving department fingers Randy Moss.
No, we’re not giving him a gift. The sweet contract he’ll get from another team after the Pats are done with him will suffice.
We are, however, giving one gift to Oakland Raiders fans, who put up with Randy “Once in a Blue Moon” Moss for two seasons, and all they got was a blooper reel featuring Kerry Collins, Aaron Brooks and Andrew Walter.
In two seasons (29 games) with the Raiders, Moss had 102 receptions for 1,558 yards and 11 touchdowns. Through 14 games with New England, Moss has 87 receptions for 1,343 yards and 19 touchdowns.
The same goes for supporters of the Minnesota Timberwolves. They had to watch Kevin Garnett, one of the best players to ever pick up a basketball, be surrounded by pitiful talent for years, get nothing back for him in a trade (suspiciously to the team Minnesota GM Kevin McHale played for), and now watch Garnett from afar, smiling and playing his best basketball for a winner. The Celtics are on pace to capture the best single-season record in NBA history.
We won’t even get into the Red Sox. All baseball fans have been through enough in the last year that the last thing we want to do is give a gift to the “long suffering” fans that are creeping ever-closer to becoming this era’s “Evil Empire.”
Please accept these hollow and empty gifts Raiders, Timberwolves and baseball fans outside of New England. It’s the absolute, very least we could do.
BCS
Although the Bowl Championship Series technically does what it’s supposed to, putting the top ranked teams into a championship game, the gift-giving department notices the public’s dismay about the current system, and agrees with the demand for a playoff.
With that said, few gifts will be passed out to those involved with the BCS. The coaches, and too few “suits” who run the conferences, that support a playoff system will be given gifts. Notice, we didn’t say players.
No, the players will receive nothing, and that’s because the gift-giving department is irked. The mad frenzy that bowl sponsors go to supply gifts to the players in their bowls was reported in detail this week.
Yes, gifts.
Bowl sponsors are allowed to spend up to $500 on each player, with some bowls passing out Nintendo Wii’s, iPod’s and $400 shopping sprees to Best Buy to its attending players.
How this makes sense, with NCAA rules strictly prohibiting any type of gift giving, we may never know. What we do know is that a team must have a winning record to receive a bowl invitation. In the words of Ricky Bobby, “Winners get to do what they want!”
College football players may be sitting pretty this holiday season, but it won’t be because of this gift-giving department.
HA!
NBA
We’re passing out a special gift – cold hard cash – to the referees of the NBA that had to endure plenty of criticism after the Tim Donaghy betting scandal. With cash, they can get whatever they want and even multiply it many times over with one single, well-placed … real-estate investment, of course.
The gift-giving department is also supplying a gift to the embattled and increasingly bitter fans of the New York Knickerbockers. The Knicks are so bad that real-life Knicks fans (they do exist!) stood outside of Madison Square Garden this past week with a pink-slip protest, demanding the immediate firing of Thomas, who came into a terrible situation and has somehow made the situation even worse. Thomas, as the coach and GM, has single-handedly cost the Knicks tens of millions for the luxury tax due to exceeding the salary cap, pulled off trades that continually decrease the chemistry on the roster, fought with a player and even lost a sexual harassment suit filed by a former employee.
With all that being said, the gift-giving department is wildly impressed, and thinks Thomas at least deserves an ‘A’ for effort in completely imploding a once-proud franchise.
Being this bad at your job, and still holding on to that job, is not as easy as it looks.
