Bad sports, good sports: A conflicted football season comes to an end for me
Football season is over. For me, anyway. Sure, I’ll continue to watch the playoffs and the Super Bowl. My heart won’t be in it, though. On Sunday, the Philadelphia Eagles lost to the Green Bay Packers, 21-16, and that ended it for me. In a way, that might be a blessing.
This had already been a very challenging season for me, as you might know if you read this column regularly. I have had a very difficult time accepting Michael Vick as the quarterback of my favorite team in all of sports. Yesterday, I found out that there is something worse than rooting for a guy you really don’t want to root for, and that’s rooting for him and having him lose. Sure, Vick had a really good season, and the Eagles won more games than I would have predicted before the season, as I expected it to be a rebuilding year. In the end, though, the Eagles lost in the wild card round of the playoffs, exactly as they did last year, and this time, they lost at home. Vick was exciting to watch all year, and he was in the discussion for Most Valuable Player for much of the season. By all accounts, he has been a good leader in the locker room and a solid citizen off the field, regularly visiting schools to talk to kids about avoiding the paths he took that landed him in prison. As a life-long Eagles fan, I had no real choice but to find a way to root for him, and I did. Now that the season is over, it is time to think about whether or not he should remain as the team’s quarterback. Most fans, I expect, will be blinded by the high points of the season, and will not really consider that the team didn’t go any deeper into the playoffs than they had the previous season. The fan base in general seems to have decided that Kevin Kolb can’t cut it, and so there will be quite an outcry if the Eagles choose to go with Kolb rather than signing Vick to a mega-deal in the offseason.
I no longer think that Vick should be barred from the NFL. He has the right to play, and there are plenty of teams that are sure to want him. His contract is up this offseason, so the Eagles can’t really get anything for him, which is unfortunate. Still, I would much rather see him leave and have Kolb as the quarterback going into next season than vice versa. I know I am in the minority in this, but so be it. My wife commented, after the game, that I seemed less distressed by the loss than she would have expected me to be. I guess that’s because there was still a part of me that had not fully accepted Vick as the quarterback. I don’t know. I do know that this was the least satisfying football season for me in a long while, and I can connect that feeling directly to the presence of Vick.
Time to move on. There is only about a month before pitchers and catchers report to Spring Training. Go Phillies!
Bad sports, continued:
2) Running 26 miles must be extremely difficult. I started running this past summer, and am up to about 9 miles. The idea of running almost three times that distance boggles my mind. Lots of people do it, though. Deep into the run, clear thinking might be a problem, based on what you can see in this video taken at a relay marathon in Japan last week. Runner Natsuki Terada, a college student, was a mere one block from the finish line when a television truck he had been following veered off the course. Terada followed the truck, unfortunately, not realizing that the truck was blocked from crossing the finish line. He recovered in time to keep his team qualified for the race next year, but any chance at victory was dashed.
3) Enes Kanter, a freshman center for the University of Kentucky basketball team, has been ruled ineligible by the NCAA. Kanter played for a Turkish team a couple of years ago, and he reportedly received monetary benefits during that stint that render him a non-amateur, according to the NCAA.
4) After winning the World Junior Hockey Championship, the Russian national team must have gotten themselves a little carried away. Their rambunctiousness got them kicked off a Delta Airlines flight from Buffalo to Atlanta before takeoff. Yep, the whole team.
5) Rumeal Robinson, a basketball player at the University of Michigan back when they won the national championship in the late 80s, is headed to jail. He was convicted of financial fraud and sentenced to 6 1/2 years in prison for defrauding a bank.
Good sports:
1) Mike James, a guard for the Lamar University basketball team, scored 52 points on Tuesday in a win over Louisiana College. Not only was the this the highest single-game total by anyone in college basketball this season, it was also extremely out of character for James, who was averaging less than eleven points per game before his outburst.
2) Last week, my Bad Sports list included the fact that the Seattle Seahawks had made the playoffs and won their division with a losing record. This week, they faced the defending Super Bowl champions. Despite being a decided underdog, the Seahawks defeated the New Orleans Saints, 41-36. It was a great performance, and quite unexpected. Seattle definitely deserves to be on the Good Sports side this week.
Bad Sports, Good Sports appears every Monday.
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Alan, good post, as always … thanks for sharing.
Regarding the NFL playoff run, my heart’s still in it … at least for one more week. As you know, I root for that team at the other end of Pennsylvania. And while I remain a staunch citizen of the Steeler Nation, I’m not ruling-out my own heartbreak at the hands of the Ravens … and in the wings, the Patriots or the NFC champs.
According to Jay Glazer in yesterday’s pre-game show, the Eagles will drag their feet a little bit but ultimately sign Vick to a long-term deal. At least that’s what I think he said.
I sympathize with you. I disliked Vick even prior to his days of electrocuting dogs. Never thought he invested himself appropriately in the game. But I agree he has a right to work in the NFL and earn a paycheck now that he has done what the judicial system has asked of him.
But I still sense that the guy doesn’t “get it.” Whenever I see him interviewed, he says “the right things” although it’s obvious he’s been coached by his agent or whoever. He just doesn’t have the “x-factor” that great QBs do in terms of leadership, work habits, whatever. Imagine him and Peyton Manning facing off in a playbook edition of “Jeopardy.” Vick would likely be shredded. Replace Manning with Brady, Rodgers, Brees, Rivers, and even the not-incredibly-cerebral Roethlisberger and I bet he’d still be shredded. In fact, I’d bet it wouldn’t even be close.
Thanks Jeff. I would wish you luck, but I am not fond of the Steelers. I haven’t worked out which remaining team I will end up backing. Not that my heart will be in it anyway.
Michael – thanks for reading. Like you, I was never a fan of Vick, even before the dog fighting mess. I agree that he never applied himself as a player. Exciting athlete, sure, but good quarterback? Not so much. Still, he became a different player in many ways this year, and I have revised my opinion of him as a quarterback. I agree with your assessment of him as a leader, though, as well as your comments on his intelligence. There is one point you made with which I disagree, though. Roethlisberger is a moron and I wouldn’t take him in an intelligence contest against anyone, really. He also strikes me as being just as bad a guy as Vick, if not worse.