Listen, Peyton: It's time to quit

The NFL never has had it so good. With record attendance numbers, monster TV ratings, and both labor peace and mega broadcast deals locked up for the next 10 years, it’s all rainbows and lollipops in commissioner Roger Goodell’s world.

Super Bowl XLVI was the most-watched sporting event ever in the US, Giants receivers Victor Cruz and Mario Manningham had the best seats in the house at the Grammys on Sunday night, and the NFL draft will cause twice as much buzz on Twitter as any presidential debate in 2012.

And that’s why Peyton Manning needs to retire.

As the quarterback and Indianapolis Colts owner Jim Irsay continue to maneuver in a strategic chess game of public relations and misdirection, my thoughts are on the league, the NFL shield, and the future of the game’s greatest ambassador.

Whether Manning has been medically cleared by doctors or not — Manning was cleared by two different doctors last week, but Irsay insists he hasn’t been officially cleared by the Colts organization just yet — the fact the longtime face of the NFL had three very serious neck surgeries in 19 months should cause widespread concern and caution. For whatever reason, it hasn’t.

As my fellow members of the media scramble to photoshop images of number 18 in Redskins and Dolphins jerseys this week, I can’t help but side with TNT’s Charles Barkley, amazingly the one clear-minded, rational thinker on the subject with a national platform. Last week, Barkley told reporters: “My first opinion is that I don’t think Peyton Manning should play football again. You’re talking about a neck. I know he’s got a couple of young twins. I don’t think he should play football at all.”

The four-time league MVP had spinal fusion on Sept. 8. That surgery, the last of the three, was, by far, the most serious.

Reports of Manning’s return to the field were breathlessly covered by an adoring NFL media last week. Agent Tom Condon got the word out to his cohorts in the press that the workout went well and the reviews were rather positive, across the board. With the exception of NFL Network’s Mike Lombardi, who said Manning struggled throwing the ball to his left, the response was overwhelmingly rose-colored.

"He threw it accurately, he threw it with a good, tight spiral and he threw it with velocity,'' said former Colts GM Bill Polian, now serving as a media talking head, himself. “Marked progress” was the term Polian used on ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption.”

But this isn’t Joe Namath playing on two bad knees for the Rams. This isn’t Joe Montana slinging it for the Chiefs with a surgically repaired elbow. It’s not Bo Jackson fielding fly balls with a new hip in Comiskey Park. This is, arguably, the most recognizable face in NFL history coming off major neck surgery.

Call me a coward, call me a worrywart, call me a Debbie Downer — but that still worries me.

Click here to read the full Fox Sports article by Peter Schrager.

Under Siege - Wilson Ramos

In crime-ridden Venezuela, every celebrity is a potential target and baseball stars have become an inviting mark. Nationals catcher Wilson Ramos is one of the lucky ones—he survived his kidnapping. But he knows that escaping poverty and fulfilling major league dreams can land you in a different kind of prison.

To the many levelheaded conspiracy theorists of Venezuela, at least this part of the story rings true: There was a kidnapping on Nov. 9 in a concrete slum of Valencia, a major city near the coast of a socialist republic whose 29 million citizens currently are as likely to be kidnapped or murdered as any population in the Western Hemisphere. Which is not to say that they don't enjoy themselves. At the moment of his abduction Wilson Ramos, the starting catcher for the Washington Nationals, sat in front of his childhood home with his father and brothers, drinking a Polar beer and reminiscing about his day at the beach by the Caribbean Sea. His mother was inside, thinking about dinner, which would have featured thick corn fritters, called arepas, with sausage and eggs, when a Chevrolet Captiva SUV pulled up and two strange men got out. They had guns.

The kidnappers had chosen a rare and dangerous target. It would not be unusual to snatch a Portuguese shopkeeper near Caracas and get away with it, because his friends would take up a collection for the ransom and no one would tell the police. You might even take the relative of a Venezuelan ballplayer, as other kidnappers had done at least five times in the past seven years. But to take the player himself in a nation that loves baseball even more than America does? You would have to be one crazy band of malandros.
 
But they recognized a narrow window of opportunity. They had found Ramos in the vulnerable space between making the major leagues and buying the security that his fame had suddenly necessitated. This is the devil's bargain of the Venezuelan major leaguer: Success comes with a terrible price. He has two main options. He can stay away from his country altogether, or he can build a fortress. High walls, razor wire, prisonlike security doors, private guards in watchtowers—these things signify realism, not paranoia. Ramos, who was getting ready to spend the off-season playing for the Tigres de Aragua of the Venezuelan winter league, earned $415,000 with the Nationals last season, but he still lived with his mother and five siblings in a small concrete box of a house with a corrugated metal roof and no sink in the bathroom.

A few days earlier he'd bought a new house in a safer neighborhood with seven bedrooms and a garden. But there was no hurry to leave the old place. Here young Wilson and his brothers had played baseball in the street with a broomstick bat and a ball of crumpled tape. Here Wilson had gone from the pudgy kid his family called Pipo to the man of the house after his parents' divorce. Long before he signed his first baseball contract, as a 16-year-old scooped up by the Minnesota Twins, he put food on his family's table. He found a horse wandering in the street and collected money from neighborhood children for rides. He caught tropical birds in a homemade trap baited with honey and sold them to a local pet store. A part of you dies when you start a new life. Wilson had not yet scheduled a moving day.

"Nobody move," one of the gunmen said, according to Wilson's younger brother David. "If anyone moves, they'll get shot."

At first Wilson thought the men were garden-variety thieves who wanted his jewelry and cellphone. He took off his gold chain and offered it up. That didn't help. One of the gunmen shoved him into the Captiva. From the kitchen his mother heard screaming.

"They took Pipo! They took Pipo!"

It happened that a family friend named Reinaldo was holding the keys to Wilson's Chevy Tahoe. Reinaldo and David and two other young men jumped in the Tahoe and sped off to chase the kidnappers. They had no gun and no plan, other than a vague notion of ramming the vehicle, and so it was probably best that they never caught up with the Captiva. Wilson was gone. And now his relatives had little choice but to put their faith in the Venezuelan authorities.

There's a joke in Caracas that goes something like this: "If you get robbed, don't shout. The police might come." The federal government, never known for its timely or reliable statistics, recently estimated that as many as one fifth of all crimes in Venezuela are committed by the police. The line between cops and criminals is further blurred by vigilantes who wear black ski masks and carry out summary executions with tacit approval from the authorities. This duality reaches the upper levels of government. A general might be supplying arms to Colombian drug smugglers. A prosecutor could be running an extortion racket, and the journalist who blows the whistle on him could be accused of plotting his murder. Conspiracy theories run wild, propagated by President Hugo Chávez himself: He has implied that American operatives somehow gave him cancer, and he once exhumed the 179-year-old skeleton of his hero, 19th-century Venezuelan liberator Simón Bolívar, in a fruitless search for evidence of assassination.

Click here to read the rest of this compelling Sport Illustrated article by Thomas Lake and Melissa Segura.

Stripped Alberto

Alberto Contador, the exceptional Spanish cyclist, is now not just synonymous with endurance and speed. Unfortunately for him and the sport of cycling, which for years has struggled to rid itself of a tainted image, he is now known as a cheat.I had hoped against hope that Contador would find a way to prove that he was clean, but his was not to be.So now there is a new winner of the 2010 running of the Tour de France, Andy Schleck. Schelck himself has stated that he does not want to win the race this way, and I understand his desire to prove himself on the road, having also been runner-up to Cadel Evans in 2011. However, all good intentions aside, if Contador is indeed guilty, then Schleck should have and could have won it had Alberto not cheated.

Here are links to further articles related to this story:

• Alberto Contador found guilty of doping, stripped of 2010 Tour title, Sports Illustrated.
• I have not won the Tour de France: Andy Schleck feels sad for Alberto Contador, Sydney Morning Herald.
• Contador's Tour dreams shattered by two-year ban, Reuters Canada.
• Why the Wheels Came of the Lance Armstrong case, Time.

Tell the Hungry Tiger Not to Bite

Telling a giant running back in full stride, inches from the line, not to score a touchdown is like pleading with a hungry tiger not to bite. Instinct, training and a huge hole opening in front of him put Ahmad Bradshaw on the horns of a dilemma, 'to score or not to score' as Shakespeare might say. Maybe it was the fact that he only had a second or two to decide what to do after Eli Manning requested the impossible. Ahmad slowed down, fighting with himself, pirouetting none to gracefully, and then backed into the end zone, buttocks-first. It was almost comical. Like a slow motion elephant ballet. I guess the bottom line is that if you are in the position to score, that's what you should do - every time. Then trust in your team mates to protect that hard-won lead.

Canadian wins Jackson to Park City sled dog race

Blayne "Bud" Streeper, of Fort Nelson, British Columbia, has won the International Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race for the fourth time. Streeper finished with an overall time of 19 hours, 52 minutes, 42 seconds. He also won the race in 2004, 2010 and 2011.

Aaron Peck, of Grand Prairie, Alberta, took second with a cumulative time of 20:09.27. John Stewart, of Scotland, was third with a final time of 20:23.40. The race began Jan. 27 in Jackson and ended Feb. 4 in Park City, Utah. Besides Jackson and Park City, the race went through nine Wyoming communities.

The International Pedigree Stage Stop Sled Dog Race was founded in 1996 by Frank Teasley to make sled dog racing more accessible to the public. This is the kind of race and effort of endurance from which epics emerge. I can't ski or skate to save my life so people that can come through this kind of ordeal are superhuman to me. Amazing!

Elfstedentocht!!!

Sports events across Europe are falling victim to the continent's deep freeze, but the Dutch are ecstatic, hoping that the revered "Eleven Cities" speedskating race can be staged later this month for the first time in 15 years.

The race, held along a 125-mile (200-kilometer) network of canals connecting 11 towns and cities in northern Friesland province, would cause a national frenzy, drawing thousands of participants and more than a million spectators. It was last held in 1997.

Wiebe Wieling, chairman of the Frisian Eleven Cities Association, told a nationally televised news conference on Monday that organizers hope to hold the event, known by its Dutch name "Elfstedentocht," but added: "The weather will determine what happens next."

He said ice is still too thin along southern parts of the route over which some 16,000 participants will skate if the race goes ahead.

But the national weather service forecasts freezing temperatures at least through Friday, fueling hopes. "We want nothing more than to organize the 'Elfstedentocht,'" Wieling told reporters. "We have been waiting 15 years and we're doing all we can."

As nations across Eastern Europe have been gripped by cold weather and heavy snow for more than a week, the Netherlands has had temperatures of -14 Fahrenheit (-10 Celsius) or lower and little snow.

The grueling race is one of the most deeply cherished Dutch traditions. Though people have skated along frozen Friesian canals for centuries in cold winters, the race — first officially organized in 1909 — has only been staged 15 times.

It is open only to members of the Frisian Eleven Cities Association, which holds a draw each year to establish who is allowed to take part. The invitation-only nature and its rarity only adds to the allure.

Winners become overnight celebrities in this country where speedskating is one of the most popular winter sports and the thousands of others who finish forever cherish the small enameled cross they are awarded. Participants are given a card at the start that they have to get stamped at stations along the route to prove they have covered the entire course.

The last man to win the race, farmer Henk Angenent, completed the 1997 event in six hours, 49 minutes. The winner of the 1963 race — which was held in extremely cold and windy conditions — took just under 11 hours.

I Found a Leopard who Changed his Spots

I have never liked Tom Coughlin, never been able to warm to him. For a number of reasons really, some selfish and some valid. My team is the Eagles and they are in the same division, and personally I think that although we both (Giants and Eagles) didn't have best of regular seasons, that the Eagles would have done just as well if they had made it into the post season. We were on a roll too.

Then there were the many times I have watched him openly berate a player for a mistake while coaching the Jacksonville Jaguars and the Giants too. I just thought that this behavior was disgusting, and I didn't see any of the really good coaches replicating that rubbish. But this season Coughlin's sixty-fifth year seems to have mellowed him. Not any less passionate, just better able to reach out to and react to players and their foibles. All of us make mistakes.

Maybe I now have to change my opinion, be a better man, and recognize that like me, Tom can change his spots too. By many accounts the new Tom was largely responsible to keeping his team together this year in the face of adversity. Good for him, his team needed it, and the proof is in yesterday's Superbowl victory over the New England Patriots. It's good for all us to know that our spots can be changed, as we all need hope.

Here are some excerpts from an Associated Press article written by Tom Canavan:

• “What I was concerned with was these guys making their own history,” Coughlin said. “This is such a wonderful thing, these guys carving their own history.”
• “Each one is very unique, and this one is just as exciting, probably more so because of the kind of year we had,” Coughlin said. “What a wonderful experience it was to see the team come together like they did. Our defense started to play very well, we gained some confidence, and as they say the rest is history.” 
• That history will show was that it was Coughlin who kept this team together through early season injuries, a four-game midseason losing streak and a depressing loss to Washington in game 14 when they lost a share of first place with a no-show performance.
• His final topic was family and love, not what one would expect from a man who is known as a disciplinarian. Coughlin, however, has learned how to reach young players lately and this message sunk in.

Unforgiven!!!

Got a glimpse of Derek Fisher during the Jazz's big 96-87 thumping of hated rivals the Los Angeles Lakers the other night. Not only did he shoot poorly which pleased me no end, but I have to admit my lip curled into a snarl when I spotted him. I still haven't forgiven him or the players association for their pathetic behavior during the lockout. If Mr. Fisher thinks the fan's have forgotten he's got another think coming, because we certainly haven't.

The players who were so adamant in pursuing this course (millionaires squabbling with billionaires) in this financial climate when everyone else is struggling to make ends meet still have a long way to go to win back the hearts of the fans. I do not include those players who were content with their lot and give so much back to their communities, I am talking about the Kobe's, the Fisher's, the LeBron's and so on. So there are big crowds, big deal, they aren't there for the players, they are there for their TEAM! You have a long, long way to go Derek Fisher. But I did enjoy you and your Lakers buddies getting whooped by a small-market team with real heart!