Yeah, Whatever

There has been a lot recent tabloid talk regarding Young Hollywood’s latest exploits. You know, Paris Hilton went to jail, Lindsay Lohan went to rehab and Britney Spears went to divorce court. Or maybe Spears went to rehab, Lohan went to jail and Hilton went shopping?
Anyway, the whole point is that there is lot of useless publicity being paid to people who more or less don’t mean anything. So the “Grandeur” decided it was time to talk about similar instances in sports. We are talking about some extremely overrated stuff here.
We’re off to a good start as the Philadelphia Phillies racked up the 10,000th loss in their franchise history earlier this week. And the news hounds are having a field day. We’ll, let’s take a look at this. They’re one of America’s oldest franchises dating back to the late 1800’s so they have playing much longer than most teams. They also play baseball, which means they play twice as many games as basketball, three times as many games as hockey and 146 more games per season as the NFL. That means a pro football team would have to put together 625 winless seasons in a row. Even Matt Millen’s Detroit Lions would take at least 950 years to catch them. And the Phillies do have one World Series trophy in their cabinet; that’s one more than most teams can claim.
As the British Open approaches this weekend, the smack begins to rain down again on Tiger Woods. “He can’t make a comeback to win in a major.” Guess what? The man has won twelve majors. Who cares if hasn’t made a comeback. Comebacks are for people who play terrible on Thursday and Friday. I believe Tiger would just prefer to play well before Sunday to make sure that last day is just a formality in wrapping up the title. And if he finishes his career with 25 or so majors and still doesn’t have any comeback victories, it still won’t be any argument to say he isn’t the greatest ever.
It’s become one of the most common, and ridiculous, themes of the NFL: hold outs. It’s the only league in the world that can’t get their guys to training camps. No wonder people see athletes as greedy. They are sitting in the A/C while their teammates out there running wind sprints in 90 degree heat all because they want $50 million instead of $40 million. Judging by most money magazines $900,000 dollars a month should be enough to put food on the table. Even when a hold out is negotiated it still leaves both sides mad at each other. Forget the extra cash, get to camp, practice with the team, keep the chemistry good and focus on winning a championship. You’ll make the guy sitting in the upper row who has to feed a family of five really proud.
Finally, sports columnists. That’s right, you read it correctly. Those guys have an opinion about everything and know no wrong. They know the perfect defense to stop Peyton Manning, how to get more people to watch the NBA finals and how the advertisements should be arranged on a NASCAR racer. And most of them never even played the sports they comment on. Good thing this columnist can’t say that.