The Most Underrated Athlete In Sports?

First of all, I admit that I'm using the dreaded "underrated" word in this post. No other description can vault an athlete from obscurity to over-exposure as quickly. The only exception to this rule was the great New York Jets running back Curtis Martin who, despite playing in New York, managed to become one of the top five leading rushers in NFL history without much fanfare.

Today, the most underrated athlete may exist on the tennis courts, which is exactly why Roger Federer is underrated. Any tennis follower will sing his praises, so it's not like he's under-appreciated in his sport. It's just that tennis is....well, it's tennis.

Growing up, I would watch Wimbledon because it was in the summer, which meant no school and it was on while I was eating breakfast or lunch. But during the 1990's, men's tennis consisted of the following: big serve, possible return, kill shot. Sometimes there was no return, which is just oodles of fun to watch. I often travel to tennis courts to watch people practice their serves because it's just so entertaining. And by entertaining, I mean life-suckingly boring.

So while most people know Roger Federer's name and understand he and Rafael Nadal are the top two players today, I don't think many of us get Federer's historical greatness.

He very well may be the best tennis player of all time.

If you aren't a hockey fan, you still know the name Wayne Gretzky. Soccer isn't big here, but everyone has heard of Pele. Yet, mention tennis and I bet you get names like Bjorn Borg, Pete Sampras, or John McEnroe.

Federer has passed them all. His tennis game is a paragon that is effective on any playing surface in any part of the world.

Don't take my word for it, just look at the numbers: Federer is tied with Pete Sampras with the most majors titles (14). But Sampras never won at the French Open. Federer now has, which makes him only the sixth player in tennis history to have a career grand slam (winning Wimbledon, the French, U.S., and Australian opens.) He's only the second player in the modern era to do it, the other being Andre Agassi.

Critics point out that Federer didn't beat Rafa Nadal to win the French Open, but it's not Federer's fault that Nadal got upset earlier. That's part of Federer's greatness, he's always around. He can be beat, but he rarely beats himself, just like Iceman from "Top Gun."

So I'm officially giving Roger Federer his due. The greatest tennis player that I've ever seen play. I only saw him play once though, it's still tennis and it's still boring.

That's Enough Cleanup, Now Back To The Usual

Ah. An improved Dallas Cowboys team in the locker room and probably in the newspapers...sounded good right?

Just a few months ago, Jerry Jones announced that he was changing up the Cowboys roster in the name of team chemistry. Out was T.O. the team destroyer and Pacman, the player who magnetically attracts trouble. The roster may not be as talented, but the Cowboys were going to make a go of the "team" thing Jones has read about.

It apparently didn't even take the full off-season for ole Jones to tergiversate his new found position. The Dallas Morning News is reporting that Jerry might be looking to bring back Pacman Jones for another run through Valley Ranch (since the first go round was SO successful).

This is a man who had an All-Pro year in Tennessee, yet was still let go. Amazingly, the Titans went 14-2 without his services last year.

Jones came to Dallas and gave the Cowboys zero interceptions and averaged less than five yards on punt returns, not good numbers for a defender who is supposed to be a play maker. What really did Pacman in was his six game suspension after a scuffle in a Dallas hotel. All of this AFTER his year long suspension for an array of various bone headed decisions off the field which led to his trade from Tennessee.

I don't care what you think Jones can do for the Cowboys, the guy clearly hasn't learned his lesson after the multiple chances he's been given.

But he is talented. And Jerry Jones knows that if Pacman is gone from the roster, it will be up to him to replace that missing talent with a solid draft pick since Jerry is the general manager of the Cowboys. Uh-oh.

I guess they need Pacman and his problems after all.

When The Big Uglies Turn Into Fatties

Whenever I watch football, my girlfriend just LOVES to watch the big fat linemen waddle around on the field. Some of her favorites include Leonard Davis of the Dallas Cowboys and Shaun Rodgers aka "Big Baby" of the Cleveland Browns.

She always loves the college football fatties as well because they often have baby faces to go along with their giant bodies. Every time there's a shot of linemen, my girlfriend will talk at the television as though she's talking to a baby or a puppy: "Oh, look at you, you're just a big fatty, yes you are!" Or something similar.

What happens to these guys when they stop playing? NFL linemen have money to hire trainers and personal chefs to help them lose their playing weight. But what about the generic college lineman that is done with his college eligibility, but has no shot at NFL ball (and riches)?

Sports Illustrated has a disturbing article about this issue in the most recent magazine. The author tells the story through the eyes of two former Oregon linemen who have taken it upon themselves to lose their linemen weight.

What I learned during the article is that major college football programs that bring in millions of dollars somehow have never found the time to give ex-players any help with life after football because they have a group of new freshmen coming in. Apparently it's just too hard to actually pay any attention to a guy who's given you four or five years of his life and well-being.

As a result, many former college linemen never take an abstemious approach to eating even when they stop working out. The result is a rotund mass of humanity who has doubled his chances to die before the age of 50.

Some schools are FINALLY starting to come around and help graduating players adjust to an average eating schedule after football, but it's still a very sad article in some respects. Linemen who lose weight get excited because they can walk without their knees aching. One guy was ecstatic because if he lost 30 more pounds, he could go buy pants off the rack.

It's unnatural for most 18-22 year olds to pump themselves up to 315 pounds. You'd think the least these multi-million dollar football programs could do is help turn these guys back to normal once they graduate.

May I Be Excused? I Need To Save My Family...

Well that's not what I expected.

When Colorado Rockies catcher Yorvit Torrealba missed some games due to "personal reasons", I assumed it was for drug addiction, a death in the family, or maybe some kind of pother concerning his wife getting busted for shoplifting or something.

I did NOT expect it was because Torrealba's 11 year old son was kidnapped in their home country of Venuzuela.

Apparently kidnappers took Yorvit Eduardo and two of the boy's uncles in an attempt to extort money from Torrealba. The ransom was $1 million. I'd say that's a pretty good personal reason to leave the team for a few days.

Everything worked out in the end. The police worked to find the kidnappers and the men ended up abandoning all three prisoners as authorities closed in.

Yet, this isn't the first time this has happened in Venezuela. Remember Ugueth Urbina's quest to get his kidnapped mother back a few years ago?

Suddenly living in Cleveland or Detroit doesn't look so bad.

Pick Your Poison

It's true. If you were watching Game 6 of the Eastern Conference Finals, you espied LeBron James showing himself to be a little beotch as he stormed off the court after his Cavs got ousted by the Orlando Magic. He skipped the post game press conference too. And if that wasn't enough, he had this to say later after he had cooled down:

"It's hard for me to congratulate somebody after I just lost to them. I’m a winner. It’s not being a poor sport or anything like that. If somebody beats you up, you’re not going to congratulate them. That doesn’t make sense to me. I’m a competitor. That’s what I do. It doesn’t make sense for me to go over and shake somebody’s hand."

So apparently winners don't shake hands after a competition. That's what an entire generation has learned from King James. America's future looks bright.

As you can imagine, the sports media and bloggers jumped all over this. King James' tantrum has even made it into the general news area. Angry writers denounced James for showing poor sportsmanship and some even managed to connect his pouting to the miserable existence so many American live in the current economy.

I happen to agree that James is a punk, but more for what he said than what he did. "I'm a winner?" Could you sound like more of an arrogant little jackass who's never had to actually struggle?

But before I go all holier than thou on King James, I would like to remind you that just a few years ago, the same sports bloggers that are blasting James for his child like behavior after the Orlando series were ripping into Dirk Nowitzki of the Dallas Mavericks for not having that killer instinct.

Maybe that's where James learned how to act. He watched and read everyone complaining that Dirk seemed too gracious when his team lost. He read every blogger and writer explain that Dirk would never be a top player until he screamed and wanted to bury teams.

Here's a thought: let players be themselves. If they're assbags, that kind of behavior will show itself. If they're soft, we'll all see it. Stop trying to create the ultimate player who can turn into a vicious killer on the court and then suddenly becomes a gracious human being when the buzzer sounds.

I believe James should be fined for his behavior as a P.R. saving move for the NBA. After that, let James be James. If he's a big baby, people will make fun of him for being a big baby. Others will applaud him for hating to lose. There are all types of personalities out there, so let different fans find their type of player whether it's a win at all costs guy or someone who can behave like a gentleman when the game is over.

Or you can just root for the Birdman because you like mohawks and tattoos.

The Apocalypse Begins Now

It was bound to happen. Crusty, cynical old writers have been warning us for years that the day was coming.

Well, here it is: your first professional sports team to stick sponsors on their uniform. Ladies and Gents, I give you the WNBA's Phoenix Mercury.

The team is struggling financially so it signed a million dollar deal with Tempe based LifeLock to sponsor the team. This makes the Mercury the first team in the United States (outside of motor sports) to officially advertise on the team uniforms.

And we're not talking about a small patch at the corner of the jersey. Instead of saying "Phoenix" or "Mercury" on the chest of the uniform, it will say "LifeLock". It is the ultimate sell out, the team will be called the Phoenix Mercury in name only. Everyone else will call them the LifeLocks.

I'm aware this is just the WNBA, a league that has struggled financially forever. I doubt this will raise many flags or cause rioting in the streets.

So far, Major League Baseball has gone out of its way to let us know that the league is not listening to any hortatory offers from potential corporate sponsors.

Mercury chief executive Rick Welts has also said that he doesn't expect any of the major U.S. sports to attempt uniform sponsorship though he did try to take a Pepsi-like approach to his statement. Welts said "the 50-year-old White male sports talk-show host may see this as a sign of the apocalypse, but the WNBA fan will see this as a sign of strength and forward thinking."

Get it? If you're an old tired white guy who spends his time bitching about any changes made in sports since the 1960's and doesn't trust computers, you probably won't like this. But if you're a progressive thinker who is down with the modern world, you see this as a positive. We're cool!

I'm not a 50 year old white guy (yet), but I don't want sponsors plastered all over team uniforms like a NASCAR event. What's happening on the field/ice/playing surface should be the game. Not the sponsors. There are already 120 sponsors plastered all over the stadium. There are time outs taken during games specifically for television commercials to run. Many of the new stadiums don't have room for the basic fan anymore because it's all about corporate luxury boxes or box seats. The atmosphere of games has already been ruined because these corporate types wander in somewhere in the middle of the first quarter, spend the game talking business and then have left for the bar by the time the game is over. If you have any questions about this, just go watch a game at Yankee Stadium. That should sum it up nicely.

I know Europe has sponsors all over the uniform, but we aren't Europe. If American sports fans want to adopt the European lifestyle and sports watching traditions, then go ahead with the naming rights (I'd rather enjoy the extra vacation days.) Until then, leave us alone. It was bad enough watching the original Dream Team stand on the gold medal platform and try to hide the Reebok sponsor on their warm up suits because many of the guys were Nike clients.

Professional sports, like any business, is about profit. But sports is also a community event and since the public usually finances new stadiums, I think teams belong partially to the city as well. As soon as teams begin wearing sponsors instead of the team name, they've cut off the final connection to the masses of fans that live and die with the team. After that, where do you go?

Now if you excuse me, I'm going to buy myself a Denver Coors jersey (formerly known as the Denver Broncos).

St. Louis Not So Sainty?

There might be a sequel to the movie, "The Longest Yard." This chapter will take place in eastern Missouri.

According to Michael Lombardi of the National Football Post, the St. Louis Rams have a genuine interest in signing Michael Vick when/if he becomes eligible to play NFL football again. That's not a surprise, the Rams have been collapsing for years and Marc Bulger is one defender's shove away from concussing his head into Troy Aikmanville.

Some team is going to take a risk on Vick. He has served out his sentence and is ready to move on with his life. He might even turn out to be a solid addition since he probably won't expect to be cosseted like many modern day superstar athletes. A prison term and the loss of all your wealth tends to bring a crushing reality to that world.

But the folks in the St. Louis Rams P.R. department have to be wringing their hands because adding Vick to the team would not only add a felon on offense, it would remind football fans that the team still has a felon on the defense.

Defensive end Leonard Little has been with the Rams for over a decade and in that span he has over 300 tackles, 81 sacks, two drunk driving arrests, and one manslaughter charge when Little killed another motorist while driving drunk.

Imagine if you went out one night and partied. You drive home a little drunk and end up killing a woman in a car accident. What do you think your punishment would be? Do you think you might be a little haunted by the accident for the rest of your life, knowing you just murdered someone involuntarily and that there could be a kid/husband/mother who's life just got turned upside down?

Little got 90 days in a work house (during the off-season of course) and 1000 hours of community service. Little spent the next year saying all the things you'd expect someone to say: "Not a day goes by that I don't think about it", "I'll never be completely over this", etc etc.

Apparently Little got over it because just six years after killing someone, he was arrested again for DUI. Gee, you think he might have a drinking problem? He didn't kill anyone this time, but you can guess the hit his image took in the court of public opinion.

Little has been smart since then and has pretty much stayed out of the public eye while other players such as Donte Stallworth populate the crime pages. But if Vick comes to town, the ghosts of Little's past will be dug up again. He won't have much time to get used to it because the Rams play the Cincinnati Bengals in Week 3 of the pre-season. Expect multiple prison jump suits to be worn throughout the stadium.