The CSTB Ouija Board was smashed to bits yesterday during the finale of the Minnesota/Purdue double OT thriller and as such, I cannot rely on Pigskin Pete’s guidance this Sunday morning.
Much of the week’s conversation has centered around the Moss/Owens matchup, a subject that leaves me cold. If the former wants to piss away her career by doing drugs with a mediocre talent like Pete Doherty (as opposed to a major talent, like a style magazine publisher, or an overrated actor), that’s her decision to make. The ensuing witch hunt has no place in the sports pages.
Eagles 36, Raiders 20
Ahem. From the San Diego Union Tribune’s Jerry Magee.
If the draft’s procedures were so repugnant to Eli, he should not have made himself eligible for it. We play by the rules in this country, and he knew the rules. He exempted himself from the spirit of the rules, for reasons that he has not disclosed except in the vaguest of terms. The decision was wholly his, he contends, which I cannot accept. Whoever made it, whether it was the Manning family or the player’s agent, Tom Condon, did the NFL no service. The NFL is a lesser thing when its college draft is made meaningless.
I stood next to Eli Manning when he was on the golf course at the La Costa Resort and Spa during an NFL rookie indoctrination program and discussed his position. I stood next to him again recently in Giants Stadium. On both occasions, I found him a mannerly and seemingly humble young man, although confused. He insists on saying that his stance had nothing to do with the city of San Diego but was based solely on his preference for playing professionally other than in San Diego.
No, Eli, you do not separate the Chargers and San Diego. They are joined at the hip. They have been since the team arrived here in 1961 and lent to the city a presence it had not previously possessed. You don’t separate the Packers from Green Bay, either, Eli, or the Bills from Buffalo or the Saints, bless them, from New Orleans, as your father would tell you if you would ask.
Manning’s act is what is so reprehensible here, not him as a person. His act was one of monumental egotism. He set himself apart. He was saying that the Chargers were not good enough for him. There is no other way to view it.
Another way of looking at it might be that you’d not seperate the Chargers from the Spanos family any more than you’d seperate the Clippers from Donald Sterling. My money tonight is on Eli (above), the least convincing adopted New Yorker of all time, and a couple of TD catches for Plaxico Burress.
Giants 27, Chargers, 21
Looking at what might be the first 0-3 start of his career, Brett Favre’s best option today might be if he holds a press conference urging Cadillac Williams to hold out for more money before kick-off. It’s never too late for Favre to start siding with his fellow players.
Bucs 24, Packers 14