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12/03/2007: "Monday Sports Rant"

After a wild and wooly long football weekend, you know I've got a few things to say ...

- Rumor has it that Brett Favre and the Packers lost Thursday night to the Cowboys, but how would I - or most of the country - know? We don't get the NFL network. Memo to the League Office: scrap it. All you're getting is bad will from your fans, and the fact that no other major sport has tried it should tell you something. Make your money the old-fashioned way - stick it to the fans with lots of advertising.

- Devin Hester may be the most exciting player to come into the league since Bo Jackson. But dude - you gotta catch that pass! Doesn't matter if you get 10 yards behind the defense when you have hands of stone ...

- Unlike most folks, I'm not going to jump on the BCS for the mess they've made of the bowl games this season. Frankly, it was such a wide-open season, with the #1 and #2 teams losing on the same weekend three (!) times, that any bowl matchups are bound to be anti-climactic. For the record, I agree with the two teams at the top, I think Missouri got jobbed by dropping from #1 to out of the BCS bowls in about 12 hours, and I'm thrilled to see the Hawaii Warriors - only undefeated team in the country - get a BCS payday. It's gonna be culture shock for their fans, though, who normally consider the Aloha Bowl to be their final home game of the season.

- Speaking of Hawaii, you probably missed Colt Brennan's 5 TD performance against Washington late Saturday night. Too bad, because it was Heisman-worthy. But while Brennan will get a seat at the Downtown Athletic Club next weekend, I don't think he'll get the hardware. It's pretty rare for someone from one of the smaller conferences to win the Heisman (think Ty Detmer), especially when Tim Tebow of Florida had a monster year. But you can also use this as a morality play - had he not screwed up when he first started college, he wouldn't have ended up at Hawaii in an offense that let him do his thing. Sometimes, redemption can be sweet.

- Not surprised, but saddened to hear of the passing of Evel Kneivel last Friday. There may not have been a more original sportsman in my lifetime. He practically invented the sport of motorcycle jumping, and his influence is still felt. More than that, he did it his way, even when the price was very steep. Broken bones, broken homes and jail cells all had now effect on him - he was Evel right up to the end. And you gotta like that. If you haven't seen the George Hamilton biopic from back in the '70s, get it - classic both for the subject matter and the Tanned One at his best!