Just when we thought we were out of Hall of Fame crypto-angst, it drags us back in again. This time, it¹s the Pro Football Hall of Fame, and nearly a quarter of the 17 candidates are from our neck o'the woods. Raiders Ray Guy and Tim Brown, 49er Charles Haley and former 49er owner Eddie DeBartolo.
[RELATED: DeBartolo, Haley, Brown, Guy among Hall of Fame finalists]
Of the four, DeBartolo has the thinnest resume (owners typically do) and the troublesome little New Orleans problem to navigate, but has some champions in the room of 46 selectors, some of whom are not certifiably nuts. Haley's presenters have to figure the second sentence after "He was on a bunch of Super Bowl teams." Brown is the latest of the receiver-aggregator class who has to hope that nobody in the room remembers his claim that Bill Callahan threw the last Raiders Super Bowl appearance because he liked Jon Gruden more than his own career. And Guy remains persistently and obstinately guilty of being a punter.
Prediction: Guy is finally freed from his hard-to-understand penance, Haley is a late cut, DeBartolo gets taken out after the first round as most owners do, and Brown's trenchant claims from a year are not forgotten, making him DOA.
Best of all for the nation, though, nobody bitches about the voting system or any of the people in the room.
Well, okay, maybe a few.
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The Dancing Maloof Brothers, fresh from their triumphant exit from Sacramento, have taken some of the money from the sale of the Kings and invested in a hangover prevention drink, called optimistically, Never Hungover. This may work as a business plan, though, since they are also investors in Zing Vodka, and with any mixology skill at all can turn the two into a single cocktail called Kings-B-Gone.
Or maybe a Seattle Sling.
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The Wall Street Journal sentenced an employee to poring through Bill Belichick's 16 postgame press conferences looking for actual smiles, and found seven. In a 12-win season. This tells me that the greater Boston area media has given up trying to coax any merriment from the old coot, which is a shameless surrender. Maybe the media is just a pack of depressing misery (hurray!), or it has lost heart (boo!), or it frankly is bored with Belichick (well, he has been there for 14 years).
But if our Tommy Curran of CSNSadTown is any journalist at all, he should start telling Belichick some off-color jokes just to see if he can break the coach's deadpan rhythm at all. If it doesn't work, maybe they can just declare the job vacant due to lack of pulse. They could use a good coaching search, and who knows, maybe Lane Kiffin won't get the Alabama offensive coordinator's job.
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Daniel Spuck, an inmate in Mercer County (Pa) Jail, is suing to have the NFL playoffs halted to allow the Pittsburgh Steelers another chance to get in, a redress of the botched call that put San Diego in instead. The case, which we presume will be called Spuck v. The Solar System, will of course be tossed out . . . in all likelihood because no judge in the world is going to find in favor of a guy named Spuck.
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And finally, how do we know the death threats Ric Flair has allegedly received didn't actually come from Vince McMahon? Or Triple H? Or the ghost of the Junkyard Dog? I mean, let's give the good people of North Carolina a chance here. Maybe they aren't as far down the tracks on the crazy train that death threats would imply.
Besides, it would be perfect if it was just a WWE scam. We would suggest the Iron Sheik might have had a hand in this, but there is no available evidence of irrational profanity.
Damn it.
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