Collinsworth opens the real season.

No, not the NFL season, but the Highly Paid Network Football Commentator Saying Something Monumentally Stupid season (or the HPNFCSSMS).

The situation: tie game, under a minute left. Hines Ward (WR-Pit) catches a ball at something like the 20 yard line, makes a nice move at the 10, and cuts back toward the end zone for what will surely be the winning touchdown, when from the back side comes a defensive back to make a one in a gajillion play and strip the ball, which was promptly recovered by the defense.

Collinsworth, new to his gig as the lead commentator for the marquee game of the week, lets fly that (I'm paraphrasing) Ward made a mental error by trying to score a touchdown...instead "all he has to do is kneel down and they kick the game winner."

On its face, this statement is factually correct. Had he knelt down at the 10 yard line, the Steelers could have run the clock down and kick the FG. But to suggest that a player should not try to make a reasonable effort to score so that they can kick a field goal later is so patently stupid and obtuse that it's almost hard to fathom.

First of all, it's not like he was dragging three defenders with him fighting for three inches. If the DB doesn't flail at him desperately, he breaks the arm tackle of the other DB and scores easily.

But Collinsworth isn't satisfied. "Even if he can manage to score a touchdown there, you've still got 51 seconds left for them to answer."

Ok, Cris, let's take that "education" you got at Florida out for a spin. What would you rather have, a 7 point lead with 50 seconds left (really 45 after the kickoff), when Tennessee has exactly one touchdown all night, and your pass rush can "pin their ears back" and go after the 36 year old immobile quarterback? Or a chance at a 30 yard field goal? Let's not forget there had already been one miss, one block (both for the other team's kicker), and one really ugly low line drive that went through. I'm doing all this by memory, so forgive me if I'm off by couple percentage points. FG accuracy in the NFL is like 80% overall. Drives that start from the 20 yard line (and there's no gurantee that they would start that deep, but they would likely have run any kick out of the end zone) result in touchdowns something like 15% of the time. Add in the fact that they had 50 seconds to do it? Well, I'll let you decide what you'd rather have.

I've often said (and I stole it from someone else from wayyyy back) that the single least qualified group of individuals to comment on the game of professional football are those who have in fact been hired by the networks to do so. Collinsworth, usually better than this, seems to be fitting in nicely.


P.S. No, it doesn't change my opinion that Hines Ward said "I need to get down there." Try to score, dude, it's your job.

In which I get fed up and start naming names...

I've yet to be political in this blog, and that's on purpose. I'm a liberal, and I'm proud of it, but I don't want this blog to become about that any more than I want it to become about my fondness for Nutter Butters and "Mad Men." But today is an exception.

If you are a certain kind of conservative, and you know who you are, who protested (or, frankly, allowed to exist unchallenged the protest) the President's address to school children this morning, then shame on you. Calling it an "indoctrination" speech, the Lunatic Right has taken a remarkable opportunity away from some children. The wingnut morons have railed against this speech to the point that several school districts decided not to broadcast it.

Read the speech here. Now, all you so-called conservatives out there, I dare you, I defy you to find one single speck of liberal propaganda or indoctrination. One thing. Go ahead, I'll wait. There's not a word of politics in there. There's not even anything political about education, which is the subject of the speech (Of course, now Karl Rove is now claiming that the White House re-wrote the speech to take all the politics out of it thanks to the protest. But we all know that's not true, and we all know that that's the easiest game to play...claim that if it weren't for your heroic efforts, there sure would've been a lot more merit to your baseless complaints). How dare they claim to know better what's best for children than a leader giving a message to kids to get an education (note: I originally wrote "what's best for their children," until I realized that most of the knuckleheads doing the protesting probably didn't have children, or sent them to private schools where they get plenty of indoctrination already).

As a result of the phony outrage, some schools are not showing the speech. The principals and district supervisors responsible for the decision not to show the speech should be removed from their positions immediately. The message they just gave to their students, that in the face of a figurative temper tantrum, the appropriate response is to find some flimsy reason to give in to the tantrum, shows they lack the capacity to educate children, and they lack the backbone to be leaders. That they would allow something as positive and harmless as this speech to be shouted down makes me wonder, what else are the children in the care of these spineless fools missing out on?

You've gone too far this time, wingnuts. This speech is simply about working hard, staying in school, overcoming personal hardships and being responsible to others in the community. Hmm...on second thought, maybe this was a liberal indoctrination speech. Hard work? Education? Not trying to take the easy way out? Those would seem to be, especially today, exclusively liberal values, because the right lacks the seriousness of purpose and the overall credibility to claim those values as their own. It makes you wonder what, if any, values they have left.