Dez Bryant and media coverage

To borrow a cliched line, I feel like we've jumped a shark by making a news story out of Dez Bryant refusing to carry Roy Williams' pads. This is what passes for news nowadays? This is a story that affects nobody. It has nothing to do with their play on the field, and come September this story will be completely forgotten because, you know, it's meaningless. And yet for a couple days in July, this story was being covered by all sports media outlets, most notably ESPN. We've lost something here.

What I do like, though, is how this story is used as a springboard to examine the psychology of Dez Bryant. Remember, he fell in the draft because of off-the-field issues, so maybe this proves that he's a problem child. Or maybe not? Well let's go to our resident psychologist to find out, Herm Edwards. I mean, what a fucking joke. Let's sensationalize a meaningless story, and then dissect to see if it means Bryant really does have issues.

There's nothing worse than when sports media personalities talk about a player's psychological makeup. They don't know a fucking thing more than you or I do about it, and they are not qualified at all to talk about it. Herm Edwards knows football and should stick to that; he does not know what makes a player tick mentally. It's like when they built up Tim Tebow for his "excellent intangibles" while criticizing Jimmy Clausen for his "questionable intangibles." What makes Todd McShay or Mel Kiper qualified to make that judgement? Absolutely nothing.

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Here's a fun thought experiment. I'm going to paste a line taken from ESPN's AFC West blog, and then you determine what this line would look like if the player in question was Jimmy Clausen instead of Tim Tebow:

" Because of his reputation as a hard worker, expect Tebow to try to get to camp as soon as possible."

Rookie camp for the Broncos began on Wednesday, meaning Tebow is officially a holdout. Jimmy Clausen got signed on time for Panther's training camp. Can you imagine Clausen getting the benefit of the doubt like that had he held out?

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An awesome quote from Broncos' LB Darrell Reid on Tim Tebow:

"Whether it's working on his throwing motion or in the weight room or running, he's almost always the last guy out of the building."

The "first guy in, last one out" line is as cliched a phrase as there is in sports, but notice how Reid doesn't say Tebow is always that guy, but rather almost always. It's like he was trying to lie about how hard a worker Tebow is, but he couldn't quite go all the way with it.

Another thought experiment; if a team has two or more players who are the "first one in, last one out" type, then who exactly is the first one in and last one out? It's can't be all of them, so do they all just stand at the exit at the end of the day and wait for the others to leave?

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Timing is everything in sports. Derek Fisher's miraculous turnaround shot against the Spurs, Robert Horry's last-second three against Sacramento...if the clock ticks a tenth of a second shorter, these plays don't happen. And now we have Brett Favre's ankle.

"Favre's surgically repaired ankle isn't expected to be healed until a day or two after the Minnesota Vikings break training camp next month."

Damn the luck, it just won't be ready until a day or two after training camp ends. What do you know. If I were the cynical type, I might say he's just milking this to get out of training camp.

(Back to Horry; what was he doing standing at the 3-point line to begin with? The Lakers needed two to tie, the rebounds are all happening in the paint, he's a forward for God's sake...why was he waiting on a one-in-a-million bounce? I've never been satisified with the fact that Horry was basically just being lazy on that play, and he somehow got a lucky bounce and became the hero)