Nashville News Blog

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Henderson in the white trunks

​Mixed-martial arts blogger Jake Rossen over at ESPN.com asks a legit question: Does Strikeforce's Nashville debut in April at the Bridgestone Arena have a card with enough starpower to light up a primetime slot on CBS?

I'm a casual MMA fan myself. If my girlfriend isn't in the room and I stumble across a good fight, more often than not I'll watch it. But the only fighter on the card I recognize is Dan Henderson -- an aging veteran of Pride and Ultimate Fighting Championships, as well as a former Olympic wrestler with cauliflower ears and a face with enough scar tissue to resemble a topographical map. After losing the feared Russian Fedor Emelianenko to the Strikeforce event slated for May, the utterly unproven but fascinating entry -- Heisman Trophy winner and celebrated NFL running back Herschel Walker -- bowed out because he hadn't had time to prepare for the fight.

Because I live here, I'll probably end up tuning in. But what about the rest of the country? Are the other entries -- Shinya Aoki, Gilbert Melendez and Gegard Mousasi -- enough of a draw to net the kind of ratings a primetime slot demands?

​From Scene intern Mark Wheeler:

Oregon sports has hit the big time. Not with the football team's recent trip to the Rose Bowl, or their famous Nike sponsorship -- but rather with the four unsavory arrests of players in 2010, including star running back LaMichael James.

While former Vols coach "He Who Must Not Be Named" (cough Lane Kiffin cough) demonstrated in 2009 that you can have players arrested and still have a lackluster season, there does seem to be a disconcerting correlation between arrests in the program and winning percentage.

​​From sports blogger and Scene contributor Martin Brady:

Youth must be served. Even in the establishment world of sports talk radio, where mostly middle-aged guys dominate the airwaves.

So when Sports Xtra debuted on Jan. 11 on WNSR SportsRadio 560-AM, it was only a little surprising that the show's team of twentysomething hosts, Jeff Thurn (pronounced "tern") and Henry Nichols, would lay a slightly alternative rap on Nashville listeners.

Thurn, marketing and sports director at WNSR, met Nichols, a local sportswriter and Titans correspondent for CBS Sports.com, in the press box at a Titans game this past fall. An instant offbeat connection and a shared love of radio conspired to bring them together. Now they're serving up a smart-alecky brand of programming that just might breathe fresh air into the local sports media scene.

A sewage plant? Burn!

According to this NBC report, a Knoxville attorney has proposed that the city rename one of its yucky-water plants the Lane Kiffin Sewage Center. Aw.

Drew McElroy, the lawyer who's making good use of his time by putting this proposal forward, says (apparently unironically), "Knowing what we know now, I don't think anybody is angry he's gone."

Uh, yeah.

Because nothing says, "Your departure from our football program doesn't really bother us at all" like proposing to rename city facilities after the guy. This way our indifference to Lane Kiffin can be immortalized! But why stop there? We never cared about your incredibly hot wife, either -- so we're renaming the Old City Laylaland.

Anyway, this being Nashville and all, I've written a Leonard Cohen-inspired song. Here's the final verse: "I remember you well / You once were a Vol / That's all / I don't even think of you that often."

Knoxville's WBIR-TV news director Bill Shory is Pith's hero. In the above video, he stands up to University of Tennessee sports flack Bud Ford and all the rest of his media comrades by demanding that cameras roll live for Lane Kiffin's little press conference on the day the coach fled for sunny Southern California. Some reporters swear at Shory, and an angry Ford repeatedly whacks papers on a table.

"You're in our building, you know that," Ford barks at Shory. "Just remember that. You're in a university building."

​Lane Kiffin bolted, students went on a rampage and Rocky Top was imploding. That was last week. Now it looks like Southern Cal did Tennessee a favor by hiring away the infantile coach.

Vol Nation wanted to win so badly that we were blinded to the obvious signs of Kiffin's jackassery. We disregarded his sophomoric trash talking and the rash of recruiting violations, even as he was turning us into a national embarrassment. Now that he's gone, it's like we're waking up from a self-induced trance. Why'd we ever hire this mouthy punk in the first place?

Here's what a class act Kiffin is: When he quit and left, he never even bothered to call his brother-in-law, David Reaves, the Vols' quarterbacks coach. Reaves found out sitting in a restaurant watching television. Kiffin didn't tell linebackers' coach Lance Thompson, either. Thompson left Alabama to come to Tennessee to coach under Lane's father, Monte, who left for USC with his son. Thompson didn't rate a courtesy call from his coach. That's how the Kiffins repaid him.

The legislature is in special session--with Gov. Phil Bredesen asking for sweeping changes to improve academics at the state's universities, among other reforms--but the biggest buzz at the Capitol today is Lane Kiffin's resignation as Tennessee's football coach.

In the House, lawmakers let their feelings flow against Kiffin, pretending to consider a resolution honoring the coach and then loudly rejecting it. A couple of hours later, a press availability with Bredesen was dominated by the topic.

The geeky governor, who couldn't care less about sports, seemed nonplussed and dismissed the whole affair with a flip "big deal." He seemed not to know Kiffin's name, referring to the coach once as "this person." Bredesen also laughed off the so-called student riot depicted in the video above. He revealed that, as a Harvard student, he was chased around campus by police. "I mean, this is college," he said.

Here's the Q&A:

Lil Wayne mentions Tennessee coach Lane Kiffin in his latest song: "Smoke weed, talk shit like Coach Kiffin," the Grammy-Award winner raps.

The stuffed shirts in the athletic department are squirming a little bit, but Kiffin and his players love it. Who cares if Lil Wayne's a thug? That's the exact demographic Tennessee's recruiters are targeting. This song is the stuff that national championships are made of.

...It is nonetheless worth a look at how the press elsewhere covered Sunday's titanic collapse up in New England. The Boston Globe leads off with this arresting sports home page.*

​Boston's other paper, the Herald, tagged it the "Bash of the Titans." NBC's ProFootballTalk.com framed it this way:

"The Tennessee Titans had been called the best 0-2 team in league history. And the best 0-3 team in league history. And the best 0-4 team in league history. And the best 0-5 team in league history. They're now simply a crappy 0-6 team."

Blogger Jeff Sack at NFL Gridiron Gab sums it up in a sentence: "This was not a football game, it was a mugging as the New England Patriots stole the pride, dignity and most likely lunch money of the hapless Tennessee Titans."

How thin is the ice upon which Jeff Fisher skates? Discuss.

Update: Fisher at his news conference this afternoon: "I'm gonna get this football team better this week."

(*What the Globe online sports page looked like this morning; has since changed.)

Like most folks, I've been half-following the news about David Givens filing a lawsuit against

Playing Football Can Cost You Your Brain

​the Titans. He's alleging that the Titans didn't give him full information about a knee condition he had and encouraged him to play, which resulted in what seems to be a career ending injury to his knee.

I was trying, frankly, to ignore it. I mean, it's one thing to watch men go out there week after week and knowingly risk injury for my entertainment.  But watching men who've had the truth withheld from them?

How can you say "they choose to do this" if they're not being told the exact nature of the choice they're making?

​ Last night. It finally happened. I was pushed over the edge. No longer a begrudging capitalist pawn, I am now a radical, ready to burn the whole country down and start from scratch. I actually uttered the words "I hate America right now." The catalyst was not a conversation about race, or health care, or immigration, or 9/11, anything that actually matters. It was that ridiculous NFL pre-game show. What the holy hell was that about?

I'm not a sports fan, but I have been known to enjoy various games from time to time. Thanks to ex-boyfriends, I can hold my own in conversations about hockey and soccer, and my whole family is pretty involved in good old-fashioned American football. I know this game. I'm comfortable with it. I know what the NFL means to Nashville, and to the South, and how uniquely American this bizarro sport really is.

But that crass, embarrassing and wholly unnecessary concert didn't have shit to do with sports. Why do we need to have the Black Eyed Peas jerk around on stage like a bunch of spastic clowns? Why their terrible, terrible songs? Why the fireworks? Why Tim McGraw? Can't you people just go out and enjoy the game? Apparently not. This is why we can't have nice things!

Does any other sport in the world do this? Basketball? Baseball? Cricket? I'd be surprised. I blame the NFL. I blame the city of Pittsburgh. I blame NBC. But mostly I blame you, America, for putting up with this crap. It's time to start over.

(Someone won the game, I guess. I don't know. I went home to watch Real Housewives of Atlanta. That's American trash I can get behind.)

Fourth? No, wrong again Kevin. You're No. 1 in our hearts.

​Vanderbilt men's basketball coach Kevin Stallings has been getting a lot of good pub lately, and rightfully so. First, he dared cross an invisible line in the coaching ranks that keeps signal-callers from speaking out about the thinly-veiled extortion tactics of summer league camp organizers. Then, when a budget shortfall threatened a six-years-in-the-making roundball tour of Australia, he poneyed up $100,000 from his own bank account to keep a promise he'd made to his team. Good stuff.

Standing at the other end of the tracks on the media pain train is Louisville coach Rick Pitino. Yesterday, Pitino publicly apologized for an "indiscretion" he committed six years ago. His sin? Sleeping with a woman who was not his wife in a restaurant booth, then giving her $3,000 to get an abortion when she later came with word that she was pregnant and without health insurance. All of this dirty laundry found a spotlight thanks to Pitino, who contacted the FBI back in April with the accusation that his long-since-paid-off paramour was trying to extort him for $10 million. Ugly stuff.

From the odd circumstances of Pitino's case was born an even odder nugget of information regarding his contract. The Lousiville Courier-Journal posted the entire document online (basketball, you may have heard, is kind of a big deal in Kentucky), including a couple of clauses that seem to indicate that, if Pitino wasn't living his life according to some as-yet-undefined principles, he could be sacked. Via Deadspin:

Rick Pitino's contract has a couple vaguely worded clauses that could figure into whatever fate awaits him at Louisville. One refers to "acts of moral depravity," the other to "willful misconduct" that "tends to greatly offend the public."

Hi, Craig!

​When you're the fourth option at a position that's impossibly deep, you've got to go the extra mile to catch the coach's eye. Which means if you're Titans' tight end Craig Stevens, a second-year blocking-specialist out of Cal, you've got to treat that extra mile as if its filled with brain-eating zombies threatening to tear your loved ones limb-from-limb*. From Jim Wyatt:

Tight end Craig Stevens was exhausted on Wednesday. He went through two practice sessions, and four altercations. All in a day's work, I guess.

The usually mild-mannered Stevens was anything but on this day. He got into scraps with defensive end Dave Ball and linebacker Stanford Keglar during team drills. Later, he got into it on back-to-back plays with defensive end Kyle Vanden Bosch.

That's right, four fights in one day. This Stevens kid is a modern-day pugilist, I tells ya!

*And in case you thought that zombie reference was a stretch, you've obviously never seen Vanden Bosch when he's wearing his extra special "Red Zone" contact lenses. *Paging Mr. Romero. Mr. Romero to Baptist Sports Park, please.*

Stevens scrapping was probably born of the natural prickliness that exists between two behemoths made to slap at each other in August heat. But it also can't hurt his chances of sticking with the team.

As low man on the totem pole, Stevens is right to try to fight his way up the depth chart. In front of him is franchise-tagged Bo Scaife, veteran Alge Crumpler who, cagily recognizing his new role on a team with two solid pass-catchers, ate his way to Koopa Troopa size in the off-season and Oh-my-god-please-let-him-be-Jeremy-Shockey-without-the-attitude rookie Jared Cook.*

*Not excited yet? Watch this video. Cook's middle name should be Matchupproblems. (Catchy, no?)

Stevens scrapping apparently paid dividends; Coach Jeff Fisher seemed impressed and said he was having a great camp. Stay tuned to see how it all plays out come September 5th, when Zombie Slayer and the rest of the hopefuls find out if there one of the lucky 53 to make final cuts.

That's my dog, there. She's an American Staffordshire Terrier, which is one of the pit bull

Local Dog Makes an Excellent Companion

​breeds. I know everyone thinks their dog is the greatest dog in the world, but I don't. She is, however, the greatest dog for me. When she's sitting or walking next to me, I go where I want without fear. I talk to people I never otherwise would talk to. And the silliness factor in my life, because of her, is pretty enormous.

Every day, I feel lucky to have her.

So, no, I am never, ever going to understand how someone could look into the face of an animal like my dog and think to himself not "I wonder if it is physically possible to die from cuteness" but "I wonder if this dog would win in a fight against that dog."  I'm never going to understand how a person could take a dog that wouldn't fight and slam it against the ground until it was dead.

Never.

I don't even want to hear justifications for it. I don't want to turn on my radio or my television and hear Tony Dungy talking about how we all shouldn't judge. Michael Vick fought and killed dogs, exploited their best traits (loyalty and tenacity) and their worst (dog aggression) in order to force them to hurt and kill each other, for fun and profit.  Hell yes, I'm going to judge.

Michael Vick is an awful person.

He still should be allowed to play football.

In 1983, an unheralded journeyman named Luis Resto won a unanimous 10-round decision in Madison Square Garden against then-undefeated welterweight Billy Collins Jr. When Collins father went to shake Resto's hand afterwards, he felt only leather. A subsequent investigation by the New York State Boxing Commission revealed that Resto's trainer, Panama Lewis, had removed two ounces of padding from his gloves.

In 1986, both trainer and fighter were convicted of assault, conspiracy and criminal possession of a deadly weapon (Resto's fists). The verdict came three years after Collins crashed his car into a culvert in Antioch, dying just miles outside his hometown of Nashville.

Sports Illustrated's Jeff Pearlman chronicled the Resto-Collins bout in his 1998 story "Bare Knuckles." Now comes HBO's spellbinding doc "Assault in the Ring." Above is the trailer, and if you follow this link you'll find a scene from early in the film, when Resto, having lost his wife, kids and any hope of ever returning to the ring, confronts his old trainer. As pointed out by Deadspin, Lewis promises to help his destitute former fighter once he gets back on his feet, even though he's covered in gold jewelry...

Area man counts chickens before hatching.

​Among some genuinely heartrending comments about growing up with a drug-addicted mother and absentee father, Titans back-up quarterback Vince Young promises the following in this month's Esquire:

I don't know when I'll start again. But I will be the next black quarterback to win a Super Bowl. And I will be in the Hall of Fame.

We're all for a good boast every once in a while. Especially from a professional athlete, whose job requires a healthy ego. But just off the top of our head, here's a list of black quarterbacks that have a better chance of winning a Super Bowl before Vince Young:

Donovan McNabb
Jason Campbell
David Garrard
Ronnie Brown (playing out of the Wildcat formation)

In Pith's ongoing quest to find Tennessee's remaining Memphis Grizzlies fans, Sunday's column from the Memphis Commercial Appeal's Geoff Calkins had a sort of crystallizing effect. Oh, so this is why nobody likes them.

Of all the different ways to describe a dysfunctional franchise (lopsided trades, more losses than wins, empty seats), nothing beats firing all of your scouts. Here's Calkins with the spin of all spins:

"I prefer a smaller group," said Chris Wallace, the Grizzlies GM.

You have to love Wallace, don't you? He could have put a positive spin on the yellow fever epidemic.

"I prefer a smaller city," he'd have said.

R.I.P. Terribly Photoshopped LenWhale White Pic

​Oft criticized Titans' running back LenDale White has lost 30 pounds in the offseason. How'd he do it? White gave away his secret to Sports Illustrated and, in the process, prematurely ended any hopes of future sponsorship opportunities from a particular tequila company:

"I really got to be honest," White said. "It wasn't a lot of major diet changes. (It was) watching what I drink. I was a big Patron consumer. ... That's what it was. I was drinking a lot, drank a lot of alcohol. I cut that out of my diet all the way. I don't drink at all. I cut the drinking, I stopped drinking for six months.

"It started falling off."

Now I'm no tequila expert, but according to this really convincing website a shot of Patron has between 69 and 104 calories. Which would mean, in order to account for a loss of 30 pounds, the previous, non-teetotaling version of White would have had to have drank approximately a case per day.

Lineman Michael Roos does a good job of summing up the guarded optimism towards the newly svelte White (who is, after all, in a contract year) with this masterful display of passive-aggressive locker-room quote-making.

"Hopefully, he'll be able to last longer than he has in the past and go deep in the season and help us out," All-Pro left tackle Michael Roos said.

"We've still got time to see what happens, but he's looking good so far."

Fare thee well, cow herder.

​Yesterday, WNFN 106.7 The Fan announced a format change. Formerly home to ESPN Radio, the new i106.7 will now play top 40. Obviously any move that improves the odds of hearing Daughtry or Vertical Horizon while flipping through the FM dial is no reason to celebrate. But it's hard to think the loss of the Worldwide Leader will cause any Nashville sports fans to break their bobbleheads in anger.

ESPN's primary contribution to the airways are their personalities (ranging from the pleasant, like Scott Van Pelt, to the intolerable, like Colin Cowherd) and the way they can somehow turn 15 minutes of national news into 24 hours of coverage. All things you can find on TV or the web. Other than broadcasting MTSU games, local sports were not their forte. (That's primarily the domain of 104.5 FM and 560 AM, who cover the Sounds.)

Still want your Mike & Mike fix? Then it's time to pony up for the Sirius.

College basketball coaches don't mess around: For speaking out, Vandy's Kevin Stallings lost a thumb. Oh wait, there it is.

​Just like in real life, it's hard to distinguish between good guys and bad when it comes to college basketball recruiting. On the one hand you've got high school and A.A.U. coaches, who serve as mentors and sounding boards for their star athletes, even though they're sometimes abusing that privileged trust to serve their own ambitions. On the other you've got college coaches with similar ambitions (Remember kids: There is always another rung on the ladder. Step on hands if you have to, just keep climbing.) and an interest in not rocking the boat that's delivered them so far in their careers.

To top it all off, you've got the NCAA, a $4 billion sweat shop that only dabbles in educational do-goodery and colludes with professional leagues even wealthier than themselves in order to keep alive the profitable practice of indentured servitude. Is that enough moralizing for you? Good. Because now we've got an actual example of an actual college coach (who's local!) standing up and speaking the truth for once. And we're almost 99% positive he's not doing it to serve his own best interest. (OK, make that 95%. You never know with these guys.)

As the New York Times Pete Thamel reports, the gatekeepers who run summer basketball tournaments are now charging college coaches hundreds of dollars for information packets, often springing the extortionate cost on them after the coaches have driven long distances and paid the up-front admissions fees. (If nothing else, these guys certainly have a future working for Comcast.)

Vanderbilt coach Kevin Stallings went to one such tournament in Memphis and drove home when the organizer asked for $295 for a "required" roster. As Deadspin points out, Stallings' willingness to talk on the record about a well-known practice marks him as the rare whistleblower in a small fraternity committed to the status quo. Bask in the glory that is a rich guy speaking truth-to-power:

"That's exactly what's wrong with our business," Stallings said. "There's a mentality where coaches want to cover themselves and not get out there and say what's right and call out the people that are wrong.

"That's precisely why things are the way they are. That's why we have culture issues in our game. It's a darn shame. The people who could have influence and do have a voice, they choose not to use it because it doesn't help them. They don't want anything unsettling their smooth little boat ride."

According to Gay.com--a website of PlanetOut, an online media company serving the LGBT community--Middle Tennessee State University is among the the top ten gay-friendly college football schools (No. 9, to be exact):

Sometimes as gay men and women we tend to be apprehensive about going to a sporting event because we fear that we might be lambasted or bashed. But what colleges make the list for the best football atmosphere for gays and lesbians to attend?

We roamed the country for the ten best gay-friendly campuses in the country on football game days that give gays the opportunity to 'branch out' and enjoy the electric football scenery....

9) Middle Tennessee State (Murfreesboro, Tennessee)
- This school makes the list because of its progressive nature trapped by the surroundings of rural Tennessee. There is no secret that gays entrench the campus of Middle Tennessee State. The school's small fan base, along with its relative close location to Nashville makes this a prime destination for any fan wanting to see a traditional college football game without the crowd mayhem. Back in 2006, the school made headlines when ESPN caught two boys kissing each other in a opening shot of a televised broadcast. After all, what homosexual wouldn't want to go to a school whose mascot is a Pegasus?

USC and UCLA tied for the top of the list. Other schools included Ohio State, Stanford, UC Berkeley, University of Michigan, Duke, University of Oregon and Florida International.

Gee, Tony, you guys are standing pretty close together, no?

Who'da thunk it? Here in gay-hating, queer-fearing Tennessee? Perhaps there is hope for us after all!

Still, our hearts go out to state Rep. Tony Shipley. Obviously we knew he wouldn't be sending his kids to USC, UCLA, Stanford or Berkeley, since God is going to drop California off into the sea. But once he learns that it's "no secret that gays entrench the campus of Middle Tennessee State," he's going to have to cross one of Tennessee's largest universities off his list. Sorry, Tony: It looks like no place is safe from the gay invasion.

From ESPN:

Federal agents have arrested a convicted murderer for allegedly providing the gun later used to kill ex-NFL quarterback Steve McNair.

Adrian J. Gilliam Jr. was arrested by agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives.

A criminal complaint unsealed Friday in Nashville says that Gilliam -- who was convicted of murder and attempted armed robbery in 1993 in Florida -- admitted he sold the gun to the woman who later shot McNair.

A quick search shows that Gilliam was arrested by Metro PD on June 30th for driving with a suspended license. The incident occurred only three days before the ATF says he sold a loaded .9 MM to Sahel Kazemi, McNair's killer, whom Gilliam had met as a prospective buyer of the car she was trying to sell.

Born in 1975, it's possible that Gilliam was a minor when convicted of the murder and attempted robbery charges. That would explain why the Florida Department of Corrections lists no record of his incarceration, nor does Nexis have any clue as to where the crime was committed, or the circumstances surrounding it.

U.S. Attorney Ed Yarborough is announcing these charges as we write. More info to come.

Part of the problem with having a hometown team with such a punnable name is that it gives you ample opportunity to create groan-worthy headlines, even though you know you shouldn't.

Anyway, in case you missed it, last night there was only one thing happening in the sports world. And at the end of baseball's home run derby, two (and a half) men with previous ties to Nashville competed for the top prize of Guy Who'll Inevitably Ruin His Swing for the Second Half of the Year.

The eventual winner, Milwaukee Brewers first basemen Prince Fielder, played in 103 games for Nashville back in 2005. The man he beat, Texas Rangers right fielder Nelson Cruz, was Fielder's teammate that year and stuck around with the Sounds for part of the '06 season as well.

Because Major League Baseball is a big, powerful monopoly with control over who watches its product, we can only offer you this link to last night's contest. But the lack of moving pictures does give us the chance to feature the gem above, a Channel 2 sportscast of the Sounds celebrating in a Schlitz-soaked locker room after winning the 1979 Southern League title.

Thanks to YouTube, we can now relive a day when sportscasters actually had to read off of a sheet of paper and the Sounds finished first despite hitting the pitcher against teams that used the DH. Seriously, this video deserves a lot more than 493 views.

In the wake of Steve McNair's death, it's clear just how enmeshed he and the Titans have become in Nashville's psyche. Perhaps that's why Les Carpenter's story in Saturday's Washington Post seemed particularly insightful--an outsider has a far more objective viewpoint.

While local media, Pith included, focused on the details of the crime and how the nature of his death will affect his legacy, Carpenter, from his distant perch, saw something else:

Rarely has there been an outpouring for an athlete's death quite like the one Nashville gave McNair this week. Certainly not for a retired player who never won a championship or made the Hall of Fame, though McNair, along with running back Eddie George, did lead the Titans to the Super Bowl following the 1999 season. McNair was just 36 when he died, and he hadn't been the Titans' quarterback since 2005, the year before he was traded to the Baltimore Ravens. His career had been over for two years. He was no longer the face of the franchise, but rather just a memory and a nameplate on the facade of LP Field, where the Titans play their games.

And yet for a week the city mourned. The restaurant, Steve McNair's Gridiron 9, that he opened across from the Tennessee State University campus just days before his death became a shrine where people, mostly strangers to him, came to write messages of farewell on the front of the locked glass doors and across the windows. And when the windows were filled, they wrote messages on cards, on photographs and on post-it notes and affixed them to the glass.

Perhaps the most poignant was the most simple. A white sheet of unfolded paper, taped to the window, upon which someone had scrawled the words: "Steve we forgive you."

Attention Grizzlies fans: This man is not the Answer.

Last week, during a regular pick-up game at the gym, one of my playing partners was wearing a Memphis Grizzlies T-shirt. In the year since I'd moved to Tennessee, this was the first time I'd seen anyone sporting a piece of Grizzlies merchandise. So I asked him: Are you a fan?

"I'm trying," he said. "But they make it really, really hard."

This comment was understandable. The Grizzlies just traded for a guy named Zach Randolph. Even if you don't understand basketball, all you really need to know about Randolph is that every time he leaves a team they get better. To fans, he's the Stephon Marbury of big men; capable of posting impressive stats in spite of (or because of) his team's failings. (And also capable of creating fantastic headlines, like "Grizzlies Trade for Zach Randolph, Continue War on Fans.")

The trade for Randolph comes on the heels of another Grizzlies move. Last year they sent Spaniard Pau Gasol, the team's best player, to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Gasol's less-talented brother Marc and not much else. Thanks in part to Gasol the Lakers went on to win the NBA Championship. The Grizzlies lost 70 percent of their games.

My pick-up partner's comment was understandable because of deals like these. For the past three years, roughly the same amount of time that General Manager Chris Wallace has been making decisions, the Grizzlies have been the worst team in the league by a wide margin. If the Grizzlies under Wallace were a child, and you were babysitting them, you wouldn't let them out of your sight for a second. As soon as you did, they'd stick their tongue in a light socket.

All of which is to say, the Grizzlies are reportedly interested in signing Allen Iverson. Which would be another really, really bad move...

Over at hardcore gridiron geek site Football Outsiders, Mike Tanier offers a thoughtful look at Steve McNair's football career, with a focus on Super Bowl XXXIV and the play that epitomized McNair's toughness and defined his career to many fans--not the final play, where Kevin Dyson came up one yard short, but the penultimate play, which can be seen 18 seconds into the above video. In Tanier's words:

The next play could have been the greatest in Super Bowl history, if only the play after it succeeded. Words don't do justice to McNair's scramble, eluding two defenders, planting his hand on the turf to keep his footing, throwing a strike to Dyson at the 10-yard line. It was breathtaking, and it took America to a place we had never been before: ten yards, one play, no timeouts, the Super Bowl in the balance.

McNair never rose to the elite level of John Elway, Joe Montana, Dan Marino or Johnny Unitas, and isn't a likely bet to make the Hall of Fame. But that play made the world take notice of Steve McNair, and cemented his reputation as a scrapper and a fighter. And though it may go against conventional sports wisdom, winning isn't everything. Tanier puts it eloquently:

One Yard Short exposes those "he's not a winner" arguments for the suckerpunch they are, showing the keen edge that separates champions from also-rans. McNair earned immunity from such taunts that day, proving that he could, even though he didn't. Thoughtful fans can return to that moment when pondering the legacy of other players, who may have come up five yards short, or twenty, but could still see the end zone, still gave their teams a chance at glory:

A loss is not always a failure.

Losing a game doesn't make someone less motivated, less talented, less conscientious, less of a man.

There are elements of competition -- perseverance, sportsmanship, courage, effort -- that are just as praiseworthy as winning.

The circumstances surrounding McNair's death cloud his off-field reputation, but they don't change what he represented on the field. Leader, trailblazer, warrior, a mortal who came up just short of a championship, a worker who never complained, always battled, did what was best for the team. A man who played football the way it was supposed to be played, and by losing Super Bowl XXXIV, taught us how the game should be enjoyed.

In the wake of Steve McNair's death, more former girlfriends are rising up from his past. The New York Daily News reports today that McNair had a six-year affair with a stripper from Minneapolis, whom he used to fly around the country for hook-ups. Says the paper:

The former business manager of a Minneapolis strip club told the Daily News that McNair had been a frequent visitor to the club and had an intimate and extramarital relationship with an exotic dancer for about six years.

"She liked money and athletes," the former business manager said on condition of anonymity. "She went out with athletes before. She was one of those girls who said, 'You're married? You have kids? So what?' Lets have fun.

"I can tell you that she was very upset when she learned that he had died," the former business manager added.

Is this the Steve McNair you'll remember?

Now that Steve McNair's and Sahel Kazemi's deaths have been ruled a murder-suicide, media coverage is turning to McNair's legacy. Will he be remembered as a great football player who soldiered on through injuries and helmed the most exciting season in Titans history? Or as a thoughtless philanderer who took advantage of an impressionable young woman?

I just read one such story, Elizabeth Merrill's The dilemma: How to mourn McNair, on ESPN.com. Merrill examines the conflicted feelings of fans around the country, particularly in Nashville. She writes:

"It's a moral dilemma in Nashville, a town that worships its sports heroes and believed, for the better part of 10 years, that Steve McNair was its most perfect role model: How do you mourn a man whose imperfections were exposed in his shocking death?"

It reminded me of a conversation I had Monday night. A friend of mine expressed disgust that McNair was being deified. The adultery was bad enough, he felt, but with a 20-year-old woman?

I asked if it would have been less irksome to him if it had been a 35-year-old woman. He seemed to indicate that yes, it might have been less unseemly. Which got me thinking about a lot of things. Does the age matter at all? She wasn't a minor, and McNair himself was 36. It's not exactly an age difference that turns heads. And if there had been no murder, but it had been revealed that McNair had an affair, would that have been equally scandalous? And do the circumstances of his death automatically tarnish his significant accomplishments on and off the field?

The latest from The Tennessean:

Metro Police Chief Ronal Serpas said the police believe Steve McNair was asleep when Kazemi shot him on the sofa and that she then sat next to him and shot herself.

Gunshot residue was found on one of Kazemi's hands, but police believe she used both hands when shooting McNair.

Serpas also said police believe Kazemi had communicated with friends days before she was ready to 'end it all'. Several things were overwhelming her, including financial problems, Serpas said. Her roommate was moving out, meaning her rent payment was about to increase. She was also making payments on the Escalade she co-owned with McNair.

Serpas said Kazemi had learned McNair was involved with another woman days before the murder and attempted to follow the woman, whom police said they talked to but Serpas did not identify.

Police also believe Kazemi purchased the gun in the parking lot of Dave & Busters, where she worked.