Syken: "Shut up and wait!"

HatestheEagles084

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to this entire message board, i say shut up and wait...if you havent noticed, i've posted about ten times this week...and its all because everyone is taking sides, and getting each other pissed off for no reason, i'll return about a week before the draft
 

Zero2Cool

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For the lazy (including yours truly)
Enough Brett bashing Shots at Favre over indecisiveness are unfair
Posted: Thursday April 6, 2006 4:12PM; Updated: Thursday April 6, 2006 4:41PM


Some of most educational stories I've worked on at Sports Illustrated are the ones where we catch up with retired athletes. Those stories, even the most banal ones, do more to normalize athletes than any DWI scandal or other episode of human failing. The myth that gets destroyed is this one: that if you could throw an NFL touchdown or hit a major league home run just once in your life, you could ride the pixie dust of that moment straight through to the old-age-home rec room.

Nothing makes that misconception disappear quicker than dialing the main number at a construction company, telling the receptionist you are looking for former Phillies pitcher Randy Lerch and being wordlessly forwarded to an extension where a man picks up the phone and says in a businesslike voice, "Hello, this is Randy Lerch." This is not at all a knock on Lerch -- he had a management job when I spoke to him last summer and seemed to be doing quite well for himself. The point is that his life after baseball had normalled out. Twenty-five years ago he was signing autographs and starting playoff games. A couple decades later he was at a desk answering a phone. Such moments bring home the reality that all athletes, after they walk off the field for the last time, have a whole next life to live. Some superstars spend that next life trading on the fame of their earlier one. But the point is, when your playing days over, they're over.

I think about this whenever fans start to push for an athlete to retire, like they are doing in Green Bay with Brett Favre.

In a recent online poll by the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, a third of the fans said they didn't want Favre to come back to the Packers this year. In a local radio interview this week, former teammate Mark Chmura called Favre selfish for leaving the Packers hanging while he takes his time deciding whether to retire. Chmura says Favre, a former close friend, never called to offer support during Chmura's trial five years ago in which the tight end was found not guilty of ****** assault and child enticement. Now, no longer bound by fealty, Chmura is giving voice to what a great many fans appear to be thinking about Favre.

To all those people, and especially Chmura, I say: Shut up and wait.

No one should be pushing Favre out the door. The reasons are:

1. He only lives once.
2. If he feels like playing and he's able to do it, he should do it.

Chmura points to a tossed-off quote from Favre on his taking his time -- "What are they going to do, cut me?" -- and said it shows his arrogance, and that Favre is only thinking of himself.

But this the NFL. Just about everyone thinks of himself. Teams will not hesitate to cut a player -- any player -- when it suits their needs. Look at Steve McNair. He is a career Titan, a Pro Bowler, he has played through injuries and taken the team to its only Super Bowl. When he was on his way to the Titans' training facility earlier this week, he was probably saying to himself, "What are they going to do, lock me out?" Then he got there and saw that the organization, which wants him to take a pay cut, had locked him out. McNair is not Favre, but he's close enough that he deserved better than the ugly ending he's getting.

Backlash against Favre is inevitable. For years announcers have filled time during the second half of Packers blowouts by gushing about how Favre represents everything that's good about football. Last year those valedictories came fast and frothy, when people assumed Favre was retiring. But now, maybe he isn't.

It's understandable that fans -- here to be entertained -- want to say "Enough already, let's move on to the next chapter." But Favre's status shouldn't be held against him. He has the same right as Sean Landeta and Julio Franco and other less celebrated athletes to play for as long as he wants, as long as someone will let him. If Favre is taking too much time with his decision -- and being allowed to take that time -- it is because he has earned the right to do so. He has been one of the league's marquee players for more than a decade. He is, as much as any one player can be, what the NFL is selling. His dithering is unfortunate and ideally it will come to an end soon. But he should take as much time as the Packers will allot to make a call he can live with. There's no going back for these years once they're gone. The next life comes soon enough.
This week I like

• Thursday's New York Post headline, "BILLY GOAT," after new closer Billy Wagner gave up a ninth-inning home run to the Nationals' Ryan Zimmerman. Welcome to New York.

• A Final Four being decided by shot-blocking.

• Surfing USA! an entertaining history by Ben Marcus.

• Restaurant week in Brooklyn! Three courses for $20.06! Value Meals for sophistos!
This week I don't like

• The missed home-plate call in the Mets-Nationals opener. It shows this: Fans would rather live with game-altering blown calls than make baseball even slower by adding instant replay.

• The fan who threw the syringe at Barry Bonds. Expressing displeasure by throwing things puts you on the low road, going 90 miles per hour. Verbal insults, please.

• The Whitney Biennial. Except for the awesome 1st Light by Paul Chan -- a projection of a silhouetted view of the Rapture going by an apartment window -- and a couple other decent efforts, this show is pure WBC. Whatta Buncha Crap. If that's the best the Whitney can put together in two years, take four next time.
 

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