NFL Blogs

According to Seth Wickersham of ESPN, Texans DT Amobi Okoye celebrated his 21st birthday on June 10th in big style but responsibly:

Okoye, who last year was the youngest NFL player in 30 years, was sober and happy and wasn't photographed doing anything stupid. Bloggers might be bummed, but kids who look up to him aren't.

I can't speak for all bloggers because we aren't a collective who thinks in lockstep (duh). Personally I would be ecstatic if Amobi Okoye and other talented athletes didn't risk everything getting stupid drunk. It would also make me happier if Wickersham hadn't promoted a wildly dangerous drinking practice in the structure of his article.

Wickersham organized his article by saying "let's do 21 shots" to discuss Okoye's birthday plans, and how he no longer wants to be defined by his age. It's an allusion to how some 21 year olds celebrate their birthday by trying to drink 21 shots.

I'm not your mom, but I think it is worth mentioning that this newish binge drinking fad kills people. Being deaded or put into a alcohol-poisoned coma isn't the best way to spend a birthday. You would think people would know that drinking 21 shots in short succession is dangerous, but apparently not. Education is the only way found to reduce the number of people doing this, and it's not a good idea to normalize this behavior in a sports article.

Oh, and belated birthday greetings to Okoye. Sorry, I didn't get you anything but I'm guessing with 400 people at your birthday party, you are doing okay in the gift department. Check out this link if you have interest in seeing Okoye photographed doing non-stupid things on his birthday. He is wearing a sweet suit. A bit heavy for June in Houston, but it can get cold in those overly air conditioned ballrooms.

Previously at FanHouse:
You Won't Want to Read This: NFL Players Doing Good in the World
Texans Defensive Line Coach Talks About Mario and More

**warning: an F-bomb is dropped in the above video**

Big Daddy Drew, a man full of gratuitous pot shots and mean-spirited abuse, recently lost his cool on a taping of Comcast's Blog Show. This incident is simply more fodder for real journalists to use to prove their case against the evils of blogs and the despicable people who write them. No member of the main stream media would ever act in such a crass manner.

For those that live in a cave, that is Drew of Kissing Suzy Kolber fame who reached mass stardom when called out by Buzz Bissinger on HBO's Costas Now. Drew, who recently outted himself as Drew Magary, has a new book coming out titled Men with Balls: the Professional Athletes Handbook.

Who needs a book tour when you have YouTube?

The current odds on the man you just watched above becoming the next editor of Deadspin.com stand at 15-1.

If this NFL thing doesn't work out, Redskins tight end Chris Cooley should think about making some of those "how to get rich by sitting on your ass" infomercials. He's been blogging for all of four months, and he expects to pull in $250,000 by the end of the year (Calendar? Fiscal? Does it matter?), primarily from sponsorships and memorabilia sales.

Obviously, a lot of Cooley's online success has to do with the fact that he's wildly popular, and his willingness to open up about, well, anything. I can't imagine, say, Todd Collins having such success. (Fred Smoot? I'd read that.) But Cooley, who signed a six-year, $30 million deal in April, isn't blogging for beer money. His reasons are noble:

[The financial payoff isn't] bad for a website run entirely by three people - Cooley, his younger brother and a friend - and created with the simple goal of making enough money to send the brother to medical school.

"We're going to way over-generate," Cooley said. "Everything that I don't give to my brother and my friend, I will donate to charity. I don't have a foundation. I don't have a cause. I don't have something that I care about enough to spend the rest of my life having a foundation. But I feel strongly about giving back."

You wouldn't suspect it to look at him, but Cooley's something of a visionary. When asked about how his blog came about, he offered: "We started looking at player websites, and they're pretty generic, pretty boring. ... We said if we want to do it, let's do something creative."

So, yeah, thank God for creativity.

Dan Steinberg of the D.C. Sports Bog reports that the Washington Redskins are looking to hire a blogger. This is good news for Redskins fans, for bloggers, for blog readers -- for everyone who likes football and likes going online to get information about football.

The reason it's good news isn't so much that the Redskins want to host a blog at Redskins.com -- there's nothing inherently good about blogs -- but that according to Steinberg, the team is committed to the idea of bringing in a writer who actually covers the team more or less the way an independent blogger would, not just to re-print press releases and talk about what a genius Jim Zorn is.

Steinberg's colleague Jason La Canfora reported that Steinberg himself was a candidate for the job, and although that ain't happening, the mere fact that the team is reaching out to someone with that kind of journalistic background is impressive. This is a smart move for the Redskins.

A day after accepting a buyout and leaving his longtime position at the Washington Post, Tony Kornheiser appeared on Dan LeBatard's radio show and shared some thoughts about the future of the media.

Kornheiser admitted to "a certain amount of anger and resentment" about quitting the newspaper business, but he seemed to think the move was necessary. When LeBatard described newspapers as dying, Kornheiser interrupted him and said, "not dying, dead. They're dead. It's the same feeling that the buggy whip manufacturers must have had when the first car left the assembly line."

Kornheiser, who is 59, also said to LeBatard, "at my age I'm not as upset about it as somebody your age would be." That was an interesting comment because yesterday LeBatard wrote a great post at The Big Lead in which he described himself as part of the old generation of newspaper people who are upset about the way the media is changing.

But the truth is, guys like LeBatard and Kornheiser, who have chosen to quit newspapers and work on TV and in radio, have more to do with the death of newspapers than bloggers do. And give Kornheiser credit for admitting the simple fact that the reason he left print media for broadcast media is for the money. When LeBatard asked him how he felt, Kornheiser answered, "Rich."

The Cincinnati Bengals blog stripehype.com reports today that the Bengals have threatened its parent company, the fansided.com blog network, with a lawsuit over what the team says is improper use of copyrighted images.

Says the blogger at stripehype:

we've been asking for access for months as a media outlet to be able to interview players, take our own photos, etc. We've been turned down, stating that the Bengals "do not issue credentials to non-traditional media."

It has always seemed to me that pro sports teams should embrace fan bloggers, as, in general, blogs written by fans offer more favorable commentary about their teams than traditional media outlets do. But apparently the Bengals disagree.

Note: I e-mailed the Bengals' spokesman to seek a comment on this; he did not reply.

Arizona Cardinals quarterback Matt Leinart was at the center of a media firestorm when photos of him partying, including the one above, were widely disseminated, first at TheDirty.com and then on ESPN and elsewhere. So what lesson did Leinart learn?

Mike Sando of ESPN.com reports that Leinart first answered.

"Obviously, you learn life lessons in things," Leinart said. "My mindset has been on football, clearly, going into this minicamp or going into this summer. When you play football, you are a name out there or a person in the spotlight; it is tough, you have a target on your chest. But you learn a lesson and you move on."

But when asked specifically about the power of the Internet, Leinart smiled and said, "The internet is a bad thing."

Buzz Bissinger agrees with you, Matt.

It's a strange thing about ESPN draft analyst Mel Kiper Jr. that he's known almost as much for his hair as he is for his draft analysis.

There have been too many Mel Kiper hair jokes to count in the 30 years or so that he's been America's foremost draft analyst, but on Saturday The Sports Hernia came up with an original one, trading Kiper's hair for that of ESPN's other draft analyst, Todd McShay.

And then something amazing happened: ESPN not only laughed along with the joke, but put it on SportsCenter. Between this and Chris Berman referencing his YouTube fame, ESPN may be learning that the best way to deal with being laughed at by blogs is to laugh along with them.

At FanHouse, one man's trash is another man's treasure. But only the few raise to the level of Notable Moments in FanHouse Commenting.

One of the best parts of the NFL draft is the passion that fans show for their teams. We see it in a ton of FanHouse comments, including this one a Titan fan gave to this entry from JJ Cooper entitled "Titans Sure Love to Draft Running Backs." Unfortunately, the comment wasn't published because of some very naughty words, but I have cleaned it up some so you can read its passion without serious profanity offending your delicate sensibilities:

**** YOU TITANS!!!! IM A DIE HARD FAN AND I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS MAD AT MY TEAM BEFORE. THERE IS ABSOLUTELY ZERO SENSE IN THIS PICK. WE DONT EVEN NEED A ****ING RUNNINGBACK AND THERE WAS LIMAS SWEED (VINCE'S FORMER ****ING TEAMMATE!!!!) AVAILABLE!!!!!!!!!! WATTTTT THEEEEEEE ****KKKKKKKKK ARE YOU DUMB ****SS THINKING IN TENNESSEE. SO NEXT YEAR WHEN VINCE ONLY THROWS FOR 9 INTS AGAIN, DONT BLAME HIM. YOU SHOULD HAVE GIVEN HIM A ****ING RECIEVER. NOT ANOTHER ****ING RUNNINGBACK FOR THE THIRD ****ING YEAR IN A ROW

Let me make a brief point on style. I believe the Titan fan makes a cogent argument that might be shared by other Titan fans, but he does not need to use the all capital letters to make his point. Though popular among certain enthusiastic fans with poor typing skills, all caps is not the preferred commenting style at FanHouse. You might see all caps around here a lot, but really, please don't do that.

I leave you with a public service couplet: Please keep the comments clean, so that they can be seen. Thank you.
Sorry, No Photos

When Washington Post reporter Michael Tunison lost his job because he is also the blogger known as Christmas Ape at Kissing Suzy Kolber, it got enough attention that Leonard Downie, the executive editor of the paper, was asked to explain. In an interview with Editor & Publisher, Downie said this:

"We don't discuss personnel matters, but we have standards for people's outside work," Downie told E&P. "You need to clear it with your editors here before and it should not be a conflict of interest."

Editor & Publisher reports that the Post has a written policy saying, "Our private behavior as well as our professional behavior must not bring discredit to our profession or to The Post." Apparently the Post believes that having a personal blog with profane commentary, drunk photos of yourself and occasional jokes at the expense of Post employees does, in fact, bring discredit to the paper.

Tunison has already found another source of income: He's selling T-shirts referencing his firing.

UPDATE: Tunison tells me via e-mail that the t-shirts were designed without his knowledge, and that he saw selling them as a way of having fun with the incident, not capitalizing on it.