NFL Washington Dc

If you go to eBay right now you can bid on an autographed rookie card of Minnesota Vikings running back Adrian Peterson. No surprise there.

But it is a little surprising that the seller, identified as cooley717523, is none other than Washington Redskins tight end Chris Cooley. Cooley explains on the Shutdown Corner blog that he has always loved football cards, and he and his wife are now becoming collectors and sellers:

At home with hundreds of cards, we decided that it would be fun to create our own account on eBay and sell them. We tried to take great pictures and then describe the cards. Christy wants to describe every card as beautiful. I don't know if that's a great way to describe a card, but it seems catchy enough.

We have our first cards listed for sale and three of them have bids already. I'm pretty sure we'll spend way more money buying cards than we'll ever make on them, but we've had a blast giving it a try.

Cooley has set the starting bid on the Peterson card at $150.

If you think this video purporting to show Washington Redskins kicker Shaun Suisham making a 110-yard field goal is real, I've got a poker game I'd like to invite you to:

But there are a whole lot of people I'd like to play poker with, I guess, because the guy from the TV station that put it together tells Deadspin that many viewers believe it:

"We've had a ton of e-mail on this, and about 30 percent of people think it's real, which is frightening," Brett Haber, the sports director at WUSA-TV in Washington D.C., said. "Yes it's real, and so is the Easter Bunny. Our marketing department put it together in the spirit of the Kobe video to promote our Redskins preseason football package. I think the phrase they're using upstairs for the video is "summer fun." I didn't have anything to do with it, but I don't think it was ever meant to be taken seriously."

So, to be clear: No, Shaun Suisham cannot make a 110-yard field goal. No one can.

Former Washington Redskins owner Jack Kent Cooke died 11 years ago, at age 84. So among the many odd things about this story is that he has a daughter who's 20 years old.

Other odd things: That daughter, Jacqueline Kent Cooke, got arrested over the weekend and asked the arresting officer, "Do you know who I am?" I'm going to go ahead and say no, Jacqueline. No one knows who you are.

Ms. Cooke told the officer that "$1 billion goes a long way" and that he would lose his badge for arresting her, according to the police report, but in reality she apparently has significantly less than $1 billion.

She was charged with operating under the influence and operating without a license.

Via A.J. Daulerio at Deadspin.

Yesterday, I passed an article along that suggested that the Houston Texans were a team that compressed the time between training camp and the rest of the offseason schedule. I thought it might be an interesting experiment to watch.

Whoops, it turns out that the Si.com article was wrong about the Texans schedule. I contacted someone with the team, and they said that the official offseason workouts concluded a few weeks ago with the last day of OTAs, but added there are "a lot of players" working out on a voluntary basis.

Maybe it's too bad, because Washington Redskin tight end, Chris Cooley provides some thoughtful reasons why offseason schedules make no sense. In one of Cooley's magnificent blogs, he explains:

"If teams really want players at their highest performance level then have guys stick around until closer to two weeks before camp starts. If you want to give players a little more time away from the game, then give it to them in March and April. If I'm coaching, I'd rather find out that my players are lying around on the beach having a couple drinks earlier in the year. I certainly don't want that happening with less than two weeks to training camp."

That seems to make a lot of sense to me but the SI.com article explained that teams are reluctant to do it because it's the only time coaches get much of a break. The coaches need to be around earlier in the season because of draft evaluations.

Cooley HT to PFT

This one is a bit odd. The Washington Times reports that Redskins' defensive lineman Phillip Daniels called out cornerback Shawn Springs for not being at the team's OTAs yesterday. (Hat tip: Hogs Haven):

"If there's no reason [for his absence] and I'm here, then be here, be a leader," said Daniels, who has been Springs' teammate for eight seasons with the Redskins and the Seattle Seahawks. "[Shawn]'s his own man. I'm a leader. I lead by example. I lead by being here. I'm not a rah-rah guy. He's not here to help us right now. ... He gotta deal with the way people perceive him. I can only say to him, 'Get here. Be involved with this.'"

Wow. Now you as a fan may think the same way, but players don't typically do this. Unless you have some character issues, teammates rarely call out others for not showing up to these things. Remember, these are OTAs which are, technically, voluntary. Now, we all know that "voluntary" in the NFL eyes means "you are either a mega star or you better have a good reason not to be here".

As you're probably aware by now, Redskins tight end Chris Cooley has a blog. So far it's been fairly well received by football fans, mostly because in an era when too many professional athletes follow a safe PR script in all public comments, Cooley will say anything.

But has he gone too far with his latest post? It's an interview with Redskins quarterback Jason Campbell, and when their Q&A delves into the subject of Campbell's relationship with Redskins center Casey Rabach, it gets, well, disgusting:

3. Jason, have you ever smelled the back of your left hand (the one that's securely lodged under the center's sweaty butt crack the entire game) after a game? I would imagine that hand would have to go through a thorough decontamination process after every game and practice.
For everyone to know if you don't take a bath your butt crack stinks and I think that's what Rabach does to me. Imagine sweating for 2 hours and you're Casey Rabach and you're really hairy and stinky. Rabach has even farted on my hand which is a feelin that never really wears off. I can actually feel it while we're doing this interview right now. After each practice and game the first thing I do is wash my hands of all that chaotic stuff running off his sweaty, nasty body.

I've heard it said that athletes' blogs will take fans inside the locker room in a way they've never been before. If that's what it's going to be like, I'm perfectly content to remain outside.

**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.

Washington Redskins owner Daniel Snyder, perhaps more than any other professional sports owner, likes to control the way his team is covered. That's true in small ways, like the team looking to hire a blogger, and in big ways, like Snyder buying as many radio stations as he can.

After Snyder reached a deal yesterday to buy three local AM radio stations, Paul Farhi of the Washington Post wrote that the purchase "gives Snyder control of sports talk radio in Washington. It thus gives the owner of the most popular and closely followed sports franchise in the region ownership of the biggest broadcast outlets for commentary about his team."

Is that a good thing? One of Snyder's new employees, WTEM hosts Steve Czaban, doesn't seem to think so. Czaban said on the air yesterday, "We're being swallowed up by the big burgundy-and-gold empire."

If Redskins fans worry that they'll lose an independent voice evaluating the team, there is something they can do: Contact the FCC, which has to approve Snyder's purchase before it becomes official. Barring some kind of FCC action, Snyder is about to be signing the checks of the people who talk about his team on the radio.

If you told your boss you were calling in sick because of your weekend-long, multi-party celebration of your birthday, would your boss be cool with it?

If not, your boss is less understanding than Washington Redskins head coach Jim Zorn.

An Associated Press dispatch about the Redskins' organized team activities includes this:

Among the excused absentees was receiver Santana Moss, who was ill following a weekend-long, multiparty celebration of his 29th birthday.

Added Moss of partying as a 29-year-old, "you think you're still young and you can still hold up, but they all know what time it was. Have to chalk it up and be ready the next day."

Yes, for the Redskins, that's a good enough reason for an excused absence. And I say, good for the Redskins. After all, Moss has always been a committed, dedicated player, and organized team activities are voluntary. Moss partied too hard on his birthday, and took a day off when he wasn't contractually required to be there anyway. Some NFL coaches would make a big deal out of it, but Zorn is right to understand.

The Redskins had two extra sandwiches at their defensive back picnic today when Shawn Springs and LaRon Landry failed to attend the first day of the latest round of OTAs.

According to the Washington Post's Jason La Canfora, coach Jim Zorn said that neither player was excused from the workouts. As always, they're voluntary but Zorn nor defensive coordinator Greg Blache had spoken to them. Zorn didn't make a big deal about the absnece.

"I'm going to try to get a feel for why they didn't want to come ... It's not something that I'm going to make a huge spectacle of. We'll just see what happens."

Per La Canfora, Springs has been working out in Arizona and skipped last season's workouts as well. Landry, however, "has not been around the facility much and some are concerned about his attitude." La Canfora doesn't elaborate on those concerns but I'll guess he has a habit of making off-color jokes about other players' mothers.

The Washington Times has a milder explanation. Teammates said each player missed his flight and, presumably, would be along as soon as they could find another.

Whenever they do arrive, they'll have to teach the Redskin secondary handshake to ex-Raider Stuart Schweigert. The four-year veteran signed with the team today. He's a much needed addition to the thin safety corps and could challenge for a starting role if all broke right for him.