My Official Green Bay Packers blog

Gene Upshaw, Executive Director of the NFL Player’s Association and aspiring breaker of Joe DeLamielleure’s neck, died yesterday from pancreatic cancer.  He had only been diagnosed with the disease on Sunday evening.  That’s like two and a half freaking days.

I was never much of a fan of Upshaw as a union honk, mainly because in the radio interviews I heard him do, reason never seemed to enter the playing field when discussing expectations of players.  He fought hard against anything that would make the players more accountable for their actions.  And what the world needs now, is accountability, sweet accountability.  It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.

But the guy was a beast on the field.  A warrior.  The kind of guy you hated playing against you, but loved when he was playing for you.  That’s how I’ll choose to remember him.

It’s also being reported that Joe DeLamielleure, the former NFL lineman who tried to get Upshaw to open up the union checkbook for former players who couldn’t use their arms or legs anymore because of the beatings they took on the field, has canceled the renewal of the Gene Upshaw rider on his life insurance policy.  The rider would allow DeLamielleure’s policy to pay off double if his neck was actually broken by Upshaw.  But you might want to double check the facts on that one.

In all seriousness, what’s with all the pancreatic cancer these days?  It seems to be popping up everywhere, and it’s so damn deadly.   If Patrick Swayze lives for another year, it’ll be the first person I’ve heard of living that long with this disease.

Catch you on the flip side, Gene.

Technorati Tags: Gene Upshaw, NFL, Players Association, Pancreatic Cancer, DeLamielleure by a neck

This is part two of the series taking a look back at the players involved in the Brett Favre circus. You’ll find Part 1: Ted Thompson, here.

As time goes on I’m finding that I’m really liking Mike McCarthy. Unfortunately, the reasons I like McCarthy are probably some of the same reasons Brett Favre is not wearing our brand of green this year. I have to admit that when he first got here, wearing his hat crooked on his head and those cookie monster eyes, I thought that the job might be more than McCarthy was up to. I wondered aloud if McCarthy would be able to handle the pride and joy of the NFL if he decided to throw a tantrum or threaten to retire. As it turns out, McCarthy’s pretty damn sure he knows who’s boss around these parts, and it ain’t Mark Messier Brett Favre.

Throughout the entire carnival ride that was The Brett Favre Situation, McCarthy appeared to not have a BS gear. Reporters trying to use spinners, Rapalas or worms were treated to the same short, succinct answers, no bites on a shinier lure, no matter how it was worded by the media. “Why didn’t you let Brett back into the fold?” “I decided his head wasn’t screwed on straight enough.” Total accountability. In this day of non-apologies like “I’m sorry if you were offended when you saw me giving your daughter a cincinnati steamroller. But she’s really a freak.”  I mean seriously, what about the effing rug?  Anyway, I’m getting off track.    In this age of kung-fu blame dodging, McCarthy, like one of my uncles once did, stood up and said “I’m da boss a dis goddam camp.”  Though Mccarthy did it in a much cooler way.  But you get the point.

I listened to the presser that included McCarthy, Thompson and Murphy, and there was one hostile reporter that I wish got a little more play, because he seemed to be the only one with the stones to ask any tough questions of these three.  One of his questions, after McCarthy had said the Favre “decided” not to play for the Green Bay Packers, was whether Brett would have been competing for the first string job or the second string job.  The question never really got answered, and I wish it would have, because in the leaked reports to the media, there was just enough info to lead people to believe that Favre would be competing for the starting job.  There were also enough quotes of McCarthy saying Rodgers was his starter that when you added those two things up, carried the seven, you wondered if Favre was in fact competing to be a backup.  Hell if I were Favre I’d have told MCarthy to fuck off if that were true.

And I think Ari Fleischer had been kneading the dough that was to be the Packer Management PR cookies enough that McCarthy’s answers sounded as though they had been prepped by Johnny Cochran.  Or Kevin Lomax.

I think that when you turn the burning to high and everything superfluous has been combusted, McCarthy is just asserting his control of this football team like a good coach should.  Now that means he put all his eggs into a pretty young and thus far frail basket (in Aaron Rodgers) instead of kissing a little Mississippi ass, but as McCarthy likely knows, if you pucker up to an ass once, you’d better invest in mint chapstick, respirators and head bands, because you’re going to be ears-deep in ass from then on out.

Technorati Tags: Mike McCarthy, Green Bay Packers, Brett Favre, trade, New York Jets, You’re Gonna Like His Rims

So there’s this Sporting News interview with Aaron Rodgers. In it, Rodgers is asked if he’s living with anybody. Rodgers replies:

I’ve got a roommate, a guy I met in town. He works for the Packers now as an athletic trainer, but he was interning when I met him and we just hit it off. He’s been great for me as far as great conversations outside of football. Our friendship goes a lot deeper than what we do.

From there, the floodgayts opened. Like this comment on my earlier post.

And it’s being reported that Rodgers is seeking PR advice from Jeff Gordon.* It’s also rumored that he’ll be receiving press conference training from Mike Piazza.** And a teleconference with Troy Aikman.*** I read somewhere that he’s never had a serious girlfriend. Whatever. Watch this video:

Now I can’t be sure, but to me it looks like he’s making the DNA hard-coded move of checking the rack while her face is elsewhere facing.

But whatever. Gay or not, we need him to step up and play. Winning isn’t everything, it’s the only thing, remember? I was going to throw in some quick-hitters about wide receivers, sending balls deep and taking wide stances, but as you know, I’m lazy. The work involved in crafting something funny out of that stuff just seemed really hard. Oops. Plus, it serves no purpose. Does it really matter if he likes women or men? Is there going to be a run on soap-on-a-rope in Green Bay if he is gay? I doubt it. It doesn’t affect anyone outside of his immediate circle, and even talking about it here feels like I’m limping into Beavis and Butt-Head territory. I just said limp. Heh-heh.

I almost forgot - there was a report a few years ago about the 10 most gay-friendly cities in America. And Wisconsin? We had three of ‘em. So like it or not, Packer fans, it’s raining men. And lesbians. So get on board or pucker up. Err, wait.

Technorati Tags: Green Bay Packers, Aaron Rodgers, Troy Aikman, Jeff Gordon, Mike Piazza, 3 Dollar Bills and Other Stuff That Doesn’t Matter

* - Untrue
** - Lie
*** - Falsehood