The Sports Bizzo

By Toph…

I’m on another flight, which is good for the Bizzo. This time I’m headed from San Francisco to Philadelphia all the name of a party. It’s been a grueling morning, waking up at 3:45am, for a, let’s just call it canceled, flight. So, why is it good for the Bizzo? Well, you might say that I sometimes overextend myself when it comes to sports, and covering them. (If you consider what we do covering sports. I maintain that we’re not a blog, because I, and all of the Bizzo crew, make a strong attempt at writing columns.) As you know, I also run another blog, as well as the thing I go to everyday that actually pays for my life. Believe it or not, that Adidas ad over to your right is there for looks, and not connected with an affiliate I.D., although at some point we should do that. Now, in my newsreader I am subscribed to 22 different sports feeds. Sure, some of the feeds only update once in a blue moon (I’m talking about you, Phil Hughes), but others update 20+ times a day. As you could imagine, living the high life (Get it? My last name is Miller? No?) I sometimes fall way back on my sports coverage. When this happens, I implore my fellow Bizzoist to write something fresh and new so I don’t have to. (This is going somewhere, I promise.) However, when I am stuck on a cross-country flight with 8 layovers I have time to catch up on the things that are important (sports, women and pop culture). The next things I do are shell out 5 – 10 blogs for all my two sites, and then post them when warranted. The moral of the story is this – I’m about to write about Brett Favre.

At some point there comes a time in every athletes life when he/she must stop playing the game. Look, no one ever wants to quit sports. Sports are the greatest things in the world. Think I’m wrong? HA! We’ve all at some point in our lives have had to quit a sport. I’ll walk you through my sports quitting history now. When I was 5 I played soccer. OK, you can hardly call it playing. I did like to pick the grass. We scored 2 goals all year. The first goal was on accident when the ball squeezed out of the goaltenders hand. The other was as I was sitting picking daisies and a ball ricocheted off my head. I, of course, have no recollection of any of this. No, the story is generally passed around at Thanksgiving. This may explain why Diabla and I aren’t returning home for Thanksgiving, again. I had to quit soccer. The next sport I was forced to quit was baseball. This was easily the most gut-wrenching thing I have ever done. I talk bad about baseball most of the time, but it’s only because I love it. It’s like how you can talk badly about a sibling, but when some one does you kick their ass. I played baseball from about 11 years old till high school. I was no superstar, but I was a pretty slick in Center, 2nd and on 1st. As much as I refused to admit, Center was my position. I made a few PBI (Texas Pony League All-Star Teams), and we had a phenomenal Yankees team. Few league championships, and playoffs every year (once we got good). I love baseball. Especially, when Ray and I were on the same team. When high school tryouts came around, stop me if you’ve heard this, I had a 103 temperature. I was abysmal to say the least, and wasn’t at all surprised when I didn’t make the team. I spoke with the coach, asked for another shot, others spoke to the coach, but I got the whole “tryout next year” routine. I played one more year, and gave it up. The reason I gave it up was because I was actually becoming a pretty decent track runner. I was doing well in the 400 and 200, so I didn’t mind too much. Plus, there are chicks in track. Of course, being from Texas I played football. Giving that up was easy. “Coach, let’s be honest with each other. I can run, I can catch, but I’m not too keen on getting drilled. We’re a running offense, so I never get the ball anyways.” He told me that I had no chance of becoming successful in life. But, as Jon and Ray like to point out, he lived with his mom. Then came my final sport to quit. Like I said, I was getting pretty good at track. So, I moved from football into cross-country. I hated cross-country, but it was good for track, so I did it. The next year, I started doing, wait for it, theatre. I finished track season my Senior year, and left cross-country to act. It worked out for the best, because I got a scholarship, and eventually co-founded The Sports Bizzo with Jon, my roommate and fellow “thespian”.

What’s my point in this second drawn out paragraph? You got to know when it’s time to move on. I never looked back and thought, “I’m going back to cross-country.” Wait, that’s not entirely true. My first year of college I tried out for cross-country, made the team and had to turn it down due to scholarship rules. The point is, I moved on. It’s like when you date a girl. When you break up, you got to move on. Oh, that’s actually not true either. Diabla and I broke up over 15 times, and eventually got married.

This might be acceptable behavior for people like me, but for people like Brett Favre it’s a shame. This time last year I received a phone call from Jon. I was in Santa Barbara for a conference, and he called to talk football. He told me that Ted made him a $5 bet (hahaha… Jon said it was out of principle, and he didn’t plan to pay him anyways) that Brett Favre wasn’t washed up. Both Jon and I laughed like Frenchmen at the thought of Favre being close to decent during the year. Turns out, he took the Packers to the NFC Championship, and honestly, should have won that game. We really hate when Ted is right, which seems to happening a lot.

There really are only 4 ways in which you should retire. Only one of them is excusable to come back into the league.

1. Completely washed up sitting around praying a team will sign you, and when they don’t just retiring. This is actually happening a lot this year. We could call this the Barry Bonds, Mike Piazza, Kenny Lofton, Sammy Sosa, Juwan Howard, Chris Webber, etc etc etc… It’s when you’re old, but you can’t let go. It makes fans hate you. Have you not made enough in your career? There’s no way you’ll ever spend all of that money, just go and enjoy your time off. (Sorry Evander Holyfield.)
2. Be forced into retirement, try another sport (because David Stern forced you as a punishment for the gambling), then come back and dominate under the number 45. The Michael Jordan. This can only happen to one man.
3. Go out a winner. The John Elway. I’m sure there are more, but he’s the only one I can think of without any sources or internet. I hate the Broncos, but winning a Super Bowl and retiring is amazing.
4. Be forced into retirement due to age, or injury. Hey, Brett Favre, here’s you! Nolan Ryan was old, and was still a great pitcher, but he knew when to call it quits. Steve Young, Terrell Davis and Troy Aikman allowed their injuries to tell them when to head up to the booth. Emmitt Smith, wait, never mind.
What more does Favre need to prove? He proved Jon (who we’ll consider “the critics”) wrong by playing well last year. He thrilled Ted (who we’ll call “the fans”) by taking the Packers deep in the playoffs. And, lastly, he showed me (the group known as Packer haters) that he’d never win in Texas Stadium. Isn’t that what you want in a career?

Now go, Brett. Give up the tundra and cheese, and get back to nature. Go fishin’ and play with your kids. We’ll see you in the booth next year.