FanHouse JasonWhitlock

We're a month into the Broncos-Cutler standoff, and here's what we know: Jay Cutler is a sensitive sort, and new head coach Josh McDaniels might be in over his head, at least when it comes to dealing with moody Pro Bowl quarterbacks. Yet through it all, public opinion seems to be firmly behind the organization.

I have no idea how this turns out, and at this point, I don't care; I just want it to end so we can get back to the important stuff: Terrell Owens, Michael Vick and Brett Favre's impending return to the sport he loves so much. But before moving on, I just want to point out that Jeff George, perpetually on the comeback trail, has weighed in on the situation and, shockingly, supports Cutler:

Now that Scott Pioli has been named the Chiefs' new general manager, Herm Edwards can count on his fingers (and maybe his toes) the days until he's relieved of his head coaching duties.

Kansas City Star columnist Jason Whitlock fired up the Jon Gruden-to-KC bandwagon as soon as the Bucs canned him, although that changed after a brief conversation with Warren Sapp, who played for Gruden from 2002-03.

"He would do a fine job in Kansas City," Sapp told me. "Why not? The thing that would really be exciting for Gruden in KC is that he'd have a strong-armed young quarterback to work with. Hell, Tyler Thigpen damn near saved Herm Edwards' job."

Yes, Thigpen exceeded expectations in Kansas City but let's not just start making stuff up; the Chiefs won twice. All season. I'm pretty sure nobody's job was saved after losing 14 of 16 games.

Jason Whitlock and ESPN are probably not friends (not that you can really be "friends" with a mouse-operated, soulless corporate entity anyway, but that's beside the point). Whitlock did, after all, take some shots at the conglomerate on his way out, and they did, after all, fire him.

So I suppose it's not a huge surprise if he throws an occasional dart at them from his column at FOX Sports. Except in his most recent column, the occasional dart suddenly df with regard to the WWL's treatment of Ball State and quarterback Nate Davis' chances to win the Heisman trophy.

Ball State's football season perfectly illustrated my problem with ESPN and why I believe the World Wide Leader is the most evil and destructive force in the sports world. It has driven and hastened the destruction of authentic, independent, democratic, courageous sports journalism.

ESPN is the enemy of the truth, and all who believe a pursuit of the truth is the lifeblood of a genuinely free society must stand against the Wal-Mart-ization of sports journalism.

I reached this conclusion when trying to figure out why Ball State quarterback Nate Davis isn't one of the top-five Heisman Trophy candidates and Ball State coach Brady Hoke isn't the front-runner for national coach of the year.

The fact of the matter is that Whitlock, while misfiring at times in this column (Ball State at 12-0 is harder to do than Oklahoma at 11-1? Really?), is dead on with this abundance of conspiracy-laden talk re: ESPN.

Jason Whitlock and Jeff George go way back. High school teammates at Warren Central in Indianapolis, they took separate paths after graduation (Whitlock to Ball State, and later sports journalism; George to the University of Illinois before being the first-overall pick in the 1990 NFL draft). But through it all, Whitlock has been one of George's loudest -- and most persistent -- supporters.

Take this Page 2 column from October 2002 that begins: "Being Jeff George's No. 1 fan is perhaps the most emotionally draining job in sports." There are other examples, of course, which help paint a portrait of a man who really loves George. So much, in fact, that in his most recent Kansas City Star column, Whitlock lobbied for Patriots head coach Bill Belichick to sign his former high school teammate. And he wasn't kidding.

Bill, I'm not crazy. Yes, I'm in the tank for Jeff George. We grew up together on the east side of Indianapolis, and we take loyalty very, very seriously.

He's not perfect. He mishandled his career and talent. But the dude is 40 now and still wants to play. He can get the ball to Randy Moss and stretch a defense.

Matt Cassel can't carry you for a full season. You need a veteran backup who can fill in when Cassel struggles or carry the load for a game or two.

This morning, PFT posted a link to Boston radio station WEEI reporting that an August MRI revealed a cracked bone in Tom Brady's foot. This, apparently, is news to Brady's old man, Tom Sr.

The information ran counter to what Brady Sr. had previously discussed with his son.

"He did tell us that he had stress on the bone, and that's why he wore a [protective] boot for a day – one day," Brady Sr. said. "He has never told us that he had any broken bones or fractured bones in his foot. All I knew is that he had stress on a bone, and there is a difference there."

You see, Thomas the Elder, this is what happens when you have a family member join a cult. The symptoms couldn't be more obvious if Junior had his fridge stocked with Kool-Aid and kept talking about moving to northwestern Guyana.

Brady Sr. did admit that he didn't directly ask his dream-tastic son about the injury, and it could very well be true. Surprisingly, head coach Bill Belichick wasn't interested in getting into specifics, but he did say that he expects Brady to play against the Chiefs Sunday.

Seriously, is sounds like he'll be fine; Brady won't be the first guy to play injured, and if we learned anything from Super Bowl XLII, it's that he can take a hit. Or a bunch of them. Still, Jason Whitlock thinks Belichick should give Matt Cassel a chance to lose his first NFL start, but I just don't see that happening.

Jason Whitlock wrote an interesting column at Fox Sports last week about the NBC Football Night in America show, claiming that the studio was already too crowded and that it would only get more crowded with the addition of Dan Patrick. Whitlock wrote:

What in the hell is NBC doing adding another person to its NFL studio show who doesn't really care or know anything about the NFL?

The last thing "Football Night in America" needed was Dan Patrick and Keith Olbermann trying to out-cute each other while highlights play in the back-back-background. The return of The Big Show is going to look, sound and feel like The Big Show-offs, another overdone football distraction.

I thought Whitlock's column made some interesting points and intended to write about it, but I never got around to it. Fortunately, today Patrick brought the column back to my attention.

The whole Don Imus/Adam "Pacman" Jones uproar didn't last very long, did it? It was like one minute everyone was getting upset, and the next minute everyone was asking, "Why should we care what this guy says?" Even Al Sharpton seems to have moved on.

But Jason Whitlock has a column at FoxSports.com in which he argues that while we shouldn't care about Imus, it actually is worth addressing the point that Imus claimed he was trying to make in asking "What color" Jones is.

Jason Whitlock, a polarizing figure in the blog world, published a column Thursday attributing part of the NBA's (massive) postseason ratings success to ... the lack of tattoos among the remaining stars. Whitlock sort-of compares Delonte West to a fat person starring in a porno (really!) and drives home this premise:

Part of the reason more people are watching these playoffs is because the average fan isn't constantly repulsed by the appearance of most of the players on the court. Most of the key players left in the playoffs don't look like recent prison parolees.

As CSTB argues, it's a fun theory, but it is rooted in nothing more than absurdist theology and/or some tainted carne asada. Brian Powell at The Sporting Blog tries to rescue Whitlock with a strained link to increased team play, though I'd tend to disagree with any assertion that the number of a team's tattoos are inversely proportional to that team's sharing attitude. I mean, seriously. (Nation of Islam Sportsblog doesn't buy it either.)

If a lack of tattoos draws fans in, why are the Spurs a panacea to Finals ratings? Why was Allen Iverson one of the biggest road draws in the league for a half-decade? How on Earth does Detroit fit this hypothesis? Did Kobe get his ink removed? How did Phoenix survive the tats of Marion and Amare? And the competition level combined with the rebirth of the two most storied franchises in basketball history is only part of it? C'mon, dude.

There have been some monumentally ridiculous columns penned the past few months, but this one takes the quesadilla.

Today, Titans quarterback Vince Young apologized to children who may have seen shirtless pictures of him in a bar, including one where he appears to drink liquor straight from the bottle. Even so, he doesn't believe he did anything wrong:

"I apologize to some of the kids if they did see it because I am trying to be a role model for them. But at the same time, I was just trying to have fun with (friends). That is the life of a quarterback, somebody of my status. I guess somebody was trying to make some money and sold the picture to the web site. But at the same time that is the life I chose to live. But it is not going to stop me from having fun. I just have to watch myself. They always want to try and get some negative pub on me. It wasn't really nothing bad. ... Everybody deserves to have a good time every once in a while during the offseason."

And when he says "every once in a while," I'm guessing his definition is different than most people's. Below the gallery is a selection of six Vince Young birthday party links (and pictures) from just last weekend hosted by a promotion group called "inDmix":

Jason Whitlock has an article in this month's Playboy that examines America's prison system and the way our nation's incarceration rate affects both prisoners and the rest of us. It's a powerful, thought-provoking piece that Whitlock has every right to be proud of.

But while the article itself isn't available online, Whitlock has written two columns about that Playboy article that are online, one in the Kansas City Star and one at FoxSports.com. In both cases, instead of reiterating the points he raises in the piece, he has been harshly critical of Playboy's editors for the way they present the article in the magazine.

Whitlock is one of America's most prominent sports writers and one of the few people in the sports media who routinely bites the hand that feeds him, and there may be a natural inclination to see Whitlock complaining about an editor and think that's just the way he operates. But having now read the Playboy article and seen how it was positioned within the magazine, I can say that Whitlock is right: Playboy's presentation of the story is shameful.