FanHouse JimBrown

Hall of Fame running back Jim Brown has an opinion on just about everything, although he usually saves the diatribes for various social issues. In the case of Michael Crabtree, he's willing to make an exception.

One-hundred-sixty-one days after the 49ers selected him with the 10th overall pick, Crabtree still remains unsigned. He's looking for something in the neighborhood of $23 million and San Francisco has countered with $16 million. And Brown, who earned $85,000 during his final NFL season, is unimpressed.

(In Ronald Reagan preaching to Mikhail Gorbachev voice)

"Mr. Crabtree, get your butt in camp," Brown said.

Elie Seckbach, the Embedded Correspondent, brings his exclusive video reporting to FanHouse. Check back regularly for more videos.

For the past nine years the Harold Pump Foundation, created by David and Dana Pump (known as the gurus of high school and college basketball) has raised over $3.5 million dollars to fight cancer. The foundation's efforts have not gone unnoticed. Major stars such as Magic Johnson, Paul Pierce, Sugar Ray Leonard, Pete Sampras and Denzel Washington have all joined the Pump brothers. In this report we also hear from young NBA stars like Kevin Love, Brandon Jennings, and Blake Griffin.

Check out the video after the jump.

Last week, Jim Brown, as he seems to do every year or so, called out a high-profile minority athlete for not speaking out on social issues.

Jim Brown was one of the greatest athletes of the 20th Century, a Hall of Fame running back for the Cleveland Browns who dominated his sport in the 1950s and 1960s. But Brown wasn't content just to succeed on the field.

Brown always said he had a social responsibility that went far beyond football, and after retiring he started the Amer-I-Can Program and has worked tirelessly to promote education and curtail gang violence, efforts that he says other professional athletes should emulate. And in an interview scheduled to air Tuesday on HBO, Brown singled out Tiger Woods as the one athlete whose failure to work for social change most disappoints him.

This should count for something, right? Hall of Famer and Browns legend Jim Brown likes Eric Mangini. Pretty much everybody was in agreement that Romeo Crennel had to go after a four-win season (even if it was on the heels of a 10-6 effort in 2007).

The most popular choice for the gig? Bill Cowher, naturally. He was an assistant coach in Cleveland under Marty Schottenheimer back in the 1980s, and even though he was a head coach for 15 years in Pittsburgh, he won. And for the hapless Browns, winning trumps rivalry. Except that Cowher, for the second consecutive offseason, said he wasn't interested in an NFL coaching job.

If Eric Mangini is trying to win friends and influence people in the greater Cleveland area, he sure has an odd way of doing it. In one of his first orders of business as the Browns new head coach, Mangini has decided to change the culture in Cleveland by ripping down a mural containing Jim Brown, Otto Graham, Lou Groza and Paul Brown. Because nothing says change in culture like removing a tribute to the most important people in franchise history and replacing it with, well, nothing.

The mural was located at the team's practice facility in Berea, Ohio, and in its place is a spectacularly bland, plain white wall. Exciting. I'm guessing this is to represent what the Browns have accomplished since the players mentioned above hung up their cleats. Or, perhaps, it represents that Mangini has absolutely lost his mind and is about to get a face full of fist from Jim Brown.

Earlier MDS noted that the Sports Bog's Dan Steinberg caught up with Stuart Scott at the Earl Woods Memorial Pro-Am yesterday, and like most people at pro-am events, they talked about sports blogs.

Near the end of Steinberg's post on the festivities, he notes that Scott's answer of the day came in an interview with Sports Groove's Mark Gray, "who asked about the criticism Tiger receives for not being outspoken enough." Scott's response:

"All the people who say Tiger doesn't do enough, stop," Scott said. "Shut up. Shut up....He's got about as much money as Oprah, but it's important for him to do something tangible for kids. Tangible."

As much as it pains me, I agree with Scott on this one. For some reason, certain segments of the population think high-profile athletes should have an opinion on every social issue under the sun.

During the "hey, I got an idea: let's lynch Tiger!" fiasco, Jim Brown said Woods "waited until it was politically correct to come out and he should have come out right away." Maybe. Or perhaps Tiger just wanted the whole thing to blow over. Frankly, I have no idea why he didn't hold a press conference denouncing Kelly Tilghman as the next coming of Hitler (or worse, the Celtics), but I can't begrudge the guy for how he ultimately chose to deal with it the matter.

Cleveland Browns tight end Kellen Winslow has skipped voluntary workouts this off-season, and he has suggested that he thinks he deserves a new contract. The team has said it's not planning to renegotiate Winslow's deal.

The team's position has the backing of an ex-player who knows how to influence people: Jim Brown, the Hall of Fame running back widely regarded as the best ever to play the game. Jason Cole reports:

"The team stood by Kellen when he got into his accident," said Brown, the Hall of Fame running back who serves as an advisor to the team. "He needed to respect that, come in and have another good year and then approach the team."

Brown is basically right about that, and that motorcycle accident Brown refers to is the basic reason that Winslow isn't entitled to a new deal. Although Winslow has outplayed his contract in the last couple of years, he also missed an entire season because of his own off-field irresponsibility. Let Winslow have a good 2008, and that might convince the Browns to give him a new deal in 2009.

Jim Brown is still the gold standard for NFL running backs. It doesn't matter how many other players pass him on the list for most career rushing yards. Brown's 12,312 yards stood as a record for almost two decades, and it still remains a milestone for other running backs.

Jacksonville Jaguars running back Fred Taylor gets this. That's why he told Vic Ketchman, editor of the team's web site, that he wants to pass Jim Brown on the all-time rushing yards list before he retires. Last week after a team workout with several Jaguars rookies, Taylor hinted he might stick around even after he passes Brown.

Clearly, moving ahead of the man that even Barry Sanders' father says is the best NFL running back of all time is a worthy goal -- especially since it will be that much harder to keep a guy who passes Brown out of the Hall of Fame.

Taylor is 1,597 yards short of Brown's yardage mark, so unless he has a career year, he probably won't pass that mark until 2009. Only seven other running backs have passed Brown on the all-time rushing yards list, and Taylor is one of three active backs within reach of 12,312 yards. The other two are Edgerrin James (11,617 yards) and LaDainian Tomlinson (10,543 yards).

Hey, look at that, Kelly Tilghman managed to string together a couple of sentences without ordering somebody lynched. Good times. Seriously, Tilghman returned to her job as a Golf Channel analyst on Thursday after serving a two-week suspension for joking that Tiger Woods should be "lynched in a back alley" to level the playing field. I know, hysterical.

I've already shared my thoughts on the whole ordeal, and although Tilghman's comments were ridiculously insensitive, I'm still not clear what was accomplished by suspending her. People seemed divided on the issue -- Charles Barkley offered some thoughtful advice while Jim Brown reasoned that Tiger was shirking his responsibilities as the world's most recognizable athlete who also happens to be of color. (Woods called Tilghman's comments a "non-issue.")

Whatever, hopefully, this is the last we'll hear of "the incident" and can now turn our attention to, you know, golf. Which segues nicely into Tiger's first round of 2008: a 5-under 67, good for third place and two shots off the lead.

Other notables: Rory Sabbatini, one of the PGA Tour's best players on Thursday (and among the worst on Sundays, particularly when paired with Woods), also carded a 67. So yay for Rory.