FanHouse JohnElway

John Elway -- two-time Super Bowl winner, Hall of Fame quarterback, restaurateur, car dealer and now: fighter of terrorism.

The former Broncos star narrates this eight-minute spot funded by the Department of Homeland Security that, according to the web site, "[lets] Americans know what kinds of activities might be a sign of terrorist activity in the making."

Pro Football Hall of Fame induction weekend is always a fun time to debate which players are the greatest in the history of the sport. And this weekend, the debate about the greatest quarterbacks of all time has been enlivened by new research indicating that Dan Marino -- and not John Elway -- is the all-time NFL comeback king.

Philip Rivers went to N.C. State, which means that, as a lifelong UNC fan, I have to hate him. That's how it works. That said, I have come to grudgingly respect the guy. I even like him as much as you can like someone who claims to talk smack without cursing (that's like saying you love going to bars to drink Sprite).

He's not afraid to take a hit, he's played through serious injury, and most importantly, he thinks Jay Cutler is a clown, which is something we can all get behind.

And Rivers also doesn't take himself so seriously that if a high school kid embarrasses him at his own camp, he immediately confiscates the video and has the perpetrator waterboarded to send a message to other would-be overachievers.

Moving pictures evidence after the jump.

Everyone makes mistakes. But when those mistakes are magnified by intense scrutiny of the NFL draft, well, they become much more embarrassing than, say, my typical Friday morning, mustard-stain-on-khakis incident.

Which is why the NFL FanHouse braintrust got together to determine who is the biggest bust for each NFL team. They're not listed in terms of stupidity -- they're all stupid relative to a team's total draft performance. Meaning, of course, some teams "bust" is much different than another organization's; we did it this way to avoid just linking you to DetroitLions.com.

Instead, we're putting it in current draft order, sans trades, and allowing this list to serve as a reminder of each's team's ability to properly execute a fail. The "bust factor" was based primarily on three things: statistical production (or lack thereof), position in the draft and other available options during that year's draft.

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CHICAGO -- So the Summer Olympics must be coming in 2016. And a minefield of potholes soon will be magically filled. And the Cubs will win a World Series for the first time since, oh, your grandparents' grandparents were double-dating in Henry Ford's Model T. And those wicked, face-eating winters will be replaced by pleasant, sunny, balmy, gorgeous ... all right, I'm obviously overcome by shock.

I don't know about you, but when one of my bosses urgently needs me, he either calls or yanks me by the earlobe into his office. We're still waiting for Pat Bowlen to have such contact with Jay Cutler, which shocks me. For a quarter-century, Bowlen has been among the dynamic owners in American sports, a primary reason why the Denver Broncos have been an elite NFL franchise.

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Kurt Warner had a bit of a renaissance in 2008, taking a team that's used to hanging out in the gutter all the way to the Super Bowl, before coming up justthisshort in lifting the Cardinals to their first title.

Yet despite his successes, it was rumored that Warner might retire this offseason. But apparently Warner isn't going down that road. According to his agent Mark Bartelstein, Warner, 37, will be in shoulder pads next season.

Sorting the Sunday Pile looks back at the NFL weekend that was. It's also an unofficial Mittens blog.

Ben Roethlisberger has started 82 games in his five-year career, winning close to 80 percent of them. Yet for most of the football-observing public not located in Western Pennsylvania, he's still nothing more than a game manager. A good quarterback who fell into a great situation and is just along for the ride.

That changed for good Sunday night.

If you are a die-hard sports fan like me, you probably get your sports news the same way. You read things online, you check your Google reader every few minutes to see updated news, and you keep ESPNews on in the background just in case a press conference or something is breaking.

What you might not do is tune in to ESPN that much anymore, just because most of the shows are aimed at people that might not have enough time in their day to read up on everything going on, so hitting the big stories is good enough. (Or you might just avoid most of the shows because, at times, they can be obnoxious.)

Good news if you're more on the side of sports features that don't really break the concrete, if you will. ESPN has decided to give Rick Reilly, their $17 million dollar journalist hire, his own television show called "Homecoming." Trust me, it gets better.

ESPN2's new series -- Homecoming -- challenges that old adage "you can't go home again." Hosted by 10-time Sportswriter of the Year Rick Reilly, Homecoming will debut Friday, Jan. 9, at 8 p.m. ET with an episode on Josh Hamilton of the Texas Rangers in his hometown of Raleigh, N.C. The following week, Pro Football Hall of Famer John Elway returns to Van Nuys, Calif. The shows are the first two of a six-part series featuring one-on-one, hour-long interviews of today's top names in sports from the towns and cities where they grew up.

The holiday season doesn't bring good tidings for everybody. Just ask those head coaches who are spending the New Year cleaning out their offices.

There is a large contingent of people -- myself and Ciskie are certainly included -- that believe Mike Shanahan wasn't really "fired" from the Denver Broncos, in the real sense of the word. In other words, Pat Bowlen demanded changes, Shanny said something that's probably impolite about running the team, and then probably dared Bowlen to fire him.

Bowlen's press conference today, regarding the decision, requires a little reading between the lines, but it certainly might lend some credence to that theory.

Naturally, Bowlen denied the idea that he demanded changes, stating that as an owner, he wasn't qualified to pick coaches and that, "No I did not (request for Mike to make changes to staff)" -- although it's important to remember that he's not necessarily dismissing the idea that he asked Shanahan to step down as VP of the team, adding that he hasn't "necessarily thought about" having a coach/GM combo again in the future.

That, coupled with the fact that Bowlen says he had "thought about it for a while" -- re: firing Shanahan -- in addition to Bowlen saying the toughest part of the move was "the emotion" and "the friendship" followed by the Broncos' owner getting choked up himself makes this all seem like a pretty unusual firing.