Football: Good bling, bad bling

Braylon Edwards... well... see for yourself:

Yow. Bling bling bling! Blingity-blangity. Blingy-blingy-blang-blang. Uh. I'll stop now. There's an article about him, too, at the Detroit News.

Meanwhile, Tom Friend over at ESPN has caught Scoop Jackson disease. (What's Scoop Jackson disease you say? Scoop's conveniently provided a stellar, unreadable example just today.) Friend has an article up about who he would pick if he had his druthers in the top ten. I mention it because Friend is fawning about Braylon, who he has at #1, but the whole thing is an excellent example of the sort of sportswriting that should be taken out behind the barn and shot. It contains a lot of this:

Cedric Benson's a con, Ronnie Brown isn't. Cedric Benson cut off his dreadlocks to impress NFL people; Ronnie Brown simply ran at the combine.

That is, sentences that substitute know-it-all bravado for intelligent conversation and make bold pronouncements with absolutely nothing behind them. Benson a "con" because he cut his hair? I bet he wore a suit, too, the phony! The whole thing is Friend pulling facts about players' lives outside of football and using that to justify his selections. As such, it gets the (new!) official mgoblog Mark of Sportswriting Disapproval:



The Old Yeller Award! For stories so obviously pained at their suckosity that the only humane thing to do is put a (metaphorical) bullet in their (metaphorical) heads!