ESPN’s Bill Simmons has published his list of “Thumbs Up/Thumbs Down” as he gets ready for the NFL season.
A few highlights:
[THUMBS DOWN] To my least favorite story line of the preseason: Anything involving the words “Brett Favre” and “retirement.” Enough. I would rather watch footage of Barbaro grazing on newspaper sports sections that had stories about Barry Bonds, BALCO and the WNBA playoffs.
[THUMBS UP] To new Vikings coach Brad Childress, who brought some much-needed discipline back to the Vikes, but with the added bonus that he looks like someone who’d wander into the kitchen of one of those “Dateline NBC: To Catch A Predator” shows holding a 12-pack of MGD and three adult DVDs. I love this guy. Couldn’t you picture him living in a trailer with Ron Gardenhire, wearing matching wife-beaters and fighting over Powerball tickets?
[THUMBS DOWN] [Matt] Leinart lost me forever during the episode of “Punk’d” when the cops mock-arrested him and a friend for soliciting a prostitute, then agreed to drop Leinart’s charges if he sold out his buddy … followed by Leinart incredibly agreeing to do so … followed by an ecstatic Ashton Kutcher leaping out of a van to tell him he’d been Punk’d. Does that sound like something a great QB would do? Would Tom Brady or Brett Favre EVER sell a buddy like that? No way. That show told me everything I ever needed to know about Matt Leinart’s future as an NFL quarterback. Pencil them in for 6-10.
[THUMBS UP] To the Ravens for bringing Brian Billick back, but only if he promised to relate better to his players and not have as big an ego. This is the same guy who once allowed himself to be filmed by HBO’s “Hard Knocks” crew reading Rick Pitino’s “Success is a Choice” while lying on a hammock. Now he’s supposed to rein it in? Yeah, right.
[THUMBS EVERYWHERE] THUMBS EVERYWHERE: To the surreal Bledsoe-Owens tandem, which gives me the same giddy, get-ready-for-anything feeling I get every time Flava Flav is handing out clocks to drunken bimbos at the end of “Flava of Love.” Here’s Owens, the worst teammate alive, someone with a history of selling his QBs out and getting frustrated when they screw up … and they throw him together with the oversensitive Bledsoe, who takes more bad sacks, throws more dumb picks and fumbles the ball in more key spots than just about anyone? How could this possibly unfold smoothly?
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready for some football.
