The Prince of Pitchmen Passes

To the master of marketing products on TV; to the prince of pitchmen; to the sultan of sales; to the hulk of hucksters; we remember and honor tv pitchman, Billy Mays, who passed away suddenly this weekend. Mays was 50.

His booming voice; his trademark beard; his undying enthusiasm for margianlly effective house-hold products--an already struggling economy lost one of its brightest beacons. Mays made the peddler soul in all of us smile.

When St. Peter looks at his chart today, he will see Billy's name on the list and St. Peter will boldly proclaim....

"BILLY MAYS HERE....welcome to heaven."

An Open Letter to Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper

Dear Mr. Prime Minister,



Because I didn't give a lot of money to the Obama campaign I can't present this request as the formal representative of the United States, but hear me out because do I have a deal for you. I am asking you to do a great service to your cousins to the south and that is to please consider taking the city of Detroit off of our hands. I'm willing to offer you the entire city, its inhabitents and its sports teams for nothing. Now before you say "yes" I want to just go over some aspects of the deal so we are on the up and up.

The motivation for this deal on my part or more accurately the straw that broke the camels back occured on Friday night after game seven of the Stanley Cup Finals ended. As a loyal Canadian I'm sure you either watched or at the very least know that the Pittsburgh Penguins won one of the best game sevens of all-time. I have no love for the Penguins, but facts are facts. After the game was over the traditional handshakes took place between the teams and I thought I heard what appeared to be booing. I come from an area of the country where booing is an art form at athletic events so I consider myself a conniseur of booing. At first I thought this was just angry Detroit fans booing the Red Wings for blowing a series that they clearly outplayed the Penguins in. However, the Red Wing players exited the ice and the booing continued. It continued through the presentation of the MVP trophy and through the celebratory skate around the ice that has become tradition for the Stanley Cup Champions to do. Now nobody likes for an opposing team/player to celebrate on your favorite teams home ice/court/field. But, in hockey Mr. Prime Minister as you know it has become tradition for the audience, whether they are rooting for or against the Stanley Cup Champion, to at the very least applaude the newly crowned champs. Obviously this did not happen.

This was it for Detroit in my mind, not only are they the recipients of the biggest welfare check in United States history (see the bailout of GM) they could possibly be the most corrupt city in America. I know this is a lot for you to take on, but you guys do have universal health care so you know about handling welfare for large numbers of people. If it will help to sweeten the deal I'm willing to throw in the city of Toledo, Oh as well. I know this isn't the Louisiana Purchase or anything, but it does expand your tax base and you get to replace the Expos with the Tigers, the Winnipeg Jets for the Red Wings, the Grizzlies for the Pistons and the Bills for the Lions. Okay maybe taking the Lions is too much we can move them to the Upper Peninsula and nobody will know.

Think about it Mr. Prime Minister and God save the queen.

I Just Can't Quit You

Honestly Brett, stop it with the annual domination of summer sports news. I personally could care less if you come back or not. Fact is, you are beginning to ruin your legacy by appearing to believe you are 'bigger than the game'. So, please, do whatever you want. Ride a tractor in Mississippi or throw a pass in Minnesota, but understand that there are several folks out in the world who could care less at this point. Seriously, six years in a row of making a media event of your retirement is a bit much. If you were a regular working man, they would have given you a steak knife set and sent you and your wife on a nice trip and that would have been it. Fact is, it is those regular working men who have now grown tired on your act.

NFLization of America

It would be too easy to use this blogging time to discuss my boy Greg Paulus and his sudden interest in becoming the Michigan quarterback. To turn down Coach K's offer of a seat on hi bench is akin to me telling the manager at Chick Fil A that I just want a salad today. It ain't a good idea and you just don't do it. Instead I want to address a far more pressing issue for sports fans around the country.


With the NFL draft rapidly approaching I want to discuss a threat so dire that mainstream media outlets dare not touch it for fear they will run afoul of the NFL's conduct policy and that's the NFLization of America. Believe it or not I coined that phrase.

To illustrate this point I take you back a few years when a friend of my friend made an offhand comment that just ruined my week a few years back. My beloved Phillies were in the midst of yet another 90 plus loss season and he said its alright because Philadelphia is really an Eagles town anyway. Boy that really burned me up, look I'm the biggest Eagles fan I know, but the Phillies have won two world championships since 1980 and last time I checked I didn't have any Super Bowl t-shirts with the Eagles logo on it. So if Philly is any kind of town it really should be a town dedicated to a team that has actually claimed the title "World Champion" at least once.

The look I shot this guy must have cut right through his being, but later I thought it wasn't him saying that, its what the NFLization has done to our psyche. The NFL has taken over everything related to sports. Its already a given that we talk about it every week starting with training camp and preseason games in August through the Super Bowl in, yuk, February now. Then we bleed into the combine, then the free agency period, then the draft and before you know it we are in the summer and training camps are about to start. It has become a never ending cycle that doesn't leave page one of the sports section. And for what? The NFL currently plays a 16 game schedule and yeah I know they are thinking of adding one or two games, but in the end we spend all this time talking about what will amount to at most as 16 regular season games now. All this time and attention focused on just 16 games. Its too much focus for just that few a number of games.

When you look at other professional sports like baseball, hockey and basketball you have at least 80 games to get excited about. There is no way we should devote this much time and effort to 16 appearances a year. I urge you to do what you can to keep your NFLization at a minimum, for the sanity of us all.

Rites of Spring

Well, I know the winter must be ending soon. There are some annual indicators that let me know the warmer weather is on the way. In our grandparents time, they probably looked to the blooming pear trees or listened for the sounds of songbirds returning to the air. For those of us in the modern day, there are two clearer indicators of spring that we can anticipate each year. First, is that every year at this time I read the same article about Kobe, LeBron, KG or some other straight to the NBA star and how they really wish they could have been in the NCAA tournament and that their only regret about having skipped college. The article is always the same - every year. The second sign of spring is that this is also the time of year when we hear the Cubs fans saying, 'this is our year', and '100 plus years of frustration is about to be over'. Let me tell you a secret Cubs fans - no, it is not your year. But, I do appreciate you letting me know the temperatures are about to turn for the better. I am ready for that.

Make Room for Greg Paulus

Its been awhile since I last posted, hopefully this makes up for the gap.

Well I hope everyone enjoyed the beat down of the Blue Devils last night as much as I did. Contrary to popular fandom I do not root (most of the time) for the conference in which my beloved Tigers play in. I don't subscribe to the theory that one should root for their "home" conference simply so they can make the point that their conference is the toughest or hardest one to play in. Rarely does that argument ever lead to anything except more arguing.

The biggest issue to come out of the NCAA tournament (at least last night) was the fact that Greg Paulus played his last game for the Dukies. Meaning just like every other guard that has played for Coach K he now gets his honorary assistant coaching job right next to the legendary coach. Needless to say the athletic department at Duke has been spending this entire past year trying to determine how they will add another chair and still keep the current student-athletes from joining the first row of the "Cameron Crazies". Believe you me, this takes some time and effort. So if you saw Chris Collins and Wojo looking to their left and right last night as the final minutes ticked away you know they were wondering which chair Greg would be occupying.

Jimmy Award Winner Number 3

Yes, I know that I have not posted in a while. I am sure you will get over it.

So, you all remember when Detroit was snatching up wide receivers like a fat kid on cheese curls? In 2003, they drafted Charles Rogers. The history is important, because Charles has not exactly had the most memorable of careers. Anyway, Charles was recently arrested for a domestic violence issue. He is serving his time. When he gets out, FFF will hand him our third Jimmy Award for this bit of self aggrandizement that appeared in today's paper:

“I’m just going to do my 10 days, get out of the court system and try to get in shape for a comeback,” Rogers said today in a telephone interview with the Associated Press from the Oakland County jail in Pontiac. “Am I sad about the way my life has turned out? No, because I know the strides I’ve made to take care of Charles Rogers.”

Congrats Charles - keep dreaming big man.