There has been a lot of comment about the sudden death last week of former Bear safety Dave Duerson. I met Duerson when he was doing the old Back Table show and he was a nice man. He took time to speak with me and we spoke a long time. (It’s funny – the death notices show that Duerson was actually younger than me, but when someone’s a famous athlete, when you actually meet them, especially as a young person, you automatically think that they’re older than you.) I have to admit that he is one of only four Notre Dame alums that I’ve met that weren’t @$$holes.
After that, when I was working as a bank examiner, I used to run into Duerson a lot in airports, and surprisingly, he remembered me, and we always had genial conversations. I had heard that he had problems with his company, and I may have heard he filed bankruptcy, but I don’t remember exactly. But I was shocked when I heard that he died; doubly so when it was found to be a suicide.
It seems that head trauma suffered while Duerson was playing football may have had an impact on his deteriorating business, marital problems, and eventual depression and suicide. Already Duerson’s family is fulfilling his wishes to bequeath his brain to Boston University School of Medicine’s Center for the Study of Traumatic Encephalopathy, and perhaps the family will allow the center to publish the results of Dave Duerson’s examination.
Head injury is yet another issue that the owners and players’ union are discussing as the sides try to come up with a new collective bargaining agreement. Older players have had problems and are being diagnosed with symptoms that are consistent with brain trauma and deterioration, and this was before today’s NFL. I have said for over a decade that the sport needs some kind of armor because as violent as football is, it was not made for 350 pound men who can run 4.4 40-yard dashes. These young men are so big, so fast, that the hits they give and take are beyond the ability of current football equipment to handle. Some kind of armor may be necessary to protect these players.
As I said, I knew Dave Duerson, and his death is a damn shame.

What is it about Minnesota? I’ve been to Minnesota; I’ve met and know many people from the state. But they can certainly elect some real doozys. First, there’s the idiotic Michelle Bachmann, and then there’s Mike Beard.
Beard is a Republican state representative who recently argued that coal mining should resume in the Land of 10,000 Lakes, in part because he believes God has created an earth that will provide unlimited natural resources.
“God is not capricious. He’s given us a creation that is dynamically stable,” Beard told MinnPost. “We are not going to run out of anything.” Beard is currently in the midst of drafting legislation that would overturn Minnesota’s moratorium on coal-fired power plants, an effort that he backs due to his religious belief that God will provide limitless resources while ensuring that humans don’t destroy the planet trying to get them.
Now, I’m not a virulent atheist like Christopher Hitchens who believes that religion should be abolished (with much of the same fervor that he despises in the religious). However, in general, it can be said that religion has done at least as much bad to the world as its done good. More people have died over which God to worship and how one should worship God than almost any other issue other than wars for land or profit (and some of them have been cloaked in religious mania).
But this moron is actually dangerous. As I asked a few weeks ago, if even a portion of what the scientists believe is true, then climate change is happening. I heard on the radio today that scientists believe that the strong winter storms and violent rain and weather are as a result of climate change/global warming. Again, if you have children (and I have two girls), a smart person would want to hedge his bets. God may provide, but he has also not provided for many people and races over the millennia who needed divine intervention and didn’t get it.
I know – “God works in mysterious ways.” But if you believe that we have been given this Earth to nurture and keep healthy. If we are supposed to build a heaven on earth, we’ve done a really crappy job of it, and history shows that God hasn’t cleaned up our mess very well.
It’s up to us, you idiot.

Billy Ray Cyrus in an interview published in the upcoming issue of GQ Magazine says the Disney TV show “Hannah Montana” destroyed his family, causing his divorce and sending daughter Miley Cyrus spinning out of control.
Cyrus said he wished the show that launched his daughter to pop stardom had never happened. “I hate to say it, but yes, I do. Yeah. I’d take it back in a second,” Cyrus said. “For my family to be here and just be everybody OK, safe and sound and happy and normal, would have been fantastic. Heck, yeah. I’d erase it all in a second if I could.”
Cyrus and his wife, Tish, filed for divorce in October. They have three kids together and two from Tish’s previous marriage.
Billy, this is Tony here, and you are a lying sack of dung. You were a one-hit wonder, desperate to show that you weren’t, so, you sold your daughter like a ghetto pimp for millions of dollars and now you’re surprised that she isn’t a choirgirl now?
Miley didn’t get picked from obscurity; you are on the show; you help produce the show. You tried to revive your signing career through the show, and drug Miley along for the ride.
I don’t know what’s going to happen to Miley Cyrus; I hope she grows up to be happy in whatever she decides to do (although I hope she doesn’t sing for a living – the Indignant Oldest daughter has forced me to watch the show and the movie and it’s purile). Ultimately, she began being a victim in all of this, but now she’s 18-years-old and is responsible for her actions. Not even Achy Breaky Dad can be blamed for the tattoos and the photos of Ms. Cyrus with a bong at her 18th birthday party.
But Billy, you started this. You could have faded into obscurity with your one hit; but you had other plans and your daughter, your marriage and the other children have paid the price.
Looking for someone to blame – look in the mirror.

The big story in the NFL is the looming lockout/work stoppage and while Commissioner Roger Goodell and MFLPA chief DeMaurice Smith have been saying publicly that the sides have to come to an agreement soon, it really looks grim.
The owners walked out of the last meeting, and the league later filed an unfair labor practice charge against its players’ union. In Monday’s filing with the National Labor Relations Board, the league is asking that the union be ordered to bargain in good faith. The NFL says the union wants to avoid reaching a new collective bargaining agreement by the early March expiration of the old deal. The league says the union wants to decertify so it can file an antitrust lawsuit. The filing with the NLRB says the “union’s strategy amounts to an unlawful anticipatory refusal to bargain.”
A statement e-mailed by union spokesman George Atallah says the NFL’s “claim has absolutely no merit.”
I know that it is taboo to take the side of the millionaire players, the owners’ motions make no sense. The union wants to decertify? The union does not want an agreement? I don’t think that either side wants to injury, much less kill the golden cow. The NFL has generated more money this past season than ever, and despite what the league says, ticket sales and other revenues were strong except where the recession was particularly harsh (Oakland, Detroit, Jacksonville) and in two of those cases, bad teams had an impact.
The owners are crying poor; the current CBA is not fair to them. The problem is that they have not shown the union, the players, the media, and by extension the public, where they are losing money. In order to get public opinion on your side, you have to eventually show your hand, and the owners don’t want to do that.
The players want to play; they want to earn their paychecks. However, they may not want to play an extra two regular season games due to the punishment and wear-and-tear on their bodies. That’s understandable – if you already make $1 million in a 16 game season, making an additional $125,000 for two games isn’t worth the cost.
The owners have admitted that four preseason games are too much as the fans have revolted; so, owners, if you need the extra income – show us. Otherwise, the players get the sympathy.
Either way, you are doing to cardinal sin of sports, not learning from the baseball lockout.

Chicago Mayor Richard Daley, who has regularly brutalized the English language, amusing and embarrassing audiences for decades, announced that he has retained an agency to book him for speeches nationally and internationally after he leaves office in May.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Daley has signed with the Harry Walker Agency, a company that sets speaking engagements for a roster of public figures that includes President Clinton, Lance Armstrong, Bono, former political leaders and other public figures.
He’s going to be a traveling “Super Fans” sketch from the old SNL. I can here the “dese”s and “dose”s already.

My stereotypical portrait of a college bowl official is an overweight, white, balding man in bad clothes who has a bag of money that he dips into to pay off the NCAA and colleges and universities. Morals? Not important. Scruples? HA!
Well, maybe this one is closer to the truth than I realized. The CEO of the Fiesta Bowl, John Junker faces allegations of improper political campaign contributions and expense reimbursements by bowl employees.
Bowl organizers said Monday in a news release that an independent investigation is being conducted by a special committee of the board of directors and Mr. Junger is on “administrative leave” during the investigation. (Still getting paid, I’d bet.)
The Fiesta Bowl has been the target of government investigations since a December 2009 Arizona Republic report raised questions about political donations made by employees of the organization. The reports cited several unnamed past and present Fiesta Bowl employees saying they were encouraged to write checks to friendly politicians and then were reimbursed by the bowl. Such reimbursements would violate state and federal campaign finance laws, and could be misdemeanors or felonies.
Junker, who became the executive director of the Fiesta Bowl in 1990 and president and CEO in 2000, has said employees never were reimbursed and the bowl did not orchestrate donations.
There has to be lots of money lying around that goes various places, otherwise why would the NCAA, the schools, ESPN and so many others fight so hard against a true football playoff, not to mention sharing any of this apparently boundless booty on the guys who earn the money – the players.
College football has been sleazy for over a century and it isn’t getting any cleaner. All that seems to be happening is that the sums of money are bigger. And in the middle; the athletes who can’t have a job, can’t be paid (over the table, anyway) and see all of the big money being earned on the fruits of their labors. It stinks to high heaven.

Not funny – 51-year-old Rebecca Wells died while working in her cubicle last Friday, but no one noticed for quite some time. Ms. Wells was found by a security guard on Saturday afternoon slumped over her desk in the L.A. County Department of Internal Services.
I wonder about her co-workers. I think that if someone was unresponsive, someone would notice. (At least maybe a smell?) In my office, if someone is too quiet, we would investigate. (Low cubicle walls help in that regard as well.) Very sad.
Somehow, you know that there will be a Dilbert on this soon.