I was reading this Rob Neyer article, and he was talking about how great Bo Jackson was. To this day he is one of my favorite all time Raiders. I loved his Tiger handheld game as well. He dominated Deion in the battle of the best two-sport athlete by a long shot. Unfortunately for Bo, and for us, his career ended far too early. It got me wondering why there aren’t more two sport athletes these days, but if you look at the salaries back then he wasn’t making close to what guys are today. Granted it was the early 90’s, and with inflation money was worth a little more than it is now, but his final year in Oakland he earned $1.6M, and in Kansas City he pulled in $2.6M. I’m not saying this is chump change, but the crappy players weren’t quite to the point of getting paid ridiculous amounts of money during Bo’s days, and even the best players weren’t completely paid. So my thinking was that as contracts rose in EVERY sport the need to play more than one sport lessened. The last guy I can even think of that stood out in two sports was Charlie Ward being the general for Florida State’s offense in football and basketball, but even he didn’t play two sports professionally, which I think proves my point that athlete’s don’t need to play two sports anymore because the money is so ridiculously good in whichever one they choose. The closest thing we’ve had recently is a Nike commercial with Lebron blocking a field goal for the Cleveland Browns. With the very real possibility of a lockout for two of our sports (NFL and NBA), I wanted to throw out some ideas for guys and types of players that I think would try to make the jump to another sport either out of boredom or the need to support the $500,000 a month spending lifestyle. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Curling
Vernon Davis Inspiring Curlers
I’ve actually watched a lot more of the Olympics than I thought I would. I never understood curling until this Olympics, nor really cared to in the past. I guess I thought it was more like shuffle board, but it isn’t quite as simple. For some strange reason I caught myself watching some stones getting thrown around on the ice in Vancouver, and I would’ve never guessed who happened to be in Vancouver as an honorary coach! He is also an avid curling fan. Give up? San Francisco 49ers tight end, Vernon Davis. His presence didn’t speed up the painfully slow paced event, but he joined the booth crew to help announce one of the matches between Switzerland and the USA. Not sure if we won, because I didn’t make it through the grueling 3 hour match, but we were ahead at the time I turned the channel. Vernon went on to say a few interesting things like “I love curling.” “I’ve tried to get teammates to come out and play with me, but they usually just laugh.”
As an honorary coach some people are actually angry at Vernon for not leading the curling team to a better record (USA is 2-7 Men’s and Women’s combined). Really, you want to blame Vernon for not doing well when he didn’t even arrive at the games until yesterday!?! It’s funny that their first two wins happened to come right after Vernon delivered a pre-game speech to inspire them to victory. He even said that the atmosphere last night was like being at a 49ers home game. Really, THAT exciting?!? Or are 49ers games only selling 5,000 seats a game? I wouldn’t blame Vernon for our shortcomings in curling, since he’s NOT even playing. I blame the popularity of the sport within the US. Maybe we need some NFL players on our curling team, so we can take home the gold next time around. I’d definitely watch every match of team Davis, Gore, and Willis! Could you imagine Patrick Willis walking down the ice sweeping huge holes in the ice making those rocks go wherever he wants it to go? I’m sold, sign them up Vernon!
I had to scan youtube for some Vernon curling action. I think it’s safe to say in this clip he looks happier than a pedophile on Halloween. I actually think he looks more passionate about curling than he is about football! We could have another Bo Jackson on our hands!
