Stuff shouldn't matter this much

I came home from work the other night to bizarre message on Facebook from a friend of mine, apologizing for something he wrote during a baseball discussion, that he was having a bad day and shouldn't have taken it out on me.

I literally had no idea what he was talking about.

Actually, I knew what he was talking about, as he was taking part in some trash-talking I was doing with my Red Sox fan friends over the previous week. They were all happy that the Red Sox beat the Yankees a few games, delaying when the Yankees clinched the wild card, and then when the Astros beat the Yankees in the wild card game.

I asked if they enjoyed their team's third last-place finish in four years, with one fluke World Series thrown in (which I called the "Jonas Gray" baseball season because Gray was a scrub who had one great moment). I told them the Yankees would have trouble making tee times after being eliminated because the Red Sox took all the good ones in July, and said the next thing Red Sox fans had to look forward to was Dave O'Brien welcoming them to spring training. (O'Brien replacing Don Orsillo as the Red Sox NESN play-by-play man is both an injustice and a serious thing around these parts, so the reference was hitting way below the belt.)

But even though I think very little of Red Sox fans as a whole, I knew this was just friends giving each other crab, and didn't find any of it offensive, certainly not offensive enough to block my friend (which I didn't know I had done) and then him unfriending me. Blocks were undone, friend status re-established and everythng is cool now.

Always remember folks ... it's only sports. Nothing wrong with throwing yourself into it, but it's not that important in the grand scheme of most of our lives.

* * * * *

Guys, we really need to get over ourselves.

Yes, Jessica Mendoza called the Astros-Yankees game. If you think she analyzes poorly, fine. Maybe she makes bad points, and doesn't know a lot about the game but tries to sound like a know-it-all ... wait, sorry , just had Harold Reynolds on the brain because I saw him do an ad for the MLB At Bat app, saying it's where he gets his information from. Personally, I'd hate to see how uninformed Reynolds is if he didn't have that app.

But I digress.

Jessica Mendoza doing color commentary isn't going to ruin a game because she's a woman, in spite of what some idiots were saying on Twitter, which Molly Knight did a fine job of recording. No one will have to give up his man card for listening, and it won't do any damage to any of the various parts of our anatomy.

I promise.

* * * * *

"First of all I hope your entire family contracts HIV."

The article on the health problems faced by ESPN NFL reporter Ed Werder's daughter and son-in-law is a tough read, even without what the idiot Patriots fan wrote to Werder after he defended Chris Mortensen's Deflategate reporting.

However, while I think Deflategate severed the last bit of the twine tethering most Patriots fans to both humility and rationality, I'm not writing this to pick on them, because who knows if this person even knew of Werder's family situation?

And it could have been a fan of any team who was upset about anything, because apparently, wishing disease on a person's family is what you do.

Just ... stop.

It was just a matter of when for Brendan Rodgers

When I first started watching Premier League soccer several years ago, Martin Jol was the manager of Tottenham Hotspur, and even though I didn't know the details that led to it, I knew that he was going to get sacked sooner rather than later.

Every time I watched a highlights show, whenever talk turned to Tottenham, it was always a matter of whether this game, if it wasn't a win, would be Jol's last. Eventually, it happened, and my mate Gardner and I came up with a term for the drip-drip-drip of rumors followed by more rumors followed by talk of replacements and eventual sacking ... the Martin Jol Memorial Death Watch (even though the man himself is very much still alive).

Which brings us to Brendan Rodgers, the man for whom the Jol tolled today.

I was among those fooled by the second-place finish two seasons ago in thinking that Rodgers was a great manager, but at some point last season, a combination of the realization that Liverpool's great season was largely due to Luis Suarez's presence, the players brought in with that money from Suarez being sold being mediocre at best, the crashing out of the Champions League, the poor Premier League form, the circumstances of Steven Gerrard's departure announcement caused someone to first say publicly the Rodgers could or should be fired.

Once that kind of talk starts, there's only one way to steer out of the skid, and that's to win a lot. And for a time, Rodgers pulled it off, with Liverpool going on a long unbeaten streak that pulled them to the verge of returning to the Champions League.

But then came a loss to Manchester United, complete with embarrassing Gerrard red card, and then the utter capitulations to end the season (3-1 at home to Crystal Palace, 6-1 to Stoke) were enough to get the "sack Rodgers" talk started all over again. He even acknowledged it was possible.

Realistically, the only way for Rodgers to save his job would have been for Liverpool to come flying out of the gate this season, but when that didn't happen, the sacking was never in doubt. The only question was when ownership would pull the trigger.

Today, that question was answered.

Why should Leonard Fournette have to decide anything?

Today's USA Today has a column from Christine Brennan arguing that even someone as talented as LSU running back Leonard Fournette should be allowed to declare for the NFL draft before he's out of high school three years.

I don't particularly agree with her argument, especially her statement that she'd rather trust talented college football players like Fournette in the hands of college coaches and adminstrators than agents, but I also think we're looking at the whole issue of when college football and basketball players are eligible to go pro the wrong way.

Whether it's after one year out of high school (men's basketball, women's is a little more complicated, but bascially four years; otherwise Breanna Stewart wouldn't be getting ready for her senior year at UConn) or three years (football), when the time comes, we are asking 18- to 21-year-olds, plus whoever is advising them, to make irrevocable decisions about their futures.

Remember ... irrevocable. Once that final decision gets made, before the draft, you can't go back, even if it doesn't turn out as well as hoped. (At least for now ... it could change if a rule allowing basketball undergrads to test the waters goes through.)

Why should the player have to make that decision? Why shouldn't the teams, with the adults who are getting paid to make decisions, have to make them?

Let teams draft whatever players they want, whenever they want to draft them, even if it's after high school. Make the teams responsible for making offers to the players they draft, so the players know exactly what they're getting into. If the player likes the deal, go ahead and sign. If not, go to school and see what the next year brings.

There would be a deadline to sign, and a team that doesn't sign a player it drafts could get some form of compensation. Oh, I'm sure there would be some outcry, since teams wouldn't have full control over the futures of the players in their uncompensated minor league systems, but again, they hire people to make those decisions.

So force them to make them.