Bottom of Bird Cage 3/26

While Traveling America’s Highways & Byways

This is the 85th day of the year and we flash our headlights in honor of No. 85 in Chiefs history, led by Bill Hull, Chuck Hurston, Ed Beckman and Jonathon Hayes among others.

It was on this day in 1953 that Jonas Salk announced his polio vaccine, one of the great medical discoveries/inventions in history. March 26 is a day for poets. On this day in 1874, Robert Frost was born and on this day in 1892 Walt Whitman passed away.

Also born on March 26, 1919 was actor Strother Martin, who may have summed up the situation involving the Chiefs and Tony Gonzalez best when he uttered this line from the great movie Cool Hand Luke:

“What we have here is … failure to communicate.”

The same can be said for some of what follows.

From the Dallas Morning News: As he rushed his family to the hospital, 26-year-old NFL running back Ryan Moats rolled through a red light. A Dallas police officer pulled their SUV over outside the emergency room. Moats and his wife explained that her mother was dying inside the hospital.

“You really want to go through this right now?” Moats pleaded. “My mother-in-law is dying. Right now!” The officer, 25-year-old Robert Powell, was unmoved. He spent long minutes writing Moats a ticket and threatened him with arrest. “I can screw you over,” the officer told Moats. “I’d rather not do that.”

The scene last week, captured by a dashboard video camera, prompted apologies and the promise of an investigation from Dallas police officials Wednesday. “There were some things that were said that were disturbing, to say the least,” said Lt. Andy Harvey, a police spokesman.

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That’s Ryan Moats is an NFL player is why this story was written.  If it was just Ryan Moats young black man in Dallas, it never would have seen the pages of the Dallas paper.  But that doesn’t take away from the disgusting nature of what happened here.  Our men in blue put their lives on the line every single moment and for that we salute them.  But sometimes there are guys wearing the badge who are unqualified for what is asked of them. They are either so geeked  up with fear or power that they forget about being a human, with a dying family member.  This type of law enforcement costs all the men in blue the respect due them. 

From Yahoo Sports:
The University of Connecticut violated NCAA rules in the recruitment of former guard Nate Miles, a six-month investigation by Yahoo! Sports has found. Miles was provided with lodging, transportation, restaurant meals and representation by Josh Nochimson – a professional sports agent and former UConn student manager – between 2006 and 2008, according to multiple sources. As a representative of UConn’s athletic interests, Nochimson was prohibited by NCAA rules from having contact with Miles and from providing him with anything of value.
A UConn assistant coach said he made Nochimson aware of the Huskies’ recruitment of Miles. Later, the assistant coach said he knew that Nochimson and Miles had talked.

The relationship and UConn’s knowledge of the situation are potential major NCAA violations. The findings are part of Yahoo! Sports’ ongoing look into the changing role of agents and their impact on college basketball. Agents aren’t just recruiting players from college programs, they are recruiting players for them, according to an NCAA official.

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This is the news of the day in the s ports world and reading through this story I can tell you two things: it’s not going to go away and UConn is in trouble. What’s laid out here are major NCAA violations and it’s hard to see how the basketball program will survive without some sanctions.

What’s interesting is this: schools always get in trouble for things like this with players who don’t end up providing the program anything. Remember when Kansas went on probation after their national championship victory under Larry Brown in 1988. The sanctions did not come because of the recruiting of Danny Manning, the star of that team. It came from among other things, dealings with Vincent Askew, who never played for the Jayhawks.

From San Francisco Chronicle columnist Ray Ratto: When they were the Oakland Señors.

This seems like such a small thing, but the idea that the Raiders might reference the dark ages before Davis is so radical that it makes the league’s decision to notice the Raiders at all seem tepid by comparison.

Raiders history, after all, is Al history, and the first three years of Raiders history were supervised by one of Al’s early enemies, Wayne Valley. They weren’t good years, to be sure – nine wins in three years, three different coaches, and three different homes. Indeed, the franchise would not have existed at all had the NFL not decided to put an expansion team in Minneapolis. The AFL originally wanted to put the Raiders’ franchise there, and turned to Oakland only after the Vikings were born.

But once Al was lured by Valley to save the team from the verge of extinction, the clock was restarted, and nothing that happened pre-Al ever existed, except when it could be used to gild the Davis lily.

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Interesting column and look at the part of Raiders history that Al Davis does not acknowledge, back in the first days of the AFL when Oakland and Denver were the worst teams in the league.

And yes, the first nickname for the Oakland franchise was the Señors. They joined the first group of eight teams late, after the folks in Minneapolis double-crossed Lamar Hunt and the original AFL owners by pulling out on the day of the league’s first draft. That group led by Max Winter was promised an NFL franchise, which came into that league in 1961 as the Vikings.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Mike Goff will have a chance to continue his starting streak in Kansas City. “It’s nice to be at a place where you know you’re wanted,” Goff said Wednesday after returning to San Diego for a few days.

The free agent right guard, who started every game in five seasons with the Chargers, received a two-year, $3.5 million contract from the Chiefs. The Chiefs have needs in the interior of their offensive line, and there is even talk of putting him in the mix at center.

While stressing he is focusing on the good times he had as a Charger, Goff clearly leaves San Diego with a bitter taste, a resentment at how his time ended. Despite numerous injuries, Goff, 33, has started 113 straight games, including in the playoffs, and he was perplexed that the Chargers made no attempt to re-sign him. “It’s kind of like getting blackballed out of the family,” Goff said. “I thought I performed at an optimal level. I guess somebody had to fall on the sword, and it was me.”

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The question is how much does Goff have left in his tank. He’s a gamer and every good offensive line has to have a few gamers, guys that ignore pain and injury and perform on the field, and play at a high level. Based on what they showed in ’08, Goff is an upgrade over Adrian Jones.

The best thing is, he signed just a two-year contract for less than $2 million per season. This is how free agency should be handled. If Goff has nothing left, then there’s no long term penalty to the Chiefs. Give Pioli/Haley thumbs up on this move.