Donovan McNabb's First Eagle Controversy In The Post-Trade Era

Well you knew that this one would be only a matter of time. Donovan McNabb engaging in a war of words with another Eagle.......yeah, this is not one bit of surprising.

But alas, it is happening and McNabb is resorting to the pity card in his response to comments DeSean Jackson made a month ago when made this extremely hurtful, offensive, and downright degrading personal attack on McNabb. Are you ready to read vitriol the likes of which your eyes have never seen before? Okay. Here is what DJacc said about the Eagles team a month ago.....

"I don't think we lost anything, even with McNabb being gone."

O.M.G., right? I know. I am blown away and incredibly offended that a Philadelphia Eagle wide receiver would express such confidence in his team and the direction they are going in. It is incredibly evil of him and I have now lost so much respect for DJacc because he dared to express confidence in himself, Kevin Kolb, Jeremy Maclin, Brent Celek, Andy Reid, the Eagles Front Office, and the Eagles new (and hopefully improved) defense.

But, one month after the quote, Donovan McNabb felt the need to respond to such classless remarks on the part of Jackson. Get ready to read the words of a leader who always takes the moral high road and commands respect from everyone in the NFL.

"It's so wild when people get to talking when you're not there, but when you're there everybody loves you. So I guess people will go deeper into it than I will. I'm a Redskin, no longer an Eagle. I had 11 great years and I'm moving on with my life, so whoever may say things when I'm gone, more power to them, but it's not making you look like a bigger man."

AN AMERICAN HERO! After those words from that mean and nasty Eagle, it is so good to see someone in this country finally take the moral high road in responding to such mean, nasty, hurtful confidence.

Okay, sarcasm and snark aside, this is not a big deal. ESPN and the rest of the media are trying to turn this into a big feud so people because it is the off-season, Brett Favre is not making a ton of noise, and they want people to watch.

Stop. Just stop. No one said anything particularly evil here and this is not a big deal. DeSean Jackson expressed confidence in his team, McNabb may have took his words the wrong way, and that is that. This is not a big deal. This is not a big blow up. This is not McNabb vs. Owens Part II. This is something the media is trying to make into a much bigger feud than it actually is. So can we cut this crap out, not make this McNabb's showdown with his former team in weeks 4 and 10 into a bigger national nightmare than this needs to be? Thank you.

Let's Play The Feud: Keith Olbermann Vs. Bill Simmons

For a man who by his won accord wants to be with his ill father, Keith Olbermann sure has been busy with other things this past week. First he made an appearance on The Daily Show as part of Jon Stewart's piece on the new social media sensation (and disturbed the crap out of me by suggesting that he or Jon Stewart needed to pull their pants down), Chatroulette, and now he has engaged in an online feud with Bill Simmons.

I will post the back and forth in an unedited stream for the sake of easiness and flow. Keith Olbermann's jabs come from his MLBlog, The Baseball Nerd while Bill Simmons' responses come from his Twitter account, sportsguy33

Olbermann started the fight in a post mainly about Johnny Orsino's Hall of Fame Candidacy

KO:

"I promised no politics here and I stick to it. But I never said anything about never mentioning other sports, although I think I'll start that rule about a paragraph from now. If you'd like to read the most poorly-informed conclusion I've come across in sports media this year, you have your link. Proceed with caution. In short, it is the contention that the comeback of Tiger Woods will be more difficult than the one Muhammad Ali faced in the 1960's. If the writer can let me know when Woods is punitively drafted by the military even though he is about eight years older than almost all the other draftees, I'll begin to take him seriously. In the interim I am again left to marvel how somebody can rise to a fairly prominent media position with no discernible insight or talent, save for an apparent ability to mix up a vast bowl of word salad very quickly."

BS: "I'm furious that my Tiger column distracted America from a detailed and only mildly creepy case for Johnny Orsino's Hall of Fame candidacy."

BS: "KO, please know the feeling is mutual. You're my worst case scenario for my career in 12 yrs: a pious, unlikable blowhard who lives alone."

BS: "I feel bad about saying Olbermann lives alone. I forgot about his cats."

KO:

"I'd also like to welcome new reader Bill Simmons, who has been kind enough to tweet about my note here last week already ceding him the dumbest sportswriting award of 2010 for his laugh-out-loud funny argument that the comeback of Tiger Woods (caught having repeated trouble with his putts) will be more difficult than that of Muhammad Ali (persecuted by the federal government for the color of his skin, his stance against the war, and his religious conversion, and effectively banned from his sport for two years).

(KO quotes 1st Simmons tweet)

This is pretty standard stuff for Mr. Simmons. Make a fool of yourself comparing Tiger Woods (loss of advertisers) to Muhammad Ali (loss of income, threatened loss of freedom), so change the topic - to an admittedly trivial column about a trivial moment from a marginal catcher named John Orsino.

Mr. Simmons resumes:

(KO quotes 2nd Simmons tweet)

This assumes that Mr. Simmons' career now is where mine was twelve years ago (anchoring SportsCenter, then my own MSNBC political show, anchoring NBC Weekend Nightly News, writing a best-selling sports book, etc). In fact, this assumes that this is Mr. Simmons' career, which is remarkable. Also, anybody who could write as many words without saying anything of consequence really should throw around the word "blowhard" as frequently as he would a street sewer cover.

Also, I don't think "pious" necessarily means what he thinks it does.

Having made his point 50% of his words ago, Mr. Simmons still continues. As usual:

(KO quotes Simmons 3rd tweet)


Mr. Simmons apparently uses, for factual research, old parody sketches from "Saturday Night Live." I'm not surprised. That was Ben Affleck. Thanks for playing.

I am surprised, however, to be able to shed some light on something that has been a prominent topic of late around the internet: the prospect that Mr. Simmons is leaving ESPN. Admittedly I am something of an authority on this process. Nonetheless, I was stunned to receive several emails from some of Mr. Simmons' bosses there, thanking me for pointing out the absurdity of, and the embarrassment to ESPN provided by, the Woods/Ali comparison.

About five years ago, I guess, somebody said Tony Kornheiser was the most uncontrollable, unmanageable talent in the history of ESPN. I was, of course, crushed (although I believe I got honorable mention). When ESPN bosses are writing me for helping them about somebody they claim has now lapped Tony and myself, I am left to conclude only that if Mr. Simmons does leave ESPN, it may not be entirely of his own choosing.

And we now encourage Mr. Simmons to again falme [sic] the comments section under various identities, to his heart's content. This is a managed site, and they can take 'em down. But enjoy yourself.

BS: "I've said enough. This was not why I got into writing. RT @rgspiegel: Anxiously awaiting ur response to Olbermann...this should be good."

Thus ends another online feud involving Keith Olbermann!

My thoughts on this:

1). Bill Simmons working with ESPN has absolutely nothing to do with any of this at all, right? RIGHT? Yeah, that's about as true as saying the Toronto Maple Leafs are going to win the Stanley Cup this year.

2). Simmons' article is no doubt controversial, and if Olbermann wants to take the time to criticize it, that's fine by me. I mean, the timing is a little suspect seeing as he is supposed to be with his father and not humiliating himself in a feud with one of the most popular sports writers in this country, but he has a right to his opinions to Simmons' piece.

3). Olbermann clearly does not understand or comprehend the amount of people that hate his guts and the amount of people that love Simmons. He is accusing all of the nasty comments he got in the comments section of the first blog post to be Simmons using different aliases. Sadly for him, he is mistaken. For starters, I read a post from someone at OlbermannWatch who said they went there and left a comment (they then copy and pasted the comment they left at The Baseball Nerd into the OlbermannWatch comments section), and that guy is not Bill Simmons, and secondly, does he really feel as if Simmons has no fans that will defend him to the death, regardless of what Simmons writes? Sheesh. Talk about delusional.

4). Lastly, am I the only one that sees Simmons being hypocritical here? First of all, his responses were not the great and read like he was the exact same thing he was accusing Olbermann of being, a pious blowhard? And secondly, if Simmons claims he is better than getting into an online fight, then why did he respond to Olbermann in the first place? Surely he was not dumb enough to think that Olbermann would not respond to his insults, right? Fitting how only after Olbermann responds with some accusations of him (albeit, seemingly crazy ones) does he then decide to be above all of this and declare himself better than getting into such a petty argument. Sheesh. Talk about a thin-skinned hypocrite.