Linky Blizzard

The Starting Five asks if Brett Favre is really better than Warren Moon. For the record, I don't think Moon is nearly as good as Favre (and I certainly like Moon better--he had a good couple of years for my beloved Purple). But the point is valid: because of racism, Moon's first six years of pro football were spent in the CFL. If it weren't for this racism, what NFL records would Moon hold? How differently would we regard him? In recent years, Favre has been praised for overcoming the sorts of things that people commonly struggle to overcome, such as death and illness in the family. That sort of universal suffering should not be diminished, but there's something odd about so much praise on one person for dealing with it. But who really overcame more in his career? Moon had to go excel in Canada before he had a chance to be an NFL starting quarterback because of racism--now he's a Hall of Famer.

Via PFT, Kent Somers questions Larry Fitzgerald's commitment to winning--because he'd rather not give up the money that he has earned by his performance and that his team has agreed to pay him in a contract they gave him. If The Arizona Republic has to fire some reporters, I'll question Somers' commitment to working for a good newspaper if he doesn't restructure his contract to take less money. OK, there is some selfishness involved when an employee puts himself above his fellow employees (I once heard a story of a high school teacher that, during contract negotiations, preferred younger teachers be fired than see his wages frozen at all). But the Cardinals gave Fitzgerald a huge contract based on incentives that he met. If he hadn't met those incentives, he wouldn't be entitled to the money, and if he was really bad, he might be cut.

MJD writes about Warren Sapp's retirement. In the mid and late 90s, Sapp was a dominant defensive tackle, a player I really feared.

53 Deep discusses the Vikings' team needs for the draft. I'm now all about defensive line depth in the draft, and I also think the team should trade for some reasonable backup quarterback (Sage Rosenfels? J.P. Losman? Somebody reasonable).

When I saw the Yahoo headline and blurb about a golfer charged for killing a hawk with a golf shot, I thought it was remarkably stupid. They're really going to charge a golfer for hitting a bird with a shot? I assumed that it was an accident. No, he purposely and repeatedly tried to hit the bird with golf ball because it was noisy. A stupid quote, though, from a Humane Society executive: "Americans have no tolerance for cruelty to animals." Well, no, except for all the animal cruelty that people don't call animal cruelty and thus still participate in. The golfer should have just waited until hunting season, used a gun, and killed a different type of bird. Our laws and morals about treatment of animals are a mess of inconsistency.

Addendum
At Epic Carnival, wwtb? explains why Brett Favre's career interception record will never be broken.

Addendum #2
At Fanhouse, TAN has some interesting insights about Favre and changing media treatment of players. But here's a rule: whenever a Fanhouse post touches on race at all, absolutely do not read the comments section. You'll just get sick.