Men Rejecting Passivity & Accepting Responsibility

If you saw the news today you saw that Kansas City Chiefs TE, Tony Gonzalez, saved a life last night. What was so amazing about this was part of Gonzalez's report of the event:

"She was screaming, "He can't breathe, he can't breathe,"' Gonzalez said by phone from California, where he lives in the offseason. "The whole restaurant was quiet. Nobody was doing anything."

Colin Cowherd made a comment today that this quote by Gonzalez gives a picture of the current state of manhood in America. Fifty years ago there would have been men fighting one another to help. Now, there is a room full of passivity. What has happened to our society that we will watch another person die without feeling any responsibility to help?

As Robert Lewis, founder of Men's Fraternity writes, a real man rejects passivity and accepts responsibility. Thank goodness Tony Gonzalez did that last night.

Georgia Dome Renovations

The Falcons are in the process of renovating the Georgia Dome to make it more "spirited." Looks good. Thank goodness there's no more teal and aquamarine colored seats in there.

My Wish

Every year Sportscenter does a "My Wish" series where children who have been or are seriously ill get to have their sports-related dreams come true. I have to admit it gets a little emotional here in the Barley household when videos like this come on...

My NFL Fanhood is up for grabs... (part 2)

I last left off with narrowing down my choices to the Titans, Skins, and Falcons. Randy asked me in the comments section why I didn't include the Panthers in my choices. In response to that...

I have a perfectly legitimate reason that I can't cheer for the Panthers. Two words: Ross Cushnie. He is a good friend from high school who happens to be the worst UVA fan I know. Such disgust with his fanhood has overflown into the fact that I could never possibly root for the same teams that he does, and he happens to be a die-hard Panthers fan. To root for the Panthers would be to go against any and all rules of legitimate fanhood.

So with the Panthers eliminated I narrowed my teams down to three, which are now eliminated to one. I chose to eliminate the Redskins because I feel like if I actively chose not to like them as a child, I have no right to start liking them now. The Skins were Richmond's team while I was growing up, and I never rooted for them. Plus, one of the few people I liked within the organization, Joe Gibbs, is now gone. This leaves Daniel Snyder as the face of the franchise. Ugh.

I also eliminated the Titans. What was I thinking? I would have been a bandwagoner to pick this up and coming team. I didn't even like Nashville the only time I've visited.

Which leaves...


The Atlanta Falcons - maybe I never really left them in the first place. I don't know. I guess you just have to stick with your team no matter how bad things get. What almost pushed me over the edge is that they stole USC's defensive coordinator. But let's be honest, USC went ahead and stole Arkansas' DC a day later. That's just football. Also, they have a great owner in Arthur Blank, who has cleaned out the franchise of problems (many of which were, sadly, VT players). I wish they had picked up Darren McFadden in the draft, but maybe Matt Ryan will work out even if he strikes me as being no better than Joey Harrington. The franchise has the opportunity for a fresh start this year, and it's an exciting time to be a fan. I think they even have a chance to make the playoffs considering how weak the division is. So I've been with them all along - fly Falcons fly.

My NFL fanhood is up for grabs... (part 1)

I've never been a huge NFL fan. The college game has always been far more entertaining, and I've been much more connected to the college game since that's what I grew up on. I've never even been to a regular season NFL game before. But I do find the NFL entertaining to watch in the fall. The first team I really cheered for in the NFL was the Falcons because it seemed that they were filling their roster with VT and South Carolina players. Plus, they were led by one of my childhood heroes, Michael Vick. But...

Then came Bobby Petrino. Then came the dog-fighting allegations. Then came the proof. Then came Vick being put into jail. Then came the Falcons players wearing "Free Mike Vick" t-shirts. Then came the Falcons cleaning out almost any trace of Hokies from their roster. The real kick in the gut came this past January, when Falcons owner Arthur Blank, who had lectured for weeks about the importance of honoring contracts in light of the Petrino fiasco, stole defensive coordinator, Brian vanGorder, away from South Carolina just weeks after he had signed to coach for the Gamecocks and promised to stay with Carolina for a long, long time.

As these events took place, my fanhood for the Falcons was hurt considerably, and I chose to no longer be a Falcons fan. It was too much to keep rooting for a team with everything that was listed above take place. After a year of not really cheering for anyone (though I did cheer for the Redskins in the playoffs) I'm ready to get back into the game, but am starting with a clean slate. My NFL fanhood is up for grabs.

So I opened up to possibly making any team "my team." But I needed to do this with care. This is a big decision - my sons could be cheering for this team because of me and I don't want them rooting for a dead-end franchise! After talking to my buddy, Ross, about this for a while I was able to narrow down the teams. I used the following criteria:

1) I can't just pick a front-runner. For example, picking the Patriots is out of the question.

2) Some sort of connection to the team - this would generally mean that they have Gamecocks or Hokies on their roster (or at least some SEC guys that I watched play in college).

3) Geographic location - they need to be close enough that I can watch them reguarly. A team out west would only be on tv in North Carolina once a year. I flirted with the idea of cheering for the Raiders for a while because of the amount of SEC players on their roster, but could I realistically cheer for a west coast team? The same goes with another team I considered - the Houston Texans. But they're just too far away and have a UVA guy as their starting QB.

4) Not underestimating the "gut factor." Sometimes there's just weird reasons that you do or don't like a team. For example, I considered the Vikings because they have former Gamecock WR Sidney Rice. However, there's no way I could root for a team who wears purple. Out of the question.

With all that said, here's the teams that I narrowed it down to:

Washington Redskins

Tennessee Titans

Atlanta Falcons (I know, I know - but part of me just wants to stay with them through these tough times.)

More to come...