Filed under: Bears, Chicago, NFL Free Agency

Shortly after Tank Johnson was released by the Chicago Bears, he said this:

“I will move on to look at another opportunity with another NFL team and make the most of the opportunity when it comes.”

Well, training camps are open around the NFL, and the opportunity hasn’t come. Johnson is an unrestricted free agent, free to sign with any team in the league, and he hasn’t. The logical inference from that is that there’s not a single NFL team that wants to put up with him.

If the Bears’ decision to cut Johnson really were as wrongheaded as the team’s critics say it was, one of the 31 other teams would have signed him. That none of them has shows that he wasn’t fired for speeding; he was fired because his lack of respect for coaches and refusal to follow team and league rules makes him more trouble than he’s worth.

Johnson has been suspended eight games by the NFL, but he can’t begin serving that eight-game suspension until he’s on a roster. There’s a good chance that he’ll never be on a roster and never play another down in the NFL.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

After being slapped repeatedly across the head and neck for a couple of years, the NHL appears to be crying uncle on the whole nobody-can-watch-their-games-on-television thing.

It appears they are swallowing their Canuck pride and talking to ESPN about getting back on the air.

The NHL and ESPN are in discussions about bringing the league’s games back to ESPN2 as soon as the 2008-09 season. Multiple sources described the conversations as preliminary. The two started talking the week of July 16 when the NHL approached ESPN about NBC’s nine-game regular-season schedule, plus the playoffs. NBC holds the rights to air the coming season as part of a revenue-sharing agreement, and the network holds a one-year option for the 2008-09 season. It’s not certain that NBC would exercise that option, given the sport’s tepid ratings on the network. Regular-season ratings on NBC averaged a 0.9 during the 2006-07 season and a 1.0 during the 2007-08 season over nine telecasts.

Hey, anything that gives us more Barry Melrose is fine with us. Though we’re still pretty certain we’d end up with Mike and Mike as the broadcast team.

Look Who’s Talking: ESPN, NHL [Sports Business Journal]

Filed under: Top Five

FanHouse’s Top Five scans the sports blogosphere for the best posts of the last 24 hours so you don’t have to. Got something for this feature? Hit us up at fanhouse@googlegroups.com.

1) Yesterday was quite a day for us headline-hungry sports fanatics: not only did Kevin Garnett finally, finally get traded — and to Boston! — the sports world lost a true mastermind in Bill Walsh. Walsh’s accomplishments (the West Coast offense; a coaching lineage to rival Moses’s) are well know, but EDSBS remembered to mention one of Walsh’s greatest additions to the football fan canon: College Football National Championship. Even then, Bo Jackson was unstoppable.

2) It wasn’t hard to find Garnett news yesterday; news outlet after news outlet jumped in on the story (albeit with differing versions of the deal) throughout the day. But lost in all of that was the fact that CelticsBlog.com, a, you guessed it, blog about the Celtics, actually broke the news first.

3) Believe it or not, Barry Bonds might have, maybe, maybe became a Devil Ray back in the day, if the chips would have fallen ever so slightly. The Sporting Orange looked at what might have been.

4) It’s the offseason, but Carnival of the NBA never rests.

5) Finally, FanHouse’s own Pat Lackey had the best take on the Mark Teixeira trade anywhere on the net. Sellers market? You better believe it.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

From the random and bizarre corner of our sports planet, Gas Lamp Ball has photos of Albert Pujols randomly playing Pop-A-Shot at a Chuck-E-Cheese. (We love Chuck-E-Cheese, by the way.)

We love the idea of superstars like Pujols being so competitive that they absolutely MUST fit in their Pop-A-Shot. A few people have criticized Pujols for not signing autographs while at the Chuck-E-Cheese, but we’ve never quite understood this. When a guy is at the ballpark, he’s a performer, and he should sign autographs for as long as he can. But out in public? Can’t a guy eat his soggy pizza and watch animatronic rats in peace? Our official position is to leave sports stars alone when they’re eating dinner. Unless, of course, they’re with a friend of the muscular, she-male type.

Pujols Hangs Out At Chuck E. Cheese [Gas Lamp Ball]

Filed under: Seahawks, Seattle

Seahawks backup quarterback Seneca Wallace is a great athlete but not a particularly polished passer, which means he’d be a natural fit to change positions, rather than hold a clipboard and wait until Matt Hasselbeck gets hurt. But Wallace considers himself a quarterback, and coach Mike Holmgren has been reluctant to move him elsewhere.

That could be changing, though, as the Seattle Times is reporting that Wallace worked on punt returns in camp on Monday. Nate Burleson was last year’s punt return man, and the Seahawks also had Bobby Engram back there yesterday, but the fact that Wallace is spending some time playing special teams is an encouraging sign that his great athletic talent might actually be used on the field.

Then again, having Wallace play elsewhere is not uncommon in Seahawks practice — he’s played offense, special teams and even defensive back in the past. The down side to having Wallace appear on special teams, of course, is that he can spend less time working at quarterback, and the Seahawks aren’t confident in third-stringer David Greene.

But the fact is, his talents would be better suited at a position other than quarterback. He and the Seahawks will be better off if he follows in the footsteps of Drew Bennett, Joshua Cribbs, Ronald Curry, Marques Hagans, Randy Hymes, Matt Jones, Rasheed Marshall, Antwaan Randle El and Brad Smith.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

The official Tank Johnson fantasy football blogger dork league has begun. [Yahoo Sports]

Filed under: Celtics, Timberwolves, NBA Fans, Featured Stories, The Word

The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones … and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.

Loyalty does not exist.

Not in sports. Not between an organization and a player. It can’t. It has no place in the relationship.

That relationship, between the organization and the player, is 100% business. It’s an exchange of services for cash. A general manager who counts loyalty as a factor when giving out contracts is a bad general manager. Keep a guy around too long because you like him, because of his past performance, because he’s such a nice guy … and you will, in the long run, pay for it.

Loyalty going the other direction, from a player towards an organization, is just as misguided. Kevin Garnett, for 12 years, has damaged his career by believing in something that doesn’t exist.

(Also at the bottom: A Mets fan does something unspeakably horrific, and the Mets respond by trading for a so-so second baseman … Daunte Culpepper talks to [of course] the Raiders … and Ricky Davis should make sure his home security system is working … )

Continue reading The Debriefing: I Could Kiss Kevin Garnett on the Mouth

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Suggested questions for today’s ESPN SportsNation chatters …
• 10 a.m.-4 p.m.. MLB trade deadline: As you can see by the Mr. Whiskers Alarm Clock, there is a mere 15 minutes remaining to acquire Norris Hopper.
• 2 p.m. NASCAR with Terry Blount: Oh no! Herbie has now entered the race, being driven by a very drunk Lindsay Lohan!
• 4 p.m. NFL with Pro Football Weekly: So how do you think that Frank Gore will … doh!

Filed under: 49ers, Fantasy Football, NFL Injuries, San Francisco

San Francisco 49ers running back Frank Gore suffered a broken right hand during yesterday’s practice, but from all accounts it’s not an injury that 49ers fans — or Gore fantasy owners — need to worry about.

Gore’s injury took place during a non-contact ball-handling drill, and although it could force him to miss the entire preseason, it’s a near certainty that the hand will be healed well enough for him to play when the regular season begins. If there’s any concern about the hand, it’s that Gore fumbled six times last year, and pain or reduced grip strength in his hand could make that problem worse.

Gore does have a long history of serious injury. He has had the ACLs in both knees and the labrums in both shoulders surgically repaired. But if anything, holding him out of the preseason will make him less likely to get hurt that seriously again. He’ll be fine.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

What were you doing when you were five? (My answer revolves around cartoons and mud). Sacramento-area native Jan Silva is attending a tennis academy in France, all expenses paid. In fact, the academy’s owner, Patrick Mouratoglou, will pay an estimated $140,000 this year to train him. Did I mention that Silva is five?

During his afternoon practice, Jan — in academy-provided Nike shoes and clothes — scampers around the court against Mouratoglou. He nearly breaks down laughing when Mouratoglou makes him sprint from corner to corner. Not surprising for a child of kindergarten age, he also is prone to temper tantrums, racket tosses and sulking when he makes mistakes.

Just like Rafael Nadal!

Gripping a racket nearly the length of his body, Jan’s fluid strokes and timing belie his age and size. He serves overhand, approaches the net to volley and can put topspin on shots, including his natural one-handed backhand.

I hear that ultrasound technology can now detect one-handed topspin in the womb. If there’s paperwork to be filled out, no use wasting precious time waiting for the kid to be born.

Could This 5-Year-Old Be The Future Of Tennis? [USA Today]