Listening to the Monday Night crew speak ad nauseum about the possible impending retirement of Tiki Barber was the last straw for me and I turned the sound down. Personally, I think players should continue playing until they physically are unable to do so because that day is coming soon. There is no need to rush it. But if Tiki is tired of getting a beat down every weekend, whatever Tiki wants to do is fine with me. The Giants will get a new running back and life will go on. What I don’t need is the announcers beating the subject into the ground, especially on something that has no bearing on the current game.
In fact, I could care less about 99% of the things said during football telecasts. I’ve been watching football avidly for 30 years so there is not much going on that I cannot figure out for myself. My question is, does anybody else care what these announcers are saying? And good lord they have a lot of announcers. Three in a booth. Four or more for the halftime show. And don’t get me started on all of the air time that’s wasted on babbling about the Cowboys problem child. To me it’s all “blah, blah, blah, T.O., blah, blah, blah, T.O.” I could care less. Am I alone?
A subject of greater interest to me than Tiki Barber retiring or T.O.’s practice schedule is the disturbing trend of wide receivers wearing quarterback’s jersey numbers. It has always been the case in the preseason when the rosters are overloaded that teams do not have enough numbers to go around in the 80s to accomodate all the recievers, so some scrubs who you knew were going to be cut would wind up with numbers in the teens. Once the the rosters were cut down and the regular season began, everything would be corrected. Then a couple of season ago, Larry Fitzgerald, Roy Williams and Reggie Williams decided to keep their pre-season number “11″s. What gives? Unfortunately they started a trend. Now there are a bunch of QBs running around in the secondary. They don’t look like wide receivers with those jersey numbers and I just can’t get used to it. It affects who I root for. I knew Santonio Holmes would be a good receiver coming into this season but I didn’t know anything about Greg Jennings. I am now an avid fan of Greg Jennings because he chose to wear #85 and looks like a wide receiver. I’m having a hard time warming up to Santonio Holmes because of the #10 he’s wearing. Instead of looking like a receiver, he looks like Kordell Stewart and I think to this day no one could figure out what the hell he was.
I realize that on some occasions, with the expanded rosters there are no numbers available in the 80s. Furthermore, some franchises have taken up the ridiculously short sighted practice of retiring jersey numbers. (Mark my words, triple-digit jersey numbers are coming soon. Now that will truly be ugly.) If that’s the case, WRs should look for numbers in the 20s or the high teens. Cliff Branch wore #21 and Ahmad Rashad wore #28 which are now more commonly seen on RBs and DBs but would still make a good number for a receiver. Harold Carmichael wore #17 in the 70s for the Eagles so there is some precedence there but to me that’s still a little low because plenty of quarterbacks wear this jersey. Gene Washington of the Niners wore #18 but that was a little before my time. Still, it’s not a number commonly worn by QBs so it doesn’t look that awkward. I think Keyshawn chose to keep #19 just to be different, but again, not many QBs have worn this jersey so I’m alright with that. Anything below #17 however to me just looks funny. I wish Fitzgerald, Roy and Reggie would exchange their #11s for more appropriate numbers. It would make it easier for me to enjoy their fine talents. In fact, if I were dictator of the NFL I would mandate it. That, and I’d put a limit on the number of words announcers can say during a football telecast. Then I would really enjoy football.