5-at-10ish: Lady Vols struggles, NFL problem, Athletes and perspective, Rushmore of MJ images

Tennessee's Jaime Nared is pressured by Alabama's Nikki Hegstetter, left, and Quanetria Bolton during an NCAA college basketball game in Knoxville, Tenn., Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016. Tennessee beat Alabama, 70-42. (Saul Young/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT
Tennessee's Jaime Nared is pressured by Alabama's Nikki Hegstetter, left, and Quanetria Bolton during an NCAA college basketball game in Knoxville, Tenn., Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016. Tennessee beat Alabama, 70-42. (Saul Young/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Morning folks, hope you are well.

From the "Talks too much" studios, seeing is believing and believing is living, ergo, seeing is living.

photo Tennessee's Jaime Nared is pressured by Alabama's Nikki Hegstetter, left, and Quanetria Bolton during an NCAA college basketball game in Knoxville, Tenn., Sunday, Jan. 31, 2016. Tennessee beat Alabama, 70-42. (Saul Young/Knoxville News Sentinel via AP) MANDATORY CREDIT

Women's sports

The UT Lady Vols were once the gold standard of women's basketball. Heck, until the last decade, if you had a Rushmore of college sports programs, you'd like have put Kentucky hoops, Alabama and Notre Dame football and UT Lady Vols basketball.

Yes, we can argue that 12 ways to Tuesday, and the Arkansas track and field and the Norwegian University bobsledders are all great, but you get the idea. As for Kentucky over, say a UCLA, well, UCLA really was the product of one man's greatness, and post-John Wooden the Bruins have been for the most part a good program but far from elite. Looking at Kentucky, look how many different coaches have a national title. That screams the program is legendary more than the program hired a legend.

The Tennessee Lady Vols are facing that very real possibility. Pat Summitt's departure a few years ago has left the once proud program looking very pedestrian at the moment.

Check the numbers:

UT is 15-10 this year. Ten losses was a bad two-year stretch for Summitt in the heyday.

UT has lost six SEC games for the first time since before Naismith hung a peach basket.

UT's struggles mean advancing into the Sweet 16 - once a foregone conclusion - would have to be considered an accomplishment.

Maybe it's a testament to Summitt's dominance as much as the current mediocrity of the program.

Maybe it's a testament to the strides other programs have made.

Now comes word that the famous dad of the Lady Vols best player is having to apologize for second-guessing coach Holly Warlick.

Delino DeSheilds, the former major league infielder, current coach of the Louisville Bats AAA team and dad to Lady Vols standout Diamond DeShields, took to social media during Monday's loss to South Carolina with jabs like, "good coaching recognize bad coaching" and "trying to beat the best without her best on the court! #sad" on Twitter.

Delino DeShields has since apologized, but this type of outburst may be the biggest testament to the differences in leadership. Could you ever imagined anyone dropping that kind of second-guessing or critique on Summitt? Of course not. (DeShields' complaints were more than emotion, considering his daughter scored 21 points in 24 minutes against No. 2-ranked South Carolina despite not starting.)

UT Lady Vols basketball gets more press than any women's sports team this side of UConn and the National Women's soccer team. So image if whomever replaced Nick Saban was in their fourth year and, after three strong seasons with the foundation built, was in this mess.

Warlick, to be fair, was 86-20 heading into this season, and was 42-6 in the SEC in three seasons.

This is not to say she should be fired by the end of business Thursday, but it sure feels strange looking around and seeing UT women's hoops in its current state.

photo The Associated Press File Photo -- In this Nov. 10, 2007 file photo, Tennessee's Jerod Mayo (7) returns an interception for a touchdown during a college football game against Arkansas Saturday, Nov. 10, 2007 in Knoxville, Tenn. Mayo is a top prospect in the upcoming 2008 NFL football draft on Saturday, April 26, 2008.

NFL's real problem

Injuries happen.

Like rain and 'stuff' and all the things that fall into the Murphy's Law category of our lives.
Injuries happen, and it was the injuries that caused former NFL Pro Bowl linebacker and UT star Jerod Mayo to retire from the league Tuesday.

He's all of 29 years old http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/25485690/lb-jerod-mayo-says-hes-retiring-a-patriot-thanks-organization.

It's a growing - and for the NFL, it should be a bit troubling - trend among some of the most high-contact players in the most high-contact game in town.

Names like Chris Borland and Patrick Willis come to mind. They were former standout linebackers who packed their pads and walked away from the game.

These are the guys that the league needs more than it's willing to admit.

Those ferocious guys that cover ground like gazelles and arrive with a controlled rage that makes the NFL equally awe-inducing and Awwwwww-man inducing.

Those are the guys that handle hits on every single play.

They also are the guys that underpaid for the physical price they pay.

And, while the league's outcomes can be dictated by quarterbacks and the highlight reels are filled with Odell Beckham Jr. and Todd Gurley, the difference between all-pro games and the defenseless Pro Bowl are the talents of the linebackers and safeties who have unimaginably difficult jobs.

Mayo, who has missed chunks of the the last three seasons with a patella injury sandwiched around two torn pectorals, was one of the good guys. A guy that destroyed things on the field who was also able to leave that violence between the lines.

Yes, there will be guys chomping at the bit to replace Mayo. It's the NFL's circle of life, and the league relies on it.

Players get chewed up and spit out and fans buy the jersey of their replacement. Rinse, lather, rehab, repeat.

For the most part we as a pubic and as a collective of fans really don;t care. They are making millions, we say. We'd trade with them in a minute, we claim. Stitch 'em up and get 'em back in or push 'em aside. Either way is fine.

Sure, the random injury story catches some attention, but remember that the supposed game-changing "Concussion" movie with Will Smith looking at the league's checkered past at handling head injuries made all of $34 million dollars. That's roughly what the NFL paid Roger Goodell - for the 2014 year, and that was with a slight pay cut from the previous year.

We want the action and the fantasy stats and gambling fix and the chance to watch the carnage as we kick back a Co-Cola on a Sunday afternoon.

So we'll miss Mayo and Borland and Willis, but just for a moment because the game is in a good place right now.

But look to the future. Look five years down the road. The NFL's collective bargaining agreement is up in 2020.

The current salary cap is could reach as high as $155 million for 2016. Knowing that the league handed each team roughly $250 million each in TV money, you have to figure that the gap will be much closer to $200-million plus (if not much higher) when the next CBA is discussed. For Pete's sake the NFL pays Goodell more than any player in the league, and the league is making well into 11 figures (that's in excess of $10 billion) annually.

So as the player's salaries go up - and they will, by a lot when the next CBA is worked out - the window of carnage will shrink.

When more and more good players walk away from the game without a limp, combined with the real threat of some of the better athletes in the younger generations picking other athletic avenues, the league's biggest problem is making sure the game does not suffer.

As callous as that sounds, the league has to get safer because in the not too distant future, it will need stars to stick around rather than playing a few years and calling it a day.

Preference

We love our athletes, right?

Sure we do.

And as much as I personally like Charles Barkley, he was a role model. Whether he wanted to be or not.

That comes with taking a million-dollar check to play a kids game. It's part of the swap.

Does that mean we need Cam Newton or Steph Curry raising our kids? Of course not.

Does that mean we expect perfection from them? Well, at times we do because they are so much closer to it on a common stage that most of us have shared at one time or another.

Think of it this way: You may be the world's best widget counter ever. Like the MJ of widget counting, to the point that widget counting shoes have your likeness on them. Well, how many of us know what it takes to count a widget or how hard it may be to keep track of all those dang widgets.

But shooting a basketball? Throwing a baseball past someone? Throwing, catching, running with a football?

We all have at least some experience with that.

So, yes, some times are expectations are closer to perfection than what should be realized.

Often the great ones come close, at least in their chosen endeavors, and those skills are the reasons we connect with them in the first place.

That connection is false, though. It's a working connection that we pay for and they put everything they have into.

But it's not who they are.

Sure we are pleased when great athletes are good people, but some times those expectations are as bipolar as the dude from "A Beautiful Mind."

This is an interesting topic in sports today because of the various sides of the uber-famous we have been exposed to in the last 10 days - and covering the last 20 years.

Is Ronda Rousey's appearance on "Ellen" in which she broke down and talked of suicidal thoughts an admission of humanity or an admission of weakness? It's some of both you could argue, but would that reaction be the same if it had been LeBron James the one in tears?

Is Peyton Manning's current spot a matter of human mistakes crossing a two-decade run of nearly flawless gestures, statements and gifts? Or has the public service efforts - efforts that have generated great wealth in endorsements and have TV networks lined up to hire him when football is done - a calculated attempt to craft the message?

These are interesting questions in times in which answers are generated from perspectives and passion more than facts and quotes.

The truth is, if we like an athlete, we rationalize that behavior more times than not, and if we don't like an athlete, we pounce on the human failings of our super humans.

Thoughts?

This and that

- A lot of the recent UT football headlines almost certainly will not make next year's recruiting pamphlet. The latest from TFP UT ace Downtown Patrick Brown is on former UT lineman Mack Crowder getting arrested on five felony charges involving porn and child porn and trying to seduce a minor.

- You stay classy, Green Bay. Packers wide out James Jones recently proposed to his now fiancé. Cool, and it was around Valentine's Day and all. Jones did it at the Red Lobster by putting the ring in the basket of cheese biscuits. Bet they popped the cap on some Boone's Farm afterward, too.
- We expect more out of ourselves and we apologize, but Tuesday was the 20th anniversary of Happy Gilmore and we missed it. That's on us, and here's an interesting story on how current Tour players love the filmhttp://espn.go.com/golf/story/_/id/14777493/even-pga-tour-pros-pay-homage-happy-gilmore
- The criminal that inspired the role of Avon Barksdale in "The Wire" died this week http://nypost.com/2016/02/16/drug-kingpin-who-inspired-the-wire-character-dies-in-prison/. He was 54, and his inspiration was a key part in David Simon creating arguably the best TV show of all time.
- This is awesome. And scary http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/man-skipped-work-for-6-years_us_56c1d32ae4b0b40245c72512?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592. Yep, a dude in Spain collected six years worth of paychecks without doing any work. And yes, Stewwie, he worked for the a governmental organization.

Today's question

It's a pretty special birthday for a couple pretty talented dudes.

Michael Jordan is 53 today. Jim Brown turns 80.

First, who was better at his craft? Who was the better athlete? (We lean toward Jordan on the first and Brown on the latter, considering he was a two-sport All-American at Syracuse.)

Which has the better movie - Space Jam or Dirty Dozen?

Finally, leaning toward the one we are more familiar with, what's the Rushmore of Jordan images? What's the four most iconic pictures of the guy that changed more than sports, he changed pop culture?

Go, and remember the mailbag.

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