Michael Wilbon -- I'm Losing Respect Quickly

More on this later, but his comments on the Scott Van Pelt show on 6/16 concerning NFL management and its lies was so ridiculous I can hardly contain myself, but must go study now so more later.

Basically, he said teams say "We signed this player for 6 years 42 million", but they always "lie" and "never keep their promise" referring to when the team cuts that player after 3 years.

So absurd everybody knows the contracts are non-guaranteed outside of the signing bonus. The players know that, the teams know that, and the agents know that. Therefore, the players and agents get as much money as they can in the signing bonus and the first 2-3 years. There is no deception. When a team cuts a player with a non-guaranteed contract, they aren't "lying" or "breaking their promise". It is just easier to say 6 years 42 million than 1 year 17 million (year 1 salary + signing bonus) with a team options for years 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6 at 5 mil per which is roughly what such an NFL contract is.

He was irate about this when clearly he is missing the entire point.

This is the second time in a few months that he has said something absolutely absurd.

In May following the NFL Draft he said that Florida State safety Myron Rolle fell to the 6th round because "people dont know what to make of a black scholar who is a football player so they make excuses for not taking him".

Actual facts:

Rolle had not played football for the last year before the draft.
He ran the second slowest 40 of any safety in the draft.
He was never that great at FSU.
He went right where he was projected to go.

There are 3 black GMs who made a combined 21 picks before Rolle was selected by the Titans a team w/ a white coach and GM.

There are also 6 black head coaches. All of them passed on Rolle.

Rolle went in the 6th round because thats how good of a prospect he was. Race is still a very sensitive issue and for a person in Wilbon's position w/ such a large audience to recklessly make assertions like that without any basis other than his emotional (and unreasonable) suspicions is irresponsible.