So Jerry Glanville was on the radio yesterday in Nashville, doing that sports talk thing. When ole Jerr was asked why, as the head coach of the Atlanta Falcons, he traded Brett Favre to Green Bay, his response made listeners sit up & listen. He said he traded Favre because "I couldn't keep him sober, couldn't keep him out of the bars in Atlanta. So I traded him to a place where they roll up the sidewalks at 9PM, Green Bay. Only thing open up there is Charlie's Chili after nine & the only thing you can get in there is with onions or without. Otherwise he would have been out of the league in three years, never would've been a Hall of Fame career." Thank you Jerry.

I've been hearing & reading how Oakland QB JaMarcus Russell has lost weight, is in much better shape & ready to take the helm & lead the Raiders. O.K. he got off to an rocky start missing the first three days of their voluntary off-season workouts, so much for being the leader. When Russell went to the 2007 scouting combine, he weighed in at 260 & he looked kinda flabby. Well on Thursday JaMarcus made his triumphant entrance at Raider headquarters & when he stepped on the scale for head coach Tom Cable, he showed just how important being a starting quarterback in the NFL is to him. He tipped the scales at 271 lbs. Way to go JaMarcus, that #1 overall money wasn't wasted on you was it?

Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount had a semi-private workout on Thursday & he showed up weighing 239 & looked chiseled. He ran 4.53 & 4.55, almost 2 tenths under his clockings at the combine. He looked great in the position drills too, the lingering question is has he matured, has he truly learned from his disastrous opening night sucker punch after the Boise State loss. Before that game, I thought of Blount as a 2nd round prospect, since then he dropped into the late rounds but now, I'm going to put him in the 4th round vicinity now.

The war of words between a large segment of retired players & the NFLPA continues. Joe DeLamielleure has been the unofficial spokesman for the retirees for several years. Before Gene Upshaw's death, he & DeLamielleure had a running feud that culminated in Upshaw saying "I'd like to break his neck!" Joe D. has a new guy in his sights now, Drew Brees. The NFLPA decided to give the retired players 2 seats on the executive committee, unfortunately, the current players decided to not allow the 'old guys' to vote on anything that the committee was considering. So basically it was only a P.R. move, their places on the executive board allow them to talk, but that's it. Drew Brees, who just signed a $60 million contract extension, put in his 2 cents at a recent meeting, "It's important that we honor their contribution to the game & make sure they're not forgotten." Joe D. responded with "I'm really tired of hearing from another multi-millionaire about our contribution to the game. We have guys who can't get health care from the union or the NFL & with many of them receiving less than $20,000 a year in pension, they are screwed. Why not recognize that? Don't pay tribute, pay us what we deserve. The union is more worried about putting together a $50 million war chest for a lockout than helping Earl Campbell or Conrad Dobler." DeLamielleure is 100% right. He made the Pro Football Hall as a guard for the Bills, gave up 1 sack in eight games against Mean Joe Greene & was elected to 6 Pro Bowls. He never made over $150K a season in his career. If they weren't able to become broadcasters, they had to take regular jobs after their playing days were over, sadly, many of these guys can hardly walk. Tough to work if you can't walk, drive or raise your hands above your head. I used to talk to a few of the retired Chiefs players & every one of them still works, at least the ones that can still get around. Think Drew Brees will need the money when he retires? I'm not picking on Brees, he does a lot for others, but in this case, he was a little patronizing.

Florida inside linebacker Brandon Spikes participated in the Gators pro day & the results were dismal. Spikes was considered a mid 1st-round prospect before the '09 season, but right now, I'd say he's no better than a mid 3rd-round selection. He ran a 5.02 forty at 249 lbs. He's always been a very instinctive player & a super solid tackler, but a 5.02 forty is painfully slow for a linebacker. Slower than any linebacker at the combine. More than 20 defensive linemen ran quicker than that. When you watch him in games it's obvious on a few plays he has speed issues, but he gets to the ball carrier & tackles him more often than not. But that's against college talent, everyone at the next level is even faster, you constantly hear rookies talk about speed being the biggest surprise when they get to the NFL. I've seen that speed up close standing on the sideline at Arrowhead(thanks Chuck), linebackers have to diagnose the play, get there in a hurry & in a bad mood. It was really an eye-opener for the NFL personnel people in attendance.

I'm having computer issues again. My repaired Dell finally succumbed to the virus that struck it a couple of months ago. I bought a 'refurbished' CPU on eBay & it worked like a champ for about 3 days. I sent it back, they sent me another & it didn't work from the jump. So now it's going back tomorrow, it's so nice to drive 60 miles round trip to get to UPS. This is one of the worst things about living in small town America, you give up some conveniences. Plus I'm trying to get another project off the ground & I need a more sophisticated computer with better software. The laptop I'm writing this with is a bare-bones device that I really don't like using for anything other than email or music. Hopefully I'll have a new CPU by late next week when our semi-genius nephew, Marty, shows up to glean some of my stuff off the original Dell hard drive. The guy I've dealt with on eBay is completely honorable, so I think I'll be back in business soon.

As I keep slogging away here, trying to build this site with hopes of actually making some income from it, the social networks are starting to reap more traffic for this website, thanks to my wife. I also must thank some other website operators & bloggers who have invited me to write something for them every once in a while. I thank the newspaper writers who email comments, compliments & encouragement. Sadly, there are a few others out there who are deliberately keeping me off their sites, I can't even post a simple response anymore. I never use vulgarity, I never call people names, but something about yours truly has caused them to make these decisions. So now Linda is going to help me get onto Facebook, MySpace & possibly even Twitter this weekend in an effort to spread the word of Richsfootballreport.com even further. I'll keep you posted as to our progress next week.