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According to ESPN’s Mark Schlereth’s Twitter page, Brett Favre has told Brad Childress he is staying retyired.

Favre is the NFL’s all-time leader in passing yards, passing touchdowns, completions, interceptions, and consecutive games started at the quarterback position. He played in Green Bay for 16 years, and spent last year with the New York Jets after coming out of retirement once.

I think it’s the right move. People have said last year tarnished Favre’s legacy, and  I think playing with the hated rival Vikings would have left a sour taste in the mouth of Packer fans in the same way Wade Boggs did when he signed with the Yankees. Stay in retirement and keep the memories of Packer fans fond.

Favre will be 40 this year, and will be a first-ballot Hall of Fame choice when he becomes eligible in 2013.

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Breaking news from Nashville – Sahel Kazemi did, in fact, shoot and kill Steve McNair before turning the gun on herself, according to police ballistics reports. This confirms what we already knew after reports that the police found the gun below her body, and after autopsy reports showed her one wound was a “contact wound”, meaning the gun was placed directly to her head.

This all but closes the case, unless the police choose to waste time trying to discover a motive. It’s not like they have anyone to ask: her friends and family are in denial that she would do this, and there were no witnesses present. And finding out why she did it won’t bring either of them back. It’s time to move on and let the families mourn in peace.

McNair, 36, and Kazemi, 20, were found dead early Saturday afternoon in McNair’s Nashville condo. McNair was shot four times at point blank range (while he was sleeping on the couch, as reported by Nashville police) before Kazemi claimed her own life.

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In the world of sports, it’s usually drama or violence that makes the most interesting stories. The human being has a morbid fascination with people acting spoiled (i.e. reality television) or violent crimes. I’ll admit, I don’t get off on it myself, but it makes for good reporting. I just wish I didn’t have to write about what happened this afternoon.

Around 2 pm, the body of Steve McNair was discovered in a Nashville apartment. He and a yet-to-be revealed woman were shot dead: the reason, unclear. McNair was 36 years old, and 2008 was his first year out of the NFL following his retirement after the 2007 season.

Anyone that was lucky enough to have either played with or watched McNair play is, without doubt, hurting severely from hearing the news. McNair was an unselfish leader and a player that didn’t know when to quit. He consistently played with injuries and never complained about his salary or team management. Steve McNair was the leader every team needs.

His diverse abilities as both a passer and scrambler helped turn the Houston Oilers, a laughingstock in the AFC, into a team one yard away from winning the Super Bowl years later, after they located to Tennessee and became the Titans. Alongside Fran Tarkenton and Steve Young, McNair is the only other quarterback to throw for more than 30,000 yards and rush for 3,500 yards over the course of his career. He was elected to the Pro Bowl three times, and with Peyton Manning, was the 2003 NFL Co-MVP.

Off the field, McNair was an even better person than he was a football player. The first thing he did after being drafted by the Oilers in the first round of the 1995 NFL Draft was buy his mother, who had raised him and his siblings alone, her own tract of land and built her a new home. McNair frequently volunteered with United Way and other organizations.

Steve McNair leaves behind not only the friends he made during his years in the Titans and Baltimore Ravens organizations, but also his wife, Mechelle, and four sons, Steve Jr., Steven, Tyler, and Trenton. On a day taken aside to celebrate the freedom and independence of our nation, a tragedy such as this reminds us how valuable life really is. Keep the McNair family, their friends, and former teammates, in your prayers.

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A recent trend in punishments for college football programs is the vacating of past wins. Being the cynic I am, I don’t agree with this practice, and here’s why.

The old system worked. If a school cheats at recruiting, or if they put academically ineligible players on the field, they deserve to be punished. The NCAA used to put schools on probation, which would limit their number of available scholarships as well as banning them from postseason bowl games for a certain amount of time in more severe cases. The team, as a result, is unable to sign as many players per recruiting class, forcing players to walk on to the team and ensuring a lesser talent level. Without the talent level or legal ability to play in a bowl game for x amount of years, usually three, the team loses some of its prestige and money. A devastating blow to the program in such a manner ensures the coaching staff won’t try to pull a fast one on the NCAA again.

For some bizarre reason, the practice recently has added vacating past wins to the loss of scholarships. First of all, how do you vacate a win? Do you go back in time and forfeit, changing the records of both the team and their opponents? No, you can’t do that. And to change the records after the fact creates controversy due to the fact that a possible fraudulent loss could have been the difference in a team’s season, whether it would have resulted in a national championship or bowl appearance, or even to save a coach’s job. It doesn’t mean anything to go back and say the win is vacated. You can’t change what happened, so don’t label it with some bogus asterisk.

By vacating wins, you’re also tainting a coach’s legacy whether it’s his fault or not. Take the recent example of so many Florida Gators and their arrest records. Urban Meyer is catching heat for it for no reason – the overwhelming majority of those players with arrest records were recruited by former Gator coach Ron Zook. A similar situation exists with Nick Saban and the Crimson Tide. It was under Mike Shula’s watch that Alabama players abused their scholarships to obtain free textbooks and other materials for other students, yet Saban’s team has to forfeit 21 wins. An appeal has been made, but the point remains valid; Shula isn’t even at the school anymore, so what is the point of vacating wins and punishing current players?

Even being a Gator fan as I am, I’m most appalled by the current situation involving Bobby Bowden and Florida State’s current vacating wins scandal. A number of students cheated in their classes, and became academically ineligible as a result. I’m not disputing that. If you cheat, you should be expelled immediately. The fact that the school did not expel these students, nor did they notify Coach Bowden of their cheating, is what angers me. Here is one of the greatest coaches of all time in any sport, nearing 80 years old, and being told he has to surrender 14 wins because of something he didn’t even know about. Bowden is currently one game behind 82 year old Joe Paterno for the all-time wins record, and both are active coaches. This effectively gives Bowden, the former holder of the record, absolutely no chance to win it back.

NCAA officials, you should be ashamed of yourselves. Are you honestly going to deprive a great coach and innocent man the chance to regain his record? Are you honestly going to smear his good name over something the Athletic Director should have been punished for? I hate the Seminoles as much as any Gator fan, but this is injustice. There is no telling how this will affect Coach Bowden, and given his age, it could be more serious than the NCAA has considered. You could be putting his already questionable health at risk by inducing stress over this whole situation, and that’s not right.

Florida State has appealed the ruling, but let’s face facts – it’s not going to happen. They already lose scholarships for this violation, and I think a postseason ban is more appropriate. Playing one fewer game every year for three years is a much more fitting punishment than giving up two years worth of victories. The NCAA needs to take a long, hard look at itself and re-evaluate this travesty of a system before it’s too late.

Let me give you something else to think about – Spygate. Remember that? The New England Patriots were caught filming the opponents’ signals on the sidelines, then reviewing the tapes at halftime. At least nothing Florida State or Alabama did was directly cheating; nothing occurred to change the outcome of the game. The Patriots were cheating to ensure being able to read the defense and offense, hence calling audibles and turning the tables in their favor. But wait a minute, that’s not all. New England had just won three of the last four Super Bowls, which included this practice as far back as taping St Louis Rams practices the week before their first Super Bowl win. All the NFL did was take away the Patriots’ first round draft pick the following year.

Are you kidding me? Cheating that directly affected the outcome of many games, including Super Bowls, and all you’re giving them is a slap on the wrist? That’s just disgusting. All three Patriot Super Bowl wins were by three points each. You’re going to take away wins from Bobby Bowden over something he didn’t know about and let Bill Belichick keep wins and championships when he personally ordered the cheating practices? Give the Rams, Panthers, and Eagles the Super Bowl rings they deserve. After all, they nearly won in spite of the dubious practices of the Patriots. If you’re going to vacate wins for college, do it for the professional games too.

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As reported today on the 6 pm Sportscenter, Broncos WR Brandon Marshall has asked for a trade. What’s the deal here? Does any current Bronco player even want to play for Josh McDaniel? The answer is yes, the ones without egos the size of INVESCO at Mile High. First, crybaby Jay Cutler, who demanded a trade after learning the Broncos had tried to trade him. Now their star wide receiver wants out too. I say good riddance, and here’s why.

Brandon Marshall is a poison. His legal troubles are nearly limitless, but to name a few, being indirectly responsible for the death of teammate Darrent Williams (the gunman had previously had an altercation with Marshall’s cousin), domestic violence (three times at that), driving under the influence, driving without license or insurance, and battery. Can someone please explain to me why this guy isn’t in jail yet? Mike Vick gets busted for fighting dogs once, gets slapped with nearly two years, and this guy beats his girlfriend annually and still isn’t behind bars? Don’t get me wrong, Vick is a pretty lousy human being, but Marshall makes me sick.

Not only does he break the law, he’s a distraction. Remember that touchdown celebration Brandon Stokley had to stop? The one that would have given the Cleveland Browns a chance to score again after the Broncos just took the lead? No good teammate would do that. After you score the go-ahead points, you quietly go back to the sidelines like classy players from the past (namely Barry Sanders) would do. You especially don’t perform a celebration with a prop (Marshall planned to use a white glove) since that counts as unsportsmanlike conduct. A 15 yard penalty during crunch time when your team is trying desperately to make the playoffs just because you want to voice some political opinion? Save it for post-game interviews and let football be about the game, not ulterior motives.

So you get rid of one problem in dealing Jay Cutler, replacing him with the very competent, underrated Kyle Orton. It’s not like 1000 yard wide receivers are a commodity in this league. Eddie Royal was just twenty yards shy of that mark during his rookie year last year, and had just one fewer touchdown than Marshall. Let a good kid step up and take the spotlight, and please, get rid of that troublemaking wide out unless you want another Terrell Owens situation. And to be fair, if you wanted that, you could have signed him when Dallas cut him.

With the addition of Orton, the Broncos need to change focus. He works best in an offense much like Ben Roethlisberger; keep him under 25 attempts, run the ball down your opponents’ throats, and he won’t make any critical mistakes. The Broncos just drafted running back Knowshon Moreno from Georgia in the first round of this year’s draft, so all the pieces are in play. Deal Marshall, use your game managing quarterback with one bright young receiving star, and focus on the two-back running back system. It’s a smart move; if you can pound the ball through defenses like the Panthers or Giants did last year with their two feature backs, what reason do you have to air it out every time? Both those teams won their divisions, and the Giants previously won a Super Bowl with that blueprint. And if you remember correctly, the last time the Broncos were Super Bowl contenders, they had a pretty good running back named Terrell Davis, one of the best quarterbacks we’ve ever seen at managing games in John Elway (though his stats don’t look like that of a game manager), and a star receiver in TE Shannon Sharpe. It worked before, it’ll work again.

So where do you send Marshall? Why, to a team desperate for receiving talent and a total disregard for the character of their players – the Oakland Raiders. Al Davis should be chomping at the bit for this opportunity. He seems to like guys that pose problems, i.e. JaMarcus Russell, who held out of training camp for so long because of a contract dispute he didn’t hardly get to play his rookie year. Maybe Marshall could reunite with former teammate and fellow loudmouth receiver Javon Walker, the other player present when Darrent Williams was shot, and the guy who demanded a trade to get away from that god-awful excuse of a quarterback Brett Favre. Those two were meant for each other. Denver, heed my warning and do the right thing. For your image, for your fans, and for your self-respect.

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