Oh my God.

Someone, anyone, please punch this man in the face.  (By "this man" I don't mean Florio, I mean D. Orlando Ledbetter, president of the Pro Football Writers Association.  Although Florio could probably use a good face punching too so if that's convenient feel free to handle it.)

“The Pro Football Writers of America, the official voice of pro football writers fighting and promoting for access to NFL personnel to best serve the public, is extremely disappointed in the lack of meaningful access to Seattle running back Marshawn Lynch at the Super Bowl XLVIII media day on Tuesday,” the PFWA said in a statement issued by president D. Orlando Ledbetter.

“Several of our long-standing and high profile members were appalled by Mr. Lynch’s conduct and refusal to answer any questions. We find the statement that by the league that ‘Players are required to participate and he participated’ to be an affront to our membership. However, we are encouraged that the league will continue to closely monitor this situation.”

DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE DIE

Your move, BBWAA.

Fucking idiot thinks Alex Smith should have made fucking idiotic play

Mike Florio, peddler of ridiculously misguided moral indignation, guy who has the reading comprehension skills of a 5th grader, the floor is yours.

While perusing Peter King’s always-indispensable Monday Morning Quarterback column,

MMQB is completely dispensable (unless you're looking for discussion of designer coffee, the Red Sox, fruit-flavored beer, and The Office). Big Daddy Drew's writeup of MMQB is indispensable (if you like to laugh).

I remembered a point that got lost in the frenzy of weekend football action.

This point got lost because anyone who tried to make it in front of the people they watched the game with was immediately laughed out of the room.

The thrilling finish we enjoyed on Saturday shouldn’t have happened.

In MMQB, King takes a great look at the bowling-ball block from 49ers tackle Joe Staley on Saints safety Isa Abdul-Quddus that cleared the final portion of Alex Smith’s path to the end zone for a 28-yard go-ahead touchdown run.

Really, King's writeup had little to do with the point Florio's trying to make. He just wanted to do some networking during his post by posting a link to King's column. Coincidentally (OR IRONICALLY?????), King himself constantly networks within his columns, although I can't recall him networking with Florio at any point. Probably because Florio stinks, big time.

But Smith arguably

Florio loves misusing "arguably." Unfortunately, there is nothing arguable about what Smith did on the play Florio's about to address.

should have gone Brian Westbrook, taking a knee at the one with 2:11 to play. (And, yes, 2:11 was left on the clock when Westbrook infamously sacrificed a touchdown.)

THAT PROVES HE SHOULD HAVE DONE IT! TEBOW THREW FOR 316 YARDS AGAINST THE STEELERS! COINCIDENCE??!?!?!?!?!!?

The clock would have trickled to two minutes, the Saints had only one timeout, and the Niners would have been able to milk the clock under 40 seconds before kicking what would have been the game-winning field goal.

Game winning field goal, huh? Well that settles it. Good thing that hypothetical field goal that would have gone through the uprights at :38ish would have won the game. The TD "drive" highlighted by the Jimmy Graham catch and run that the Saints put together in real life after the Smith TD took :34. But a game winning field goal is a game winning field goal, so I guess it wouldn't have mattered if the Saints had scored that TD or a similar one after the hypothetical FG. The game would already have been won.

Instead, the 49ers left the Saints and quarterback Drew Brees way too much time — and Brees took full advantage of it. Fortunately for the 49ers, Brees took too much advantage of it.

Looks like the Pro Football Talk editor had MLK day off.

Instead of having to pull the latest Dwight Clark/Terrell Owens rabbit out of their hats, the 49ers merely should have had to keep the Saints from scoring a field goal with roughly 30 seconds on the clock.

Something they doubtless would have done, except for the fact that the Saints scored a TD in roughly 30 seconds in that same situation in the real game. In a tie game, and if you're going to be able to run the clock down to :01 before the kick so that the worst case scenario is overtime, I say don't score the TD. In all other situations, you've got a lane to the end zone, fucking take it or risk being labeled the second biggest asshole in sports history after that one guy who returned the fumble the wrong direction and threw it out the side of the end zone.

Florio's post in its entirety should have read: "Remember that time Westbrook took a knee instead of scoring because doing so meant the game was over as long as Philly didn't fumble any of the next three snaps? Alex Smith wasn't in nearly that same situation on Saturday, but still, that Westbrook play was awesome."

PS- the Cardinals arguably should have let the Rangers score more runs in the game 7 of the WS, because then they could have produced a more memorable finish if they came back to win.

Ridiculous Moral Indignation: ur doin it rong

By now you've probably heard the "story" (sarcastic quotation marks used because as the main subject of the story herself says, this is not actually a story) of Jan Cavanaugh. She's the Packers fan/cancer patient/autograph seeker allegedly snubbed by Aaron Rodgers as he walked to the team's Atlanta-bound plane last Friday. Now, all of the following are rational responses to the viral video that shows Rodgers walking past Cavanaugh without acknowledging her:

1) This is one 3 second video, we don't really know the context. Hard to judge Rodgers' entire character on this alone. Maybe he does other charity work and/or has given this woman an autograph before. (Both possibilities true)
2) Rodgers is wearing headphones, who knows what he was and was not aware of at that moment. (If you're Mike Florio, you speculate that Rodgers wore the headphones to make it easier to ignore cancer patients looking for autographs)
3) Players are not obligated to sign autographs for anyone and everyone at all times even if the autograph seek does have cancer and is a die hard fans of the player's employer. (Cavanaugh's own reaction, see below)

Of course, none of those angles appeal to sportswriters. #1 involves looking at all sides of an issue/situation, something 95% of sportswriters are too fucking stupid to do. #2 is too practical. #3 is too blindingly obvious and prevents sportswriters from being morally indignant about something that calls for no such perspective. So of course ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio (a breathtakingly useless writer employed by a breathtakingly useless site that we should write about far more often) took the easy way out.

Aaron Rodgers has a lot to learn about where his money comes from

Alternate title: Mike Florio has a lot to learn about how the business of professional sports works.

We realize that only two days ago we defended largely unlikable Bears quarterback Jay Cutler from a mailed-in attack by ESPN’s Rick Reilly.

The Rickster? Mailing in a column? Never. Also: anyone using the first person plural to talk about themselves deserves a square and vicious kick in the balls.

But since Reilly has yet to attack Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, we feel no need to defend him. (Yet.)

In fact, we feel the need to crucify him using shitty logic and pointless moral outrage.

Rodgers makes a lot of money because people are willing to pay to watch him do what he does, and because they’re willing to sit and watch him do it on television, while being bombarded with advertisements and networks promos.

True. Keep in mind that Rodgers does not make money because people think he's a swell guy. At least, not primarily. Of course being a non-asshole is good for a player's career, but before they can benefit from that kind of thing they have to be, uh, good at sports.

Without fans, football would be lacrosse. Or indoor soccer. Or postseason baseball.

Boom. Roasted. Take that, baseball. Your TV ratings for divisional round playoff games that start on weekday afternoons are not very good. That proves once and for all that football is better than you.

So football players need to be willing to pause and sign an autograph or two from time to time. Especially when the person seeking the autograph is female, is wearing copious amounts of NFL-licensed pink apparel, and has very short gray hair.

If players are going to stop and sign for anyone, I agree that cancer patients should be at the top of the list. Unfortunately, as previously stated (and as known by anyone with a brain since it's a really basic and obvious fact), athletes who are really awesome don't need to be willing to stop and sign for anyone. They don't. They don't owe it to anyone, they don't "need" to do it for anyone, and I think it's a stretch to say they "should" do it for anyone. The best way to put it is that they "can do so if they want." But you already knew that, because you have a brain.

Look- like any other fan, I want athletes to be nice. Especially the ones I cheer for. I can appreciate the occasional puff piece about one of them doing something really cool and charitable. But I'm not so much of an entitled prong as to think that any athlete owes fans anything. They owe their teammates, coaches, and management something. But they don't owe me shit. They don't work with me or for me. End of discussion. If you think otherwise I suggest you get your head out of your retum. When an athlete signs autographs, I say "Awesome! That guy rules!" When they refuse to, I shrug and feel neutral about it.

Hey, it’s a free country. Rodgers has an inalienable right to choose to behave like an ass.

Fuck the charity work the guy does, and all the other autographs he's ever signed in his life-including one for this very fan-this incident proves that Rodgers should be skewered by the media.

And the rest of us have an inalienable right to tell anyone who’ll listen that he’s behaving like an ass.

ExACTly. Good for you, Florio. This is a much easier way of generating pageviews than your normal method of making up trade/transaction rumors. Way to be the watchdog who makes sure no athlete gets away with snubbing an autograph seeker. AMERICA NEEDS TO KNOW WHEN THIS KIND OF THING HAPPENS. HOW ELSE WILL WE KNOW WHO TO HATE FOR NO GOOD REASON?

Rodgers needs to realize that without people like Jan Cavanaugh, whose passion for pro football prompted her to go to the airport after a radiation treatment in the hopes of getting Rodgers to sign the pink hat with the Packers logo that she always wears, make his entire lifestyle possible. Otherwise, he’d be no different than a guy who’s really good at throwing darts or horseshoes or cornhole bags. He’d derive personal satisfaction from the use of his God-given skills, but not much if any money.

And Florio needs to realize that people like Cavanaugh might be slightly disappointed if they don't get an autograph, but they will continue to watch NFL games on TV, attend them when possible, buy NFL merchandise, and generally structure their entire lives around the NFL. Like most others in the world, our country is sports-obsessed. Our star athletes can more or less do whatever they want off the field as long as they don't kill anyone.

Do I hope that every person who wants an autograph gets one, especially when the person is a cancer patient? Of course. I've also heard of a man named Barry Bonds, who was a shameless user of illegal drugs (and eventual cheater once baseball got around to officially banning those drugs) and a world class asshole who treated 90% of the people he ever met like complete trash. Barry made a kajillion dollars throughout the course of his career and to this day remains wildly popular with a large number of fans. Why? Because he was good at what he did. And throughout the course of the modern history of sports, there have been hundreds and hundreds of Bondses. Rodgers isn't the Bonds of quarterbacking in terms of skill level, of course, but he's not a long ways off. And that's why is doesn't fucking matter whether he signs autographs or not.

We hope this strikes a chord with all pro athletes. The fans are the reason you get paid the big bucks. And it would be wise to show some gratitude, especially when it’s obvious that one of those fans isn’t blessed with good health.

Now I'm starting to think Florio himself was snubbed by a player at some point and is still carrying a grudge about it.

We also hope that Rodgers and/or the Packers track down Jan Cavanaugh and make it up to her. The fact that Rodgers would crap on a rare moment of happiness for someone whose entire life in consumed by fighting the disease and contending with the physical, mental, and emotional effects of it should make the stomach churn of anyone who has cancer, or who has seen a loved one stricken by it.

Jan Cavanaugh, what say you about this whole deal? (From the news link at the top of the post)

"I am very unhappy with people making so much out of this, because this really isn't that big of a deal. It's up to the players to decide who they want to give an autograph to, and that's their prerogative."

Three cheers for you, lady. You just made me hate the Packers a little less.