Kick ‘em When They’re Down

By MikeBullock  |   Wednesday, August 04, 2010  |  Comments( 0 )

Oakland Raiders
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One of the absolutes in professional sports is this: the better you are the more some people will hate you. Take the Los Angeles Clippers for instance. How many people, outside of Southern California really have an intense hatred for the Clippers? Now, flip that and look at the professional powerhouses like the New York Yankees, Dallas Cowboys and, you guessed it, the Oakland Raiders. It seems, the higher you fly, the harder some people want to see you fall, and when you do fall, the faster they’ll shovel dirt on you to try and keep you down.

So, it stands to reason that if you’re the team that once held a winning record against every other team in professional football, the haters will get out the pitchforks and torches every chance they get. From the constant hate mongering that takes place within 50 feet of Chris Mortensen, Adam Shine and other talking heads to the comments by ex-players like Warren Sapp, it’s a sure bet that if you want to hate on Oakland, you’ll have people lining up to listen. And, once the team looks as if it’s about to turn the corner and climb back to the stratosphere, the hate chefs turn up the heat.

Case in point: Darrelle Revis, the New York Jet cornerback and, according to some, best DB in the league refuses to play for less money than Raider great Nnamdi Asomugha is pocketing. While that in and of itself isn’t really hateful, ex-Raven coach Brian Billick took the opportunity to fan the flames of Raider hate by actually blaming the Raiders for paying another player who, according to some, is the best DB in the league.

“I think the big difficulty for this is the fact that the top cornerback contract in the league right now is Nnamdi Asomugha.” Billick quipped. “And to let the Raiders, who are notoriously bad negotiators, to let them set the standard you now have to negotiate against, that’s a cap guy or a general manager’s worst nightmare.”

“Because the agent for Darrelle Revis is simply going to say, `Hey, this is the contract we’re basing it off of.’ He’s not going to listen to, `No, no, that doesn’t count. That’s the Raiders.’”

So, the issue apparently isn’t a good player tossing out the prima-donna card and refusing to man up and play for a contract he agreed to when he signed it. The issue is actually the Oakland Raiders.

Riiiggghhhttt….

Nice try, Billick. You already know that the Broncos have a head coach, right? As does San Diego and Kansas City. Cheap shots at Oakland won’t land you a job coaching in the AFC West anytime soon.

Next thing you know, Billick will blame Oakland for the oil spill in the gulf.

Billick, a product of Redlands, CA currently holds the California high school career interceptions record with 21 picks. Somehow, I fail to see how that translates to cheap shots at a California team that has a corner far better than he ever was. Maybe Billick is still stinging from the play where Tony Siragusa cheap shotted Rich Gannon to propel the Ravens to the Superbowl over the Silver & Black. Or, maybe he simply ran out of logical things to talk about on the radio and decided to babble nonsense.

We may never know.
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