With Friends Like These

The National Football League suspended New York Jets strength coach Sal Alosi for the rest of the regular season and the playoffs without pay. If you live anywhere outside of New York or Miami, you might suspect that Sal was found shooting horse DNA into the spines of the players for whom he has been trusted to care. That would make sense, right? Not really. Instead, he received his punishment for intentionally tripping Miami Dolphins cornerback Nolan Carroll on Sunday during an otherwise routine bit of punt coverage. Bad sportsmanship? You bet. Maybe this guy thought he was channeling Woody Hayes, but if you add the twenty-five thousand dollar fine to the three weeks of missed work plus the potential earnings of any Jets playoff games, it looks like a pretty bleak Christmas in the Alosi household.
Holiday depression is nothing new for fans of the Los Angeles Clippers, but you might not expect that someone making more than a million dollars a year to play a game to be free of such anxiety. Unless you happen to be Baron Davis, and your owner happened to be Donald Sterling. Baron isn't having the best year. Donald would like him to know about it. That's why Mister Sterling has taken it upon himself to show up at all of his team's games to heckle his own superstar from the very good seats that owners allow themselves. “Why are you in the game?” “Why did you take that shot?” “You’re out of shape!” These and other less encouraging barbs are routinely hurled in Davis' face as he attempts to live up to his salary. Mister Sterling may want to investigate the power of positive thinking, given the fact that his team has already lost more games than anyone else in the National Basketball Association. It does make me wonder what the holiday party at Clippers' headquarters must look like.