There are a few reasons I’d like to thank Plaxico Burress for turning the gun on himself and putting a slug in his leg.  First and foremost, this incident has shed light on just how uncapable of being a functional person in society Plaxico is.  Lets paint the scene here and look at just how mind blowing this incident is.  Plax goes to the club, gun stashed away (which wasn’t registered), in a state where it’s illegal to carry firearms.  Not only was the gun loaded at this point, the bullet was already in the chamber and the safety wasn’t on.  What the hell else did he think was going to happen?  Might as well pull the pin on a grenade and stash it in your back pocket while you’re at it.  Better yet, lets carry around some butcher knives in our pockets without any sheaths or means of covering them.  All of these scenarios will probably have favorable outcomes.  Okay, no they won’t.

Now lets talk about the legal aspect.  If he Plaxico gets pinned with carrying a firearm illegally (which if he didn’t would be the second best lawyer performance next to Ray Lewis getting off clean) he will face a minimum mandatory sentence of 3 and a half years in federal pound me in the ass prison.  But that’s not all, right?  There’s no way Plax was rollin to the club alone.   Sure enough, linebacker Antonio Pierce was there with him and Pierce is being investigated for potentially moving the gun.  Tampering with the weapon of a crime is a misdemeanor within the state but if Pierce happened to take that gun to, say, New Jersey, then he’s looking at a federal crime as well.

Finally, the best part about this whole situation.  The hype.  This incident has people talking; media, players, people who think Plaxico is a moron.  Violence with athletes is becoming a more and more prevalent issue.  Hell, last week Giants wide receiver Steve Smith was robbed at gun point.  Should athletes be carrying weapons?  That’s not for me to say.  It’s easy for me to sit here and bark out opinions on what guys should and shouldn’t be doing with their lives at night because I’m not in those shoes.  But is it really that hard to put yourself in a position where you aren’t going to run into the homies at 3 am and gunshots might be exchanged?  I don’t think so.

Going back on a previous statement made by their coach and front office, the Bengals mde the daring move of re-signing Chris Henry today.  My immediate reaction was nothing short of ecstatic. I make no bones about being a big fan of anyone who makes the NFL and is stupid enough to get themselves arrested multiple times and be suspended by the league.  This list includes but certainly is not limited to the likes of Chris Henry, Pacman Jones, and Tank Johnson.

Before training camp opened, head coach Marvin Lewis insisted that he and his team had moved on from Henry and were ready to put him in the past.  Playeres needed to be held responsible for their actions he said, and despite Henry publicly saying he wanted to remain a Bengal, Lewis held firm in his statement, firm that is until today.

The word is that the Bengals made this signing because they are worried about depth at wide receiver.  Chad Johnson banged his shoulder up during a pre-season game and T.J. Houshmandzadeh has been battling a hamstring injury throughout camp.  That story is all fine and good, but the problem is Henry still has a four game suspension to server, so if Johnson and Houshmandzadeh find themselves hurt and unable to go week one, the Bengals will not be in any better of a situation than they were before signing Henry.

I don’t particulalry understand the signing because of that seeming Catch-22.  But just because I don’t understand it doesn’t mean im not a big fan.  This just means CHris Henry is back into the league and we have one more player who is on my watch list as I wait for them to screw up.

ESPN has announced that, from now on, they’re changing their name from the Worldwide Leader in Sports to the Rehashed Story Network. I’d be curious to know the last time NFL Live talked about a story other than Brett Favre, the NFC East, or the New England Patriots. And whatever happened to that West Coast baseball game ESPN used to show once a week to, you know, provide baseball fans with a nationally televised game that didn’t involve a team from New York or Boston. There’s a reason that most people didn’t know about Josh Hamilton’s story until he was hitting 28 first round dingers in the Home Run Derby; ESPN doesn’t cover teams that aren’t in huge media markets.

In case you were concerned or didn’t know about it, ESPN will be airing Green Bay’s first pre-season game and their first regular season game on prime time so everyone can bask in Brett Favre’s greatness. But you must know about it already because you just watched NFL Live do a role play with Floyd Reece pretending to be Ted Thompson and Drew Rosenhaus pretending to be Brett Favre’s agent while they acted out a conversation between the two. Why would they do this? Is there really nothing else going on in the football world that takes priority over an amateur skit? Absolutely nothing that was said in the five minutes of Reece and Rosenhaus bantering has any factual weight or any relevance to the topic of Brett Favre.

Then, of course, I would want nothing more than to watch the Yankees and Red Sox play the first and third games of a meaningless June series on primetime. Why would ESPN bother showing anything other than Cubs-Cardinals, Yankees-Red Sox, or Mets-Phillies. Those are the only teams in the league right? How about giving Anaheim more than one prime time game every two months. They’re the best team in the league, at least give them some love. How about showing us Josh Hamilton, Milton Bradley, and Ian Kinsler slug balls out of Arlington every now and then? Would it kill to go to Florida and show us the Marlins, a team who is just a few games out of first despite half the team being fresh out of high school. To ESPN, yes, it would kill.

I suppose the purpose of this article doesn’t go beyond a simple rant. Nonetheless, I can’t believe that ESPN continues to get away with garbage unbalanced coverage of the sports world based on what they view as important.