clinton's weblog of the present and near future

Brett Favre has informed the Jets he plans to retire. Cross your fingers and hope he means it. It’s time for Favre to finally go after collapsing down the stretch, costing the Jets the playoffs and Eric Mangini his job.

The Jets can now look forward and are $10 million or so under the salary cap for next year. All speculation is that they’ll attempt to bring someone new in to fight with Kellen Clemens for the QB job. After last season, with Joe Flacco in Baltimore and Matt Ryan in Atlanta, I’m not really worried about who the starter is.  I want the Jets to sign Bart Scott away from the Ravens and turn Vernon Gholston into, at least, a contributor on defense. If that happens, the quarterback becomes less important. They’ll just need whoever it is to limit mistakes, manage the running game, and not collapse in December.

Favre will hold a press conference at 6. I’m going to guess that he won’t cry this time.

UPDATE: Here’s a link to an ESPN story with audio from his retirement conference call and another link to Kerry Rhodes on the Doug Gottlieb show. In other news, Doug Gottlieb has a radio show.

On Saturday, Sports Illustrated reported that Alex Rodriguez was one of 104 players to test positive for steroids in a 2003 test that was supposed to be confidential. On Monday, he admitted it and apologized.

Going forward, I think we have to assume that most, if not every player used steroids sometime between the late 80′s and 2003. MLB is screwed now because Rodriguez was supposed to be the guy that was going to save baseball’s records from Barry Bonds. I guess not. Baseball has been trying to sell us that steroids are in the past and guys like Bonds, McGwire, Palmerio, and Clemens were gone from the game, so let’s move on. Not anymore. His positive test and admission means that for the rest of his career, and anyone else whose name is leaked, the specter of steroids will be hanging over baseball.

Obviously and unfortunately the steroids crisis isn’t over for MLB and it isn’t going to be for a long time. It’s important, again, for Bud Selig to come out again and do something to address the issue. My idea would be to exclude anyone who’s ever tested positive from the Hall of Fame. I don’t care if that starts with these 104 positives that were supposed to be anonymous or any test following them that led to a suspension. Either way, kicking guys out of the Hall of Fame is a serious consequence for anyone good enough to have a lasting impact on the game.