One Good Thing
By No matter what happens on Tuesday, at least Evan Bayh will no longer be a United States Senator.
Speaking of which, this seems like a good time to revisit the standings for the Evan Bayh Award For Outstanding Achievement in the Field of Perceived Relevance to Actual Relevance ratio. It’s becoming a little tricky because the major candidates have maxed out their actual irrelevance, hence threatening their perceived relevance. Here’s how I think it shakes out:
- Brett Favre. Remarkably, seems to still have the highest perceived relevance of these irrelevant entries. Troy Aikman’s outrage over even the possibility that his coach would evaluate Favre, with his unprecedented one Super Bowl ring, like any other player — as if he was trying to win or something, and would bench a player who was playing badly! — was uniquely pathetic.* And this, of course, is true. (*Note to Mike Shanahan: this doesn’t mean that benching your fading vet is always a good idea. If the answer is “Rex Grossman,” you’re asking the wrong question.)
- Dallas Cowboys. The injury to the oldest exciting young QB in the game pretty much killed any perceived relevance for this year, although the fact that they’re on national TV pretty much every week the rest of the way will require some feeble attempts to claim relevance. But I’m sure the hype machine will kick in again when they have a new coach next year. Personal to Jerry Jones: Brad Childress and Norv Turner are likely to be available, and would be worthy successors! Mitigating factor: getting Dez Brant with the 24th pick really was a steal.
- Notre Dame. Here we’re starting to have real perceived relevance issues. Unlike his predecessors, Kelly hasn’t been able to knock over enough tomato cans and equally overrated former powers to even create a Potemkin relevance. Maybe the Mets can trade Oliver Perez to NBC for the remainder of their TV agreement…