Jon Gruden is John Daly's enabler

Jon Gruden is John Daly's enabler
You may have seen the news from the golf world that renowned swing coach Butch Harman has dropped pupil John Daly, because Daly's more focused on drinking than he is on actually golfing. Oddly, the same could be said of just about everyone I've ever played golf with.

What you might not have caught however, was that Jon Gruden was wrapped up in the whole fiasco.

Rain delayed the PODS Championship this past weekend, and with some time to himself, Daly went to enjoy himself at the Hooters hospitality tent, and signed his autograph on some lady's pants. When the rain cleared and Daly finished the round, he did so with Jon Gruden as his caddy.

“I’ve let him know that after his actions of last weekend, we are no longer together,” Harmon said. “In all honesty, I’m a very busy person. I’m willing to help the kid, but until he helps himself and makes golf his No. 1 priority, I’m not his guy.

“Jon Gruden caddying, I thought was ridiculous. I thought he made a circus out of the whole event.”

Honestly, I'm a little surprised at Gruden for doing it. Maybe Daly wasn't going to make the cut anyway, but still, the man is (at least supposed to be) a professional. Not that I'm going to launch a crusade to protect the sanctity of the PODS Championship, but if you're a tournament organizer, you'd like for Daly to at least pretend that the thing matters to him, right?�

If the situation was reversed, and the Buccaneers were getting blown out, I don't think Gruden would get plastered at halftime and then let his pal John Daly take over as offensive coordinator for the second half. Gruden's the one in this situation that should know better.

• Swing coach dumps Daly because of ‘shenanigans’ / Yahoo! Sports

A novel approach: Sue the supplement maker
Obafemi Ayanbadejo is not the first NFL player to claim that he tested positive for steroids because he took a supposedly-legal supplement that somehow got tainted. It's more commonly referred to as "the Shawne Merriman defense."

Merriman never bothered to actually go through with the lawsuit, though, which left everyone feeling like he was full of goose manure. Ayanbadejo, however, is going through with the lawsuit, which makes his goose manure content seem a little lower.

From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

“I took a supplement that had a banned substance in it that was not listed on the bottle,” Ayanbadejo said yesterday. “I know a lot of guys have been using that excuse. But I said from the beginning that I was going to sue the company and make sure that whoever was responsible would face the music.”

He said the stigma of testing positive in January 2007 has helped keep him from getting back in the league.

Maybe he's right, and maybe the company wronged him. If that's the case, I hope he wins his lawsuit, but, as Pro Football Talk points out, the NFL has a strict list of supplements that are approved for use. And while it's not actually against the rules to stray from that list, you know that you can't get burned if you stick to the list.

• Ayanbadejo Sues Supplment Maker / Pro Football Talk
• Ex-Aztec sues supplement maker, shop over failed NFL steroid test / SignOnSanDiego.com

Miami signs safety Keith Davis away from Cowboys
Keith Davis became the latest unrestricted free agent to leave the Cowboys when the strong safety agreed to a two-year, $3.5 million deal with Miami on Tuesday the Dallas Morning News reported.

Davis, who had drawn interest from several teams since the free agency period started Feb. 28, said playing time was a key factor in his decision to leave Dallas.

"It's a great opportunity for me," said Davis, the Cowboys' special teams captain last season. "I'm here to compete for a job, and I want to help turn the organization around."

Brett Favre is a woman, says someone who is sort of like a woman
In discussing Brett Favre's retirement speech, I did note that it was a blubberfest, but it never crossed my mind to criticize the guy for it. I only thought of the words of The Big Lebowski. "Are you surprised at my tears, sir? Strong men also cry ... strong men ... also cry."

Especially in sports. It's not like Warren Schmidt retiring from the Woodmen of the World insurance company in Omaha (though that has its own challenges).�

Here's the difference, here's what Laura Ingraham didn't get, and here's why it's going to lead to tears: You do not become a great athlete without a strong passion for what you're doing. If you don't love to play, and if you don't love and trust your teammates, and you're not willing to sacrifice your body to make a play for your team ... you're not going to be great, and you're never going to be a part of a great team. Favre was great, in part because he did all those things.

Having teammates is not like having coworkers. You develop a bond with teammates that goes beyond what you develop with Yvette, the middle-aged woman in human resources with the Garfield calendar.�

In football, you have to trust the people you work with. And it's not the kind of trust where you're hoping they'll get the Power Point presentation done on time. You have to trust that a guy will break his back in order to protect you. It's 11 men vs. 11 men, all trying to do great bodily harm to one another. That tends to bring a group of 11 people together.

Brett Favre routinely picked Donald Driver up over his shoulders after touchdowns. Favre's passionate nature and the bond they had to develop led to that sort of thing. When's the last time you threw Yvette from Human Resources over your shoulders?

And he's letting go of all that. All the effort and passion and sacrifice he put into his job, all the bonds he had with his teammates, all the camaraderie he established with his boys ... that's worth shedding a few tears for, yes?

Anyway, I don't think any of this factored into her thinking when Laura Ingraham went off on Brett Favre. She just saw a man crying, which contradicted her vision of the ideal man, which goes something like, "Man strong, man don't cry, man go kill bear, bring home for dinner for family, wife cook, family eat, man ravage wife with brute force, so wife make more babies with her wide childbearing hips."

Here's what she said:

"All these years, and I didn't know there was a woman quarterback in the NFL.

"Brett Favre ... we're watching this in the studio, obviously retiring from the NFL, great quarterback, handsome 38-year-old man, he gets up there and he does this press conference that was frankly one of the most embarrassing things I have ever seen."

"That's a great message for young boys. 'Get up there and act like a girl and start blubbering like a baby."

Then, in her best impersonation of a crying toddler with its favorite toy taken away, she wah-wah-wah's while uttering in a mocking tone, "It's about me, it was never about me, but it is about me, bla, bla, bla" before returning to her regular voice and stating, "I could not believe what I was seeing."

My initial reaction is to become angry with women, and say, "One minute, you want us to be sensitive and in touch with our feelings, and the next, you're calling us women if we cry. Not fair, ladies. Please make up your mind ... because the next time an ex-boyfriend of yours calls you a naughty word, I won't know if you'll want me to defend your honor and beat him to death with a tire iron, or if you'll want me to go home and have a good cry with you."

Upon further review, however, I think the fact that Miss Ingraham works at FOX News disqualifies her from being a normal woman. I assume, like everyone else at FOX News, Miss Ingraham believes that the ideal man is a cross between John Wayne and Ronald Reagan, except not an actor, because too many actors are gay, so I'm not going to hold that against an entire gender.�

I'm still going to cry when I feel like it, and if you don't like that, I'll just shut down emotionally until your self-esteem plummets into the gutter because I don't every tell you that you're pretty anymore.

• Conservative Talk Show Host Laura Ingraham Is Officially On The Packers Nation Hit List / 100% Injury Rate