Rob Parker of the Detroit News is a big fat idiot ... blunt enough?

With one week to go in the National Football League's regular season, several questions remain unanswered, but at least one fact is pretty much assured - this year's edition of the Detroit Lions is by far the worst team of the decade. The Lions, who have had several dismal seasons recently, have never reached depth like this. As of yesterday's 42-7 drubbing at the hands of the New Orleans Saints (and the score wasn't that close), the Lions are 0-15, a first in the NFL's nearly 90-year history. If they lose their season finale next week against division rival Green Bay, Detroit will complete the first winless campaign since 1976, when Tampa Bay went 0-14. (Of course, the Bucs had the "excuse" of being a first-year expansion team at the time. This is the Lions' 80th season. So much for experience.) All parts of the organization have collapsed, and it doesn't help that the city surrounding the team is crumbling thanks in part to the near-death experience of the auto industry. In fact, there were reports that scalpers outside of Detroit's Ford Field were trying to sell tickets to the Lions-Saints game at a fraction of the face value - as low as $10 - and still were having trouble passing them along.

And through all of this misery, much of it self-inflicted by the inept coaching and management sides of the Lions, they may not be the biggest idiots in Motor City. Nor, for that matter, are the arrogant car executives who didn't think twice about taking private jets to Washington to ask for billions in bailout money. No, the top S.O.B. in Detroit is probably Rob Parker, a beat reporter for one of the struggling newspapers, the News. It seems that Parker has made a season-long issue out of the Lions' coach, Rod Marinelli, hiring his son-in-law, Joe Barry, as his defensive coordinator last year. Granted, Barry's tenure has not been successful - Detroit's defense ranks 30th out of 32 NFL teams - but Parker's criticism has crossed the line when it comes to getting personal about the familial connections involved here. And at the post-game press conference yesterday, Parker obliterated that line. After several inquiries toward Marinelli about why Barry was still employed, the intrepid reporter threw this final question out for good measure:

On a light note, do you wish your daughter would have married a better defensive coordinator?

Charming.

To the credit of Marinelli, who looks like the kind of guy you don't want to annoy in a bar, he simply ignored Parker's crass question rather than the natural reaction of most, which would be to rip off the reporter's scalp and piss on his brain.

Now, let's be clear - Rod Marinelli, his son-in-law and maybe just about everyone on the Lions' coaching staff will be sacked within two week of the Lions' final game on Sunday. Because, basically, they don't seem to know how to coach football in the proper fashion. And it's Parker's job, as it is the job of any beat reporter worth his or her salt, to hold the team they cover to the fire if the players or coaches or ownership deserve it. Bu there was absolutely no reason for Parker to go there with Marinelli other than to show off how clever he could be. Well, Parker is now way more famous nationwide than he was 24 hours ago - that much is certain. But not for being a clever or tough journalist, but rather for being, to paraphrase a line from the beloved series Gilmore girls, a buttface miscreant, not to mention an embarrassment to his profession. And it also doesn't help Parker's case that he was caught making false statements about a Michigan State football player during a TV broadcast not too long ago, for which the News should have fired him right then and there. Or before that, when he called Henry Aaron a coward for not speaking out about Barry Bonds' quest to break his all-time home-run record. Overall, Parker has much in common with the Lions and the auto industry. Congratulations, Rob.

P.S. Oh, Parker now says, in a column that seems designed more to save his own bacon than as an actual mea culpa, that he was just "joking" with that final question to Marinelli. ("Marinelli ... just ignored my attempt at humor and moved on.") Ha ha, Rob. Don't quit your day job. No, actually, do.

Here is a video of the Q-&-A, along with the repsonses of Fox Sports' NFL commentators.

Brett Favre is dead

I was very sorry to hear of the passing of Brett Favre. He was indeed one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history, a legendary player for a legendary franchise. His untimely death at only 38 is truly a tragic event ...

... wait ... what? You mean Favre isn't dead? Oh, he just ... retired?

Well, you could have fooled me. The way ESPN and other sports outlets were running round-the-clock film reels of Favre's career highlights, the solemn commentary, the reverent music, and you would have thought the future Hall of Famer had driven his truck off of a Mississippi road and been eaten by a bear after the wreck. News flash to the media - the man is still alive. He's retiring, not ascending into heaven!

If Favre got this treatment by just hanging up his shoulder pads, God help us all when Tiger Woods decides to pack it in. The Earth may hurl itself into the sun upon that cataclysmic news.

What a pig ...

This is Bobby Petrino. He's a football coach - a successful one, for the most part. He was a major success at the University of Louisville, going 41-9 in his four years there and raising the Cardinals to a powerhouse in the NCAAs, after decades of being known as just a basketball school. He took that record to the NFL, signing a lucrative deal with the Atlanta Falcons prior to this season.

Bobby Petrino is a football coach.

He's also, as of last night, a coward and a quitter.

That's because Petrino's tenure as Falcons head coach also ended last night, abruptly, precisely 13 games into his NFL career. In fact, it ended less than 24 hours after he had led his team against the New Orleans Saints on Monday Night Football. Hours before that game, Petrino had told his boss, Falcons owner Arthur Blank, that he was with Atlanta for the long haul, despite the fact that the team had gone through a dismal season, a season that was doomed from the beginning after Michael Vick, their dazzling star quarterback, blew his career and his life by becoming the mastermind of a dogfighting ring and getting caught doing it. No, he told Blank, he had no desire to jump ship for the open job at the University of Arkansas, despite rumblings that Blank had heard in the background.

The next day, in the aftermath of the Falcons' 34-14 loss to the Saints - and Petrino's challenge to his players to ask themselves how they could improve the 3-10 team - the coach called Blank to tell him he was done. That night, he was at a press conference in Arkansas to accept the Razorbacks' coaching position.

How did he tell his former Falcon players? With a form letter hung in their lockers. It might as well have said "So long, suckers!" And just like that, Michael Vick - who was sentenced to 23 months in federal prison the morning of Petrino's last game with the Falcons - was no longer the most notorious person in Atlanta. At least for the time being.

We hear so much about how pro athletes aren't loyal anymore to their teams, their fan bases - that they're in it only for themselves and not the greater good of their respective franchises. But it's just as bad, maybe worse, when coaches pull the same act. Petrino is a doctrinaire coach, one based in discipline. He clashed with veterans on the Falcons, even cutting a popular and still effective lineman during the team's bye week as if to make a point about who was boss. He outlawed loud talking during team dinners. It was his prerogative to set team rules, as it is for any head coach - but Petrino seemed incapable of dealing with his players as men of respect. And then there was the absence of Vick, the talented QB Petrino was brought in to work with, to harness his skills into a form that would deliver those long-desired Super Bowl titles to Atlanta. The moment he was busted for the dogfighting, their season was effectively over. Petrino may have been dealt a bum hand, but he was being paid handsomely for it ($24 million over five years), and there was no reason not to suspect that he could right the boat next year, maybe the year after that.

Instead, he bailed out before his first year was even done, after effectively lying to his owner, his players and virtually everybody else in Georgia.

The Falcon players have condemned Petrino as a quitter and a coward and as less than a man, and why shouldn't they? After all, if one of them had pulled this act, the first person to blast them would have been Bobby Petrino. Blank says he feels "betrayed" by the move and also is pissed at Arkansas, whom he says didn't have permission to speak to Petrino. Almost everyone in the NFL family has blasted Petrino. Meanwhile, Arkansas apologists are speaking. "Forget everything you hear out of Atlanta," wrote Wally Hall in the Arkansas Democrat Gazette.

Yeah, Wally, remember that in two years when Petrino bails on Arkansas' ass to coach a larger NCAA program.

Falcons strong safety Lawyer Milloy may have said it best when summing up the sudden departure of his former coach. "This league is for real men," he said. "And I think he realized that he doesn't belong in it." At this point, I'm not sure what league Petrino belongs in. It surely isn't one I would be interested in watching.