Let me clear my throat.

After a good couple of weeks on some different subjects for a big time sports columnist like myself, I have decided to get back to “real” sports this week and rant about a few things that really frost my cookies.

How about the crazy baseball trade deadline? Every season about a month before the trade deadline, all the sports talk radio guys and all the sports channels start trade talk. Every season the biggest stars on the worst teams are rumored to be going to the Yankees, or the Red Sox, or the Mets, etc. This year was no different. Being a Reds fan, I can tell you that when Adam Dunn, Sean Casey, and Ken Griffey, Jr. all came up in trade talks, it got my attention. I heard those three players were going to about 10 different teams. Sources said that the action as the deadline neared would be the hottest ever.

Well, Matt Lawton got traded. Who’s he? Exactly. Matt Lawton was the biggest name traded by the deadline. The same thing happened last year, nothing. In fact, the trade deadline isn’t even the last day for trades in Major League Baseball. As long as a player clears waivers they can be traded. The whole thing is a travishamockery. This message is to all the experts who hype this event up every year. Let’s wait until there’s actually a BIG trade before we start hyping something that is a letdown every year.

Here’s another thing that flosses my nostrils. All these NFL players that are going to hold out and not play this year until their multi million dollar contract is renegotiated into a MULTI MILLION DOLLAR contract. What? Exactly. You make millions of dollars a year and now you want more. Well, I guess all those people were right about athletes being greedy. Look at Terrell Owens, he is making pretty good money and is playing on a Philadelphia Eagles team with a shot at the Super Bowl, again. TO is not happy, he wants more money. The only problem I have with that is, he signed a contract, a pretty good contract, and he is not starving. Unless he can prove that he was forced at gunpoint, I have to side with the Eagles on this matter.

I know, I know, some of you are saying, “Players can be cut at anytime in the NFL and the teams don’t have to pay the remaining money on the contract. If the owners don’t have to honor the contract, then the players don’t have to either. If the players want to hold out for a better deal that helps them, then there should be no problem.” Wrong! Wrong! If these players don’t like the way the contracts are in the NFL, then they can play baseball or basketball where the contracts are guaranteed. These players are given an opportunity that millions of people would slap their momma to get a chance at. If you make millions of dollars and are in the prime of your life, shut up and play ball. And some wonder why the general public thinks athletes are greedy and selfish.

Here’s another thing that grills my grits, football in the summer. The NFL seems to start the season earlier and earlier every year. Football is a fall and winter weather sport. There should be a temperature limit on football. It must be below 60 degrees to start a football game. Who enjoys watching or playing football when it is 90 degrees outside? Is that really the type of game conditions Dick Butkus or Art Donovan would play in? Heck no! If you tried to make them play football in 80 or 90 degree weather, they would have ripped your face off.

I have an idea, let’s play football in the fall, that’s ingenious, I know. It takes 100 years of football before someone of my intellect can figure that out. I know that high school and college may not be able to do this, and that’s fine. They have to play a little earlier than the NFL, but the NFL can at least start the season in late October. At least let me have a whiff of fall, at least let me see some leaves start to change, throw me a bone over here.

Those are a few things I had to get off my chest this week. Sometimes you have to let it fly, know what I mean? Maybe next week I will return to my series on fake sports. Maybe I can write about checkers next week. Until next time.