Bo Jackson and Kansas City Sports

I finally watched the 30 for 30 special on Bo Jackson last night. It was really good, and it makes a very salient point that Bo came along at the end of a more innocent era. In that era, sports pages were dominated by sports instead of steroid use, prison sentences, fake girlfriends, etc. Anyway, I think I have a post coming some day on why I turn the radio channel every time the sports talk is about any of the previously mentioned distractions.

But today, I simply want to acknowledge the bittersweet feeling of watching a time when Kansas City sports mattered. I was a kid then, and I loved Bo Jackson. I met him when I was 12 at the KC airport, and he was extremely nice and gracious to an excited kid asking him to sign the title page of a Garfield comic book. To me, it was totally natural that my favorite Royal was on commercials and cartoons. As an adult, I can hardly imagine what it would be like for a Royal to be in the national spotlight in the same way. I can't imagine it from a Chief either.

The special last night said that the Royals were derided for taking Bo in the MLB draft. Everyone thought he would abandon baseball for an assured Hall of Fame career in the NFL. But the Royals believed it was the right move. They had just won a World Series and didn't have much to lose anyway. Back then, the Royals could do almost nothing wrong. Nearly three decades later, they can do almost nothing right. And the Chiefs just played badly enough to earn their first ever number one pick in the NFL draft... a draft that nearly everyone agrees has the worst crop of quarterbacks (their biggest need) in years.

That is just KC sports these days. Everyone assumes the Chiefs will pick a bust at number one, and that Wil Myers is destined for greatness because the Royals traded him. Hard to blame anyone for thinking that way. Bo has been gone for a long time.

Any Questions, No Questions.

Of all the crazy things I have heard in the gun debate thus far, I think maybe the craziest is that one of Obama's executive orders was to allow federally funded research on gun violence for the first time since 1996. We live in a very strange world.

NBA Draft Note

So, this is pretty off topic for right now, but I was just thinking about it...

If you are an NBA drafting over spot 5, don't take a center. That is all.

Gun Rights

Is the unspoken message here that in the eyes of the NRA not only do gun owners have rights, but so do guns themselves?

Rathner says the NRA will ask for an accounting of every weapon turned in and then go to court to stop the firearms from being destroyed. If that doesn't work, Rathner says they'll change the law.

We have now reached the point where gun advocates thinks more guns are the answer even for people who do not want them. We are nearing the end, right?

Good Thing Kansas is a Long Way From Water

The House finally passed a relief package for Hurricane Sandy victims. Sixty-seven Republicans still voted "no" for the package, including the guy who represents a Katrina-devastated district in Mississippi.

Closer to home, all four Kansas Reps voted no making Kansas and Montana (which only has one Rep) the only two states to vote unanimously against helping storm victims. Here in Missouri, Republicans were a bit more generous with only Sam Graves flipping the bird to the coast.

So I guess the question is whether coastal reps will remember the next time Kansas has a devastating outbreak of tornadoes.