Regarding Frank Gore, you have to take into account perceptions and opinions around the league. Although he spent a large part of his early career on a losing team, many coaches, players, commentators and reporters have always viewed him as an elite running back, one of the three or four best to have entered the NFL in the last 10 years. Indeed, in this respect he is, somewhat surprisingly, more highly esteemed than Steven Jackson, another outstanding running back who has mostly labored on losing teams. Early impressions seem to count for a lot in the NFL - Patrick Willis is a great example - and Frank made a big impression early on.

I mentioned him as an HOF candidate because his head coach Jim Harbaugh said the same thing last night. It's not just the raw numbers - Gore has always been a tremendous disappointment to fantasy league players because he has scored way fewer touchdowns than his skills or pure yardage numbers might suggest. And I realize full well that you can point to that as partly a product of his lack of breakaway speed and therefore a negative. But if you listen to what other players and coaches say, you hear, beyond the talk of his toughness, an admiration for his total and utter absorption in the game, his football IQ, and an understated but unmistakeable quality of leadership that infects those around him.

A year or two ago there was good reason to worry that Frank might walk away from the game with a merely so-so set of measures. Not now. I don't think it's too early to be sizing him for one of those yellow jackets.

And hey, I believe both Roger Craig and Ricky Watters will eventually be elected, rightfully, to the Hall.

As for good old "Ray,', it's not that I can't appreciate the social utility of mortal sinners seeking repentance, salvation and even absolution within the rhetorical arms of one of the Abrahamic religions. Nor that I can mount any objection to the frequently positive bye-products of their efforts to enhance their rehabilitation by "good works." What I cannot abide or condone is the abject collaboration of people who should know better in the theatrical self-congratulation of a rampant, unreconstructed narcissist. Such a man should be under therapeutic care 80 hours a week and otherwise be walking around with his mouth taped shut. He should not be given any sort of platform, local or national, to indulge in the kind of egotistic ranting that demonstrates only that he has learned not a jot about humility or cohabitation with his fellows, rather that he is the "ME" who should be celebrated five times per sentence as opposed to anyone or anything else, including this god he appears to have befriended. Tune in accidentally to one of this monster's press interviews and what you hear is "ME, ME, ME, ME, god, ME, I, ME, I, ME, ME, ME," and how his teammates exist purely to provide further proof of his extraordinary, predestined sainthood as a leader of "men." It's sad, it's sorry, and unfortunately it's something that probably should have been arrested thirty five years ago, before he could walk or talk. I mean that seriously, in full awareness of the research into the importance of pre-natal and early infant nurture to the development of potentially violent members of our species.

But I guess what I'm saying comes back to the basic reaction I had last night: I can't stand a phony.

Last Edited By: Win80 01/22/13 12:54 AM. Edited 1 times.