Jos Verstappen has backed Ferrari’s push to allow top teams to enter third cars in formula one. “For the teams it’s not expensive as the parts are already there,” said Dutchman Verstappen, who usually drove for the kind of small constructors that Ferrari president Luca di Montezeolo is now so critical of. But 38-year-old Verstappen [...]
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Remember that depth the Browns supposedly had at the running back position? Let’s just pretend we never brought it up. In a way, the Browns did take advantage of that supposed depth, as Peyton Hillis has emerged as the featured back this season. However, it also came at the expense of Jerome Harrison and James Davis’ playing time. Harrison was traded a few weeks ago and Davis is now the latest running back to be let go, as the Browns have released the 2009 seventh-round pick.
With Montario Hardesty out for the whole season, let’s just say that the running back position has not panned out how anyone expected. Hillis was definitely going to contribute, but to the point of single-handedly ending the tenures of both Harrison and Davis? The Harrison-for-Mike Bell trade certainly sealed Davis’ fate, but he wasn’t getting any playing time before then either. Once Hillis stole the show, it was all but over for everybody else.
While I don’t think Jerome Harrison or James Davis would have been the answer at running back, it might have been beneficial to give them some more carries, just to make sure. Hillis is probably more effective when he’s splitting at least some of the carries, as his running style is conducive to injury, as he has already shown. They guy’s tough, but who knows how durable he’ll be.
With Hardesty’s injury history, the running back position is once again shrouded in some uncertainty. Let’s at least ride the Peyton Hillis gravy train for now and hope that it keeps rolling.
In his three-hour radio bonanza explaining his departure from the Kansas City Star last Friday, Jason Whitlock dropped some potential bombshells about the paper’s top editor, Mike Fannin. Chief among them: Fannin had an inappropriate relationship with a direct subordinate (Holly Lawton, whom he promoted to sports editor), and that he drank excessively and used drugs in front of colleagues.
Well, Hearne Christopher of Kansas City Confidential (and an ex-Star staffer) weighed in on Fannin yesterday, and let’s just say that, after these two portrayals of Fannin, we don’t love his chances to continue in his current job.
Christopher mentioned drinking a lot with Fannin when they worked together at the Star, but he said that was just a part of a “friendly and open working relationship.” When it gets really interesting is when Christopher mentions discussing Fannin’s upcoming promotion to editor of the Star:
It was at an April 2008 kickoff party for the Star’s new weekly Ink at the nightclub Mosaic in the Power & Light District that Fannin told me Zieman had offered him the editor’s post. I congratulated Fannin and wished him well, but he went on to explain that he’d turned the position down.
The reason: Fannin said he’d told Zieman he had too many skeletons in his closet and if he became editor the Pitch might write an embarrassing expose.
Of course, eventually he took the job. Christopher looks into what some of the worst skeletons might be:
Stanford & Sons comedy club operator Craig Glazer had told me years ago that he’d snorted cocaine with a Star sports writer and Fannin at his club, prior to Glazer’s 2001 drug bust. While having a little nose candy may not be a capital crime, it’s not something the Star would be pleased to read about in the local newsweekly.
To bolster Whitlock’s widely broadcast claim, I can assure you that people I know who worked at the Star were under the strong impression that Fannin was having an affair with his immediate subordinate Lawton.
So that’s both Whitlock and Glazer who mention drug use by Fannin, both Whitlock and Christopher who provide accounts of him drinking to excess, and apparently a ton of people at the Star virtually certain of Fannin’s affair with Lawton. And not surprisingly, re: Fannin-Lawton, Christopher makes plain:
Two former Star editors have told me that having an affair with someone you directly supervise and then promote is grounds for immediate termination.
Emphasis his. Again, a rule like this only makes sense, but if it applies to Fannin – and let’s face it, there’s a LOT of smoke here – he might not be long for the Star.
Whitlock (of course) met some opposition from some other people he targeted Friday, chiefly former sports editor Rick Vacek, who wrote this e-mail rebuttal to KC Confidential. But it’s tough to make any judgments on that relationship with no third parties weighing in.
In Mike Fannin’s case, Hearne Christopher gave us that third party. And everything we’ve heard points to Fannin acting in a way ill-suited to a paper’s top editor. Whatever else one might think of Friday’s WhitlockPalooza, available evidence strongly suggests that as far as Fannin is concerned, Whitlock indeed spoke truth to power.
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