NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- So part of what I’ve promised you here is more of me unleashed.
At ESPN, I was not allowed to offer any media critiques, and that was understandable. The biggest sports site around didn’t want to be critiquing competition.
Now I am free to offer thoughts on other media both good (The Tennessean did a great job getting Predators captain Mike Fisher to give them a personal account of his retirement decision) and bad (The Tennessean’s Jason Wolf is not a good beat writer on the Titans -- at all.)
I’m not looking to blow people in the business up, generally. But it's all on the table now. I have a great deal of respect for the vast majority of sportswriting and sportswriters I come across. I love reading other people’s stuff and being part of the fratenity.
These two characters invited me onto their "show." Jonathan Hutton and Chad Withrow convinced me I should do it.
It actually turned out to be amusing. And while I mocked them for taking too long with post-production, it turns out there is some significant post production.
Their limited bandwith, or something like that, forced them to break it into four pieces, however.
CANTON, Ohio -- After a day of Pro Football Hall of Fame interviews on The Midday 180 that included quality chats with Steve Largent, Jim Kelly, Bruce Matthews, Terrell Davis and Jimmy Haslam, Jonathan Hutton and I took in the Gold Jacket Dinner and then headed to Glenmoor Country Club.
There, we were among roughly 1,000 guests at Jerry Jones' party, shortly after he put on his jacket and the night before his bust is unveiled and he's inducted into The Hall of Fame.
Friends who were at Eddie DeBartolo's shindig last year said Jones worked hard to trump what rated as an all-time bash, and succeeded.
There was only one shelf of liquor, and it was a top shelf. Black wristbands like ours got you on the floor while white wristbands got people into tiered levels above where the host had a great perch to visit with friends, family and Hall of Famers and see it all unfold in front of him.
The cocktail napkins were made for the occassion. The cocktail stirrers were topped with "JJ." The glass table tops in our area covered pictures of Jones and friends and Jones' families from different eras.
He offered a short greeting and talked about the place being filled with people on whose shoulders he rode to such success as the Cowboys owner. The team's won three Super Bowls under his watch, and he helped the league move into a new television stratosphere.
CANTON, OHIO -- Titans controlling owner Amy Adams Strunk is on the NFL's Hall of Fame committee.
Friday, following the State of the Hall event, she posed for pictures with the other NFL owners and looked around for Oilers Hall of Famers to say hello.
I'm here with The Midday 180 from 104.5 The Zone, and caught up to her for a few seconds.
The Titans practice Friday night at Centennial High School in Franklin. They’ll get dressed at their MetroCenter headquarters’ locker room and hop on busses – not the yellow kind – and head off to work under the lights.
In anticipation of that, I checked in with some guys about their favorite thing or memory of the stage in their football lives when they played their games on Friday nights.
Tight end Delanie Walker: “There was always that band playing. That was my favorite thing. Once I heard that I knew it was time to play. I think that would be awesome for an NFL team to have a band. That kind of gets you hyped yup to see your band rocking the stadium.” (The Ravens do still have a band, a carryover from the Baltimore Colts. Washington has one too.)
Nose tackle Sylvester Williams: “Going to eat after the game with the boys. We used to go to Quizno's after every game. I got the bowl, I think it was a chicken bowl, a soup bowl, a chicken soup bowl. I probably haven’t had one since high school. We’d hang out for an hour or two, replay the game, talk about life.”
Cornerback Adoree' Jackson: “My favorite Friday night memory, I think it was my junior year. It was championship to go to state. It was against a team we lost to in the regular season. It was 0-0 going into the second quarter and we did a fake punt and we ended up beating them and we won state that year. Yeah, it was me on the fake punt, 30 or 40 yards.”
Punter Brett Kern: Up in Western New York, I had about three Friday night games in my whole career. Friday night though, we had a playoff game in about almost a foot of snow. I think we were the last seed and we went to this farm town down in the southern counties in Western New York. We beat them something like 47-7. I was punting and kicking. Some of the local farmers brought their snowplows out and were plowing off the yard markers, but they couldn’t get quite to the corners of the field. I had a punt that went left, it almost went out of bounds, but it stopped on the 3-yard line and it just kind of disappeared. The next play, one of our guys picked it for a touchdown and it kind of started the rout. That got us to the Bills stadium for a sectional game.”
Outside linebacker Brian Orakpo: “Man, the bright lights bringing the whole city together. That’s how it was. That whole high school feel, it’s a great feeling, I had a number of great Fridays in Houston. Texas is big on high school football. The crowds were ridiculous, like 30,000. First time is definitely an eye-opener, it’s like bigger than life, and it’s crazy.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Thursday, three national reporters passed through Nashville to look in on the Titans.
Their visits will inform not just whatever they wrote/write with a Music City dateline, but will likely color their opinion of the team, especially before meaningful games are play.
Kevin Clark of The Ringer and Dan Pompei of Bleacher Report and The Athletic are high-quality, insightful guys. La Canfora, of CBS, has been around the league for a long time and has solid connections -- though in Nashville he’s known for a disconnect with the Titans.
NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- The fifth pick in the draft, Titans receiver Corey Davis, pulled a hamstring during one-on-one drills on Thursday and was sent to have an MRI.
Coach Mike Mularkey said he didn't know the extent of the injury yet.
With Davis out, Eric Decker will move outside opposite Rishard Matthews and third-roubd rookie Taywan Taylor will be in the slot.
Here's a good look at every receiver at practice before Davis was hurt.
