No Guarantees

Dan writes about the guarantee foolishness from the Pittsburgh Steelers. The column itself is okay....nothing remarkable. Shaughnessy takes no shots at Coach Hoodie which is a nice change of pace. Shaughnessy is guilty of his typical hyperbole when he claims that if the Steelers win, Anthony Smith will become the boldest young gun since Joe Namath made his famous guarantee for Super Bowl III. Are you kidding me? The comparisons here are incredibly weak: Let's see, we have one team's star quarterback (Namath) versus a little known defender? A Super Bowl game versus a regular season game? A game in which the Jets were given little hope versus a game in which the Steelers are widely perceived as having an excellent chance of winning. An era where guarantees were not everyday pedestrian fodder versus an era where guarantees seem to be made every month (Hello Gilbert Arenas and the Washington Wizards). There is a huge difference between Namath and Smith.

I have a bigger issue with all the attention this story has received nationally and am surprised by the legs that it has had. What does a guarantee mean anyway? Is Smith going to give back his salary if they don't win? For that matter, did Gilbert Arenas really take a hit in the reputation department when the Wizards lost to the Celtics despite his guarantee? Do the Patriots really derive that much motivation from the words of a second year DB (and as Shaughnessy points out, the kid really kind of meandered into this statement--it wasnt the boldest proclamation in the world)

Here is my guarantee - Sunday's game will be a good one. Let it play out on the field and enough of this foolishness.