Who Is Your Mid-Season MVP?

ESPN is like a flamer on a message board. the content they churn out only seems intended to incite readers. Because you would hate for anybody to be that stupid.

How else could you explain Chris Berman? There aren't four people in this world who would agree that he makes a football telecast watchable. Yet there he is every Monday night, laying his dookie stinks on the television. And what's with his self-glossed nickname, "Boomer." Who gave him that (expletive) nickname? And why does he have to take an hour to explain his Monday night pick, when the rest of the 50 analysts in the booth just spit it out? And really, are ESPN and NBC in a war to see how many ex-NFLers they can put into one studio to make their respective shows less watchable?

Moving on ...

So it should come as no surprise that ESPN would pull a similar stunt with its poll for the NFL mid-season MVP award. Just take a look at the candidates.

Drew Brees. Yep. He's on his way to breaking Dan Marino's single-season passing mark of 5,084 yards. But he's on a last place team.

Albert Haynesworth. Sure, we can overlook him stomping a Cowboys lineman in the head. But he's the trendy pick on the defense, even though Bob Sanders is way more valuable.

Clinton Portis. Somebody on the Redskins needs to be in the discussion, so he's not a bad choice.

Kurt Warner. We don't need to go on.

So while you might not agree with all of those choices, you can see where they are coming from. The next guy on the list ... not so much. Kind of like an SAT question where you need to identify the one who doesn't belong.

That last candidate is Eli Messiah. For real. Now maybe I have spent too much time watching actual NFL games, but who are the geniuses who think that Messiah should be considered in the MVP race? I was thinking of making a post imaging how deadly the Giants would be if they had a real quarterback like Warner still running the team instead of Messiah.

The Giants seem to be living on borrowed time because they can only tempt fate so long by running the Messiah out there every game, because it's going to come crashing in around him. It has to, right?

Again, shouldn't let this kind of stuff get to me, but damn. He's like the new version of Donovan McNabb -- a loser who inexplicably is given more credit than he deserves.

Although, before my faith in humanity is totally ruined, Warner is carrying 46 percent of the vote, which is nice.