Who cares if you can speak when everything you say is crap?

This week's AFL news has consisted mostly of one issue: AFL identities who feel they have something to say being pilloried for saying it. Jason Akermanis – by most accounts a good man, if a little too self-indulgently fond of the talky-talk – has played his last AFL match after collecting his pink slip from the Western Bulldogs, while coach Kevin Sheedy has been gagged by the brains-trust at the AFL's newest franchise Greater Western Sydney for his caustic assessment of arch-rival Mick Malthouse and successor Matthew Knights.

Both Aker and Sheeds have the cred. They've walked the walk over long careers: fifteen and forty-plus years respectively, and both are entitled to feel that they can and should talk the talk. But here's the trick: do we want to hear what they have to say?

I'm sure that these icons of the game will be remembered more for their on-field achievements than for their media (in)abilities. And they should be: Sheedy was the archetypal back-pocket plumber while Akermanis was nearly nonpareil as a sublimely skilled midfielder. Both are multiple-premiership winners and occasionally have had innovative and interesting observations about the state of Australian Rules Football. But on the whole, they like many of their counterparts have absolutely nothing new to say and we find ourselves assaulted either by boring, boring column inches or half-baked ideas (now known in the industry as “pulling a Grant Thomas”).

We cry out for articulate athletes. We desperately hope after a big match that someone snatches a mic and cuts a WWE-style promo: we love to see emotion as it comes out on the sports field because we identify with that joy, anger, frustration and despair. But given the climate of fear under which our sports stars now live, all we get is “We're just taking it one week at a time” or “We are focusing on our structures”; sporting banalities equivalent to the nod and mumbled “sorry” offered when you accidentally bump into a stranger on the street. You mumble “sorry” because you've been subconsciously programmed to do so but sports stars don't have the luxury of subconscious training. Under the instruction of team management, players say only what they are 100% sure will not be offensive, revealing or fuel-for-the-fire. Image Is Everything and this age of constant information in which we live means that nothing falls under the radar any more. Everyone has just enough information to draw their own half-baked opinions and, for better or worse, half-baked opinions aren't what generate commercial success. Any comment must be considered carefully or remain unspoken; it's easier and safer to spurt cliches so that's what athletes do. Better that than expose themselves to being hung-drawn-and-quartered in trial by media. The average athlete's media independence is now practically nonexistent and players are not the slightest bit empowered by clubs in their dealings with the press. We love truth as we love emotion, so we want to see unbridled superstars taking their chances when picking up a mic – the suits do not. The age of Akermanis is ending, and it may signal the media-empowered player is joining the flamboyant one on the AFL's endangered species list.

Should we care what these faux-journos have to say? I'd go as far as to say that unless someone writes something heinously or consistently offensive – and make no mistake, Akermanis' column on gays playing AFL was just that – then Aker, Sheedy, Grant Thomas, Bob Murphy and L'il Gary should be judged by exactly the same standards as those with journalism training. The ultimate test for an article, or indeed a column, is the response it receives: if it's crassly or poorly written then it should receive little or no response. Everyone now has voice and the most important thing now in the world is to be heard whether you have something to say or not. This is trap into which Sheedy and Akermanis have fallen – spouting what's on your mind just to be heard – and a trap into which the world, with it's MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube is also rapidly falling.

I couldn't care less what most AFL players see fit to say. Take for example Li'l Gary. His column each week in the Sunday Herald Sun is possibly the greatest waste of four minutes reading time I have ever encountered. I have read lettuce with more to say on Aussie Rules than him. Each time I've braved his prose, I find myself thinking that my life could have been seriously enriched by reading four minutes worth of anything – the back of a chewing-gum wrapper, the contract for second-hand sale of a 1955 caravan to a new owner, Mark Latham's autobiography, anything – else. But fool me once, shame on me ... fool me twice and I deserve to pay the stupidity tax.

A few weeks ago I was stopped by two rappers in New York City. They shoved CD-singles into my hands and told me they were raising funds for a national tour or something. I should have given the CD back and kept walking but I didn't, and then came the request for money. There were two of them and one was nearly as big as I am, so I paid them $6 and chalked it down to the Stupidity Tax – I deserved to lose my $6 because I knew what to do and didn't do it. Reading Gary Ablett Jr's Sunday Herald Sun column is much the same: you pay four minutes as stupidity tax and think I'm never making that mistake again.

But Li'l Gary doesn't have much media training. He's not genuinely outgoing nor is he at ease with cameras or computers: his best talents lie in chasing around a lump of leather and air. He's been given a voice, but should not use it – he has nothing to say. Neither do Sheedy or Aker have much journalism schooling, it's all been on-the-job education. Nothing more is to be expected of all three other than what they've produced because they often pipe up when they've nothing to contribute. They are nothing more than a representation of the late-noughties' quest to be heard. What they must realise however, is that there's nothing wrong with keeping quiet when you have nothing helpful to say.

Steinbrenner's greatest legacy

This week, the North American sports fraternity mourns George Steinbrenner, former owner of the New York Yankees who passed away of a heart attack aged eighty on Tuesday.

Beginning in 1973, Steinbrenner's reign at the top of the Yankees proved tempestuous, going through growing pains for over two decades. It didn't pay too long to be the Manager of the Yankees - “Manager George” changed them with the same frequency as most of us change antivirus softwares – he employed 20 bosses through his first 23 seasons. General managers fared little better as the Yankees discarded 11 over a thirty year period. His teams started off winning sporadically, but over time fortunes improved and last season he saw his Yankees win their seventh World Series under his tenure with a 4-2 win over the Phillies. Along with those seven titles came 11 American League Championships. Famous initially just for his involvement with the Yankees, Steinbrenner was launched instantly into public consciousness soon after taking over for his tendencies to overvalue the benefits of personal grooming: shortly after purchase he took down the numbers of all the Yankees whose hair he decreed as too long. Other times reprimanded or even benched stars like Goose Gossage and Don Mattingly for having hair, beards or mutton chops not to his liking. Steinbrenner was the archetypal Meddling Owner and the forerunner for such fantastical owners as Mark Cuban and or Dana White*.

Unquestionably though, he became most famous of all for being George Costanza's boss on Seinfeld.

Voiced by series creator Larry David, the Steinbrenner character was portrayed as a random, constantly rambling buffoon who placed more importance on Calzones, Tyler Chicken and the merits of a good, hot soak, than he did the fortunes of his baseball club.

This was my first introduction to George Steinbrenner and to be fair, my defining knowledge of the man is of the parodies he engendered. So his passing got me thinking: Which sporting identities could be parodied in such a way as to become sitcom characters? Given that – let's face it – most secondary sitcom characters have only one defining characteristic or joke and are rarely afforded time or want for character development (cf. “The Todd” in Scrubs; Seinfeld's own Evil Genius Newman; any character in Big Bang Theory or Two and a Half Men – the list goes on), so each would really only need their own physical, mental or emotional idiosyncrasies and a profile large enough that the viewing populace could reasonably recognise them without assistance.

The first that leapt to mind were:

The 1987-88 Washington Bullets (Players, NBA, err ... Washington Bullets)
Well, really only two of them. The Bullets in 1987-88 sported the equal-tallest player in NBA history, Manute Bol (7'7), and the shortest, Muggsy Bogues (5'3). Call 'em what you want: Little & Large Show, The Odd Couple, Manute & Minime ... Coupled with Muggsy's origins in the toughest part of Baltimore and his mile-a-minute speech patterns; Bol's indeterminate age (he honestly didn't know how old he was), stories that he killed a lion in a coming-of-age ceremony in Sudan and courtside pratfalls make this comedy gold! Actually, why isn't anyone making a sitcom about this right now?

Terrell Owens (Player, NFL, Free Agent)
Perhaps the most naturally-gifted Running Back of the past twenty years, TO has already made a parody of himself without needing Hollywood's help. Not the only prodigy to do such (Stephon Marbury's gradual decline into insanity springs instantly to mind), TO's outspokenness, cross-promotability (I'm sure I just invented that word) and utter inability to get along even in the medium-term with anyone in authority just screams sitcom.

Jerry Buss (Owner, NBA, LA Lakers)
Real-Estate billionaire, adopts Playboy-style life, buys a sports franchise; Daughter poses for Playboy herself, joins her brothers in running the franchise then dates Supercoach; Jerry decides to play high-stakes poker. Actually I've got this wrong – this isn't sitcom (though it could be), this is Days of our Lives!

David Beckham (Player, MLS, LA Galaxy)
So what if we're picking on easy targets! Beckham's very life is a soap opera crammed with so much comic gold it's impossible to know where to start. He's actually fits the model of the sitcom character already – the beautiful jock who's perhaps just a couple of kangaroos loose in the top paddock. Add to this his American-Idol-reject of a wife and, to borrow a Seinfeldism, “That's gold, Jerry, GOLD”! Sadly this may never happen as it's eminently possible we've not seen a soccer player this aware of his own marketability before.

Don Nelson (Coach, NBA, Golden State Warriors)
Zany, off-the-wall basketball tacticians, thy God is “Nellie”. After creating a legacy as an innovator while coaching in Milwaukee, Nelson has become th all-time leader in NBA coaching victories. But he's done it amidst rosters no sane man would assemble, the occasional feud with his former-BFFs – he's apparently never left a job on good terms – and the occasional lawsuit thrown in, you can just see him as Crazy Uncle Don, who begins and ends each sentence with “The Power of Christ compels You to DO AS I SAY!”. Nelson comes in to address the quarter-time huddle “The Power of Christ compels You to DO AS I SAY! The next play is an alley-oop to Mullin, run it quickly from the sideline as we don't want him picked up by an athlete. The Power of Christ compels You to DO AS I SAY!”

Kevin Sheedy (Coach, AFL, Greater Western Sydney)
Don Nelson's Australian counterpart! With antics like tying the windsock down at Essendon's home ground; coining the phrases “Marshmallows”, calling a trio of field umpires “Martians”, Sheedy could be the madcap Grandpa – I'm sure you, like me, would have to check Williams Shatner's availability. Picture Shatner waving his jacket over his head on beating the West Coast (http://www.bigfooty.com/forum/showthread.php?t=662764&page=2). Now reverse the image, and see Sheedy screaming “KHHAAAAAAAAN”! Perfect, eh? (smug smile)

We'd love to hear your suggestions: please feel free to let Balanced Sports know!

* I know White's really the President & minority owner of the UFC. A little poetic licence, please.