Go ahead Cowboys fans. Go ahead and enjoy all these five years (maybe) with your star receiver Dez Bryant. Five years and $70 million for a receiver is absurd. Philadelphia fans are laughing in the faces of the Cowboys right now. Why? Name the best receivers in the league and then tell me how many Super Bowls those guys have. Calvin Johnson? His number is zero. Dez Bryant? Dallas fans know that answer. Brandon Marshall? Keep wishing. Now think of the last two Super Bowl winners, the Seahawks and Patriots. The best receiver between those two teams was not even a receiver, it was tight end Rob Gronkowski. So go ahead Dallas fan, live it up while the Eagles sit back and laugh because they have DeMarco Murray who can actually make a difference over the course of an entire season. Receivers don’t win Super Bowls. Tony Romo has had talent on the offensive side of the ball his entire career. Why can’t Dallas win the big one? Because when it comes down to it, no matter the stats fantasy guy throws up, Romo is not a big-game player. Russell Wilson is and so is Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady. Those guys make players around them better and they don’t need their teams wasting $14 million a year on a receiver. That money is spread out on making the team better. Bryant would have eventually come around and Dallas would have been better off waiting him out for five or six games. Receivers have huge egos so the man would have played this year before long…Caitlyn Jenner during Wednesday’s ESPY’s was awarded the Arthur Ashe Award and many people are appauled at it because they say she (formerly Bruce Jenner) has not shown courage like others in our country. Here’s the deal, does it really matter? Did your toast not taste the same the next morning? Quit worrying about things you cannot change. Did the award going to Jenner harm you in any way? I would think the answer is no. So why let this ruin even a moment in your life? It is time to grow up and stop letting things like this become such a huge topic…No matter what the man did the rest of the time at St. Andrews after Thursday, Tiger Woods is done. D. O. N. E. He was asked recently if he was going to retire. Yes, that Tiger guy was asked if he was not going to play on the PGA much longer. The problem with Tiger is simple, he is no longer feared by the other golfers. Jordan Spieth does not give a crap if Tiger is on the course or not and Rory McIlroy is certainly not scared and the same goes for Dustin Johnson…Corey Dauphine reported this week he expects to see some playing time as freshman for the Texas Tech Red Raiders this upcoming season. Dauphine, who shined at Port Arthur Memorial, said he has been used as a running back and arrived in Lubbock and had an outstanding summer…Congratulations to former Port Neches-Groves basketball player Travis Thompson. Thompson, who was featured in The News a few months ago, has been named the head basketball coach of Marantha Christian Academy. We wish Thompson and his team the best…There cannot be a more meaningless event than this past week’s Home Run Derby. MLB officials have tinkered with the format of the event so many times over the past decade it is sad. Cincinnati’s Todd Frazier won this year’s derby which took on a round-by-round format this go around. It is hard to pinpoint why the derby is so lackluster these days and it all could be a part of the fact baseball has lost its steam over the years. Football is so big in this country and with the growth of soccer, baseball is starting to fade real quick in the mind of young athletes. Why? It takes too long. In an opinion piece printed in The News this week it was report humans have attention spans one second shorter than goldfish, true story. Baseball takes too long while football is fast paced and quick moving. Also, the length of the seasons matters because of the fantasy sports world. People don’t want to switch lineups every single day of their lives. It is hard to believe how baseball is falling away in this country considering its popularity just 25 years ago. Imagine what the sports world will look like for the next generation. Will football still be king???It was reported this week Colin Cowherd is headed out of ESPN. I am not sure about you but this ruined my day. Cowherd is the best at taking lessons learned in sports and equating them to daily life. His show, ‘The Herd,’ has been on ESPN Radio since 2003 and I have done everything I could to catch it almost every day since its start…Lets revisit my stand on the Washington Redskins logo from last week. I realize there are more important things out there in this world than what a team’s logo is and has been for many years. I get that. I also get the Redskins are not alone in having a team name some might find offensive. So, should we change them all? Why change this one to begin with? I was called a liberal and a dummy in one email and told I didn’t know what I was talking about in another. If the name Redskins is offensive to a number of people of Native American heritage then yes it should be changed. This doesn’t mean this issue is the top issue facing our country and sure there are bigger topics facing the world we live in but it is still an issue that needs to be addressed. We are all equal here on this planet and if a group of folks truly finds something racially offensive, as the name Redskins is, then we make the switch…Have a good week folks and take care of each other. As my grandfather used to say, “Smile. People will think you are up to something if you do.”
Gabriel Pruett is a sports writer at the Port Arthur News. He can be reached at gabe.pruett@panews.com.