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The Debriefing is a column that runs every weekday at 9:00 a.m. here on FanHouse. It goes deep into one issue and then bounces around to a plethora of smaller ones ... and does it all in a way that will make you feel like the prettiest girl at the cotillion. Bookmark this page, and visit daily.



Pretty much everyone agrees that SportsCenter's "Who's Now?" competition is worthless fluff. At best, it's time-filling silliness, and at worst, it's self-serving athlete-worship that's destroying a small part of every fan's soul.

I understand why it's happening, though. I'm not saying it's OK that it's happening, but I understand. It's the summer, it's the dullest part of the sports calendar ... they have to talk about something, and you can't keep doing these "My Wish" things forever. Soon, ESPN producers are going to be sending Greg Ostertag to South Dakota to brighten the day of a child with a particularly rough case of the sniffles.

Now, I'm not going to go so far as to say that I like the idea of "Who's Now" -- I see the panelist debates as sort of a male version of The View (and there's no way that can be taken as a compliment, right?) -- but I am going to steal the concept from them.

But my tournament will not celebrate athletes who are winners on the field and making headlines off of it -- or whatever the hell "now" means -- I'm going to celebrate the losers, letdowns, and washouts. The athletes who, when their parents see them on television, deny that they're related. We don't have T.I. doing our theme song ... if we had one, it'd have to be by Rob & Fab, formerly known as Milli Vanilli.

Welcome, dear readers ... to The Debriefing's Who's Erstwhile?

(Also at the bottom: Alonzo Mourning must've partied a bit too heavily at "Zo's Summer Groove," because he making a poor decision ... Scotty Nguyen's doing well, Oscar Pistorius is not ... Phil Mickelson choked, Bill Laimbeer is the man ... and Venezuelan booty.)

Here are the criteria for entry:

1) They must be active professional athletes, or at least athletes who are still trying to be active. Without this rule, you could have a field of 128, and it wouldn't be enough. You could have Ryan Leaf, Mark McGwire, Sam Bowie, Rick Mirer, Jose Canseco ... it would be endless. So I guess the competitors here have to be sort of now ... they just can't be now now. ESPN and I expect you to know what that means.

2) The athletes must have been, at one point, noteworthy for some reason. Without this criteria, you could just make a list of 3rd string NFL guards, and NBDL'ers who no one's ever heard of. Now, don't confuse this with thinking that the athlete in question had to be good. It might help if they were a success at one point and then flamed out spectacularly, but they don't have to ever have actually succeeded to make the field. They just have to have been noteworthy.

3) We're leaving real tragedy out of this. So if guys like OJ Simpson or Rae Carruth were still active, or trying to be active, they couldn't participate. Rae Rae, since it's hard to achieve athletic greatness or make headlines while doing prison laundry, would just have too much of a built-in advantage in the Who's Erstwhile? competition. It wouldn't be fair.

With these people disqualified, everyone on the list still has lots of money, fame, and the ability to bed groupies (be they of the NFL or CFL quality). So nothing here is too tragic.

4) No dead people are eligible, either. No Barbaro, and no Chris Benoit.

And here's how we'll determine winners.

1) The actual Who's Now? tournament describes itself as this:

... a daily series in which viewers will help ESPN determine the ultimate sports star by considering both on-field success and off-field buzz.

So I guess if we're going in the exact opposite direction, we'd judge by on-field failure, and off-field ... what's the opposite of buzz? Silence? Indifference? Non-vibration? That's not going to work, because a certain amount of buzz (presuming that buzz can exist in a negative sense) is created just by being that big of a loser. Buzz is acceptable, but not in a "that guy really has things going his way" sense.

2) ESPN announces their winners by a combination of online voting and panelist debate. I think we're going to change that up slightly, and go by 100% panelist debate, because that is the best part of these things.

ESPN brings Kirk Herbstreit, Mike Wilbon, and Keyshawn Johnson into the studio and forces them to debate something that does not make the slightest bit of difference to anyone. And all of three of them know it, but they do it anyway ... and that "God, where did I go wrong?" look in Wilbon's eyes during these segments is the real highlight for me.

Therefore, for the Who's Erstwhile? tournament, winners will be determined solely by panelist debate. There will be one panelist (at least for the early rounds), and it will be me.

3) My decisions will be completely senseless and arbitrary. I think that's the only sensible way to do this. If you disagree with any of the selections, I encourage you to express these sentiments in the comments, but please know that your counter arguments will be regarded as equally senseless and arbitrary.

That said, it will help if:

- The athlete is, compared to other athletes in his sport, very bad at his job.
- The athlete is very bad at his job in a way that is amusing.
- The athlete has no or little future in his current field of athletics.
- The athlete was either once good, or once thought to be good.
- It is particularly fun or easy to make fun of the athlete.

Beyond that, it will all be decided on my whim.

And now, to announce the field of 16*:

And the first round match-ups:

Berman Division:
(1) David Duval vs. (8) Eli Manning
(2) Mark Prior vs. (7) John Daly
(3) Sebastian Telfair vs. (6) Floyd Landis
(4) Chan Ho Park vs. (5) Jerome James

Barbaro Division:
(1) Akili Smith vs. (8) Daunte Culpepper
(2) Evander Holyfield vs. (7) Any NHL player not named Sidney Crosby or Alex Ovechkin
(3) Carl Pavano vs. (6) Steve Francis
(4) Kerry Collins vs. (5) Kerry Wood

Round 1 ... is coming soon.

* = MJD reserves the right to slightly alter the field, pending any awesome suggestions you have in the comments for athletes I've left out who also meet the criteria.




We have so much to learn from the Venezuelans.

Bill Laimbeer. In what Linda Cohn described as a "highly entertaining" WNBA All-Star Game, Bill Laimbeer made his team play defense. With 5 minutes left in the second quarter, the East team was in a full-court press.

And this is why Bill Laimbeer needs to have an NBA job. Because he is the kind of guy who will employ a full-court press in the WNBA All-Star Game.

I think it's a little bit of a misconception that the egos of NBA athletes can't be controlled, and that coaches have to capitulate to players. It is still possible, and it is still a good idea, for NBA coaches to run their team through fear. Chicago Bulls players fear Scott Skiles. Utah Jazz players fear Jerry Sloan. Some NBA team should hire Bill Laimbeer to make their players cower.

Ideally, he wouldn't have to leave the city to do so. The Shock aren't the only professional basketball team in Detroit who need a coach that rules with an iron fist. Or at all, really.

And I'm sure Laimbeer sees Flip Saunders all the time ... if he were to accidentally run into Flip in the parking lot with his car, then back over him, then accidentally run and back over him six to eight more times, and then accidentally park on his neck, just to make sure the job was finished ... well, I don't think anyone around Pistons headquarters would be too eager to rat him out to the cops.



Phil Mickelson. If the Scottish Open can be considered any kind of a British Open preview, expect Phil Mickelson to have the lead going into Sunday, and then to play the last several holes with a Nike Sasquatch lodged into his esophagus.

Phil had gone 21 straight holes without making a bogey, and then bogeyed 4 of his next 7 holes, the last one being in a playoff against someone named Gregory Havret. His last 7 holes went birdie, bogey, birdie, bogey, birdie, bogey, (playoff) bogey. Said Phil:

"I made birdies and bogeys; he played steady and ultimately that won out."

It's a pleasant little theory that Phil lost because Havret was steadier, but it's a little more accurate to say that Phil gagged this one away. When you've only made three bogeys through the first 66 holes of the tournament, and then you cram 4 of them into your last 7 holes, including the deciding hole ... sorry, FIGJAM, but that counts as a choke.



7:00, ESPN. San Francisco Giants @ Chicago Cubs.
9:00, USA. WWE Monday Night Raw.
9:00, ESPN2. Softball. 2007 World Cup Final.