Oakland Raiders now have Richard Seymour and Greg Elllis, but...

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UPDATE: Seymour may not report to the Raiders.

The trade shot heard 'round the football and the Internet world is that the New England Patriots long time defensive end Richard Seymour was traded to the Oakland Raiders.

While the transaction seems like a good deal for Oakland, hold on. There are two problems: the first one is that Seymour has not had an all pro season since 2006 and the Raiders defensive formation design is suspect.

Since 2001 Richard Seymour has been a force on New England's defense. But starting with a knee injury in 2007 and a back injury in 2008, he hasn't been the disruptive player he was known as three years ago. While he did have a career-high eight sacks last year, giving up a first round pick was too much for Seymour. Why Oakland did that is beyond me (it would make more sense for a Seymour three years younger) but he's here so we have to figure out a way to employ him to get best results. Let's look at the pluses of this trade:

Richard Seymour is not old

Richard Seymour while 29 years old, is not old at all. He still has perhaps five good years left in him. If the Raiders focus on enhancing his pass-run skills, then he will be a major addition to the squad. If the Raiders use him paired with Greg Ellis in a hybrid version of Buddy Ryan's "46 Defense" - where Ellis and Seymour would be aligned on the strongside of the formation - it would place considerable pressure on the offenses of the AFC West, especially the San Diego Chargers.

Richard Seymour is a tall defender

Seymour's 6 foot 6 inches tall so having him rush on the left side, when most quarterbacks are right handed, would block throwing lanes like no other player has been able to do. Greg Ellis, who the Raiders got from Dallas, is the same height as Seymour, so having them on the same side in a 46 Defense would spell matchup problems for any offense.

Richard Seymour brings the experience of a winner

Richard Seymour has four Super Bowl rings and is a product of a New England Patriots locker room culture that transformed Randy Moss from a player not really into the game in Oakland to a star player who takes over a game in Boston. Yes, I can understand if you question the Raiders culture, but this move signals a desire to bring in people who can lead the team and set the tone on the field and off of it.

Will Coach John Marshall creatively use Seymour?

My concern is less with Seymour than with Oakland Raiders Defensive Coordinator John Marshall. Will he design schemes that creatively employ Seymour and Ellis? Is Marshall capable of the kind of out-of-the-box thinking that's needed to counter what is a period of revolution in NFL offensive design?

The college game has altered NFL offenses like never before with the Utah Spread and the Wildcat Offense being paired with the passing philosophies popularized by the late 49ers Coach Bill Walsh to produce some of the best passing systems ever seen. It's no wonder why defensive designs like those used by the Baltimore Ravens are more in vogue, with overload defensive fronts and stand-up defensive end / zone blitz schemes.

Is John Marshall willing to be creative with the Raiders Defense? If so, he certainly has the tools to do so. Now, with the addition of Seymour, the Oakland Raiders Defense is a wild card; I don't know how well they will do this year and have to wait until the San Diego game to determine that. But I'm excited to see what's next from this unit.

Van Jones is a good man who should fight back

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Van Jones talks about "The Green Collar Economy"

I just saw an email from The Washington Post explaining that Van Jones resigned from his post as the Green Jobs Czar in the Obama Administration. Sad news as I know Van and have known him as nothing but a good man committed to the betterment of society.

One of the staples of Van's life has been the pursuit of social justice. He's always worked to better the lives of those less fortunate and the creation of the Oakland-based Ella Baker Center is a great example of what he's tried to do to improve life for Oaklanders, especially those who are poor and black.

Van Jones stepped down from a post that was the logical end result of his tremendous growth as a person: a job in the White House. Moreover, those attacking his character themselves are people with questionable backgrounds or anti-social actors. I will not go into that here; but Van should fight back.

Glen Beck is the person Jones should fight back against. Beck's acting like a domestic thug, calling the President racist, then using the media to be the inspiration for others to make terrible statements and threatening acts, like the woman who camped out at a National Guard base, thinking it was a FEMA encampment.

But Beck's not the only one who's unfairly attacked Van Jones. There's a long list of conservatives. To be fair, they did go and get video of things Jones did say, but then posted part of the videos so the comments lack the proper context and have him sounding like a radical totally against America. (By contrast, I have an unknown cyberharasser that makes up lies about my life online. If I learn who this person is, they will be arrested and prosecuted as they're breaking Federal law.)

I'm proud to be an American, but I'm not proud of the modern-day McCarthyite's run amok online. It's as if we're allowing them to get away with murder.

A Landmark graduate

Some of my friends who also know Van point to his enrollment in The Landmark Forum as a key reason for his amazing personal growth. The idea of Landmark, which I've not "done" but seem surrounded by people who have been in it, is to provide a person with mental tools that cause them to overcome their cognitive road blocks and achieve their desired objectives.

Can one say Van became a different person? No. I think it's more accurate to say he became a better version of himself. I met him after his time in the program; the Van Jones I know has never even come off as anti-American and always as one who cares about people.

Good people like Jones must vigorously fight back against their attackers. To me, it's as if he was mugged in broad daylight.

Meghan McCain doesn't want her "juicy booty" on the Internet

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Boy the things some people put on Twitter! Senator John McCain's daughter the now famous blogger Meghan McCain (which some people misspell as "Megan McCain")just tweeted this:

my hotel has this amazing pool but I've been too paranoid 2 use it cause I don't want any pics of my juicy booty in a bikini on the internet

I couldn't stop laughing. Meghan should let it all hangout - so to speak. She's a great looking woman. She may be surprised to learn that she's better looking than Michelle Nunes and Stacy Burnes (In this video from a Bauer's Limousine Super Bowl Party I attended in Miami two years ago):



..And they don't have her tush!

After I stopped laughing, I wondered if someone had scored such a photo of McCain's rear and placed it online; the answer's no so her wish is intact. But this picture of her is a cool one:

Someone should tell Meghan the brothas (black men like me) love a juicy booty!  It's also good to learn that Meghan herself thinks her butt's juicy!

Lou Holtz says Notre Dame's Charlie Weis is "most underrated"

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It's College Football Gameday and I'm watching ESPN's Lou Holtz make the case that Notre Dame's Charle Weis is the most underrated coach in college football. Now, remember this is the same guy who said Notre Dame would play in the BCS Championship.



Holtz colleague, the former Washington Redskin Mark May went ballistic, and rightly so.

Sure, Weis generates good schemes, but if he were the great coach and "most underrated" in college football he would not have lost 15 games in the last two years. Weis record between 2007 and 2008 is 9 wins and 15 losses, going 3 and 9 in 2007.

Weis' record over the last two years is so bad 2007 and 2008 aren't even mentioned in Coach Weis' on profile on the Notre Dame website.

Who's really underrated? Cal Coach Jeff Tedford, who's Golden Bears take on Maryland today. Of course, being a Cal graduate, I'm biased, but I'll put Coach Tedford's 59 and 30 record against Coach Weis' 29 and 21 record any day.

Notre Dame plays Nevada this afternoon and for the first time in school history.  Cal takes on Maryland in this evening's game at Memorial Stadium in Berkeley.

LeGarrette Blount punch reveals America's fear of talking about race

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On YouTube.com

What I find really infuriating about the "LeGarrette Blount punch" issue, where Oregon running back LeGarrette Blount punched Boise State Defensive End Byron Hout after Thursday night's Oregon v. Boise State football game, is the number of people who can't look at the video or the issue and agree to talk about race in a constructive way.

I've found there are two categories of readers:

1) People who want to attack any mention of race.
2) People who have to mention something racially negative, for example stating that I'm trying to give LeGarrette Blount a reason not to feel bad about what he did because I'm just a black person defending an African American male.

Both are wrong.

My motivation for writing was the vast number of blogs speculating that LeGarrette Blount's motivation for punching Byron Hout was because Hout may have said something racist.

Note the word may.

What compounds the problem is that not one of the people - Blount, Hout, or either coach - is saying what was actually said. So we have this huge void created by their silence right at the moment when America wants the void filled.

It's not happening.

What I'd like to see is for America to evolve into a country that doesn't shy away from a good dialogue about race if only to make sure race has nothing to do with an issue. We're all different by appearance, but via talking and sharing we realize that we're really all the same.

And for the record, again, I don't think what LeGarrette Blount did was right and his suspension for the season was just. Even if it's revaled that racist language was used, it doesn't let him off the hook, but it does cast a dark shadow on the character of those who made the comments.

If Hout did this, he should be punished but I think he should be publicly reprimanded just for trash talking, period.

Chevron Ecuador: Amazon Defense Coalition's statement on Judges' recusal

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The Amazon Defense Coalition sent this email to me containing their statement responding to the news that Ecuadorian Judge Juan Nunez recused himself in the wake of a video that captured him in a meeting explaining how he planned to rule in the Ecuador / ADC lawsuit against Chevron.

The statement:

Judge’s Recusal Clears Path For Legal Proceedings to Continue
Validates Chevron’s Initial Faith in Ecuadorian Court System

Quito, Ecuador (September 4, 2009) – Steven Donziger, attorney for the plaintiffs, said:

The judge’s decision to recuse himself clears the path for the legal proceedings to continue uninterrupted. This appears to have been done by the judge to disrupt Chevron's intention to further delay a litigation that has lasted 16 years. The judge’s action once again validates the effective functioning of the Ecuadorian legal system — a system that Chevron chose as the best forum to hear the lawsuit. The vast majority of the competent evidence in the case, including all the evidence used as a basis for the $27.3 billion damages assessment against Chevron, was received by the court prior to the tenure of Judge Nunez.

We again call on competent authorities in Ecuador and the United States to investigate any role Chevron and its officials might have played to script a bribery scheme for purposes of extracting an advantage in a private litigation.


The recusal does not change the overwhelming evidence against Chevron in the underlying case. The evidence in that case demonstrates clearly Chevron’s responsibility for wrecking the rainforest, decimating indigenous groups, and putting thousands of Ecuadorian citizens at grave risk.”


NOTE: Chevron’s main defense is that a 1995 remediation agreement, signed with the government of Ecuador two years after the lawsuit was filed in the US in 1993, releases the company from all responsibility for the contamination. However, it is important to include that the agreement specifically carves out individual, third-party claims, such as ours, in the agreement. Chevron was not released from lawsuits such as the Aguinda vs Chevron case. Also, evidence in the Ecuadorian trial has found that the oil wells and pits that Texaco claimed to have cleaned in the remediation agreement test today at extremely high and illegal levels of toxic contamination. The plaintiffs maintain that the remediation agreement was a sham. Two Chevron lawyers, who worked for Texaco at the time, and seven former Ecuadorian officials have been indicted for fraud.

Maryland folks make fun of Cal's Jahvid Best

Maryland fans are making fun of Cal's Heisman Trophy hopeful running back Jahvid Best and the reason is a monster hit Best sustained last year and delivered by Terps linebacker Kevin Barnes. He hit Best so hard the runner was momentarily looking to right himself, then tossed his cookies on the field.

As we approach what's shaping up to be an epic battle between the 12th ranked California Golden Bears and the Maryland Terrapins, that play comes up again and again, and again in the media and on the blogs with the Internet providing remiders of headlines past.

The blogs have had a field day.

"Terps Pull Upset, Cal Pulls Upchuck"
"Terps Football Makes People Sick"
"Cal's Jahvid Best Loses His Lunch"

You get the idea.

Best wants revenge, saying "I have to go this weekend and reclaim my name in Maryland." And he has every reason to want to. That hit was the shot heard round the World. Barnes hit Best so hard that dogs howled, children dried, Terrapins hi-fived, and, well, Best threw up.

I wonder how the memory of that play will impact Best on Saturday,after his first contact. It's a weird position for him to be in: first game of 2009 but against the very team that knocked him silly last year. Best can either sink or swim. My bet is that he swims.