Sports Fodder: NFL all 'a-twitter'

Sports fodder for a Friday morning . . .

 The National Football League is in a turmoil over Twitter. Some teams won't even allow fans to send Twitter updates while they are watching practices this summer. The San Diego Chargers just fined player Antonio Cromartie $2,500 for tweeting that the training camp food wasn't to his liking. OMG! What is the NFL so afraid of? Nothing important, interesting or valuable has ever gone out on Twitter. What are fans going to tweet about? The fat guy sitting next to them eating four hot dogs while wearing a too-tight Ray Lewis jersey? TMI! How incredible the wide receiver's new haircut looks? JSYK, his do is fab! The play-calling? BTW, the offense looks GR8! L8er! The 49ers quarterback situation? IMHO, U R going to Njoy Alex Smith this year! LOL!

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 Hank Aaron seems like a nice man. Great player. Classy. But he needs to keep quiet. Hank, tell us what it was like trying to hit Sandy Koufax, Warren Spahn and Bob Gibson. Tell us how horribly America treated you when you were chasing Babe Ruth's record. Tell us how Willie Mays was overrated. Just don't tell us about steroids. Aaron wants to reveal all of the 100 or so names of the players who tested positive in the 2003 so-called anonymous drug tests. He says that is the only way baseball can get past the black cloud hanging over the game. He couldn't be more wrong. First of all, the test was supposed to be anonymous. Nobody should know who passed or failed the test. Why hasn't the players union sued Bud Selig and MLB yet? And, second, who is Aaron kidding? If steroids were widely in use during his day, he would have used them, too. The old players need to quit with their holier-than-thou attitude.

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 When you think about it, the Legends Reno-Tahoe Open fits right in perfectly with the rest of Northern Nevada sports. It's just another event where the temperature of the beer and the cost of a burger is far more important than the results of the competition. See Reno Aces, Reno Bighorns, Reno Air Races, Reno Rodeo, balloon races, pro bowling, boxing. There are only two sports entities in the area that truly matter to the community -- University of Nevada and high school sports. The rest is just one Hot August Nights contrived event after another.

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 Is New York Giants quarterback Eli Manning worth almost $100 million over six years? Well, is Nnamdi Asomugha worth $45 million over three years? At least Manning has won a Super Bowl. The only thing Asomugha would win is a Scrabble game if they allowed proper names. How would you abbreviate Nnamdi Asomugha on Twitter? How about OVR8ed?

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 It's too bad Prince Fielder didn't get into the Los Angeles Dodgers locker room after Tuesday's game. Talk about a classic YouTube moment. Fielder, who was mad after getting hit by a pitch by Guillermo Mota,  would have caused the biggest Southern California earthquake since Northridge in 1994. If Fielder was so upset, why didn't he charge the mound during the game? Heck, he could have clubbed Mota over the head with his bat the way Juan Marichal beaned John Roseboro in 1965 at Candlestick Park. Now that was a baseball fight. Trying to sneak into the opposing team's clubhouse after the game while everybody is showering -- and letting a fat security guard keep you out -- isn't exactly Chuck Norris material, now is it?

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 Why hasn't anybody signed Michael Vick yet? What is everybody so afraid of? As long as Vick keeps his dogs out of the locker room, everything should be fine. The moment Vick signs with a team, he'll be the 10th best quarterback in the league. After three or four games he'll be No. 5. The man is instant excitement and he's worth the risk. All the team that signs him has to do is donate $10 million or so to PETA and the picket lines will disappear. They'll make double that in jersey sales in two weeks.

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 San Francisco 49ers rookie wide receiver Michael Crabtree is threatening to sit out the season if the 49ers don't pay him much more than his slot (No. 10) in the draft dictates. The 49ers should let Crabtree sit. The last thing the 49ers need is a guy who cares more about money than he does getting his NFL career started. If Crabtree is selfish when he has zero catches on his NFL resume, what's going to happen four or five years from now when it comes time to negotiate his second contract? Crabtree, though, is convinced nine teams made a huge mistake by allowing him to fall to No. 10 in the draft. And now he wants the one team who believed in him to pay the price for that mistake. That's the type of logic the 49ers don't need right now.