GO FOR 2

So by now you’ve seen/heard about Tennessee Titans coach Jeff Fisher rocking a Peyton Manning jersey the other night. Fisher was at a charity event and was introducing former Colts coach and role model extraordinaire Tony Dungy.

For those of you who haven’t tuned into the World Wide Leader in Sports recently, I’ll recap. Fisher walked on stage, turned around, and started to unbutton his shirt – a lot of people probably worried this was going in a different direction. Instead of pulling a Demi Moore, Fisher pulled off his shirt to reveal a Manning Jersey, and then suddenly Tennessee fans were wishing it had been some kind of creepy strip-tease. Fisher made sure everybody got a good look, then came up to the mic and dropped this beauty: “I just wanted to feel like a winner.”

Alright, now rabid fans and people who don’t know anything about Jeff Fisher are going to say this is an act of treason, and Fisher shouldn’t be taking shots at his 0-6 football team. Well, sucks to be you guys, because none of that was going on here. Fisher is one of those well-respected coaches who seems to be friends with most of the big time coaches in the NFL, he is close personal friends with Tony Dungy, and he was playing the crowd at a charity event to help out a friend. Ok, so there’s the fact that he wore the jersey to get a laugh and help out a good cause…but come on, why the shot at his own team? Well he wasn’t taking a shot at them, he was showing his confidence in them. Don’t believe me? You take life way too literally. A coach who is really disappointed in his team, who is really out of ideas and really really just wants the season to end doesn’t make good-natured quips about them. He does exactly what, oh say, Eric Mangini does…absolutely nothing. Bottom line: Fish’ believes he has a good team, and doesn’t think they’re so fragile and helpless that he needs to walk on eggshells with them 24/7.

So when Fisher got called on this and the firestorm of stupid began, what did he do? He apologized…kinda.

“I really apologize if I offended anybody, but if you’re offended over the nature of that type of thing, then I think you need to rethink things.”

Zing. He apologized then smacked you in the face with reality: its time to grow up and see that there are bigger things in life than football. Like Fisher said all along, this was for charity…even if his team was so fragile that this kind of thing might actually cause a little locker room strife, he would absolutely do it again in a heatbeat.

Its nice to see a coach as confident as Fisher, lets hope his team puts together a few wins so that we get to see more of him in the future.