Hello ladies and gents and welcome to another Whip It Out Wednesday here at the Gab. Big things happening this week as baseball’s winter meetings begin with a big trade, college football prepares to hand out it’s most coveted award, and the NFL season begins to wind down. My take on all this and more, comin right up.

            Let’s start with the freshest story out there… the Yankees-Tigers-D’Backs playing Let’s Make a Deal at baseball’s winter meetings. The Tigers have agreed to trade OF Curtis Granderson, their most popular position player, along with SP Edwin Jackson, who had a breakthrough season last year after many disappointing seasons before, to the Yankees and D’Backs respectively. Basically, this is nothing more than a salary dump for a team in a cash-strapped town. But when you get a the Yankees top prospect, OF Austin Jackson, a power arm like Max Scherzer, and add a couple of low priced relievers in Phil Coke and Stink’s kid, you did pretty well in exchange. The Diamondbacks get Jackson from the Tigers, and receive oft-injured pitcher Ian Kennedy from the Yankees to complete the deal. Completion of the deal is dependent upon all players passing physicals and such, but it looks like this is a done deal.

            My take on the deal is that the Yankees just snagged themselves one hell of a ballplayer, and a hell of a community guy as well. Granderson, although he did struggle against left-handers (just .188 against lefties last season), is a nightly highlight-reel in center field (Sportscenter doesn’t have to reach to get a Yankee on every night now), a damn smart base runner, and a guy who can give you a lot of pop in the leadoff spot, especially with the short porch at new Yankee Stadium. With the kind of class-act Granderson is, I’ll find it a little bit harder to root against those douchebags next season as the playoffs roll around.

       Jackson is a bit of a mystery. He’s either lights out or pretty bad… not much middle ground. If his splitter is working, you’ve got a nice addition to the rotation out in AZ. Hopefully they’ll give him more run support than the Tigers tended to last season, which cost him a few ballgames and would have given him a more impressive W-L record than 13-8. But with arbitration coming up, he should be due a bigger payday, and that is just something the Tigers cannot afford to do at this point with the massive contracts of Magglio Ordonez, Nate Robertson and Carlos Guillen still on the books. As I said earlier, Kennedy is good if he can just stay healthy.

            As for the Tigers, I like the fact that you come away with a top prospect to replace Granderson in Jackson, a hard throwing starter like Scherzer, and two fairly cheap relievers in Schlereth and Coke. Overall, this is a sign of things to come for Tigers fans… Illitch can’t afford to spend 100 million plus on a team that just can’t keep the ballpark full, so we’re going to have to rebuild. That means we’re possibly even looking at Miguel Cabrerra being dealt before the offseason is over… at the latest by the trade deadline. At least for this “rebuilding” period, we’ve got some pieces to move to bring in good prospects; unlike the decade and a half long debacle we had from ’95 to ’05 around here.  Let’s hope Dave Dombrowski has some more of that magic in him that brought the Tigers an AL pennant back in 2006, and we’re only looking at two years or so of piss poor baseball here in Detroit.

            Speaking of messes, how about that BCS title picture folks? Yup, we’ve got the potential of having three undefeated teams once all the bowl games have played themselves out, and we’ve got two bowl games featuring two undefeated teams going head to head. The hell with Alabama-Texas; I say they make the Boise State-TCU winner the national champ! Could have had some good ‘ol BCS chaos had the Cornhuskers pulled off the upset in the Big 12 title game, but sure enough, Nebraska’s jerkoff placekicker had to kick the ball out of bounds with under a minute left, giving Texas great field position to drive for that winning field goal. But alas, the BCS has it’s ideal championship matchup… Big 12 vs. SEC, two Heisman finalists going head to head.

            And since we’re talking about Heisman finalists here, I’d like to throw my endorsement out there. Of the five players heading to New York City for the Heisman Trophy presentation, only one can win. Tim Tebow is purely there because of his career accomplishments. By his standards, this was an off year. McCoy was good at certain points, but really padded his stats against the five or six soft opponents Texas played this year (side note, if the Longhorns want to show they have a pair, schedule TCU next season). Ndamukong Suh was dominant in the Big 12 title game in front of a national audience, but the 12.5 sacks he registered this season were padded by the 4.5 he picked up in that ballgame. He might have made himself the #1 overall pick in the NFL draft next spring, but I wouldn’t give him the Heisman this year. Alabama’s Mark Ingram set several single season records in one of the nation’s premier college football universities historically this season, but he had a few off games and even missed a few with injury. The guy I’m handing the trophy to is Stanford RB Toby Gerhart. Gerhart led the nation with 1736 rushing yards and 26 TDs, and without Gerhart, the Stanford is probably lucky to make it into a bowl game. It’s not the award for the best player on the best team; it’s an award for the best player in college football, and in my opinion, Gerhart fits the bill more than any of the other finalists. Hopefully the voters will feel the same way.

            Well, I know I said this last week, but I’m going to do it again… please, Coach Schwartz, put Matt Stafford on the bench for the rest of the season so you don’t do any long-term damage to this kid. I know it’s his non-throwing shoulder, but for the love of God, this guy is out there taking a beating every single Sunday. He’s proven himself to the fans here in Detroit, and he should have proven himself to you by now. So get him on the bench, the only safe place for a QB with the Detroit Lions, and let Daunte Culpepper finish off this likely 2-14 (maybe 3-13) top five pick of a season already. There is nothing else to gain the rest of this season for him or for the organization, and nobody around here will blame you for “throwing in the towel” so to speak and keeping the guy you have 42 million invested in over the next 6 years upright. And Mayhew, I hope watching your 42 million dollar “sometimes quarterback, sometimes punching bag” get knocked around every Sunday this year has shown you the light; draft some offensive linemen… sign some free agents… get this kid some protection, and he might just get this organization back into the playoffs sometime this millennium.

            Anybody have a rolling count on the amount of money Chad “Can’tSpeakoSpanish” has donated to the NFL throughout his career? He was fined another 30 large after wearing a sombrero after scoring against the Lions this week. Fucked up thing is, he was on the sideline… not even in the end zone, not even interfering with the game. I know the guy has made himself a target in a way, but he’s only out there trying to entertain people… cut him a little slack, Goddell.

            Speaking of those Bengals, great to see them clinch the AFC North and a playoff spot. This whole run game and building on defense is something the Lions may want to consider modeling themselves after… you know… if they ever decide to become contenders again.

            And before I go, I’d like to say it’s nice to see the NFL taking a more pro-active stance with concussions and head injuries this year. Already, Ben Roethlisberger and Kurt Warner are among a few big names to miss a game because of doctor’s orders after a concussion, and I for one am all for it. I know these guys are paid to be out on the field, and I know there are many inherent dangers in playing a game like football. But I also know the ramifications of diseases such as altzimers, recently linked to multiple concussions, all too well.

No matter how much these guys are paid to play the game, no amount of money is worth having to live that way. I’ve been through it with one of my grandmothers before she passed away, and now my wife’s grandmother, whom I’ve always had a good relationship with, is suffering from the disease. Hell, I suffered a few concussions during my high school football days, including two in the same ballgame, and I wish I would have had the kind of coach that would have told me to stay out of the game, or the kind of information we have today on the long-term effects of concussions. I hope they’ve developed a better system for diagnosing and preventing these sorts of injuries by the time my son reaches the football playing age; it would kill me to see anything of that sort happen to him.

 But I’d like to close this out by applauding the NFL for finally improving it’s policies about concussions. It will be a few years, maybe even decades until the mentality of “if you can walk, you can play” out of players’ heads. I know it was beat into my head even in pee-wee and high school. But hopefully in a few years we won’t have a QB being second-guessed by his teammates for not playing the week after a concussion.

That’s all for this week, folks. Thanks as always for reading and for any comments you leave on the way out.