Somebody Get Shaun Phillips a Spell Checker

Sometimes it's easy to forget in all the glory of professional football that many of these athletically talented men are less than moderately intelligent. In some cases, they don't express themselves well. This is why I love Kissing Suzy Kolber, which routinely verbally eviscerates NFL players while still remaining loyal fans, and Yardbarker, which brings the fans on the same level as the players. Yardbarker features several blogs written by professional athletes, and some are better than others. Keith Rivers of the Cincinnati Bengals, for example, often writes thoughtful and extensive entires with proper grammar and syntax. Then there's Shaun Phillips of the Chargers, whose hobbies include "Learning about the world", weighing in on the controversy surrounding the rapid inflation of rookie contracts:

I think they gotta stop somewhere with this. I love that everyone is making money but its starting to get rediculous how much money unproven players are getting before they take a snap. There are future hall of famers that are not making as much in there entire carrier as these kids are making in one check. I think the nfl should take some notes from the nba on caping rookies. If you think about it most rookies don't really come into there own until 4th our 5th yr anyway. So just imagen how much there second contract will b if they where 2 play there whole 50mil contract out it makes u wanna laugh huh. My final note is more power to them cause I want everyone to get all the money in the world cause imma get mine.

Sp95

Where do I start? While I do agree with Shaun that it is 'rediculous' how young phenoms are "making more in one check" than hall of fame-bound veterans earn in their entire "carrier" and I do think that "caping" rookies a la the NBA is the solution, it's hard for me to "imagen" how we can take his opinion seriously when he doesn't even bother to spell out "be, to, and you." What did you save with those abbreviations, Shaun? Four letters? Factor in your decision to include proper punctuation and you're almost up to double digits in characters you didn't have to type!

Also, I think I saw his final note of "more power to them cause I want everyone to get all the money in the world cause imma get mine" on a bumper sticker. It was a long sticker.

But hey, I guess the joke is on me because a guy who types at a first grade level is making millions of dollars a year while no doubt sleeping with countless beautiful women - while I sit in my underwear eating a klondike bar amidst snarky blogposts.