Homerism gone too far

This week in the Titans: The Titans signed Justin McCareins to a one-year deal. McCareins is a low-risk free agent, a la Justin Gage last year. The Titans offered McCareins and Drew Bennett identical deals after the 2003 season. Bennett signed and McCareins went to the Jets for a second-round pick. The Titans turned that draft pick into Travis Laboy. Laboy, at best, will be a fourth round compensatory pick next year. When a third-year receiver catches 47 passes for 813 yards (17.3 average) and seven TDs, there's upside. In four years with the Jets, McCareins had seven touchdowns. So much for upside.

Let's talk about homerism. During my Yahoo baseball draft earlier this week, one of the draftees tried to take as many former LSU Tigers as possible. This will work out as well as Ben McDonald and Warren Morris did in the pros. Warren Morris hit the winning home run in the 1996 College World Series championship game. According to Wikipedia, he's the only guy ever to hit a two-out, ninth-inning, walk-off home run in a championship game. He hit 15 homers his rookie year in Pittsburgh in 1999, but he faded after that.

Our team called BCS Champions took LSU alum Brad Hawpe in the fifth round. He followed that up with Aaron Hill in the 7th. Ryan Theriot went in the 10th. There were Pirates (Pittsburgh native) Jason Bay in the third round, Matt Capps in the 6th, and Ryan Doumit in the 14th. There were teams that drafted solely based on name recognition. Our Florida State fan (not alum) picked J.D. Drew in the fifth round and Stephen Drew in the 13th. OK, Stephen could have been a decent pick.

I took a couple of White Sox, but both were good values. Paul Konerko was ranked 85th by Yahoo. I got him with pick 95. Jim Thome was 93rd ranked and I got him with pick number 122. You can be a homer, but don't go too crazy.

I recently discovered that one of my co-workers is a Florida fan. There are few fans more over the top than Florida fans now. This may change after the somewhat embarrassing bowl loss to Michigan and last night's first round SEC tournament loss to Alabama. After reading my white board that chronicles the Titans' free agent tally, he said that the Titans were dumb to let Ben Troupe go. I made an inappropriate comment about Troupe's intelligence. Troupe's one of those guys who looks really good during a pre-draft workout. He's an athlete, but Titan fans have learned that he is not a football player. Just think that in my rookie draft that year I agonized between taking him or J.P. Losman.

Looking back at my Yahoo draft, I did OK. Every player I drafted was at least at or below their Yahoo ranking. Hanley Ramirez at 2 and C.J. Wilson at 242 were the only two at their ranking level. C.J. Wilson was the 31st closer off the board. I was able to trade Joey Votto for Jeff Kent, so now I have two second basemen who will miss 30 games. Yeah me.