During the week of downtime, one of the earth shattering events that occurred in the world was the retirement of San Diego/Tampa Bay/Dallas/Seattle “quarterback” Ryan Leaf retired.
The really odd thing was that some of the stories claimed Leaf retired from football. Give me a break. Leaf might have been on the field occasionally, but whatever else he was doing, Leaf was not playing any recognizable form of football (if Leaf was playing football, then my cat is playing chess when it swipes at the pieces on the board).
Leaf is a fascinating contrast to someone like Lance Armstrong. Leaf had a lot of physical gifts and apparently no desire or mental discipline to actually harness those gifts. Back in 1998 the San Diego Chargers gave up two first round and a second round pick as well as two very good players in order to draft Leaf. At the time the book on Leaf was that he might be even better than Peyton Manning (who went no. 1 in the 1998 draft — Leaf went second).
Instead in a horrible career, Leaf threw almost three interceptions for every touchdown, alienated teammates everywhere he went, and generally wasted the physical prowess that many of us armchair quarterbacks would kill for.
The one real regret Leaf will probably have is that he never got to play with fellow bad boy and underachiever Lawrence Phillips. It’s a real shame those two never found themselves on the same team.