Joe "Do Bud's Bidding" Biddle Performs His Best Herkie for the Titans

When I was a high school kid each year at homecoming the girls at my school would form powder puff football teams and compete. It always appeared to me to be more of an excuse to get close to the varsity football players (who coached the powder puffers) than devotion to play or competition. Joe Biddle's latest homage Bud Adams and the Tennessee Titans strikes me a strictly powder puff in that sense: it's an excuse to ingratiate himself to team ownership and milk team popularity instead of writing thoughtfully.

He describes the suffering that wealthy owner Adams suffered in Houston in sympathetic tones:

The Oilers never had control of its revenue, operation or scheduling. Houston's city fathers made it clear they would ignore Adams' pleas for a new stadium.

Houston, which once again has their own pro football team, would probably have a slightly different take on Biddle's pro-Adams spin on the event.

While Nashville's sports journalists are basically homers anyway, Biddle drives the generally uncritical sports journalism pose to new lows in this piece by reimagining former Mayor Bredesen's deal-making with Adams without reference to cost. Joe seems too busy teasing up benefits to acknowledge that the stadium deal is draining $4 million a year from financially troubled Metro Water Services and will do so through 2026 (if the Titans hang around that long). And he makes no attempt to explore whether public schools have suffered as a result of Metro's financial commitment to pro football.

For a professional journalist, Joe Biddle seems to be a pretty good pro football media guide writer. Maybe Bud Adams will hire him instead of freeloading the gratuitous advertising that the Tennessean is giving the team under Joe's byline.