Flipping back and forth between the AMAs and Sunday Night Football, I realized that music gets me more opinionated and fired up than anything else. I also see an overlap in criticism that applies to both top 25 radio and the NFL.
Some thoughts:

• It all sounds the same: That 4/4 dance beat with the bass playing quarter notes with no syncopation is getting old. Rhianna owns the category and Pussycat Dolls, Xtina, Pink, Miley Cyrus, and Katy Perry, all need to give it a rest. It’s like the West Coast offense. There was one man and one team that owned the West Coast Offense, his name was Bill Walsh and he had a young man named Joe Montana to lead his 49ers to multiple Superbowls. We don’t need a bunch of copy cats, we need some originals.


• Roster moves: Chris Brown or Ne-Yo, we only need one. You’re both very talented, dancers, songwriters, producers, boyfriends. Good for you. Now, let’s cut one and make room on the active roster for a specialist, a great singer maybe? John Legend just doesn’t do it for me.


• Neat Utility Player: Taylor Swift = Devin Hester. She’s neat and her little gimmicks are cute. She’s a pretty little girl and she seems genuinely talented. She’ll also be insignificant in a year or two… unless she develops some other skills. Also, applies to Taylor Swift.
  


• The Awkwardly-Celebrated Veteran: That Annie Lennox performance was almost unbearable. Music award shows do this every time. Drag some legacy talent on stage to receive a “lifetime-merit-integrity-achievement-greatest-person-who-ever-lived-until-next-year’s-winner” award. In the NFL, people retire for a reason. We give them a standing ovation as they exit the field, plaster the name in a “ring of fame” and make a nice tribute video of them in their prime years. Nobody is bringing John Riggins back to fire up the Diesel one more time. Music world, take a lesson from sports on this one and skip the awkward old person performances - unless the awardees are the Eagles.


• Annoyingly-Talented Egomaniac: Kanye West = Terrell Owens. Look, no one denies the talent - it’s there, it clearly exists. But neither are truly rare-air, once-in-a-generation talents. T.O. is second-shelf to any number of WRs in the past 10 years. He’s not even the best WR among active players (R. Moss, L. Fitzgerald, A. Johnson, etc…). Kanye isn’t as unique as he claims and he’s a weak rapper/lyricist. Take the image factor away from either of these 2 and both are empty souls.


• The Video Game Effect: Madden = Guitar Hero/Rock Band. It’s games like Madden that make people like me believe winning in the NFL is much easier than it is. I’ve led my Madden franchise to 11 straight Superbowls - Bill Belicheck has nothing on me. The game does an excellent job of providing the right physics and graphics to mimic reality, but it’s still a far-fetched notion in the end. Guitar Hero and Rock Band are solely to blame for the popularity of the Jonas Brothers. The Jonas Brothers are the personifcation of Rock Band. You don’t need to actually play the instruments, just hang it on your shoulders and mime the motions. You don’t need to actually sing on key, just keep the beat and follow the general up and down of the tune. It’s all a game and the crowd will love you either way - there is no personal accountability for your performance.
  


• The Good Ol’ Days: Its amazing how we pine for the old days. I don’t have to go back too far in either case. Here’s to Britney Spears reigning the charts again and the ‘Skins going 4-1 again to end the season.