FSU Can Wait. My Favorite Major - The Mickeslam.

After Monday night's near win against Clemson, which if the quarterback could throw the ball would have gone exactly as I predicted, I had planned on writing about Florida State today. Many point their fingers at certain coaches for the Seminoles recent issues, but I can point two fingers at two people. Want to know who they are? You'll have to wait. My best friend catapulted himself into today's post.

"My frustration from this past year came from asking for a couple of things in the FedEx Cup that weren't done."

What gives Phil Mickelson the right to ask things from PGA Tour officials? Everything I suppose. He plays on the tour, they are there to promote the tour and most importantly, take care of it's players.

Phil Mickelson won the FedEx Cup Deutsche Bank Championship last week and is now the leader in the FedEx Cup Points Standings. As you can imagine, that alone is enough to get my attention...not in a good way. When he wins, I get irritated as he is my least favorite institution in sports, but when he opens his mouth, I react. When he acts like a like a spoiled brat who just isn't going to do something if he doesn't get his way, he puts me in the position to write about him and then wonder why people put up with this waste of space. Mickelson is not playing in this week's BMW Championship.

"I certainly feel the obligation to support the FedEx Cup, to support the PGA Tour, and support the game of golf. And I also want to have a balance in my life, and my family has sacrificed a lot this year because it's been a very difficult schedule.''

This season, Mickelson has played in 20 events on the PGA Tour. Vijay Singh has played in 25. Davis Love III (who you probably forgot is alive) has started in 21, the same number as Zach Johnson. Frank Lickliter has 23 starts. What does this mean exactly? Well even for Vijay who tops our charts here, with his 25 starts, that means if he made the cut and played Thursday through Sunday, and then a couple of practice rounds on Tuesday and Wednesday, that's a six day work week, with travel on Monday. At 25 weeks, that's 150 days of work, at most, this year with two weeks left. The average person works 50 weeks per year (2 weeks vacation) at 5 days per week. That my friends is 250 days of work per year. You do the math, and I'm not playing golf everyday.

I'm sick and tired of listening to people like Mickelson talk about their schedules. This is the life that they chose. If they wanted to work more days like the rest of us, he could have thrown golf out the window and picked up some books in college. Imagine if he was a surgeon? The hours that they put in? What is he going to do...tell his chief of medicine that his hours are just too tough for poor little Phil? Doctors choose the paths of their lives just as athletes, and players of games do. When they've had enough, they retire or find a new career path. Same with any profession. Maybe if Phil can't handle the GRUELING schedule of being the #2 player in the world, he should just pack it in or start serving Starbucks. Well, Phil probably couldn't handle the hours of a retail professional. Think he wants to work until 9 on a holiday?

A lot of people out there pity these athletes, or in Mickelson's case, players of a game, who complain all the time, especially all of you who are Mickelson fans for some unknown reason. With the attention that they get these days, they seem to forget what they have; a gift. I would give anything to play baseball, or football, or golf for that matter for a living. I, like all of you, am not good enough. Some peak in high school, college, or even the playgrounds in grade school like Mike Greco. But as fans, I believe we love the game more than these athletes, or players of a game, do. The funny thing is, the one guy who is most like us, Brett Favre, gets ridiculed when he decides not to just hang it up. I wouldn't do it either! If I could play football for my job, I would play until I couldn't do it anymore. How many people in this country wake up in the morning and love going to work? Not many. Brett Favre does. And his ability to stay is a respect that he has earned from both being great, but also for his respect for the game of football. People like Phil Mickelson don't respect what they have, and they don't respect that they made a choice to live the lives that they do. Mickelson lives a life of luxury thanks to his choice, not only financially, but in the fact that he plays a game for a living and is good at it.

If you read this, you know how much I hate Phil Mickelson. Not only does he have the nerve to public admit that he and the commissioner are having problems, but he has the nerve to whine about it and not play when he doesn't get his way. Because poor Phil is tired and lonely. I don't see an injured Carlos Beltran taking off games down the stretch do you? Mickelson is the figurehead of what is wrong with sports today. You want to talk about pre-Madonna athletes in football, basketball? Look at golf. Look at the #2 player in the world to find the best example.

The funny thing is, you know those 2 weeks off we get out of the 52? A lot of us spend those two weeks playing golf.