A Gentlemen's Wager

An interesting tidbit found on "Shutdown Corner," a blog on Yahoo Sports, and “FanHouse.” Braylon Edwards (he of last year's turn as the Cleveland Browns' surprisingly-not-a-total-draft-bust wide receiver) and Michael Phelps (he of the golden-god-of-all-things-overhyped) have a small bet regarding this NFL season. Earlier this summer, Bray-Bray vowed to score more than twice as many TDs as gold medals that Phelps would win in Beijing.

The foot injury wasn’t a complete loss. Edwards used the time on his couch to catch up with swimmer Michael Phelps’ chase for history at the Olympics.

Edwards and Phelps have University of Michigan ties and struck up a friendship. Edwards bragged before Beijing that he would more than double Phelps’ gold-medal total with touchdown catches. After Phelps’ record eight golds, Edwards needs to set another franchise record.

Unless you were in a coma during most of August (or managed to avoid even more of the nauseating Olympic media hype than I did), you know that Jesu—I mean, Phelps—won 8 gold medals, which means that Bray-Bray has quite the task at hand. True, he scored 16 times in 2007; but that was a “breakout” (read: defensive coordinators weren't paying attention until he’d scored 9 in the first half of season) year, which he is very unlikely to duplicate in the 2008 campaign. And now he has one less game in which to do it, since he was shut down by the Cowboys yesterday, catching only two passes for 14 yards—and a big goose egg in the touchdown department.

I think Jesu—I mean, Phelps (it’s so hard to tell the difference sometimes)—is safe to win this one. Whatever the hell it is he’ll actually win.