Friday Firings: Roger Clemens, Bobe Hope Classic, Oden Contract Offer

Every Friday the HR Department fires two or more things from around sports that range from silly to outrageous. Here's what we came up with this week:

Clemens should reconsider his strategy.

Fire Roger Clemens' Strategy to Discredit Brian McNamee - Clemens' legal team is trying to convince the judge in Clemens' upcoming criminal trial to allow evidence that McNamee lied to police about allegedly raping a woman while he was employed by the Yankees in 2001. The strategy is obvious - portray McNamee as a liar to convince people he also lied about Clemens' alleged steroid use and to show his motive for cooperating with the feds. What the Rocket doesn't seem to realize, however, is that the worse McNamee looks, the worse he looks, too. If Clemens was regularly training with a guy who definitely dealt drugs and allegedly raped a woman, what does that say about Clemens' judgment? Even if Clemens didn't juice (ha), he's at least guilty of picking a lousy associate. The worse McNamee looks, the more doubt it casts on Clemens.

Fire the Bob Hope Classic's New Name - The Bob Hope Classic golf tournament has been around since 1960, but the tournament's leadership decided to rename it the Humana Challenge in 2012 because of the "reality of today's economy." Sure, Bob Hope isn't so relevant culturally anymore, but he also hasn't been dead that long (since 2003). Now another classic sports property falls victim to the corporate name virus, joining the FedEx Orange Bowl, the Chicago Bears presented by Bank One and the Go Daddy Super Bowl (made the last one up). This is a trend that nobody likes except for the people cashing the checks. It's not going away, but it should.

Fire the Blazers Offering Greg Oden $8.8 Million - The Trail Blazers offered oft-injured former #1 pick Greg Oden an $8.8 million qualifying offer for one season. This allows the Blazers to match any other team's offer or if another isn't made, for Oden to become a restricted free agent in 2012-2013. It's nice that Portland wants to stick by Oden, but if teams are complaining about how much money they lose, maybe it doesn't make a lot of sense to offer that much for a guy who is talented but only played 82 games in parts of two seasons and has had a broken knee cap and two microfracture surgeries. The demand for Oden can't be all that high (especially with the impending lengthy work stoppage), so Portland could easily have saved some money here. Bad move.