In his blog, Donovan McNabb mourns the passing of Michael Jackson.

Here's the entry:

Like most of the rest of the world I am devastated by the news of Michael Jackson’s death. Ironically, I am in Los Angeles for a few days between shooting a commercial and attending a teammate’s wedding this weekend.

Those who have followed my career know that I am a huge fan of the King of Pop. After many of my touchdowns, I have moonwalked or mimicked some of his moves – before you get ready to criticize those moves on a post, know that even I understand I couldn’t hold a candle to Michael when it comes to dancing. My dances were a mere tribute to Michael’s unbelievable ability to entertain.

Many times we are reminded at someone’s death that “there will never be another one like him/her.” In this case, those words couldn’t be more true.

My condolences go out to his children, his immediate family, and his extended family of millions around the world.

PS: The wedding in question is apparently the Hank/Kendra nuptials.

UPDATED: Jennings has slipped far enough that he isn't coming to the green room.

From his agent, Bill Duffy: "Because we do not have a strong grasp of Brandon's draft position, I've advised that he and his family enjoy this day in a more private setting with the people he loves the most. Brandon Jennings will have a very illustrious career in the NBA, and at the end of the day, that is all that is important."

EARLIER:

Up here in NY for tonight's draft. There is no news, only rumor.

Like this: the latest SI.com mock draft has the Sixers taking point guard Brandon Jennings.

It would be a gamble, to say the least, because of Jennings' decision to spend last season in Europe rather than in college. His numbers and his playing time were disappointing. He was hoping to be a top five pick or a top 10 pick. I interviewed him yesterday and he is brash and cocky and all of that. To fall to No. 17 would be a pretty significant comeuppance (or slidedownance).You wonder what the effect would be on such a super-confident kid. Then again, he is super-fast and the Sixers still presumably want to play super-fast under new coach Eddie Jordan. It makes sense that way.

As of Wednesday afternoon, Jennings' plan was to be in the green room -- but he acknowledged being worried about being the last guy in there, and the embarrassment. Maybe he had a sense he was slipping, maybe not. In  the end, he said, "It is everybody's dream, to shake David Stern's hand." At the same time, though, he admitted to "thinking about" skipping the whole thing and hanging with his family someplace instead.

So, we'll see. And if it were to happen, well, a question:  would this mean the Sixers finally have a European player, even if he is from California?

Based on all of the reporting that had been done up to this week, the NHL wanted the Washington Capitals to play the Boston Bruins in Fenway Park on New Year's Day. The league wanted another showcase of Alex Ovechkin, one of the league's signature player, its most exciting offensive player.

Instead, the Flyers apparently will get the spot as the visiting team.

The reason? You.

This is about television ratings. This is about the television ratings that the Flyers tend to draw, around the nation but especially in Philadelphia. NBC is driving the bus here. Ratings are driving the bus. And the Flyers are the NHL's old reliable that way.

A smaller city like Buffalo might get a higher percentage of its televisions to tune in to see the Sabres in this kind of a setting. But there is no big city like Philadelphia when it comes to these numbers -- and it's true in the NFL, too. Routinely, Philadelphia fans show up in big percentages to watch their teams, bigger percentages than New York or Los Angeles or Houston or (most of the time) Chicago. It is probably the best big city/high penetration combination that there is.

This has become a very big game for NBC. You have to know that the network wanted the Flyers. And again, with all due respect to Mike Richards and the fellas, they aren't the reason. You are.

This idea comes from Matt Mosley's NFC East blog at ESPN.com, by way of Football Outsiders. Anyway, they did a thing where they picked the 10 most irreplaceable players in the NFL. Indianapolis quarterback Peyton Manning was No. 1, and Cowboys linebacker DeMarcus Ware was No. 2.

There were no Eagles on the list.

I don't get that.

Is there not enough evidence out there about the importance of Brian Westbrook to this team? As he spends June nursing whatever the hell ails him this time, and it's always something, how is it possible that someone cannot recognize just how vital Westbrook is to the Eagles' success?

Just look at last year. In the games he was functional -- not great, but just decent -- the Eagles were an offensive machine. In the games when he was either out or obviously hobbled -- Chicago and Baltimore come to mind immediately, but there were others -- they were only an imitation of themselves, and a poor one at that. And while there was near-unanimous applause for the drafting of Shady McCoy as Westbrook's understudy, he hasn't yet seen the field. We really don't know.

Hell, I could put Donovan McNabb on the list, too. He tanked last year and they tanked. He was re-born and they were re-born. Some of this obviously coincided with Westbrook's health, which is why I think he is the key, but McNabb seems reasonably essential to this mix right now, too. Even if you like Kevin Kolb, he has barely played.

The Eagles have worked to make these two guys less irreplaceable, and maybe they have. But we really don't know. And until we do, it is hard to see that list as anything but flawed, and incomplete.

The first report came from ESPN's Jayson Stark (I'd give you the link, but you need to be an Insider subscriber kind of guy). I am awaiting confirmation from the club and have left a message. But the news is ominous: Clay Condrey is headed to the disabled list tomorrow, the third Phillies reliever on the DL.

Here is the report:

According to ESPN.com's Jayson Stark, the Phillies are planning to put reliever Clay Condrey on the 15-day disabled list before tomorrow's game. Condrey has a left oblique strain. They will recall left-hander Sergio Escalona from Triple-A Lehigh Valley to replace him. It's Escalona's fourth stint in the big leagues this year.

The Phillies already have two other relievers -- closer Brad Lidge and left-hander Scott Eyre -- on the disabled list. Lidge will throw a second rehab outing Tuesday for Class A Clearwater before they make a decision on him. They could activate him Wednesday, or opt to have him throw for Clearwater again on Thursday.

It is obvious enough that the hits just keep coming. Condrey has been good this year, too. It will just continue the shuffling of actors and their roles in that overworked bullpen. And is anybody else the least bit concerned that one good rehab night in Reading wasn't enough to get Lidge activated for Tuesday's game in Tampa Bay? This has been a cautious, curious couple of weeks for Lidge and the ending is just as cautious. They obviously feel as if they have one chance to get Lidge right and don't want to rush. At the same time, they are desperate to get that bullpen back in order -- because it was going to be one of their strengths, back when.

In the Twin Cities, they are on all-Favre, all-the-time duty. As rumors continue to swirl, there is the belief that if something is going to be announced, it won't be this week -- because Vikings coach Brad Childress and Eagles coach Andy Reid have headed to Alaska for a week-long fishing trip.

The two have been close forever, since before Childress was Reid's offensive coordinator with the Eagles. They've been close, their families have been close, they have gotten together in the off-season before. But it's funny. Say you're an accountant. Do you really, really want to spend a week of vacation with another accountant? But these guys do it.

It is such a different world, being a professional football coach. The hours, the pressures -- when you talk to them about it, they all say the same thing. That is, that nobody else really understands what they go through except for people who have gone through it. So they find comfort in each others' miseries, or something.

These two guys are good enough friends that they have other things to talk about than football, like their families. Still, it is hard to believe that football -- old stories, funny stories and current predicaments -- won't be a part of the conversational menu. So they travel four or five time zones away to have the same conversations that they have every week during the season on the telephone.

The point being, NFL coaches never seem to get away sometimes, even when they travel to Alaska.

And they would tell you that you have to be a football coach to understand.

There's a story on Yahoo! about Terrell Owens and his exit from the Cowboys. It quotes Stephen Jones, son of owner Jerry and the guy who runs a lot of what goes on in Dallas these days. It seems to me, Jones hits it just right -- because it sounds so much like the reality the Eagles faced back when T.O. was here.

The operating shorthand is that Owens is a pain in the ass, such an organizational irritant that it isn't possible for a team to survive his nonsense over the long term. There is truth to that, no doubt. There is absolutely truth to that. But when you really look back on it, the issue for the organization is different, deeper, more nuanced. In Dallas, as in Philadelphia, the real issue was the way that Owens divided the locker room and prevented the quarterback from leading. The problem was not that he tore down the organization. Instead, it was that so many of the players were attracted to him.

Listen to Stephen Jones:

“It’s hard to take over leadership when you’ve got a strong personality like Terrell,” Jones said. “If you look back at our old teams [from the 1990s], a lot of people would say maybe Michael [Irvin] was the leader. Then you might say, ‘He was a receiver. What about Troy [Aikman]? He was the quarterback. Wasn’t he the leader?’ And the answer is, yeah, Troy was a leader. But if Michael wasn’t supportive of him, Troy would’ve had problems.

“A lot of our players thought the world of Terrell – they still do. They loved the way he prepared and how hard he played, and everybody respected his skills and what he’d done in the league. And with him here, I think he was always going to carry that kind of weight.”

It is exactly what happened here. The whining about his contract was the pain-in-the-ass part, a splendid sideshow. But in the end, the Donovan McNabb part of it was what drove everything. It was the potential division of the locker room. It was the impediment that placed in the quarterback's way. And while he is declining now, and the Cowboys do have other receivers -- led by Roy Williams -- that wedge in the locker room is why Owens had to leave Dallas and go to Buffalo, just as he had to leave Philadelphia.

The hits keep coming. Now, pretty much out of nowhwere, a lingering groin problem that nobody mentioned for months has landed Phillies leftfielder Raul Ibanez on the disabled list.

From here, the glass is starting to look a little less half-full.

The starting pitching has begun to revert, unable to give the Phillies the requisite innings. The bullpen, in mid-June, is a smoldering husk, overused by necessity. Brett Myers, the No. 2 starter, is likely gone for the year. The closer, Brad Lidge, is still on the disabled list. The record at home is as abominable as it is inexplicable. And Ibanez, everybody's favorite story of the 2009 season, is on the shelf with the kind of injury that only kind of gets better when it decides to get better. An MRI is likely coming -- and say a prayer that he hasn't torn it.

Murphy is all over the details. I'm just here to convey this growing feeling of unease. I know, I know, the Phils still have their lead in the National League East over the Mets and the rest -- and that is why the glass is still viewed from here as half-full, not half-empty.

But if you are the Mets, watching this all from a distance, what do you think? The Mets have been clobbered by injuries this season, absolutely slaughtered. They also have a bit of, uh, history to overcome if they are ever to be considered serious challengers. But they're hanging around. As the Phillies begin to drop here, they're hanging around. It's a long year and stuff happens and enduring the stuff is what baseball is all about -- all of that is true. And the Phillies have shown a significant ability to endure the last few years. It is just that the challenges are growing here while the biggest challenge -- starting pitching, underlined -- remains unresolved.

And so, on the day Raul Ibanez goes to the disabled list, you wonder what's next. That is what this is starting to feel like. That is what the dominant question is starting to become. What's next?

Haven't had a chance to write much about the big wet kiss that the Eagles gave Donovan McNabb last week. We all know the basics: that the Eagles threw about $5 million at their quarterback, in the year after he was benched and felt disrespected by the club, in an attempt to keep everybody happy and on the same page as they make another run at that elusive Super Bowl. And that's all fine.

Much has been made about how both remaining years of the contract were adjusted. The key provisions for 2010 are these: that $3.5 million of the money that season is guaranteed (none was guaranteed in the previous deal), and that there is a $6.2 million roster bonus that kicks in if McNabb is indeed on the roster on May 5, 2010.

Odd date, that May 5th. My first thought was that it was after the draft -- but, strangely, a few weeks after the draft. Now comes word that the draft might be moved to the first weekend in May next year, which means it will be only a couple of days after the draft. Interesting.

It seems to me that the draft will be the decision point for the club. At that time, McNabb either will be traded or have his deal extended.

People have said that this new contract gives McNabb two years to win the Super Bowl or be gone. I really see it as one year. I cannot imagine the Eagles would allow McNabb to play into the last year of his deal. Elite quarterbacks just don't do that, especially in a media market such as this one. Think about the furor that arose this off-season, the constant discussion and potential distraction, when McNabb had 2 years left on his deal. Can you imagine him playing a season with the contract set to expire at the end? I can't.

Think of how McNabb has dealt with this kind of thing. He was really insulted last season by the benching (and played better after it). But his demeanor has been off ever since then. He has become very hard to read, at least from this distance. Maybe he and the club are fine and the rest of this is just public relations, but I don't know. Something seemed to change with that benching -- and if McNabb were allowed to play into the last year of his deal, I don't know. Your guess is as good as mine about how it would affect him.

I think we're all going to be back in the same spot next spring. I really think the Eagles, in buying McNabb's happiness, bought only 1 year of peace.