Reynolds: Memo to Moss - stop your whining

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Memo to New England Patriots receiver Randy Moss:

Stop it.

Stop it right now.

Enough of this contract talk.

Enough of saying this feels like you're not wanted.

Enough of this "woe-is-me'' you spewed on CBSSports.com over the weekend saying, "when you have done so much and put so much time in it kind of feels like I('m not wanted."

Enough of all of it.

Because the last thing we need is one more example of how clueless so many athletes have become, one more example that so many of them seem to live in some fantasy world that has nothing to do with the one that the rest of us live in.

Because, let's get one thing understood right up front: You are in the last year of a contract you signed in 2008, one that by one report has you making $6.4 million this year to play a game high school kids play for nothing. Roll that figure around on your tongue for a while.

We're supposed to feel sorry for you?

Sorry.

You are one of the chosen, one of the physically gifted that are fortunate enough to live in a country that rewards sports stars as if they just stepped down from Olympus. You are one of the fortunate few who receive the world and all its gold for your ability to catch a football. Not to come up with a cure for cancer. Not teach kids. Not build companies that employ people and make communities. Not lead people through periods of strife.

To catch a football.

We're supposed to feel sorry for you?

Please.

And no one is begrudging you or your contract. You didn't make the contemporary NFL culture. You just benefit by it.

But to complain that you don't have a new contract yet, to whine that you don't feel wanted when you are making millions of dollars is obscene. It would be obscene anytime, but in today's day and age, one on which the economy is in the tank, double-digit unemployment, municipalities with the wolf at the door, and every day brings more evidence of woe, a daily diary of heartbreak, you are coming across like the new poster child for spoiled superstars.

You are coming across like just another jock brat who doesn't have a clue.

That's the unfortunate part.

That, and your short memory.

For it was the Patriots who threw you a life raft and resurrected your career three years ago, back when the word in the NFL was that you were a problem child that had burned too many bridges. It certainly was a wise move on your part, one that's benefited both you and the Pats. No one's ever questioned your talent. Nor your work ethic. But it was the Pats who gave you the stage to jump start your career, a high profile team, QB Tom Brady, the perfect place to move beyond your past.

Does that mean anything now?

Guess not.

In a perfect world you would see the big picture, the one where there is real suffering out there. In a perfect world you would realize that no one looks good when they complain about their contracts, not in this day and age. In a perfect world someone -- your agent, your advisers, your friends, someone -- would clue you in, would tell you that it's not in your best interest to say not being offered a new contract makes you feel not wanted

And maybe it's the fact that Brady reportedly is close to signing a new three-year deal that supposedly will pay him nearly $20 million a year is the source of your discontent.

Or if he can get a new sweetheart deal, why not you, right?

Maybe this isn't all that complicated.

But who knows.

Maybe it's simply the fact that you're 33, a dangerous time for a professional athlete, a time when your own athletic mortality becomes more of an opponent than the guys trying to cover you, a time when you know there aren't too many more contracts out there in your future. I suspect that's what is really going on here, this fear of your future, the fear that this fantasy world you've been living in is a lot closer to the end than it is to the beginning.

Maybe it's that in the myopic world of professional sports you're never truly happy with your contract if you know someone else is making more.

Who knows about that, too?

But one thing I do know.

Stop the contract talk.

Enough already of saying that this feels like you're not wanted.

No one wants to hear it.

Not now.

(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold(at)projo.com.)

(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)

columnMust credit The Providence Journal