By Jim Kelly Jr.

It shouldn’t end like this.

In sports there are players that personify teams. Players that characterize the city they play in, the attitude they play with, and the highlights they create. The same goes for couples. When you think of Brad Pitt you think of Angelina and third world children. When you think of the Yankees you think of Derek Jeter third world children grown up playing baseball. These long term relationships are branded into our sports fan lives, like Kobe and the Lakers or Tiger and the entire sport of golf. But much like the countless problems Kobe has gone through, sometimes these relationships have bumps in the road, and sometimes the breakup is the only way out. Both sides know something is there, that just maybe things might work out, but it’s just too late; there’s just too much baggage.

There are a few different kinds of sports breakups. You can have the Quiet Breakup- the kind where there’s a known problem, maybe an incident happened a few weeks ago that one side really can’t get over- say you called her parents fat, uneducated slobs. You made up and swear everything is fine, but the tension remains. Finally one side wants out, burdonned by the memory of what happened, and in time their wish in granted. Everything was fine for a while, and it seemed like this was a life long fit, but after that infamous moment nothing will ever be the same. Jeremy Shockey and the Giants did this, as Shock was out for the most improbable playoff run ever and was quickly replaced in the minds of the fans by a rookie. His antics and playing style fired up Giant fans and made the rest of the league despise him as a showboating punk. He played hard and candid, even if it meant complaining about his lack of receptions in a game, yet it never seemed like him and Jekyll and Hyde Manning were on the same page. Once he was left out of the Super Bowl triumph it was easy to see he wanted to be left out of New York all together, and while fans will miss him it's hard to blame him for making the decision.

There’s the Mean Spirited Breakup. Maybe you had a fight and now every time you see each other the sarcastic comments flare up like that thing she gave you but never told you about. You’re having cordial conversations on the way to a mutual friend's party but give her a beer and she’ll start telling everyone that you don’t satisfy her enough and you haven’t washed the jeans you’re wearing since you started dating 3 years ago. Follow that up with an awkward week long silence filled with sarcastic jokes and ill willed quipps to mutual friends and you’ve got the Jason Taylor break up. Taylor and Tuna never got on the same page, maybe Bill was jealous of Jason’s samba abilities, and the animosity carried over to Taylor’s eventual escape to Dan Synderville. Taylor was the Dolphins though, a great player stuck on an under performing team that still lives in the shadow of laces out Dan Marino of nearly a decade ago. His production, leadership, and promotional skills will be missed in Miami now, a city desperate for wins and large enough elastic wasitbands for the Tuna.

There is everyone's favorite- the I-Told-You-That-Bitch-Was-Crazy breakup. You liked her for her free spirit and ability to get along with all of your friends, but deep down you knew something was a little off. She started making your friends beaded necklaces and dancing on every bar she could find from family resturant to sushii, but you shrugged it off because she had an outgoing personality and she was a bit out of your league. Now she’s saying you don’t appreciate her and the way she lives her life and she went ahead and pulled a Carrie Underwood on your car while stealing the passwords to your voicemail and emails and alerting everyone you know about how horrible a boyfriend you are and one time you pee’d the bed after a long night at the bar. You could probably tell this is the Manny Ramirez breakup- a long, unorthodox, painful ordeal that pulled out all the stops to Bizzaro-ville filled with media rants and homemade dug out signs. The Red Sox fans will always loves Manny being Manny, his antics and more importantly run production personified the greatest run in franchise history, but management has their own frustrating take on the situation. A me-first player with unpredictable moods to match his majestic home runs. Sox fans had the greatest times of their sports lives with Manny, but he fell out of favor with eventually everyone and the bittersweet departure into the arms of Joe Torre is like watching your crazy ex girlfriend start to date the quarterback from your rival high school, only like 6 years later. Or would it be like your rival quarterback’s dad? I don’t know.

Then there is the worst kind of breakup for everyone involved- The Long Breakup. It was the greatest run of your life, as your walls are filled with pictures from your multiple vacations together and cards she gave you over the years with flowers and babies dressed as adults on them in black and white. But you’re falling out of favor with her now, she’s grown tired of complacency and she just doesn’t see a future with you, even though her parents, family friends and great aunt Edna all love you. You want to come back, she isn’t sure, she wants you back, then you want out, then you want back and she says nay- too much has happened. No one is pointing fingers, it’s just…things have changed, and while you call her parents to explain your side and text message Edna for advice (and her oatmeal cookie recipe) it’s over, you know it, she knows it, but you just don’t know how to break it off. So it drags on, your stubbornness shining through, so much so that you charter a plane to see her in Wisconsin. It’s the Brett Favre breakup- the dragged out public ordeal that has everyone just wishing it would go away. In the beginning the friends and family took sides, saying who was in the wrong and who was trying to make things right, heck even Edna took your side. Yet now after months have passed everyone just wants it to go away, be together or stay apart, whatever you choose we don’t want to talk about it anymore.

The loser in all of these breakups will always be the sports fan, who is like the mutual friend to the couple, someone forced to listen to both sides of the story and give one liners like “I don’t know where it all went wrong” and “you’re going to be fine”. The problem is the sports fan is the only one emotionally invested in all of these relationships. In the real world people breakup and it hurts them the most. In the sports world the breakups only hurt the one’s on the outside, as teams will move on in free agency and the draft and players will find a payday in some other greener pasture. It’s the business aspect that gets in the way, and while the player can say thank you for the memories the sports fan has no grounds to say anything but the same thing back to them. Taylor, Shockey, ManRam and Favre all had great runs, Hall of Fame runs for a few, and while both sides are still good for each other the breakups all will eventually be better for everyone involved. They have to be, as in a world where media quotes from text messages and private conversations with reporters break headlines to teams and fans it’s the impersonal breakup that dominates the sports landscape. There are no more closed door meetings, no more hashing out your problems and looking for a way out, just phone calls and text messages to Chris Mortensen or Peter Gammons to air out your feelings and desires to move on.

Now as each player moves on the fans will know that for whatever reason things just didn’t work when they were here, and now like the mutual friend you’ll wish the best for both sides without ever mentioning either of them to each other for fear of bringing up awkward situations. I’m sure now Pack fans will be glad with Favre no matter what happens because he gave them so many years of promise, and Sox fans will look back on the Manny years with a feeling of nostalgia, like the feeling you get when you hear 50 Cent- In Da Club.

Yet the time to move on has come and gone, and while some players skipped town and never looked back the fans are the ones left to continue forward and wait for the next relationship to carry their franchise, always hoping that this one is the one, and the only baggage they carry with them is a ring.