When it comes to sports entertainment, there really is no substitute for age.

Players and media members can break out all the antics they want to try to get attention, but nothing is as unpredictable and as difficult to mimic as sheer oldness.

If someone stays in the spotlight, keeps a camera on their mug or a microphone in their face long enough, it's basically a lock that their oldness will begin to become a source of humor on its own.

The subject of sports senility came to the forefront this week when the 79-year old owner of the Oakland Raiders, Al Davis, went on a rampage at his press conference to announce the firing of head coach Lane Kiffin.

Doing anything he could to disparage Kiffin, Green went so far as to break out of the old overhead projector like he was a high school Social Studies teacher in 1984, all so he had a visual aid when railing on his former coach.  In other words, Davis saw the "high road", turned in the opposite direction and floored it.

One had to feel sorry for Tom Cable, an offensive line coach thrust into the vacant head coach position, who was seated next to Davis during the majority of the press conference doing his best not to look terrified of his boss.

While some aging owners such as George Steinbrenner of the Yankees have taken a step back from the public eye, Davis' insistence on remaining in the spotlight as the figure head for his team has made him an icon for entertaining old men in sports.  That and the fact that he looks like he died five years ago.

But Al Davis is by no means alone.  The sports world is littered with old guys who have become beacons of comedy based largely on their date of birth. 

College Football is full of aging legends, but two in particular are still pulling significant face time past the age of 70.

Amongst ESPN's team of football analysts sits one legendary former Notre Dame head coach, born in 1937, who never fails to make us smile with his spittle-enhanced analysis of the games at hand.

If Lou Holtz's lisp and the noticeable bi-focals weren't enough to keep us happy, you can appreciate his consistency in starting out every sentence with the words "as a football coach".  We know you were a football coach, Lou.  A damn good one too.

And when it comes to legendary football coaches that refuse to acknowledge the concept of "retirement", no one is more prominent than Joe Paterno.  The Penn State head coach is still manning the sidelines and conducting regular press conferences in Happy Valley at the ripe age of 82.

If you ask the question - what's so entertaining about Joe Paterno? - just take one look at the picture below and it should provide the answer...



While guys like Paterno are on the field, the announcing booth is filled with guys who have been calling games since the days when "watching the game at home" meant staring at your giant radio.

Obviously any talk of senile-yet-hilarious announcers begins and ends with the late Harry Caray, who sits atop the "unintentionally hilarious old guy Mt. Rushmore" from his days in Chicago.  Non-Cubs fans across the country watched his weekday WGN broadcasts simply because he would look at a guy named Ryan Karp and audibly wonder why his name wasn't Karp Ryan.  Sure it didn't make any sense, but that didn't make it any less enjoyable.

Still manning the booth today is the iconic Pat Summerall who, when paired up with a young meathead partner not named John Madden, can take a college football bowl game to a whole new level.

In St. Louis, we have the pleasure of hearing former St. Louis Football Cardinals head coach Jim Hanifan - born in 1933 - serving as the #2 man on the radio broadcasts and proving that blurting out borderline obscenties in disgust of the team makes listening to Rams football a little more bearable.

In the written media, no one has lasted quite as long as Furman Bisher of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution who was born in 1918 and is still writing regularly for the paper.  If I make it to 90 years old, I'm not banking on being able to form a complete sentence much less churn out a 700 word blog on the FedEx Cup.  Thankfully, Furman Bisher has maintained his skills long enough to provide readers with age-tinted blurbs like this...

Eight springs ago the Mets and Cubs opened the season, not in Cincinnati. Guess where? Tokyo. That Tokyo, the guys who gave us Pearl Harbor. Some people don’t like you to bring that up, trade with Japan is so hot. But I’ve got a long memory. I saw what a few bombs can do to our property.

Bill Simmons has 80's movie references, Furman Bisher has Pearl Harbor references.  To each his own.

The bottom line is simple - we can never get enough senility in sports.  If I'm still writing sports columns in 2049, I guarantee I'm going to way funnier than I am now, even if I have absolutely no idea why.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to grab a cold beer and watch the latest Al Davis press conference that I Tivo'd.