Cliff Notes: Training Camp, Day 1

As the 2008 version of the Kansas City Chiefs poured out of their charter buses, it was hard not to think about what Glenn Dorsey was up to. Was he eating a sandwich? Playing some Madden? Maybe he was finger painting.

No one really knows, but what we do know is he is not in River Falls, making it official that we will have back-to-back years with a Chiefs' first-round holdout. Both of the Chiefs most recent holdouts will be from LSU, and both will have probably been rookie starters.

There are lots of similarities with Bowe and Dorsey, and though there is no likely correlation between Bowe's holdout and his rookie success, it'd be nice if Dorsey's rookie success turns out to be another similarity.

Carl Peterson claims the ball is in Glenn Dorsey's court as far as negotiations go, but the real question is how far on the other side of the court is it? Are Peterson and Dorsey’s agent, Joel Segal, even on the same court? Is Segal standing at one free-throw line while Carl is sitting down facing the opposite wall? Where would the ball be in that scenario? Hopefully they're both standing inside the circle at mid-court, with the ball just across the line.

If you believe what Carl is saying, you would think the first scenario I painted is more likely to be true. If you believe Nick Athan's reports to be true, the latter scenario may be accurate.

No one is all too certain whether or not the Dorsey deal is close to being done, and while we all want the NFL Live crew to talk about something other than Brett Favre, let's hope it's not a Glenn Dorsey holdout that gives them the opportunity.

On a brighter note, Dwayne Bowe did get his plasma television delivered to his dorm room. What the Chiefs call “training camp” is about as close to a camp as Martha Stewart's stretch in jail was to hard time.

Soon after the players rushed inside their newly built dorm, they lined up just outside the door like kids in line to meet Santa Claus. Only this time, Santa was a University of Wisconsin at River Falls employee wearing a blue polo, and instead of driving a sleigh, he was driving a white moving van full of suitcases and amenities.

Bowe's television and some of the other amenities were sent to River Falls via private associates. There is actually a company that arranges the delivery of a player's car. The company will also fill that car with the items a player might need throughout training camp, like video game systems, recliners, and toilet paper.

There is no campfire, no singing of Kum-Bay-Yah, and as far as I know, no fireside guitar music to lull River Falls' campers to sleep. According to Larry Johnson, training camp this year will get even less campier (I know that's probably not a word) without HBO's Hard Knocks crew around.

“This time there’s no hard knocks,” said Johnson. “Now everybody can't act for the cameras, everybody can be their real selves. Everybody won't go on nature walks, and all this other stuff they had them doing, but now it's time to really play football and get to having fun.”

Maybe not going on nature walks will be good for Johnson and the crew after all. That way he can't re-injure his foot tripping on a pinecone!