Disgruntled Eagles’ cornerback Lito Sheppard has hired infamous super agent Drew Rosenhaus to represent him in his attempts to negotiate a new contract.

It’s a move that will likely provoke bad memories amongst the Eagles’ faithful.

According to news reports, the two sides had an initial meeting Wednesday and look forward to getting a deal done and avoiding the ugliness that occurred the last time that Rosenhaus held negotiations with the Eagles when he represented Terrell Owens.

Sheppard is due to earn a base salary of $2 million in 2008.

Since the dominating story in the NFL news cycle during the dog days of summer seems to be the impending return of Brett Favre from only 4 months of retirement, I explore the reasoning of his comeback and what could occur if he made his way to Philly and donned the NFL’s darker shade of green.

As of now, the Powers that Be in the NFL media circles are all but certain that Favre will announce his desire to return within the next two weeks. Peter King meticulously lists all the options available to both Favre and the Packers in his Sports Illustrated column. The possible outcomes consist of the Packers keeping Favre and benching an aggravated Aaron Rodgers, the Packers trading Favre to the suitor of their choice, or the Packers cutting Favre so that he can play wherever he wishes. I won’t examine all the details surrounding where Favre could or should play in 2008, but I will say that Green Bay’s best bet to avoid humiliation and win games is to keep Favre.

What I find most interesting about the ongoing tale of whether or not Favre will play football again is the quest to determine what …

 Dear National Sports Media (read: Our ESPN overlords),

We really enjoy what you do for us, really we do. If not for you we couldn’t check our fantasy stats when our girlfriends leave the room as we’re stuck watching America’s Got Talent (Don’t Hassle the Hoff). We wouldn’t know that the Cleveland Indians have only a 0.7% chance of making the playoffs (shouldn’t that have dropped when they dealt Sabathia). And we would have never been introduced to the smooth stylings of Stephen A. Smith. Hey, it’s a mixed bag. But with baseball in full swing, the NBA and NHL free-agent period underway and NFL training camp right around the corner, do you really need to manufacture stories about Brett Favre?

Brett Favre was a great player, just ask John Madden. And none of us are going to argue that he should go right into Canton. Hell, put his bust in there now, let him live there, whatever he wants to do. We also know that having him come out of retirement would make a great story, especially for the reporters in Bristol, CN (although Aaron Rodgers will probably go Jeff Gillooly on him if he …

This is the first installment of a weekly review of former Philadelphia athletes who have passed through town.  However, this won’t be your normal look back at players like Mike Schmidt, Julius Erving, or Ron Jaworski.  Instead, I would like to focus on some players that made an impression with me, either good or bad, that for whatever reason have become a part of my memory and my desire to search them out and relive some of their great moments.  Players like… Steve Jeltz.

The greatest French born Major League Baseball player of all time spent parts of 7… yes 7 seasons playing shortstop for the Philadelphia Phillies starting in 1983 and ending, mercilessly, in 1989, when he was traded in the off-season to Kansas City for Jose Dejesus.

What most people recall about Jeltz was that he was born in France… and he didn’t give you much too remember either.  A career .210 hitter with only 5 homers to his name and the gall to not even be a good fielder left most Philadelphians with a bad taste in their mouth.But Jeltz’ glimmering, although drippy, mane made him a topic of …

Former Philadelphia Eagle and recent DUI attainee Jevon Kearse said recently that his former team will be sorry it didn’t re-sign him.

According to a Philly.com article,

Kearse, who was arrested and charged with DUI near Vanderbilt University on June 22, told ESPN’S Paul Kuharsky that the Eagles and their fans will be surprised at how well he plays this season.

“They’ll say, ‘Why the hell did we let that dude go?’ ” Kearse said. ” ‘What were they thinking?’ ”

“But everything happens for a reason. Maybe it was a good reason: So I can get [hissed] off and get more motivated.”

Kearse may be right. If he has a good season this year, we will be surprised. Since signing with the Eagles in 2004, Kearse has largely been a disapointment. In four years as an Eagle, Kearse had a total of 22 sacks, with the first 15 coming in the first two years. Last season, in 14 games, Kearse got just two sacks, with a measly eight tackles.

Gee, yea, why did we let that guy go?

So last night the rumor came out that Alex Rodriguez’s wife is leaving him for Lenny Kravitz and the Internet almost blew up. Who would have thought any story could take away from the “Brett Favre Returns” story from Favre fellatist Chris Mortensen? A quick look at google trends shows that five of the top 10 searches on google involve Rodriguez and his wife (although my favorite trend comes in at #52 - watermelon viagra). I’ll grant you this is a pretty big story (I’m writing about it, right?) but if ARod still played in Seattle or Texas would this be this big of a story? Clearly if he played in Philadelphia it wouldn’t.

New York is the biggest city in the world, I get it. But for god’s sake just because they’re the biggest market doesn’t mean ESPN, and in turn the rest of the sports media world, has to cover them so much. When the Mets finally fired Willie Randolph two weeks ago it was the biggest story in the sports world. Remember, the Mets were in third place at the time of his firing. If the Phillies were in third place and fired …

The Eagles signed third round draft pick Bryan Smith Tuesday to a four-year deal.

Smith was a defense end out of McNeese State. He had 31 career sacks in college, with 24 of them coming in his final two years.

The Eagles have signed eight out of their 10 draft picks from this year. Only Trevor Laws and DeSean Jackson, their first two picks, remain unsigned.

Last Friday I was listening to The Herd with Colin Cowherd, a show on ESPN Radio, and host Colin Cowherd made a very interesting point about how a tough sports media ultimately benefit the teams they cover, regardless of how harsh or unfair they can be. Many people find Cowherd offensive and seriously dislike him and his in your face style, particularly those in the blogosphere. I guess since Hot Stove Philly is technically considered a sports blog, I should also dislike him, but I don’t. I often times find him incredibly interesting and thought provoking. I don’t always agree with him, but he always makes me think and provides me with an endless stream of interesting sports topics.

One such topic is this idea that cities, or regions, with a tougher sports media benefit those sports teams that receive intense and often times harsh media coverage. One example given by Cowherd included the Los Angeles’ media market’s fiercely lackadaisical approach to all of their sports, with the exception of the Lakers, USC football, and UCLA basketball. Other than that, the LA media largely ignores the other sports in the region aside from your general day to …

It’s safe to say Javon Kearse’s time in Philadelphia was disappointing to say the least, so it wasn’t really shocking when the Eagles released him earlier this year. Now the word coming out of Tennessee is that Kearse was arrested and charged with DUI early Sunday morning after being stopped near Vanderbilt University by campus police. You’re telling me with all that money he stole from the Eagles he couldn’t hire a driver?

Reportedly, Kearse took a field sobriety test but refused to take a breathalyzer which is a violation of Tennessee’s implied consent law. When he was pulled over the officer reported he “exhibited slurred speech, red eyes, and smelled of alcohol.”

Well I guess that’s one way to get your career back on track.

At 10am today Eagles single-game seats went on sale and as expected they were sold out in under an hour (actually it only took 40 minutes). But this year tickets were only available through Ticketmaster either buy calling their phone number or, as most people would do, through their website. As The Inquirer points out, trying to buy tickets was an exercise in frustration. But all is not lost, you can still buy tickets from Ticketmaster, well sort of.

When tickets sell out it doesn’t mean you’re not going to be able to buy seats, it just means you’re going to have to do some searching and probably pay a little more. But usually it’s calling some shady ad from the paper or dealing with the “Need ‘em, Got ‘em” guy walking around the stadium. Not anymore, this is the 21st Century and instead of the little guy making some extra dough from re-selling tickets, companies like Ticketmaster do it themselves.

Just go to ticketsnow.com where you’ll be able to find as many tickets as you want. Let’s look at the Eagles first game of the season against the St. Louis Rams. As of 2pm, TicketsNow had …

Eagles’ quarterback Donovan McNabb appeared Wednesday on Daily News Live on the Comcast Sportsnet Network and answered several questions ranging from the condition of his recent shoulder injury to his relationship with the fans.

McNabb responded to several questions about the condition of what has been identified as shoulder tendinitis. When asked by DNL host Michael Barkan how his should felt, McNabb responded “I’m fine, the shoulder’s fine. I think it was blown way out of proportion.” He went on to discuss the injury in more detail.

I think what happened was that when people heard shoulder tendinitis, they automatically thought oh no, not again. The perfect term for it is shoulder tightness, that’s all. It’s not soreness, it’s not a tear, it’s not a tendon problem or anything. It’s just tightened.

McNabb also addressed previous remarks he made that seemed to indicate that he wasn’t happy with the outcome of the Eagles’ draft this year.

Like I said, I was happy with what we did. And it’s really not for my likeness, the draft, anyway.

He commented that the Eagles historically never play their rookies much anyway, so regardless of who they pick, they aren’t …

The Phillies followed up their red hot streak the week before with a tough couple series this past week, losing two of three games to both the Florida Marlins and St. Louis Cardinals. Both teams are in the mix with the Phillies for the top spots in the NL. The Cardinals currently lead the NL Wild Card race, 3.5 games up on Florida. If the Phillies are going to win the NL East, or the Wild Card if it comes to that, they are going to have to beat those teams they are competing with. What the Mets did last year isn’t going to happen every year. This team needs to improve upon its consistency and continue to win series.

In other news this week, Phillies set up man Tom Gordon was demoted from that role after a couple shaky outings. The reasoning given for his demotion was that the Phils don’t want to overuse him and wear out his arm. Gordon has had a pretty solid year this year, with only a couple trip ups along the way. That being said, he has been shaky recently, and is 41 years of age. This might not be …