Oh, the tricky proposition of college number retirements…

What should determine whether a college kid’s jersey number gets retired? Of course the player should have meant something to the school in some form or another, but are there any quantifiable standards schools should hold players to when considering number retirements?

Breaking and/or setting school records?
Player of the year honors?
Other awards?
Championships?
Should they have graduated?

The University of Texas, which formerly required player of the year honors, has now – in conjunction with the completion of renovations to its football and baseball stadiums – let go of all inhibitions and decided to go on a number retirement binge.

Included in the group will be football players Vince Young, Bobby Layne and Tommy Nobis; baseball players Greg Swindell, Burt Hooton, Scott Bryant and Brooks Kieschnick; and basketball players Kevin Durant and Slater Martin.

One of the number retirements — No. 21 — will actually be a repeat retirement. The baseball program’s retirement of the number in honor of Swindell will mark the second time it’s been retired. The Longhorn baseball team’s other retired No. 21?

Roger Clemens.

Anyway, here’s a recap of the number retirement bonanza…

Baseball: Burt Hooton (20), Greg Swindell (21), Brooks Kieschnick (23), and Scott Bryant (25)
Basketball: Slater Martin (15) and Kevin Durant (35)
Football: Vince Young (10), Bobby Layne (22), and Tommy Nobis (60)

Brett Favre as a member of the Chicago Bears? Try not to bring this up around Brad Maynard.

For the record, this whole Brett Favre fiasco is annoying, and is kinda turning us off to him.

In any case, the good folks over at the Chicago Tribune – playing on the (obvious) notion that the Bears’ QBs suck, and that Brett Favre would be an upgrade – came up with the photoshop dandy you see to the right.

Brett Favre as a member of the Chicago Bears? Sure, Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton aren’t exactly, well, what you would call “good,” but isn’t the idea of a Packers legend as a member of the Bears blasphemy in the Chicago area? Heck, it’s already a given that heart failure would skyrocket among Wisconsin’s populace.

Amazingly, No. 4 isn’t among the zillions of numbers the Bears have retired.

However, Bears punter Brad Maynard tells us it has been in use since at least 2001.

Favre ending up as a Bear is doubtful if you ask the folks here at TJNB. But the idea leads us to the following question:

Under the Unofficial Number Priority Hierarchy, would Favre be entitled to No. 4 as a member of the Bears?

The number’s not retired, but it is being worn. And it is being worn by a veteran — an 11-year veteran at that — not a rookie or an early-career player. However, this is football and the guy wearing it is a punter, while Favre’s an ever-important QB. Additionally, Favre is sort of a legend. But on the other hand, he’s spent his career leading the charge for the Bears’ biggest rival.

While we don’t think it should really be this simple, the likelihood is that if the Bears did acquire Favre, team GM Jerry Angelo would pass him a No. 4 Bears jersey at his introductory press conference probably right around the same time Maynard would be showing up to his locker at camp or practice only to find some other number adorning his jersey.

Sorry Brad.

The good folks over at knowyourdallascowboys.com have been listing Cowboy greats by number. Today’s number? No. 56, and thirteen players who’ve worn it.

The practice of retiring college athletes’ numbers has always been a curious one to us. Players cycle through college every couple years, whereas pro athletes at least have the ability to stay with a team and keep numbers in use for an extended period of time before meriting a number retirement.

But with the opportunity for so many players to have an impact on a school over so many small individual periods of time, we’d think number retirement rules at the college level should probably be pretty stringent, or even, perhaps, non-existent.

At least one school’s football program falls into the latter category: apparently the University of Oklahoma doesn’t retire football players’ numbers. So says Stiles Points, reading from a book titled Soonerology Trivia Challenge.

Sacrosanct Gospel has been stirring up a little bit of a debate (and have made some corrections as a result) in compiling a list of all-time great NFL players – number by number – from Nos. 1 (actually No. 00) through 99. They posted Nos. 51 though 75 today.

Also check out Nos. 1 through 25 and Nos. 26 through 50.

Stephon Marbury might wanna think some more about getting his number tattooed to his head.

For current (and probably soon-to-be-former) New York Knicks’ guard Stephon Marbury, the No. 3 is more than just what he wears on his jersey: it’s his brand.

Starbury, that is.

And now his brand is branded to his head.

Marbury went the Mike Tyson route and tatted up his dome with Starbury’s company logo.

Stephon Marbury bounded off the Knicks’ team bus at Vegas’ Valley High last night – a new tattoo inscribed on his left temple. The “3″ logo found on his Starbury sneaker and apparel line is now a permanent part of his bald head.

For his sake, if he doesn’t stay with the Knicks, here’s hoping he ends up somewhere where No. 3 is available. Or where they don’t have a no-headband policy.

Orlando Magic guard Courtney Lee was about to be the first player to wear No. 32 for the team since Shaquille O’Neal last wore it in 1996.

The team actually assigned him the number. He wore it in high school, in college at Western Kentucky, and, hey, it was available.

Lee, however, decided he’d rather wear No. 11.

Lee will honor Daniel Rumph, who wore the number when he was Lee’s teammate at Western Kentucky. Rumph died of a heart condition while playing pick-up ball in 2005. Lee has credited Rumph with keeping him in school after a homesick freshman season.

“I wouldn’t be here without Daniel. I wouldn’t have this opportunity,” Lee said.

“I always want to represent him in a good way.”

It often takes the stars and moon lining up just right for rookies or players new to a team to get the number they wore in college or with their last team; taking something else when your number is available is almost like spitting on the good fortune you’ve been given.

In Lee’s case, I don’t think anyone will blame him.

Sure, Jermaine O'Neal can dunk. But should the Pacers retire his number?

Jermaine O’Neal, who was recently traded to the Toronto Raptors after eight seasons with the Indiana Pacers, has undoubtedly been one of the better prep-to-pro basketball players to come around. Not Kobe, KG, or LeBron, but pretty good nonetheless.

He didn’t really get decent until he was traded away from the Portland Trail Blazers, where he had spent four years mostly just racking up limited minutes or DNP-CDs. However, at least one RealGM writer feels JO’s Pacers’ tenure may be worthy of commemoration by the team sometime down the line:

As his career currently stands, O’Neal will not make the Hall of Fame. However, it wouldn’t be hard to envision the Pacers retiring his jersey once the sun has set on his career. That’d be no small feat in Indiana, where just four players have their name and number hanging in the rafters.

Is eight years of 18.6 ppg, 9.6 rpg, and 2.4 bpg with a team enough? Definitely not too shabby, and they’re better than the raw stats of the man behind Pacers’ retired No. 35, Roger Brown, but Brown played on an ABA champion Pacers’ team. Mel Daniels (No. 34) had similar, though slightly better numbers, but also played on that championship team. The other Pacers’ number-retirees — Reggie Miller (No. 31) and the stat-stuffing, ABA MVP George McGinnis (No. 30) – were shoo-ins for number retirement.

So, in JO’s case, should zero championships, a most improved player award (for goodness sake), and one third-place finish in MVP voting do the trick in rounding out the numbers?

What about the time O’Neal spent injured? Is “what could’ve been” meritous of having his No. 7 hang in the Conseco Fieldhouse rafters?

Also of note in the RealGM article: ”Quite simply, Jermaine O’Neal is a class act.”

Sure, he seems like a straight-shooting guy in most interviews, but, um, what about the time JO slugged the dude in the face during the Malice At The Palace? Wasn’t that whole situation was quite unbecoming of what the Pacers organization likes to promote, let alone unbecoming of a “class-act”?

Or how about when O’Neal got pissed off because the Pacers signed him to a long-term deal and then fired Isaiah Thomas as coach, who he said he wanted to play for? Didn’t he say he would’ve signed with the Spurs if he’d have known Indiana was going to fire Thomas?

What about when he cried tears of joy at his introductory press conference with the Raptors, noting he was glad to have a fresh start?

Number retirements aren’t things to be thrown around. They should be reserved for the absolute best or most meaningful players with a franchise. O’Neal proved he was a pretty good player, but with Reggie Miller around to soak in the bulk of any adulation the team got, was JO really considered that meaningful?

O’Neal still has some time to play, and the Pacers have plenty of time to think about it. They’re gonna need it because retiring JO’s number won’t be that easy to decide.