We watched both of the NFL playoff games yesterday, and both turned out to be pretty solid games. But our focus in this post is on San Diego defensive end Luis Castillo. The day before our country honors Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., here’s what Castillo had to say about his team’s quarterback playing injured:

“Philip Rivers is the most courageous teammate I’ve ever had; the most courageous guy I’ve ever seen. For him to go out there and play, nobody will ever comprehend what that means.”

Based on this comment, we strongly considered creating a Martin Luther King Courage Award and handing it out to Rivers. Now, we’re not here to dog Rivers, as we do think it was a gutsy performance to play injured. But courageous? Really?

One day before honoring a man who fought an uphill battle for civil rights. A man who constantly was in the public eye, not afraid to support his cause even though many in this country hated him. A man who was eventually assassinated because he was having too much success in his battle for civil rights.

One day before he is honored, Castillo says that a sports player with an injured knee is courageous. We are generally not fans of using words like this to describe athletes. And this seemed like a perfect time to point out how idiotic it really is.

Here you have a guy playing a sport. He is paid to play, and anyone who plays the sport has a goal of reaching the Super Bowl. He has an injured knee, yet he plays even though his knee is in pain because he wants to get to the Super Bowl. Yeah, that’s nice what Rivers did. We admire his toughness for getting out there and playing. But courageous? Um, not really.

If Rivers hurt his knee in that game, he would sit out the rest of the game. He might have surgery in the off-season and have to rehab to be ready for the 2008-09 season. If things did not work out well for Dr. King, he ended up in jail, or worse yet - shot. That’s courage.

So, thank Luis Castillo. It’s not often that we jump up on our soapbox here at CIV, but you left us no choice. And yes, we are well aware that it took a lot of courage from us to write this post.