Looks like I have several things to talk about as we are now at the end of the 2015-16 NFL season.  First up is the recent Hall of Fame voting and the Class of 2016.  No surprise that Brett Favre got in on the first ballot or that Marvin Harrison finally made it.  The same for Orlando Pace.  The rest of the bunch, with one exception, I just say “Fine.  If that’s who you think belongs, good for you.” The one exception:  Ken Stabler. It should have been a federal crime to keep Ken “The Snake” Stabler out of the HOF until this year, just  after he passed away in 2015.  The Snake was “The Man” in the 1970’s, the undisputed leader of the baddest, toughest, winning-est, and weirdest bunch of outcasts in the NFL – the Silver and Black, the Oakland Raiders.  I saw many games where Stabler would somehow, twist and turn and scramble out of a sure sack to hit the long bomb or a crucial touchdown pass.  So many times my friends and I would look at each other and say “How the $%k did he do that?!” All Oakland did was win, and then win some more.  Hell, even their punter (Ray Guy) was awesome.  So, Mr. Stabler finally getting into the Hall of Fame, well after so many lessor candidates were inducted, is well deserved.  As for the voters prior to this year – they should be drug out back behind the barn and punched in the kidneys until they admit that they are idiots.

With that off my chest, let’s turn to the Super Bowl.  It was a good game  – one of the more entertaining of the past ten years or so.  While I could care less who won, it kept my attention until the very end, something a lot of the Super Bowls fail to do.  Was great to see Wade Phillips get his due as a coach and to see Von Miller and Demarcus Ware show up big time.  They were beating on Cam Newton like it was their job!  On reflection, I guess it was their job.  As for the Panthers, hard to believe it was the same team that steamrolled through the NFC playoffs.  Cam looked like one of the 17 back-up QB’s the Cowboys used this year.  None of the commercials really grabbed my attention other than the monkey/baby/puppy horror served up by Mountain Dew.  That was worse than the constipation commercial.  I can only imagine that at the meeting where they are firing the numb-nuts who came up with the constipation commercial, his defense is “at least I didn’t come up with monkey/baby/puppy creature!”  Halftime was kind of a mess.  I though Coldplay was playing.  Felt like they got one song in and then two other bands kidnapped the stage.  I love Bruno Mars – mega talented.  Could live without Beyonce.  She writes/performs the same song (and dance) over and over and over.  Made me wish for “Up with People”!

Finally, I came across this great article on ESPN.com about the owners meetings that led up to the Rams move from St. Louis to Los Angeles.  Click here to read it.  It’s long so set some time aside to read it.  It is a fascinating story about the the backdoor dealing, backstabbing, and backsliding that went on behind the scenes.  You could tell from the public announcements about the new L.A. stadium and the Rams move that something goofy had been going on behind the scenes.  It wasn’t just goofy, it was bloody!  From the article:

“One NFL owner called the meeting a “s— show.” A “nightmare,” another said. Yet another described it as “the most contentious and polarizing” in decades. On Dec. 2 at the Four Seasons in Irving, Texas, the owners-only meeting had a single agenda item: Which team or teams should be allowed to relocate to Los Angeles?”

*****

“Before the meeting ended, [Jerry] Jones, as would be his habit, took control. He delivered a rollicking, profanity-laced eight-minute endorsement of Kroenke’s monumental vision, saying in his Arkansas drawl that whichever owner returned to Los Angeles, he needed to have “big balls.”

*****

“In the lobby of the Westin after the news conference, Jerry Jones exited an elevator, carrying a nearly empty glass of whiskey, looking both energized and relieved. Though he deeply believed that the vote reflected the league’s best interest, Jones had engineered the defeat of one of the most beloved owners by one of the shrewdest. A few feet away at the hotel bar, some owners took turns consoling Spanos. He felt as if he’d been stabbed in the back. Someone suggested that he should pull a Kroenke and move to Carson anyway. Spanos didn’t want to hear it.”

*****

I guess the days of “all for one and one for all” – a hallmark of why the NFL became the most popular and successful sports league in America – are over.  The NFL has a lot of issues on its plate at the moment – popularity isn’t one of them.  But at some point, the owners really need to think about what they’re doing and how it impacts interest in the game.  They need to make it safer for players, stop the extortion of cities over stadium funding, and give something to the fans other than the finger when it comes to ticket prices/parking/concessions, endless pre-season games, and televised games that are taking longer and longer to play.  Not saying the league is in a danger right now, but I think you’re starting to see a few cracks in the foundation.  Better shore it up quickly Mr. Goodell.  Here comes the NHL!

That’s it for now football fans,

Sterling

Go Snake Go!

It’s been about one year since “deflategate” roiled the NFL world.  In case you were locked away in a cave for the past 12 months, “deflategate” involved allegations that the New England Patriots and star quarterback, Tom Brady, illegally deflated footballs during last year’s AFC playoffs.  While I have no great love or hate for the Patriots, I did think the $3M investigation and the weak (too be kind) Wells Report and conclusions seemed fishy  – as noted in my book.  It appears they were exactly that.  The New York Times published a story today discussing how a number of noted and independent scientists (MIT, Carnegie Mellon, Univ of Chicago, etc.) found the research and report written by the expert hired by Wells and the NFL would not even meet the quality of a bad graduate student.  The scientists were able to show that the deflation of the footballs was consistent with well known scientific laws around the behavior of gasses in a cold environment.  Click here to read the story.  From the story:

“When he was done, he concluded that Exponent had made a series of basic errors. Leonard’s work showed the exact opposite of Exponent’s conclusions: The drop in the Patriots’ footballs’ p.s.i was consistent with the Ideal Gas Law; the smaller drop in pressure in the Colts’ balls was not. (Leonard surmises that because the Colts’ balls were tested after the Patriots’ balls, they had warmed up again.)

The edited lecture went up on YouTube on Dec. 1 and has been viewed more than 17,000 times. It is utterly convincing. Leonard told me that if an M.I.T. undergraduate made the kinds of mistakes that Exponent made, “I would force them to repeat the experiment and correct the analysis.” Based on his study of the data, Leonard now says: “I am convinced that no deflation occurred and that the Patriots are innocent. It never happened.”

Brady of course ultimately won the battle with the Commissioner over the issue, but the owner of the Patriots paid a steep price for the NFL’s bogus science.  Meaning, the real crime here is the made up crisis put on by Roger Goodell and the NFL front office.  The second crime was not dealing properly with the Patriots’ video-taping incident back in 2007 which led to the other owners wanting Goodell to “get the Patriots” this time around.

And if the Patriots win the Super Bowl again this year…

That’s it for now football fans.

Sterling

 

A new device may soon be available to help eliminate concussions in football (and other sports, e.g., ice hockey, NASCAR, etc.).  The technology is based on woodpeckers and the fact that they can bang their head against a tree repeatedly and not suffer any ill-effects. It’s not a new helmet however:

“Helmets are good at preventing skull fractures, but they can’t prevent concussions. That’s because the brain floats in fluid inside the skull, like an egg yolk inside a shell. No matter how well the outside is padded, the brain is still damaged when it sloshes against the sides of the skull during a collision. Bailes’s innovation is a collar that lightly constricts the jugular vein, which has the effect of reducing the jiggle room inside the cranium.”

Rather, the technology is based on the physiology of woodpeckers:

“He began studying woodpeckers. One of their most unusual features is a long tongue, which in some species is supported by bones that wrap all the way around the head. Smith theorizes these compress the woodpecker’s neck veins as it thrusts its head forward, increasing the volume of blood between its brain and its skull. Smith says this extra fluid “works like Bubble Wrap” to help keep the brain from knocking against the skull. He was convinced that the same effect could be reproduced in humans, perhaps with some kind of collar.”

Click here to read the full story.

This could be a real game changer (no pun intended) if it really works (and a lot of “ifs” here).  Eliminating or significantly reducing head injuries in football would be a godsend to the players (at all levels), the NFL owners, and the fans – who are often conflicted between the love of big hits and concern about the well-being of their favorite players.

Fingers crossed on this one.

That’s it for now football fans,

Sterling

The big news is that the Rams are moving back to Los Angeles.  While I think it sucks that the great city of St. Louis (where I lived for 8 years) loses another NFL franchise, it is just par for the course in these days where money is king.  I also think it is awful that the Rams owner felt the need to trash the city as part of his escape plan.  I’d like to think that the saying “he’ll get his in the end” would apply, I also know that Santa and the Easter Bunny are not real, so let’s face it, the only thing that is going to happen to Stan is he’s going to get richer with this move.  Oh yea, he’ll also die but that’s in everyone’s future so no special karma there.

Long wind up to a great article showing the history of the Rams unique uniforms.  As you know from my book, they were the first team to use helmet logos, when a Ram player painted “horns” on the sides of their blue helmets back in 1948 (see picture below).  To read more about this and to see how the Rams’ uniforms changed (along with their home cities – they were originally from Cleveland), click here.

That’s it for now football fans.

Sterling