Showing posts with label NFL. Show all posts
Showing posts with label NFL. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 26, 2022

Strike Three for Barry Bonds


 





 

Switching briefly to another sport, two NFL quarterbacks that I'm pretty sure will be in their own league's Hall of Fame retired after their final games this season. Both of them made it to the playoffs in their final season but not quite to another Super Bowl. One of them had such a remarkable career that I wouldn't be surprised if they made his image into a league logo someday. I wrote a blog post about the other guy once. Both of them, the latter in particular, stood in the way of my Jets winning a championship (in the seasons that they were actually halfway decent) time and time again. No hard feelings though. Bon Voyage Ben and Tom!






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Tuesday, October 12, 2021

Jon Gruden Fails Email-101

 


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Sunday, November 17, 2019

BREAKING SPORTS NEWS



There were a couple interesting events in the world of sports this week, NFL football to be specific, that caught my attention and led to extensive Twitter commentary by myself and others. The first was a brawl that took place towards the end of an otherwise boring game between the Cleveland Browns and Pittsburgh Steelers. Due in large part to the out of control behavior of one participant in particular, it may go down as the most memorable sports brawl since the legendary Malice in the Palace. I don't know if an equally catchy nickname has been decided on for this latest athletic brouhaha.

The second occurrence was a surprising and oddly rushed decision by the NFL to give Colin Kaepernick a tryout before all 32 NFL teams, after having snubbed him for the better part of the past three years, to possibly make a return to the league. I'm sure you know all about how and why he ended up out of the league to begin with.

Below you'll find a recap of both sporty happenings and various contrary reactions from those in my Twitter feed.





























I'm curious to see where this Kaepernick situation goes. After today are his odds of being signed by a #NFL team higher, lower or unchanged. Will teams retain their opinion that his potential to cause them headaches is greater than his potential to be a franchise QB?




















Oh, there was one other bit of sports news this week.




Also...OUCH and good night.

That's all I got for you sports fans. As for the avid book readers among you, here's one of my videos at Roy's Book Reviews.

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Monday, August 19, 2019

Jay Z and NFL join forces





It has been announced that Jay-Z is going to become one of the owners of a NFL team and lip service will be paid to social injustice at some point by the forming of an "entertainment and social justice partnership". As you well know, Colin Kaepernick played a major role in dragging the NFL into matters of social consciousness, particularly overly/needlessly aggressive policing by officers that often end up with an unarmed black person being killed by a cop. Now it's not as if a fair amount of attention wasn't already being paid to the situation prior to Kaepernick taking a knee for the cause. Every other week it seems a video of racial bias goes viral. Word on the "street" has it that Russia is playing a big part in making sure such videos are seen by the maximum amount of people to keep friction between whites and people of color in America at peak. Whether that's true or not, what's indisputable is that too many of the racial tension incidents where at least one of the participants was a police officer ended up in someone being shot. More often than not it proved fatal. More often than not the victim of melanin had not committed a crime and was not armed, yet still managed to be on the receiving end of a cop's bullet. It's no wonder that Colin Kaepernick was disturbed by what seemed on the verge of becoming an epidemic. All decent people were, and many black people grew frightened and/or furious. Something clearly needed to be done and once Hillary Clinton "lost" to Donald Trump it was clear that aid wouldn't be coming from the federal government any time soon.

But was the NFL the best place to take a stand and make a plea? One could reasonably argue that this situation has nothing to do with professional football (none of the prominent victims has been a NFL player), so taking a knee while the National Anthem was played before football games was perhaps misdirected effort. During televised games is certainly a high profile, much viewed opportunity to draw attention to an issue. But it's not as if the NFL was the entity that needed to do anything about horrible, homicidal police officers with bigoted mindsets who are not worthy of the uniforms they wear. In fact, the only meaningful action taken by the NFL was collusion by team owners to keep Colin Kaepernick from returning to the league. He had become a PR nightmare for a league that wanted focus to be on its entertainment value. The NFL already had plenty of unavoidable thorns in its side. How best to discipline star players for various infractions, particularly those that do not lead to criminal convictions but seem in need of moral condemnation. The long term effects of concussions. Refs screwing up calls in prime time games, leading to constant tweaks of what is/isn/t a catch, what is/isn't reviewable by instant/slow mo replay. The last thing the NFL needed was to be dragged into politics, into the debate over what constitutes patriotism, into matters that were supposed to be in the domain of #BLM (Black Live Matter), not #NFL (National Football League).

Just as the dust FINALLY appeared to be settled (Colin Kaepernick sued for collusion and won an undisclosed amount of money. He still wants to play in the NFL and still hasn't been called for a try-out, but when you sue someone it's not surprising that they choose not to contact you for a job interview) Jay-Z of all people stirred things up again. We knew the topic was of interest to him because he had previously shown solidarity with Kaepernick, wearing his old jersey and referencing him when stating his reasons for not participating in the Super Bowl halftime show. Therefore it came as a surprise to many that Jay-Z isn't making headlines by coming out with a pro Kaepernick - anti NFL rap song, but rather, by entering the ranks of NFL team owners. Who the team will be remains a mystery for the time being. 

Jay-Z is famously a billionaire. If you're a billionaire who enjoys sports and/or realizes pro team ownership is a sound financial investment, you have the option of buying into a team. So if Jay-Z does have any more new music left in him, perhaps he will tell us why he decided to buy into the NFL with a remake of Bobby Brown's MY PREROGATIVE. If you see Jay-Z as being a sell-out because he seemed to switch sides from the oppressed to the oppressor, I can understand that interpretation. If you see him as as being a much needed brown face in the sea of white pro team ownership, I can understand that too. If you believe Jay-Z wants not only to make a sound financial investment and gain entry into the ultra exclusive club of professional sports team owners, but also to use this position to make change for the better in the NFL where it comes to taking action on behalf of social injustices, I can see how you would reach such a conclusion. Doesn't mean you're right, but we'll find out soon enough I suppose. For all we know Jay-Z may plan to finally give Colin Kaepernick the opportunity to try out for a NFL team once he's officially a shot caller for one of them, whichever one it may be. I can't imagine this to be his primary motivation by a long shot, but perhaps it's an item on the agenda of Beyonce's hubby. Based on past history Colin Kaepernick has shown himself to be a flawed quarterback who nonetheless is better than a fair number of back-ups currently in the league and is perhaps better than a few starters. This is assuming that he 
hasn't become quite rusty since his last time under center, which is certainly a possibility.

If Jay-Z was a hero to you because of his status as hip hop legend, you may feel betrayed. Or else feel the need to defend him against accusations by those who believe he has gone Benedict Arnold. As for me, I am neither enraged nor especially encouraged by Jay-Z's latest venture. I didn't see him as saving or destroying the world with Tidal (which I mostly ignored) and same deal with his foray into the NFL. If the team he ends up involved with happens to be my beloved New York Jets I suppose that will make me care a little bit more, but not substantially. Jay-Z told us a while back that he has 99 problems. Seeming to turn his back on the plight of Colin Kaepernick, patron saint of lost causes whom I sincerely respect but idolize no more than I idolize Jay-Z, adds a 100th problem. But I suspect it will blow over soon enough. Colin Kaepernick may or may not get a shot to return to the league. Jay-Z will remain wealthy, and I think he realizes that he won't be adding to his riches courtesy of many more hit songs in the future (he's rather long in the tooth by rap star standards), so instead he'll get his current money to make future money for him. Such is the way of capitalism and successful capitalists. He may lose some fans over this at least temporarily, but as with DOLLAR$ he has plenty of them to spare. As for the rest of us, we'll continue to enjoy Jay-Z songs and NFL games. No amount of kneeling for the National Anthem or saluting the flag or arguing over it threatens to impact that by a substantive amount. Ultimately we are here to be entertained.




























COMPLETELY UNRELATED BUT HERE YOU GO ANYWAY

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