5.12.10 4:13 pm by Brian
Despite all of the excitement of free agent moves and superstars finding new homes for the 2010 National Football League season, the uncapped year that has provided the foundation for all of these moves disguises a damaging potential situation coming about at a high point of the game’s popularity; without a renegotiated collective bargaining agreement between the National Football League and the NFL Player’s Association, there will be no football played after Super Bowl XLV comes to an end on February 6th, 2011.
Now that football is firmly-entrenched as the sport of choice among key American demographics, the league and its players simply cannot afford to have a work stoppage kill their momentum.
Even though I am a sportswriter here, I can’t speak intelligently to the set of agreements and compromises that will need to be reached in order to bring the two sides together to continue football into the future. However, one clear point has been that NFL veterans need to be better compensated, and one way to accomplish that goal is to bring about a new rule: setting a salary cap for rookies that will free up money to be paid to players who have accumulated more time in the league.
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4.22.10 2:23 pm by Alex
There are only a few hours between us and the always highly anticipated NFL Draft. For a Baltimore sports fan like myself, the Ravens’ day at the draft will be a well-needed distraction from the atrocity that is the 2010 Baltimore Orioles, and I’m sure many football fans from otherwise-struggling sports towns feel the same way. Since the end of the NFL season, every eligible player has been analyzed, examined, scouted and worked-out again and again. Draft experts like Mel Kiper and Todd McShay (or is it Todd Kiper and Mel McShay? From this point on, and in all The Sports Geeks posts in the future, they’ll be referred to as the McKipers to take care of any confusion), have been all over everyone’s TVs, computers and radios touting the players they like and arguing over the differences in their mock drafts. Speaking of which, I did a little comparison of these mock drafts vs. the actual results, and they’re pretty much useless once you get past the top 10.
Among the most disputed and featured discussions in the pre-draft frenzy is the quarterbacks. This year, the draft features 4 QBs that have been at the center of attention for the better part of their college careers. The quarterback’s of any draft class have their differences, but this is a particularly diverse group:
Sam Bradford, Oklahoma – Projected to be the first overall pick. 50 TDs, 8 INTs in 2008. Some injury concerns after missing most of 2009 season.
Jimmy Clausen, Notre Dame – Arguably the most NFL-ready coming from an offensive system more closely related to that of most NFL teams. Possible arrogance/personality issues. Has had a few negative off-field incidents.
Colt McCoy, Texas – 4-year started at Texas. Heisman runner-up. Won more games than any NCAA QB Ever. But, took most snaps from shotgun. Arm strength concerns.
Tim Tebow, Florida - 3-year starter at Florida. 2 National Championships. 1 Heisman. Crazy stats, but all in non-NFL Urban Meyer offensive system. Next Alex Smith? Hopefully not.
All four of these guys will likely get drafted in the first few rounds, but chances are, more than one of them will end up on the bench or out of the league before too long, and the crazy part is, even with all the college statistic, 40 times and Wonderlic tests, there’s really no way to know which one will end up riding the pine, which one will never get a real chance, which one will have a 14-year career with 6 different teams, and which one will be a 9-time Pro Bowler and Hall of Fame candidate.
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4.20.10 6:59 pm by Brian
Although the final seconds ticked off the clock of Super Bowl XLIV over two months ago, there has hardly been a moment to rest and take a breather from news in the National Football League. The Saints’ triumphant victory was a feel-good story that had all of Louisiana in jubilation, and the offseason moves all over the league have kept football on the minds of sports fans everywhere.
After a number of delays—presumably to tweak the schedule match-ups with all of the offseason moves being made this NFL offseason—the 2010 regular season schedule has finally been released to eager fans. Finally, those die-hard fans can begin circling specific dates on the calendar to make their plans for game-viewing beginning in September.
Here at The Sports Geeks, we understand that not everyone can sift through the 256 regular season games to find the biggest stories of the upcoming season. To help out the casual NFL fan, I dived into the entire schedule to pick out some of the juicier storylines—along with the dates those games will be played—to provide a one-stop guide to the regular season’s most dramatic games. As with so many things, however, the NFL is subject to change; some games highlighted on this list may end up being snoozers if players are injured or teams are underperforming compared to the expectations currently held of them.
Obviously, divisional games are always big draws; playing six games a year against rival teams creates dramatic storylines, and the interactions between both players and fans makes for must-see games. However, for the sake of this list, those divisional match-ups have been avoided as much as possible to focus in on the other storylines present behind the games on the docket.
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4.05.10 11:16 am by Brian
Here at The Sports Geeks, it isn’t all just sporting news and analysis; we like to touch on how sports play a role in other aspects of daily life as well. For this article, I’m taking a look at EA Sports’ Madden NFL video game franchise and a potential opportunity for this year’s demo to help teach fans about this year’s new playoff overtime rules.
Edit: Thanks go out to PastaPadre, a leader in the sports video game community, for mentioning this story in his April 13th, 2010 write-up on the Madden NFL 11 demo.
In the video game business, few games are as sure a sale as EA Sports’ yearly incarnation of the Madden NFL series. Since an exclusivity deal was struck between the NFL and EA Sports in December of 2004, the series has been the only officially-licensed video game representation of the league. While this move angered fans of the NFL 2K Sports series of football games, sales of Madden NFL have not shown any signs of slowing down; such is the safety of being the only licensed product on the market.
With the introduction of the current console generation, the Madden NFL team has put out a downloadable game demo on the online services for the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 before the retail release of the full title for the past few versions of their title. Some might argue the necessity of such a demo—given that consumers surely know from year-to-year whether or not they’ll be making a purchase—but in some ways the demo has come to serve the role of a “teaser,” satisfying the appetites of gamers waiting for the new iteration of the game as the season approaches.
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3.18.10 7:11 pm by Brian
A few days ago, I wrote that I thought it was very questionable for the Cleveland Browns to cut ties with Brady Quinn–shipping him to the Broncos–and stick with a quarterback tandem of Jake Delhomme (former Carolina Panthers starter) and Seneca Wallace (career Seattle Seahawks backup). I thought that Mike Holmgren had made a decent move getting Wallace as a backup–a player that he was familiar with from his days of coaching in Seattle)–but I also thought that Quinn should’ve been kept around to provide a backup option. It was my unofficial ”Dumb Move of the 2010 Offseason So Far” pick.
I was so, so wrong. So very wrong. Yesterday (March 17th, 2010) featured a clear “Dumb Move of the 2010 Offseason” pick; I’m not even sure I would qualify it with the phrasing “So Far.”
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3.15.10 4:16 pm by Brian
While as a contributor here at The Sports Geeks I know that my stories are not going to be your up-to-the-minute source for offseason moves in the NFL, I can provide you with some thoughtful analysis of the free agency signings and trades that are making headlines so far for the 2010 season. For a more complete list of free agent moves you can check out the NFL’s official coverage at http://www.nfl.com/freeagency, but for the sake of The Sports Geeks, here are the big stories of the free agency period so far.
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