Due to circumstances completely beyond my control, this column is a tad late this week. My wife really hammered me on picks. Anyway Week 4, yay! The real referees are back. Wait, is the honeymoon over already? Did the NFL sneak a replacement crew into the Green Bay game? Why are the Cardinals 4-0?
The Great Brain Robbery Pt. II – It was a pleasant experience to see the regular officials back on the job. For the most part games ran more smoothly. Continue reading
Well it was definitely an interesting week 3 in the NFL with upset, controversial calls and some pretty serious injuries. I am pretty sure I got hammered on picks this week but that’s because one week of the year the NFL goes all parity whacky and the “Any Given Sunday” theory kicks in. Let’s get to it shall we?
The Great Brain Robbery – I call it this because so many things happened at the end of the Packers/Seahawks game that I am pretty sure the replacements had their brains stolen and replaced with rocks before the game started. Ignore the fact Golden Tate committed such an obvious case of offensive pass interference that a four-year-old could have thrown the flag. Continue reading
Despite the fact that the NFL season is only 2 weeks old, I’ve learned quite a bit by watching games and catching the highlights. This week I’d like to share my insights with you.
San Francisco is the real deal. The Niners are a complete team and are far and away the best team in the NFL right now. Their two wins have come over potential playoff teams. Alex Smith, left for dead a couple years ago, looks like a pro bowl quarterback thanks to his shiny new wide receivers. Looking at their schedule and barring a catastrophic injury to a key player, I could see them going 14-2 easily and having home field advantage throughout the playoffs. Continue reading
Friends, Netizens, countrymen, lend me your ears. For I come to bury college football, not to praise it. I don’t like college football. There, I said it. I’ve never really liked it. Oh I’ve tried watching it, but there are so many flaws in the college system that it makes my brain hurt. Every couple of years I forget what I have learned and catch a game on TV. And then I remember: “I hate this game”. Continue reading
Football season is starting and, unless you have been living under a rock since the last Super Bowl, you are probably aware that the NFL is in the middle of a labor dispute with their referees. The NFL is a $8,000,000,000+ a year business. In case you are wondering the team owners are attempting to save about $62,500 dollars a year per team. There are currently 119 officials who make an average of $8,000 dollars a game. Being very generous with the owners and how much they pay the refs (about 2 million a year total for the entire crew), that is .025% of their entire revenue. OK, I’m done throwing numbers at you as I can see your eyes glazing over with boredom, let’s get to the meat: why the referees are important. Continue reading
As discussed during an episode of Radio Crass, Oscar Pistorius (aka “The Blade Runner”) is a South African runner with a disability: he’s a double amputee with both legs removed above the knee. He can run by wearing not mere prosthetic legs, but special curved carbon fibre “blades”. And with those blades, he has not only been able to run faster than any other man in the history of the Paralympics but fast enough to qualify for the real Olympics. In fact, he made the semi-finals of the 400m race at the recent London Olympics, but came last in his semi-final (although had he repeated his best time, he would have made the final). Continue reading
Last year, the AFC West was a terrible division. The difference between first place in the division (Denver 8-8) and last place (Kansas City 7-9) was 1 game. This division was devastated by injuries (Chiefs, Raiders), subpar quarterback play (Broncos) and general suckiness (Chargers). This year, however, things are supposed to be different. I have serious doubts about that. Continue reading
So two weeks of preseason games are behind us and the only thing we’ve really learned is that if the real referees don’t come back before the regular season starts, it’s going to be a long year. Preseason games are good for two things: evaluating talent and causing injuries. I’d like to question the decisionmaking of important players who find offseason injuries and don’t get them taken care of immediately. Continue reading
From the desks of mighty cat herders to the sad cubicles of underperforming corporate drones, fantasy football is back to suck up hours upon hours of would-be productive time. The time-suck, like Crasstalk, is alternately fulfilling and frustrating. With that in mind, we figured, we present Crasstalk Fantasy Football 2012. Continue reading
Before I get to the AFC East, I’d like to discuss the biggest story in the NFL right now: the referee lockout. I watched a few (meaningless) preseason games and the replacement refs looked like they came straight out of Clown College. I actually don’t blame the replacement refs, I blame the NFL with its incredibly arcane and complex rule book and the fact that these replacements had only a few weeks to learn it. The official rulebook is 244 pages long and reads like a bad Congressional bill. If this labor dispute continues into the regular season, you are going to see important games changed by bad calls and coaches out of challenges by the end of the first quarter. Continue reading