Training Camps and the Preseason

"If you train hard, you'll not only be hard, you'll be hard to beat." Hershel Walker

You can’t see me but I am rubbing my hands in anticipation for we are standing on the very brink of football season. We’ve successfully made it through the hard months and finally August is here, bringing us a special time in the life of your football team.

Before I get into the Preseason, let’s do a little backtracking to get us up to this point. After the 2010 Super Bowl, we watched teams maneuver their players in various ways; they cut some players loose while they lost some to free agency. They gained players through free agency and through the Draft. And now all those new and old players need to find a time to get to know each other and gel so that the coming year will bring victory after victory.

The method that all NFL teams use is all the same—Training Camps! Training Camps are, obviously, to promote training and optimal performance but they are also a great way to gauge how everyone is going to get along. The team now has a variety of big personalities from the veteran BMOC who made record-breaking performances to the bad-ass rookie that kicked ass in college and now was offered a big fat contract with bonus. All must be taken into account.

Training Camps begin usually around the end of July, spanning into early August. Their importance, on the surface, is to get these bums back into shape. I don’t mean that the football players are actually bums but you tell me what you would look like after 6 months of vacation and we’ll go from there. Yes, these guys have all been off frolicking for the last 6 months and training camps are the place where they have to put the pedal to the metal. Eating right, getting back into shape, working out, weigh-ins, mingling—this is the regimen for all players during this time.

It is also a great time to start practicing. With preseason nipping at their heels it’s vitally important that each player starts getting back into the groove of their position. For the rookies and the newest players, they must also deal with memorizing a new system and finding their place among the veterans and the NFL coaching staff. And then there’s the speed of the game. The action on the football field in the NFL is fast, much faster than any college player has experienced before. If a coach does not want his rookies standing around in disbelief, it would be well for him to simulate some games using real time.

Rookies are dealing with a lot of things right about now. Just a few months ago they were college football gods while now they are at the bottom of the food chain. Just because the team owners believe this kid might have the goods does not impress the veterans who are already tried and true. Therefore it is imperative that the rookie gets off on a good start, takes his hazing like a man, and performs his ass off on the field. Also, and this is much more of a problem, the rookie, who in all likelihood was completely broke in college, was just given a huge contract, complete with bonus, making that rookie worth so many millions of dollars. This influx of wealth has been known to cause complete chaos with many young men, thus, most NFL teams provide training in…well…life. With so much money and fame, it is not surprising that it can go to their heads and they end up making bad decisions. This special rookie training includes how to handle the money, how to handle certain situations, how to handle family members, etc. I think it’s a really good idea.

Now just because a player was picked up by a team does not necessarily mean that they have a bona-fide position there. In fact, training camp is very much like an audition, allowing each player on the team to try out for various positions on the field. By the time that the regular season rolls around, each team can only have 53 players on the roster which entails some weeding out of undesirables. If players can handle the rigor of the summer training camp then they might well make it further.

Another way to audition players for positions occurs in the Preseason. The Preseason is always in August and it includes practice games between the teams. Each team graduates from playing scrimmage against itself to playing other teams in the NFL in games that do not count. When I say “do not count,” I mean exactly that. Preseason games are just practice and so all wins, loses, statistics, etc. mean nothing. Do you remember a couple years ago when the Colts won the Super Bowl? Well that year they lost every single preseason game. Every single one! After that though they kicked it up a notch and managed to go all the way.

Preseason is tough time for me. I love, love, love football but for some reason, watching preseason games is almost not fun at all. The problem is that they are treated like real games by the networks—so you have the same commentators, the same catchy music, the same everything but the game, in essence, doesn’t count. Not only that, but I’ll see a game on, get all excited, start watching it and then bam! All the good players come out in the second quarter. WTF! Trust me, I’m not bitching at the NFL. Preseason games are good practice, especially for those same rookies that wouldn’t know real speed until it hit them in the face.

But for people like me, preseason is just agony. Most teams allow their regular starters to begin the game…just like normal. However, this does not last for long and for good reason. If preseason games don’t count, why on earth would a good coach leave his best players in the game, only for them to get injured? Also if preseason games are a perfect way to see which players are going to keep up and which can’t, why then would they leave only one set of players in the game? Due to the possibilities of injuries and the fact that roster decisions must be made soon prompt coaches to filter in the whole team during preseason which can lead to some pretty boring games. Just saying.


Although I am definitely hard on the Preseason period (I would prefer one less preseason game—there are 5—and maybe one more regular season game??), I still enjoy it being on. I get an electric thrill when I hear that Monday Night Football tune and see that large, green expanse lay out before me. The Preseason is just like a lovely amuse bouche right before the exhilarating main course.

The whittling of the teams continues and by the second Sunday in September (try saying that 5 times really fast), the final 53 players for each team will be chosen!

Ode to Golf

Ladies, while we swelter in the torpid doldrums of the interminable month of July, waiting in vain for the much-anticipated start of football season, we can take this opportunity to learn about another sport.

That’s right—I’m going to talk about golf.

Golf is pretty much a year round sport so that means I can push it on my friends whenever I want. The reason I am bringing it up now is in honor of the British Open recently held at St. Andrews in Scotland. What makes this British Open special is that golf was allegedly invented at St Andrews about a bajillion years ago. No really—golf has been around a couple centuries, giving it a permanence that our American football has yet to attain.

Personally, I love golf. I can have it on all day, biting my nails at every swing and clapping at each bee-yew-ti-ful shot. One of the main reasons I love golf (aside from the fact that it oozes relaxation through the beauty of its verdant courses, the muted golfer claps and the whispers of the British-accented commentators) is that it is so very logical. While I’m not much of a math person, I can appreciate all the numbers and equations that make this sport so magical while also so mystifying.

In the good old US, golf is primarily controlled by the Professional Golfer’s Association of America or the PGA, giving the tournaments and players a strict code of rules and schedules. During the golf year, there are four “Majors:” The Masters, the US Open, the British Open and the PGA Championship. These majors are special events in which, as a golfer, you must be invited and winning them produces oodles of clout for that lucky person. In fact, the majors have a category all their own. For instance, Tiger has over 70 wins in various tournaments in the US but on top of even that, he’s got a whopping 14 major titles. Just in case you’re not sure, that’s very impressive. Majors are perennially hard to win because you have the best golfers in the world, trying to play on the hardest courses in the world. Good luck with that.

A rather new development concocted between the PGA and FedEx has been the addition of the FedEx Cup to the PGA tour. Basically, and this is for all you NASCAR fans out there, golfers win points at each tournament for the FedEx Cup the way drivers do during the NASCAR season. Of course it depends on how well the golfer places in the tournament (obviously more points are awarded the winner and so on down) but by just keeping steady at a higher level of golf more points are awarded to that golfer. At the end of the FedEx season, usually in September, the FedEx Cup Tournament is held in my very own backyard, Eastlake Country Club. (I actually went to see it last year and had a blast. The Tour Championship only allows the top 30 point winners in the tournament so I was surrounded by Tiger, Phil Mickelson, Jim Furyk, Hunter Mahan, YE Yang, and others. It was awesome! I even got a great pic of Tiger while I was on my way to the bathroom and yes they sell beer there.) The reason that FedEx and the PGA decided to use this particular golf course to host this special event is due to the fact that the most famous golfer ever, Bobby Jones, grew up there.

(Bobby Jones is a genius. Not only did he go to GA Tech and become a lawyer and a doctor but he did all this while being a golfer. He never went pro but he’s the only guy to ever win all 4 majors in one year. Oh and he designed Augusta National, the course that hosts The Masters every year. Ha!)

So onto the scoring! I bet you were looking forward to this the whole time, right!?! Even I have to admit that scoring golf is not the easiest thing in the world because basically its premise is contrary to almost every single sport out there—the player with the lowest score wins. Now I’m going off the assumption that you, the readers, know very little to nothing about this game so I will start from scratch. The scoring is actually based on the layout of the golf course and the distance from the tee-off (a flat place where the golfer puts his ball on a little tee to start the hole) to the hole (surrounded by the putting green, this is where the ball must eventually fall to end play). Picture mini-golf. You start the ball off at one side and putt down the green to the hole at the end. You can’t move on until your ball falls in the hole. Now take your little mini-golf hole and multiply it by like 50.

The PGA tour uses an 18-hole course format, which means that on any day of the tournament each golfer must complete all 18 holes on the golf course. These holes (1-18) are ranked in order of how hard they are and this difficulty level is what gives golf its peculiar brand of scoring. You see, golf is measure in “swings.” Every single time the golfer hits a ball, even mistakes, are counted against him. That is why you’ll see a golfer staring at the ball and then off into the distance for the longest time—this swing has to count.

I mentioned before that each hole is ranked and the rankings look like this: Par 3, Par 4, Par 5. Each hole has one of these rankings slapped on it and this ranking gives the golfer an idea of what to expect up ahead. “Par” in the golf world simply means “even.” Therefore, a Par 3 Hole means that to remain “even,” the golfer can use 3 swings. If he uses 4 swings, he goes “over” and if he uses 2 swings, he’s “under.” A Par 4 means that the golfer is allowed 4 swings and a Par 5, 5 swings to remain at par or even. The individual holes get their ranking based on distance. If the hole is a short one and the green can be reached in one swing, then it’s probably a Par 3. A Par 3 is usually so short that a golfer can get to the green in one swing and then have 2 spare putts to get the ball in the hole. With a Par 4 or 5, the hole is a longer one, frequently causing the golfer to hit the ball off the tee onto the fairway before using another swing to get the ball to the green.

The fairway is the long stretch of really manicured grass stretching from the tee-off area to the putting green around the hole. The fairway is usually surrounded by rougher grass and by any other natural-growing stuff. The layout of the course is extremely vital in a golf tournament because it’s going to affect the golfer’s game. So the basic idea here is for the golfer to get the ball in the hole. Golf courses, on the other hand, do not want the golfers to get their balls in the hole so they will make it very, very difficult for them to do so. Thus, the golf course will literally be riddle with all sorts of very interesting obstacles, depending on the climate and the area of the country in which the course is located. For example, Pebble Beach Country Club, right on the water in northern California, uses a spectacular water hazard to make things difficult. Likewise, any British Open is frustrating because golfers almost have to change their swings so that the ball won’t be carried away by the wind. Hazards include sand bunkers, thick, rough grass, trees, bushes, water, rocks, etc. Just about any natural element can be added to a golf course to make it harder.

All golfers, at the beginning of a tournament, start out “even” or E. But what exactly is even in golf? Before any golfing actually starts, the scoring is set by making even a certain number. Let’s use St. Andrews as an example. Here is what a typical scorecard will look like:



BTW, I took this graphic from http://www.pga.com/openchampionship/2010/.

Ok let’s dissect this information. First of all, you can see that Hole 1 has 376 yards and is a Par 4, while all the other holes follow with their yardages and pars. Secondly, you’ll notice that St. Andrew’s Old Course has 2 Par 3s, 14 Par 4s, and 2 Par 5s. If you remember we were discussing even and what that is. Well here is the equation to get the even number: Par 3s + Par 4s + Par 5s=Even. So here we go with St Andrews. (3x2) + (14x4) + (5x2)=72. Yay! When you add up all the holes with their par number, you get even. “72” means that at the end of a round of golf, the golfer who scores a 72 is exactly even.

I know this is confusing. This scoring is not like any other sport in that when the game begins everyone is 0-0. Even can mean zero but it can also mean par, which can mean that someone who finishes their round at even is also equal to someone who hasn’t started playing yet. Sigh. This is harder than I thought.

Let’s say we’re at the Par 4 Hole 1. This Hole gives us 4 swings to break even so we will plan our strategy accordingly using the best golf club to suit our purposes (more on clubs later). Now say we get our ball in the hole in only 3 swings. Well that’s very good. We’ve scored a “birdie.” On the flip side, if we take 5 swings to finish the hole, then that’s not good—we just got a “bogie.” Usually the golf scoring lingo goes like this:
Double (or Triple or Quadruple) Bogie=2+ over par
Bogie=1 over par
Par=Even
Birdie=1 under par
Eagle=2 under par
The key words here are “over” and “under.” If you recall, golf is opposite in that the lower number wins. So it’s better if you score under, a lot under. The first day at St. Andrews, Rory McIlroy, a young golfer from Northern Ireland, scored a freaking 63!! Par was 72 at St. Andrews so over the course of 18 holes, McIlroy managed at least 9 birdies, landing him at 9 under par. That was a new course record.

You notice that the golfer scoreboard is different as well. They call this the “leaderboard” because it usually only contains the golfers doing the best at the tournament. The leaderboard always starts with the person in the lead and it will show their score. For example, Louis Oosthuizen, who won the British Open, had a score of -15. This means that he was 15 under par for the entire tournament. Most tournaments last 4 days and his total score was the product of four days on a 72-par golf course. The first 2 days of the tournament, usually Thursday and Friday, are qualifying rounds. If the golfers score under the “cut” score, then they head into the last 2 days of the tournament, Saturday and Sunday, to compete for the win.

Since the amount of swings the golfer takes determines his score, you better believe that he wants his swings to get the most bang for his buck. Therefore, he needs good golf clubs that will be able to send the ball sailing. However, as the golfer gets closer to the hole he also needs specialty clubs to get the ball close to its destination.

On the Par 4 Hole 1, the golfer would realize that he cannot get to the hole in one swing. So he needs a club that will get him as close as he can, which is why he would probably pick up a wood. “Woods” are clubs with those big old heads on them that send the balls sailing for what seems like miles. Do you remember the movie Happy Gilmore? He used a wood in those shots. Now all golf clubs are numbered and since golf is contrary, all the numbers go backwards. For instance, the 1 Wood, also known as the Driver, is going to send your ball the farthest. There’s also a 3 Wood and a smaller 5 Wood. After that, there are the “Irons.” The Irons are numbered the same way, from 1-9, but don’t have the distance that the woods usually carry. Golf bags are also usually equipped with a putter and some sort of chipper or sand wedge, which will help get your ball out of a bunker or some extremely rough grass. There are even new hybrid clubs being used nowadays that combine the distance of the woods but the control of the irons.

Well, I hoped this has helped someone somewhere. Just try watching a tournament sometime and I guarantee that you will understand it easier after reading this. The PGA Championship, the fourth “major,” is coming up at the end of August and it will be the perfect opportunity to show off your brand-new golfing knowledge…or it’s a great time to nap. Either way, let me know if you have any questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.

What to Do in the Off Season

So here we are—it’s a dreary Thursday in June—and there’s no football in sight. I bet you think I’ve forgotten about you, my fellow female football-philes, but that’s simply not correct. The truth of the matter is that there is a sad dearth of newsworthy events happening in the football community right now, baring a random assortment of odd occurrences. Currently, talk is swirling about a shake-up in the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) regarding the school conferences.

What are the school conferences, you ask? Well, all colleges and universities are divided into several divisions: Division I, Division II, and Division III. Basically Division I schools are your big universities that generate a lot of money and scholarships for their athletes. For example, University of Florida, University of Texas, Ohio State University, etc. Using this criteria, you can then work out what schools would be included under Division II and III; schools like Appalachian State or Georgia Southern in Division II and Lenoir-Rhyne University in Division III. Within these Divisions, most schools find it expedient to join with several others to form a conference, which runs like a mini-union for universities and colleges in the sports world. Most conferences consist of 10-15 universities and while a college/university doesn’t have to join one, like Notre Dame, it works out for most of the others.

I live in Georgia and you can bet your bottom dollar that football is The Big Thing down here. In fact, the South is proud to be especially rabid when cheering not only for their favorite team but also for their conference as well. We love us some SEC (Southeastern Conference) and ACC (Atlantic Coast Conference) but there are lots of other conferences as well, including the PAC-10, the Big-12, the Big Ten, the Big East, the Mountain West Conference, the WAC, the Conference USA and so forth. The SEC is comprised of the University of Florida, the University of Georgia, the University of Tennessee, the University of South Carolina, Vanderbuilt University, Auburn University, the University of Alabama, the University of Mississippi, Mississippi State, Louisiana State University, the University of Arkansas, and the University of Kentucky. These schools all play each other in whatever sport is going on, culminating in a conference championship.

I won’t go into the BCS (Bowl Championship Series) right now but believe me, I will get to it soon. I’m only mentioning it at this time because the conferences play an important role in which schools go to which bowl games through the BCS.

Back to the rumors running rampant in the sports world about conference shake-ups. Apparently some teams are willing to jump ship and move to new conferences. The Big Ten and the PAC-10 are making the effort to lure various teams away from the Big-12 and I’m not sure how I feel about this. I’ve kinda grown up with these conferences so to see them rearranged makes me sad inside. But both the PAC-10 and the Big Ten have good reasons for wanting some new blood because they have perennially weak conferences and schedules. If you’ve watched any college ball recently, you couldn’t help but notice that USC (University of Southern California) dominates the PAC-10 while OSU (Ohio State University) has done the same to the Big Ten. There’s no competition and as a sports lover, I want competition. I mean, what’s the point of watching otherwise? So here we are at a watershed and no one seems to know how this situation will turn out. What we did learn today though was that Colorado is leaving the Big-12 for the PAC-10 but that’s hardly earth shattering.

I’ll keep you posted.

Also today USC got their hands slapped by the NCAA for improper recruitment procedures against Reggie Bush from years ago. Reggie has since gone on to the NFL and even has won a Super Bowl with the New Orleans Saints but that hasn’t stopped the NCAA from investigating the USC athletic program. The NCAA isn’t playing around though (hahaha…nice pun) because they’ve literally thrown the book at USC. Not only have they banned the team from bowl games for the next couple years but they’ve taken away some of the wins that USC had when Reggie was on the team. Also, and this is the most heinous of the sanctions, USC will lose more than 30 football scholarships over the next 3 years! I can’t tell you how terrible this situation has become for USC. Athletic scholarships are gold, people! Scholarships are how teams are made; it’s how teams get the good players. If you take away scholarships, good players go elsewhere and then you are stuck with the scrubs. And because I dislike USC and all their shady dealings, along with former head coach, Pete Carroll and current head coach, Lane Kiffin (or Lame Kitten, as I like to call him), I have something that I must do at this very moment….Mwah Ha Ha! In your face USC!

I’m not a malicious person by nature, but you have to admit that sports is basically legalized hatred at best. I’m allowed to hate USC and no one would think a thing of it. In fact, most people expect it. And that is another reason why I love sports—we can all hate each other and it is, for the most part, perfectly amicable.

So while there hasn’t been much football news lately, I’ve managed to eke out the most important stuff. Soon training camps will begin with the preseason right around the corner and then the regular season starts and OMG, I’m so excited!

Before I sign off however, I would like to draw your attention to other things going on in the sports world during these dreary, non-football related, summer months. First of all, there are precisely two—TWO—playoffs going on right now. We have the NHL finals and the NBA finals. Either are good for some fun at a sports bar or out with friends. (Correction: I just found out that we have exactly one playoff going on at this moment, the NBA. The Stanley Cup was won last night by the Blackhawks. Just shows you how much I keep up with hockey. Ah well—it was a good thought.)

Also next weekend the US Open golf tournament is on and this is a biggie! There are only 4 Majors a year on the PGA tour and the US Open is one of them. If you’re like me, you’ll be cheering on your boy, Tiger Woods, but just about every good golfer in the world will be at this tournament. Very exciting! Also at the end of June, Wimbledon kicks off and with Rafael Nadal recently winning the French Open, I’m feeling pretty good.

Not to mention, we are exactly One Day Away from the start of the World Cup! I’m not much of a soccer fan but every country around the world loves this sport and can’t understand why we call football, football. (Like Mike Ditka says, “If God had wanted us to play soccer, he wouldn’t have given hands.”) Anyways, the World Cup is fun to watch because it’s like a mini-Olympics, bringing the entire global community together in a bond of legalized hatred. USA plays England on Saturday, June 12th and I’m excited to see if our Americans can revolutionize the Brits back across the Atlantic! Go Team USA! Don’t Tread On Me! Woot Woot! The World Cup lasts a month so try to catch a game out some where. I know that here in Atlanta a couple parks are trucking in big TVs so that everyone can watch together.

Let’s see…I’m sure NASCAR has a race every weekend and…um…baseball is playing all the time till October (which is pretty much The Best Month of the Sports Calendar).

Unfortunately May, June, and July are a pretty big loss when it comes to football but there’s hope, ladies—autumn comes every year. Watch some other good sports for right now and then before you know it, when temps begin to fall, we’ll be right back in the midst of another exciting season for football fun.

The Draft and All That It Entails

"Sports don't build character; they reveal it." John Wooden

Yay! We have finally…I mean, FINALLY…made it to Draft Day! Actually, the NFL draft this year has been moved from its usual weekend schedule to the brand new Prime Time spot at 7:30pm on Thursday, April 22nd on ESPN. Girls, it’s extremely important that you watch this phenomenon because it will give you an in-depth look at the selection process for new talent and it is crucial in becoming a football fanatic. Not to mention, Draft Day is kind of like Christmas morning for football fans with everything leading up to this moment in the football calendar. It is the ne plus ultra of the football year if you will. Since the Super Bowl, we have gone through a relative dearth of football news and the long months till August are looking pretty bleak indeed. But what’s this!?! The NFL Draft comes along the last weekend in April and its all holiday for us! All this raw talent out there—who is my team going to choose? Which players are my rivals going to get? Ooooohhh, it is so exciting!

At least pretend you’re excited. Maybe the reason that you just can’t get into it is due to the fact that the Draft is like an incomprehensible enigma that only some people seem to understand. Well, look no further, dear lady! I shall expound the common Draft mythology so that you too may become handy with the lingo.
As I discussed in my last blog, two major events occur in the off season that affect the cohesion of your embryonic team. The first one is the Free Agency for veteran talent, allowing teams to trade or swap their players in an effort to find a balance between talent and price…and personality. I added personality to the list because some players, though really good, just don’t belong on certain teams. Take for example Brandon Marshall of the Denver Broncos. He is a veteran wide receiver having some problems with the overall team so he was traded to the Dolphins. Right now, everyone is happy.

The second event is, of course, The Draft. We discussed the Draft briefly in reference to the Combine, which is where the young players who wish to be drafted try out their skills in a variety of tests. On Thursday, those results will then coalesce into hard decisions made by the various teams themselves. These decisions will impact the entire direction of their teams, leading either to victory, one hopes, or to defeat. Unlike Free Agency where teams must determine to acquire a player based on age or talent, the main question that infests the Draft mainly deals with a sort of to be or not to be in regards to each new recruit.
When I say “raw talent,” I mean just that…these are players that have never played in an NFL game. That means that they have no concept of just how much faster and better NFL players and how fast NFL games are in general. Remember that the NFL is the best of the best playing each other. These young players are trying to find their way into this elite group but there is no real way to know how they will ultimately perform under the NFL’s conditions. Thus, each NFL team is faced with a weighty dilemma—how to find that diamond in the rough, who will perform at the highest level, without spending the entire team salary on that one player?

Pretty much the entire Draft can be summed in that one question. The Draft has been around 76 years and in that time there have been countless flops. Some players can ace the Combine and say all the right things during the interviews but once on a real NFL team, they can’t seem to handle the level of play. Ryan Leaf comes to mind here. It’s a General Manager’s worst nightmare: to draft a promising young player with all the attendant salary and bonuses, just to have him fall apart in front of a viewing audience of several million people. On the other hand, there have also been countless stories of players making it big, even though they were disregarded on Draft Day. Take Tom Brady for example—he was drafted in the 6th round (I’ll explain the significance of that later) and then proceeded to absolutely kick ass in the NFL by winning 3 Super Bowl rings. Not too shabby—and better yet, New England drafted him for a song.

And honestly, there is positively no way to quantify all that will make The Perfect Player. Football gurus out there will try to make informed guesses and will inundate you with mock drafts all the way to the penultimate moment, trying to be the first to say “I told you so” when the real Draft occurs. They will throw stats at you and quotes by the recruiters, the GMs, the owners, the players’ coaches, their mothers, etc on how perfect such-and-such a player will be but in the end, there is no way to really, truly know how a player will stand under the pressure of professional sport.

Now I also do not want to give you the impression that the Draft is one big crapshoot either. There is a method to the madness of that day but it is derived from taking the quantifiable qualities along with a hefty dose of the unquantifiable and putting together a giant plan of what players coming out this one year fulfill some of the team's key needs at the lowest price guaranteed. Ha! Even as I write this I find that this sounds so ridiculous. But this is the way of the NFL Draft…and the beauty of it as well.

The actual Draft consists of 7 rounds. If you don’t know what a “round” is think of boxing. Round 1 in boxing is so many minutes long and then the bell rings for a breather. Next round and so on. It’s the same with the Draft. Round 1, obviously the most important and highly anticipated round, is where the talent auction begins. Each round allows each NFL team one chance to make a selection during the Draft. Therefore, since there are 32 NFL teams, there will be 32 players picked each round and each team then has 7 picks. The number of picks can fluctuate for a team depending on whether they traded some of theirs away or if they picked up extra ones. Draft picks can be a very hot commodity, instead of actual money, when one team wants a player from another team or vice versa. Thus, when a player is traded you might hear that one team received, in return, another player and a second round draft pick. Just recently the Pittsburgh Steelers traded WR Santonio Holmes to the New York Jets in exchange for a 5th round draft pick. As you can tell by the low draft number, Holmes had some issues.

At the start of the Draft, the NFL Commissioner will give a little speech, which effectively highlights the talent-to-come and the expectations of the teams and proceeds to call the 2010 NFL Draft to order. That is when the first team goes “on the clock.” Being “on the clock” simply means that one team and one team only has the opportunity to determining who they want. Each team is allowed 3-4 minutes to be “on the clock” while behind the scenes, frantic deals and decisions are made. At the end of the alloted time, the team then must make a decision—either they decide which player they want or they may sell their draft pick to another team in exchange for something else. Now who would want to sell their draft pick? Good question because that brings up nicely the most important part of the Draft: your team’s place in line.

What determines where each team goes? Good news for you, ladies! This is the easiest part of the entire affair to understand. The order of the Draft is determined by the previous year’s team’s standing. Basically, that just means that the worst team in the NFL last year will be the first team making a selection at this year’s Draft. By that same standard, you may assume that the team that won the Super Bowl, the New Orleans Saints, will be the absolute last team to pick in Round One. And you would be right, of course. Here is a list of the draft order for Round One for this year:
1. St Louis Rams
2. Detroit Lions
3. Tampa Bay Buccaneers
4. Washington Redskins
5. Kansas City Chiefs
6. Seattle Seahawks
7. Cleveland Browns
8. Oakland Raiders
9. Buffalo Bills
10. Jacksonville Jaguars
11. Denver Broncos (they traded for this spot from Chicago. This spot does not reflect their standing from last year)
12. Miami Dolphins
13. San Francisco 49ers
14. Seattle Seahawks (traded from Denver)
15. NY Giants
16. Tennessee Titans
17. San Francisco 49ers (traded from Carolina)
18. Pittsburgh Steelers
19. Atlanta Falcons
20. Houston Texans
21. Cincinnati Bengals
22. New England Patriots
23. Green Bay Packers
24. Philadelphia Eagles
25. Baltimore Ravens
26. Arizona Cardinals
27. Dallas Cowboys
28. San Diego Chargers
29. New York Jets
30. Minnesota Vikings
31. Indianapolis Colts
32. New Orleans SaintsThere is a lot of strategy that goes into trading draft picks. If a team knows that a player is so good that they won’t last long, well they might trade up to nab that player. On the other hand, a team that doesn’t need any player specifically might be induced to trade their draft place for other goodies.

So let’s take a minute here and talk about money. The money situation is real simple: the earlier the player is drafted, the more money he makes. For instance, the Number One Draft Pick will be the highest paid rookie in the NFL usually with a super high salary and a big fat “signing bonus.” After that First First Round pick, the salaries and bonuses begin to fall in proportion to draft number. Matt Leinhart is a good example of what can happen, financially, during the Draft. He was the quarterback for the USC Trojans in college, a Heisman Trophy winner with a national championship ring. The pundits all agreed in their mock drafts that he was a winner and destined for glory. However, something about his arm strength during the Combine apparently scared enough NFL teams that they began to doubt his staying power in the game. When Draft Day rolled around, he was forced to watch as his stock slipped ever lower. Most people assumed that he would be a Top 3 pick but in the end, he was drafted #10 by the Arizona Cardinals and I’ll never forget what the announcer said. “Just think of all that money he lost!” Because he was a #10 pick, his salary and bonus would reflect his fallen status and the money only falls farther in the later rounds.

I, personally, am a HUGE fan of the Draft, not only because I will watch anything that deals with football but because it is, in my mind, the number one indication of how a team will do the following year. Making good draft choices is an art form. Coaches and GMs who can put together a decent class of rookies for their team are giving that same team a gift that simply cannot be qualified. Research has shown that teams who draft poorly or trade away their draft picks do not do well in the long run. Mainly that situation is due to the fact that they are spending good money on raw talent and then practically giving it away for players that are older and may not be around very long. Let me quickly take you back a couple years ago when the NY Giants won the Super Bowl. In that game alone, the Giants used all 6 of their draft picks from the year before in game-changing plays. And you know what? THEY WON THE GAME! Now, that was a good recruiting class! On the flip side, the Miami Dolphins only won one game all year but if you looked closely you could see that they had traded away all their draft picks from the last 7years. I think you can see where I’m headed with this. Draft Day then, for me, is an extremely vital moment in the affairs of each football team. How they use that day is entirely up to them.

Unfortunately, for me, there is no way to truly give you all the information about every possible scenario that you will see at the Draft. Every year is different and every year teams are looking for different specialty players. 2010 seems to be the year of the defense with a relatively weak quarterback class. We will see though. Just remember that this is no quotidian day of the year for your average football fan—Draft Day really is the pinnacle of expectations and pageantry during the long hiatus between seasons.

The Combine and Free Agency

Girls, it is an exciting time to be a football fan, I assure you! I know, I know--you're probably wondering what the hell I'm talking about. After all, the Super Bowl was over a month ago, effectively ending the football season for another six months. Well, you're wrong, that's all. Football, whether you want to acknowledge it or not, is happening! The reason is simple--the NFL is more like a corporation, rather than a sport and you don't see national corporations taking half the year off! I'm lucky to get 5 holidays off a year! No, the NFL is a business and has work to do all year round. What you don't see, when football season finally begins, is all the little things that occur in the off-season that make a team what it is, all the haggling and the money and the superstars. It's really quite interesting.

If you were like me at all the last few weeks, eating and sleeping and breathing the Olympics, then you were probably unaware that last weekend (Feb. 24-March 2) was the Combine. Honestly, I was unaware of a LOT more than that (I almost feel like I am waking up from a lovely sports dream), but the Combine did it's thing just like it always does. What is the Combine, you say? Well, ladies, if you want to be a fan of football or at least appear unnaturally intelligent in this area, then you will need to have an idea of what the Combine entails. NFL.com has a truly wonderful definition of it. "The 2010 Scouting Combine, which will be held from Feb. 24 to March 2, is the annual job fair for prospective new NFL players. For six days at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, players are put through a series of drills, tests and interviews with more than 600 NFL personnel including head coaches, general managers and scouts." And that, in a nutshell, is the Combine.

I love that they call it a "job fair" and that is just what it is! In a real job, though, a manager can fire you pretty quickly if they see you aren't qualified. In the NFL, it is a little more complicated because a job in the NFL, involves lots of money and long contracts. Thus, it makes sense that before the NFL Draft (more on that later), the top dogs in the NFL want to ascertain, as best they can, that they are not making a giant mistake on any one particular player. So while everyone in the NFL, from the Commissioner down to the Presidents and GMs down to the Assistant to the Assistant Offensive Line coaches, looks on, the top prospects from colleges and high schools across the country perform. They are drilled to see how fast they are or how high they can jump or how much they can bench. They are given the Wunderlic test which gages them on their smarts and gives them a score. They are interviewed by everyone. It is a very grueling weekend for the players but it can be highly profitable if they spent their time well.

Now let me just say one thing: the Combine is nice and all but it isn't able to quantify everything. There may be a great guy who can run the 40-yard dash in under 4 seconnds and scores high on the Wunderlic test but who can't perform in a real NFL game. This is more common than you think and I am sure there's a place online where you can look up NFL Draft Duds and a whole list of names will pop up...probably starting with Ryan Leaf. Try it. Look it up. On the other hand, sometimes a guy can have a bad weekend and not do well at the Combine. Will that blight his NFL hopes forever? Not necessarily. If he does tremendously well in college or elsewhere, then NFL scouts will take that also into consideration. Some of the best NFL players EVER have had a mediocre Combine experience but have moved on to better and brigther things.

So Combine weekend ends and each NFL teams holes up and starts to make some assessments. Looking ahead at the 2010 season, they'll ask themselves what their shallow positions are or where are they weakest. Maybe one of their good players has a history of injuries, shouldn't they have a back-up for that, just in case? Maybe their star QB retired, now what? Maybe their safety position was scored on too much last year, so it's time to make a change at that position. So many issues and situations factor into who plays what position on Day 1 of each season in August that it brings me to another exciting occurrence going on right now.

If the Combine was to give NFL teams a foretaste of the talented feast to come, then the Free Agency Draft is a feast of different and amazing dishes of current value. Ha! Okay, let's terminate this horrible metaphor, shall we? What I mean is that Free Agency is a separate way for NFL teams to fill their rosters but with verteran players. I'm sure you can see the tremendous difference in the two approaches. The rookie, just out of college, prospects are new and exciting but there is that chance of supreme failure. The NFL is so much faster and more complex than college games that some players just can't make the adjustment. Just picture it: The NFL is the creme de la creme of football...and they are all playing each other!

Now Free Agency is for the veteran players to either find a better salary and team or for a team to explore new options. Like I said earlier, so many little things go into what makes a team, a team. Most importantly, of course, is the money factor. Since the NFL is a business, each team would like to find "a deal." You know, the best player for the cheapest price possible. Money will play a major factor during the NFL Draft (more on that later as well) but it also affects the rules of Free Agency. In years past, each team was under a salary cap, which allowed the team to pay out so much money for its sum players. This salary cap was, in effect, a leveler between all the teams to some extent because some teams are naturally more affluent than others. However, this year (and here's the exciting part), Roger Goodell, the NFL Commissioner, has nullified the salary cap for the 2010 season. Not only that, but this may be the best year for Free Agents EVER! I'm guessing that money will be flung all over the place. Whew! Famously good players are up for grabs for any team to pick up...depending on the price. Let me use Julius Peppers as an example. He played Defensive End for the Carolina Panthers for many years. This year his contract is up and he's a Free Agent. Now the Panthers have the option of re-signing him first, taking into account his good work for them over the years. They decided not to keep him. Maybe the raise he was demanding was too high or maybe he's not as young as he once was.

Ahhhh...now I've inadvertently stumbled upon the Great Football Debate: age or talent? With some positions it doesn't matter if the players is "older", what they're worth will remain steady. Unfortunately that is not true of every position nor of every team. For instance, this year many of the Free Agents are running backs (RBs) because their teams are unwilling to re-sign them due to their age. Being a running back is a physical, demanding position. Not only must you be able to run (and be fast about it), but you must also make good decisions on an instant's notice and be able to take a hit...or give one. Usually by 30 years old, most RBs have been in the business around 8ish years and have taken a fair amount of hits and tackles making the older RBs (although they've performed very well in the past) less lucrative. QBs, though, are not allowed to be hit (at least rarely) and so their staying power in the game is much longer, as evidenced by Brett Favre, Kurt Warner, etc. Back to the RBs though, they are older but they've had great careers. So they want more money from their teams, but now the teams don't know if they are worth an extension on their contract with so much extra money. Remember if the player gets hurt or if the player doesn't perform up to standard, the teams may potentially be screwed, not necessarily monetarily. If a team hires an older player, who they decided can't play, then that player has already gobbled up a roster position that could have been used for someone else. NFL teams are allowed only 53 total players during the season so you can understand how parsimonious the coaches are with those meagre positions. Also, don't forget that there is potential greaness waiting in the wings at the NFL Draft.
Sorry for that llloooonng digression but as we speak, these are the issues that are swirling around the NFL. Free Agency began at midnight this morning and a list of very impressive guys are out there for anyone to grab. The team that you know and love from last year's season will not be the same after this. There will be trades and re-signings and backstabbings and contract extensions galore. Each team will determine whether or not they want to go the Free Agent route with a veteran NFL player just waiting to get on that field again or with a new, dashing NFL Rookie just waiting to make a name for himself. And don't forget money--it's going to all come down to that. I know that makes me sound mercenary but these are the facts, Jack. Money plays an important aspect in everyone's life and it really takes the bigwigs a great deal of time to be able to put together a Super Bowl-winning-team on a budget. I'm telling you--it's much much harder than it looks.

That's all for today. I will get you more information about the Draft as a we get a little closer but for now all I'm asking is that you check out any sports page on the internet. Free Agency is going on and you'll be kept updated with each new signing and with all the players changing sides. Where players go will impact every team so it's imporant to be "in the know." And who knows, maybe your team will get some great new players :)

The Playoffs and the Super Bowl

“The reason women don’t play football is because eleven of them would never wear the same outfit in public.” Phyllis Diller

Hello ladies! So we have less than a week to the Super Bowl and I know that many of you are getting your last minute party ideas together. In many ways the Super Bowl party is like the best of both worlds. The women can congregate around the food unimpeded while the men, who usually hog the food, are glued to the television. Super Bowl is a tough time for me, not only because I actually watch the game, but I also can’t seem to leave the glories of the smorgasbord behind. The best scenario though would involve the women moving into the living room to watch the game as well. That’s where I can help.

I feel like most women think of the Super Bowl as just a good party excuse only. Not so! Part of the beauty of the Super Bowl, apart from the game itself, is all the toil and excitement that led up to it during the Playoffs. Truly, when you watch the Super Bowl, you know that you are watching the two very best teams in the nation, nay the world. Seriously, the Playoffs are exciting! All season we watch teams play each other every week with the Playoffs as their goal, culminating in all the pomp and circumstance of the Super Bowl.

The road to the Playoffs is affected by two things: the division and schedule of your team and how well they play, illustrated by the Win-Loss record. Let’s go into what I mean by a team’s schedule. I know you smart-asses out there are thinking “We know what constitutes a team’s schedule, Vanya” but I promise, it’s more complicated than you guys think. It’s not just pairing your team with other teams; it’s putting your team into a division and then pairing your team with other teams. Ok…here goes. The National Football League (hereafter referred to as the NFL) is comprised of 32 teams. These teams are then split exactly down the middle to form two separate conferences, the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). Within these two conferences, the teams are then split into divisions, containing 4 teams. These divisions are very, very important to the teams in them. Out of the 16 regular season games that each team plays in a season (not counting the preseason and the postseason), that team must play two games against each of its fellow division members, giving an added weight to the divisional games.

I know that this sounds confusing but it really isn’t. To illustrate this, here are all the NFL teams included in their respective divisions.

AFC South
Houston Texans
Indianapolis Colts
Jacksonville Jaguars
Tennessee Titans
NFC South
Altanta Falcons
New Orleans Saints
Carolina Panthers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
AFC North
Baltimore Ravens
Cincinnati Bengals
Cleveland Browns
Pittsburgh Steelers
NFC North
Chicago Bears
Green Bay Packers
Detroit Lions
Minnesota Vikings
AFC East
Buffalo Bills
New England Patriots
New York Jets
Miami Dolphins
NFC East
Dallas Cowboys
New York Giants
Philadelphia Eagles
Washington Redskins
AFC West
Denver Broncos
Kansas City Chiefs
San Diego Chargers
Oakland Raiders
NFC West
Arizona Cardinals
San Francisco 49ers
Seattle Seahawks
St. Louis Rams
Now I know that you’re looking at this thing and wondering how on earth they decided which teams would be in which divisions. I’ll be honest…I’m not quite sure. However, I know that they took into account previous rivalries and similar localities but there are some divisions that just don’t seem to match. The AFC East, for instance. I mean—what is Miami doing in there! Especially when they could have been included in the AFC South. Whatever.

The point is that the teams in each division basically have to fight each other for a place in the Playoffs. Here’s the reason: the winner of each division automatically goes to the Playoffs. And that is really nice when you’re working all year just to get the Super Bowl. The Playoff picture looks like this then; there are 4 spots, one for each division in a conference, and 2 Wild Cards spots that go to the other teams in the conference with the most wins. I’ll take these past playoffs as an example. In the NFC, New Orleans, Minnesota, Dallas, and Arizona won their divisions, which left Philadelphia and Green Bay to grab the two wild card spots. On the AFC side, San Diego, Indianapolis, Cincinnati, and New England won the division and New York (Jets) and Baltimore were wild cards. The NFL takes into account the W-L records for each of these Playoff teams and awards the teams with the best records, the coveted home field advantage, not to mention an extra week off! Thus each playoff-bound team is given a "seed" or position to play within it’s own conference.

And the playoff seeds go something like this:
AFC
#1 Indianapolis
#2 San Diego
#3 New England
#4 Cincinnati
#5 New York
#6 Baltimore
NFC
#1 New Orleans
#2 Minnesota
#3 Dallas
#4 Arizona
#5 Green Bay
#6 Philadelphia
Once in the Playoffs, where your team is seeded (#1-6) becomes the most important thing. Not only does it show exactly who that team will play first but also when & where. For example, because Indianapolis, San Diego, New Orleans, and Minnesota are the top ranked teams, they get the first week of the Playoffs OFF. Pretty nice, eh? Also they get home-field advantage in every game, which is also very nice (unless #1 plays #2 and then #1 is gets home-field.) Also according to the rules, lowest seeds always get paired with highest seeds. Thus, Philadelphia traveled to Dallas, Green Bay to Arizona, Baltimore went to New England and the Jets drove to Cincinnati. At the end of the weekend, the teams left standing were Baltimore, New York, Dallas, and Arizona. The second week of the Playoffs those 4 teams then traveled to the #1 & #2 seeds. Arizona went to New Orleans, Dallas to Minnesota, Baltimore to Indy, and finally New York to San Diego.

We have finally arrived at the all-important Conference Championships. By the 3rd week of the Playoffs, the remaining teams must play to see who wins their conference and, by extension, who goes to the Super Bowl. The AFC Championship was played by Indianapolis and New York and the NFC was played Minnesota and New Orleans. At such a high level of play, you can usually count on really, really good games. Indianapolis won the AFC and also their right to defend the AFC in the Super Bowl, while New Orleans won the NFC.

So, ladies, after all that confusing jargon, we are back to the beginning. On Sunday, starting approximately around 6pm EST, the Super Bowl will feature a showdown between the AFC and NFC, between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. Who you cheer for is up to you but remember these two teams earned their right, the hard way, to play in front of you that night.

Women: Interested In Football?

"If God had wanted women to understand men, football would never have been created." Roger Simon

“[Sports] are the absolute good.” So says Phinney from A Separate Peace and really, I couldn’t agree more. I was brought up in a very sports-oriented family. Not only was my father proficient at tennis and my mother at golf but I was also taught to understand and respect all forms of athletics. As soon as I was able, I dropped the years of dance that I had indulged in and moved into the more satisfying realm of middle school sports. I embraced volleyball, basketball, and softball while watching football on the weekends with my father. In high school, I again played volleyball and softball and again took up dancing but I watched football more voraciously than ever before, even going so far as to do all my homework during the commercials of the football games on Sundays. Super Bowl became a special bonding time between my father and I. I was even lucky enough to participate in football through our high school Powderpuff Game. For those of you who are unfamiliar with this term, it is a popular high school event where the girls play flag-football and the boys are the cheerleaders, juniors play seniors and it can get pretty dirty. Overall, however it is a really good time. Other than the entertainment value, it was a great way for girls to learn the complexities and the overwhelming beauty of the game itself.
Now I realize that not every woman was granted this in-depth introduction to American football and that maybe these “other” women had parents that loved other sports or, horror of horrors, didn’t like sports at all. However, I feel that football is becoming our new national pastime so that any woman, who is not well-versed in this matter, may just find herself out in the cold. Increasingly, curious females have been asking me questions on various football topics and I do my best to furnish them with answers that they will understand. Sometimes though I am aware that football talk may be Greek to most of you. In fact a coworker of mine, Darbi, made mention of that as a group of us discussed fantasy football. “Fantasy football is the Dungeons and Dragons of the athletic community.” So, sure, any guy can tell you what an illegal movement is but he will probably tell you that the tight end moves while the wide receiver is moving on the line of scrimmage and your then you’re left wondering “what is a tight end?” “what is a wide receiver?” “what is the line of scrimmage and where on earth is it exactly?”
Now this, ladies, is how I intend to help. I will answer your questions so that you do not have 18 other questions after that. Although of course, I can’t possible answer all questions but I hope to give you as many details as possible so that you can sit down in front of a football game and understand it. This insight will then, hopefully, lead to an increased enjoyment of the great game of football, whether college or professional.
Here are some words of advice to aid you on your road to better sports knowledge. Notice I didn’t say better football knowledge. The reason for that is that I feel you can use these tips to watch any sport, whether it be hockey, tennis or, even, golf!
1. Pick a team. Honestly, this is the most important element of enjoying sports because once you pick a team or a player, then you are invested in that game. There is a feeling of ownership. For example, in the movie My Fair Lady, Eliza Doolittle is taken to Ascot’s to test out her new grasp of the English language. Ascot’s is famed for its horse-racing and the day that Eliza arrives is no exception. A race soon starts and Freddy, a gentleman entirely smitten with her, gives her his ticket which shows that he placed a bet on a horse named Dover. Of course, this culminates in the famous scene where Eliza screams “COME ON, DOVER! MOVE YOUR BLOOMIN’ ARSE!” Priceless. How this relates to you though is that Eliza did not pay one bit of attention to the races until Freddy handed her that ticket. After that, she is invested in the race and therefore all her attention is focused on poor Dover. So, the minute you sit down to watch a game, no matter who is playing, pick someone to cheer for. I was teaching a friend of mine about college football and we had decided to watch the Florida State vs. Miami game. When I told her to pick a team, she chose Florida State because she thought that their burgundy and gold uniforms were nicer than the green and orange of Miami. This was fine. Anything that allows you to pick a team. If you like purple, choose the Minnesota Vikings, if you love Tom Brady because he’s so hot, choose the New England Patriots, if you love Home Depot, cheer for Tony Stewart, if you love hotties from Spain, go for Raphael Nadal. Do you get the picture? Guys seem to think that if you pick a team it should be based on who your grandfather cheered for, the area of the country that you were born in and the mathematic ratio of wins to losses over a 5 year period. (I apologize to any men that do not do this.) Now once you start understanding football, then by all means, figure out a team that you like and stick with it. I’m not advocating fair-weather fan-ness here, folks.
2. Try not to ask men to explain things. I’m not trying to malign the male character, but watching sports is one of those situations when you will inevitably not get the answer you were looking for. Either his answer raises too many other questions or he’s too engrossed in the game to take the time to reply and really answer the question. Or he simply doesn’t understand the game either but doesn’t want to say this and possibly get his Man Card revoked, so he’ll just tell you anything at all. Ugh! Again I’m not trying to malign any men but I have had all 3 instances happen to me. It’s frustrating, guys!
3. Make the game into an event. Invite people over or dress up. That helps to make the sport more important and engrossing. Super Bowl parties are fun because they combine lots of people and football. What could be better? Even if you are at home alone, get food and drinks and take time out to give the sport your undivided attention. I like to put on a jersey, slap a cold beer into my team's coozie, and maybe bring down a banner. Have your own way of doing things.
4. Do things during commercials. In other words, watch the game while the game’s on and then during the commercials, go to the bathroom, get another beer, etc. That way you’re not missing much of the action. The advent of DVR is THE BEST THING EVER sportswise.
5. Try to listen to the commentators. You may just assume those guys in the box are there just to hear themselves speak. But I’ll be honest, sometimes they know what they are talking about. Usually there are at least two commentators in the booth, one for the play-by-play explanations and the other for “color,” just making converstion (hopefully about the action on the field.) This normally leads to a nice, balanced, running chat about the game. During football games, you’ll almost be sure to have at least one former player commentating, which is helpful by breaking down the game for you, explaining the plays and the penalties. They will sometimes fall into the crime of using football jargon but that just simply can’t be helped. You can ask me what any term means if you like.
6. Remember, above all else, that athletes and coaches are human, just like you and I. They will make mistakes. They will do really cool superhuman things and unbelievable plays. They will have superstitions. They will have a life outside of the sport. They will say boneheaded things. Take them like that and you will not be disappointed. For example, I like Tiger Woods. Now I know that he has gotten a really, really bad rep lately but here’s the thing—he’s human and made some mistakes. When he was playing golf, I liked him because he was…get this…a good golfer! I’m disappointed that he was living this whole other lifestyle but if he can get it together and still manage to kickass at his sport, then I’ll be cheering for him once again.
7. And for all you advanced football fans, try to call plays and penalties before they do on TV. I think the hardest part about watching football is to actually see penalties occurring. Once you can do that (& call them correctly), you will feel empowered and to be congratulated.

Now it is up to you to make the best of this situation. If you have a male in your life that loves to watch football/sports, this is a great opportunity for you two to spend time together. If you just want to try something new, prepare to expand your horizons. And most of all, let’s have fun!