Think you’ve got it tough in the off season, NFL junkie? Think again, Barney. Like Charlie Sheen, circa the Hot Shots era of hi career, or people who’ve never been exposed to Piers Morgan, sometimes you just don’t realise how good you’ve really got it.
Back when I was a kid, on the wrong side of the Atlantic when it came to the NFL (and in retrospect, admiring the name “Jesse”) it was slim pickings football wise till August rolled around.
Forget being able to pore through the net checking out acres of highlights, or devour the 417 hours of live games V (or Sky) plussed from the last 3 years, archived eps of Total Access, and of course FIVE’s groundbreaking magazine show NFL : UK 
the best I could hope for in the off season was devouring fading back issues of First Down and hoping that the crackly American Forces Radio would, out of nowhere, interrupt its broadcast for a 15 hour exclusive with Marino, the Marx Brothers (both sets, ideally) and Brian Bosworth reviewing the films of Steven Seagal.
These days, alongside the remarkable access to archive footage, we’ve got stories breaking on Twitter even before they’ve actually happened, and America’s 4th greatest invention, Sports Talk Radio. And it’s slick, shiny nephew Todd Podcast. Yes, there are dozens of rubbish ones where jawing heads talk mindless drivel – an underrated attribute, frankly – but there are also some diamonds in the rough, and my picks have been based around shows that balance smart broadcast journalism with both irreverence and ease of downloadability.
Some are podcast only podcasts, others edited/best of versions of a radio show, many are ESPN, a few are out and out indies. Check em out, and head to i-Tunes or similar, and get downloading people.
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