Posted on April 3, 2011 by mrgekko

Am pretty sure, though not certain, that Phil Coke once tried to sell me a used Harley....

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One Ocho Cinco, There’s Only One Ocho Cinco….

Posted on March 20, 2011 by mrgekko

News that Chad Johnson of the Cincinnati Bengals, arguably the NFL’s most flamboyant superstar, is trying his hand in the MLS should come as no surprise. You think Mario Balotelli is eccentric? Couple of years back Johnson legally changed his name to Ocho Cinco : his shirt number, 85, in Spanish. He was prolifically tweeting & appearing live on Ustream talking about Lady Ga-Ga and his love of cigars whilst other athletes were still getting to grips with MySpace or Facebook. Even Middle America fell in love with him when he fox-trotted his way around Dancing With The Stars – their version of Strictly Come Dancing.  And now he’s announced, mid labour disputes in his primary sport which means NFL players are, effectively, on enforced holiday, that he’s having a 5 day trial with Sporting Kansas City.

It’s unlikely that this is anything more than another stunt in a career full of more colourful manoeuvres than a Miro retrospective at Tate Modern. But it did get me considering a few things. Firstly, is it even possible for an athlete to capably switch sports to a suitable level in 2011? Sure, there are examples of it happening historically: CB Fry knocked up 30,000 first class runs in Cricket and simultaneously was a capable defender for Southampton & England.  “Neon” Deion Sanders played his way to a Hall of Fame career in the NFL whilst turning out for the New York Yankees and others as a professional baseball player. The great Michael Jordan – in many people’s eyes the finest athlete of all – switched from basketball to baseball too – but never made the Major Leagues.

Closer to home we had former West Ham hardman Julian Dicks on our chat show Talk of the Terrace (Mondays 6.30PM ESPN) last week and he discussed how he tried his hand at becoming a pro golfer when injury forced him out of the Premier League – but despite coming close, wasn’t quite able to join the elite.

The thing that connects all these stories is that there hasn’t been a recent example of a player pulling it off. It just hasn’t happened in the last 20 years. Presumably there are lots of reasons for this. The dramatic increase in pace that we’ve seen in football is representative of all major sports – and the levels of conditioning, positional focus and training, plus the fact that so many leagues are now truly global, thus subject to a higher level of competition – and so not only is the transition between one to another that much harder, but barely considered by an athlete whose main focus is the protection of his standing within his primary sport.

Factor in tactical savvy and an understanding of the game that is only developed with repetitive experience, and the difference between looking good in training – or over a 5 day trial – and putting in a capable performance over 90 minutes in a system that relies on all 11 players knowing what their individual role is continuously, and the scale of the challenge is magnified.  Johnson – a pacy Wide Receiver – is a huge football fan (he’s reputedly good mates with Thierry Henry) and played the game when he was younger. He’s clearly on a par with many, if not all, of the MLS players in terms of physical attributes and instinctive athletic ability. But his speed and agility will only carry him so far – even if the level of competition he’d be going into is more akin to the Championship than the PL.

When the Johnson story broke I tweeted for suggestions of which Premier League players could make it in the NFL and in what position. Around all the jokey suggestions – Berbatov, Michael Owen & Nani being my favourite 3 – the overwhelming winner was Micah Richards, presumably because he quite visibly possesses the physicality required for most positions. And arguably, whilst the strategic complexity of the NFL, certain positions, and the short, sharp explosive involvement lend themselves far more to a player making the transition between sports, because they can rely on physicality and natural ability more than anything else.

Will we ever see a 2 sport star in our lifetime? I doubt it. Ocho must rank among the hot favourites to ever do it simply due to his remarkable and chutzpah but even if he does get picked up by Kansas City, you can bet your house that when the NFL finally gets its act together and the lockout is rescinded he’ll be back in Cincinnati faster than you can say “6 million dollars” – the amount he’s due to earn from the Bengals this year.

Follow me on Twitter @natcoombs

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Romance isn’t (completely) dead….yet

Posted on February 27, 2011 by mrgekko

The now infamous Fernando Torres quote that “romance is dead”, made after his big money move from Liverpool to Chelsea seemed to polarise opinion across the football world. Some could barely bring themselves to type their vitriolic response to a player that they perceived as the apex of money grabbing turncoats thus propelling El Nino above Ashley Cole into the top spot of players fans would least like to have a beer/shoot air rifles with.

Conversely, there was a vociferous constituency who credited Torres for his honesty, citing his guts at being so forthright in tackling the issue. (Ironically, it’s perhaps the only successful tackling he’s been involved with in the last 14 weeks).

They argued that the mercenary approach to work from footballers, of the top drawer variety anyway, is something most fans agree on, and have seen gradually creep into the game we all love over the last 10 years. And it’s a sadly inevitable part of the deal most of us have entered into. Amazing talent costs – literally in terms of expense, but also in terms of what gets lost when something is gained.

We’ve never had it better on many levels. The calibre of the generation of players currently in the top flight – the excitement drawn from the juxtaposition of their technical skill combined with the explosive pace that’s always been intrinsically connected with the English game, makes the Premier League, the most watchable league in the world. No contest. But this all comes at a price – literally and figuratively.

Interestingly, if you look at other sports with similar economic power to the Premier League, the story is the same. Take the NBA, across the pond in the US.  Here’s a league with scores of very good players, but only a handful of great ones. Traditionally, as far as the purists are concerned, great players were scattered around reasonably evenly, so that *most* teams had their superhero, who in turn reveled very much in the idea of it being “his” team. In the last 12 months two things have happened which have, to all intents and purposes, smashed this utopian vision apart with a size 15 Air Jordan.

Heard of Lebron James? Forget Torres.  This guy announced his decision to leave Cleveland, the hapless team that he’d turned single handedly from zeros to heroes – live on national television, in a show snappily titled “The Decision”. Lebron was the standard bearer for superstars doing it for love and loyalty, not money. And what made his defection – to Miami – all the more spectacular, and somewhat depressing, was that he was teaming up in Florida with two other galacticos in Chris Bosh & Dwayne Wayde. Comparatively speaking, it makes Real, Chelsea & Man City look like a League One set up.

And only last week, a second seismic NBA move happened. Carmelo Anthony – who admittedly sounds like a character from The Sopranos, but is in fact one of the best players of his generation – walked away from the Denver Nuggets, where he’d had an almost mirror image career to Lebron – to join the New York Knicks, who now have 2 superstars and have made it clear that they’re adding a third.

And in the NFL it’s even more clinical, not least because the teams make it crystal clear that their players are jewels in their crown up until the moment where they get injured/lose ability where they’re summarily dropped and moved on quicker than Simon Cowell can ignore phone calls from the act who finished 6th on the X Factor. And here’s the crunch. Contracts in the NFL get torn up all time. So if you sign for a $50 million, 5 year deal, and get cut after year 1, you don’t see a penny (or cent) or the remaining money (only the guaranteed amount). So the players, understandably, have next to no tangible concept of loyalty to a team that they know for certain, sees it all as strictly business.

Depressing stuff? Yes. Logical that billion dollar businesses breed such clinical mindsets? Of course. For the fan, the Faustian pact that we’ve all entered into – consciously or otherwise – means that this won’t change until the entire mechanic is upended and everything becomes less about money and more about other values. Of course there are exceptions, and for the romantic supporter, irrespective of club colours, these shine through and should be championed for the acts of decency that they are.

Take Gil Meche, a pitcher for the Kansas City Royals in the MLB. In January this year he walked away from a guaranteed salary of $12 million, and retired, because he knew that due to injury, he wasn’t capable of honouring his contract with a suitable level of play. (Mauricio Taricco did the same thing for West Ham a few years back, for rather less cash)

Meche could have easily clocked in every day, popped to the treatment table for a massage, driven home, repeated this for 9 months and grabbed his considerable swag. But his integrity prevented him being so, well, mercenary. His actions have helped Kansas, a small, struggling minnow, immeasurably.

The next time a player, regardless of his sport, makes a move that is seemingly so self interested in makes you grimace every time you think about it for the next year, don’t blame him. It’s what most of his contemporaries are doing, it’s what’s become expected. But while you’re doing that, raise a glass to Mr. Meche, and mutter quietly under your breath : Who says the age of romance is (completely) dead?

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Return of the Brett Pack?

Posted on January 30, 2011 by mrgekko

If you think you know cheese you’d better think again. Green Bay, Wisconsin, is the beginning, the middle, and the end, when it comes to our favourite dairy product. Put it this way – if you’re from this town and you don’t like cheese, people will look at you funny, point and nudge when you walk past them. Bit like when you tell people that you live in Milton Keynes. Or if someone finds out that you own an Backstreet Boys – Live! album. Only worse.And if you’re a Wisconsian (I appreciate this may not be an actual word) and you don’t like the Packers – Green Bay’s other famous offering – then you’re just plain weird. Lots of teams try to blag it, but the Pack is a genuinely legendary NFL franchise.

For starters, the championship trophy that all 32 teams aim to get their grubby little mitts on every year is named after one of their own – Vince Lombardi, their former head coach, and winner of five championships during the 50’s and 60’s. You know you’ve made it when people with fancy titles decide to name things after you and in Lombardi’s case, they didn’t stop there, and also went for a street, a square, a school, an award for college players, hell even a steakhouse. It’s possible the town’s dignitaries got hammered and went crazy with Google Map to end up with that list, but whichever way you (cheese) cut it, it’s a legacy with a capital L.

Speaking of legacy, another favourite Green Bay son is the NFL’s leader in almost every passing record going, the great, and recently much maligned Brett Favre.

Here’s a man so confident in his all round awesomeness that he decided to retire and come back to the game 419 times. The “will he, won’t he” merry go round in every off season for the past 7 years became so collapsing-in-on-itself post modernist, that if it was a plotline David Lynch would have dismissed it as “too confusing. And a bit weird.”

In 2008, after playing his entire career for the Packers, Favre quit in the glare of the national media again, then decided he wanted back in. No change there then. He figured that the same shtick he’d pulled for the previous few years – quit at a tearful press conference, then right before the season was due to start have a change of heart – would work again. Except this time: it didn’t. The Packers moved on, closed the door on Favre, backed a young unproven guy with a promising mullet (Aaron Rodgers) and rode of into the sunset. At this stage, a shell-shocked Favre carried most of the public’s sympathy – crucially in Green Bay too.

Head bowed, he moved to the New York Jets, did reasonably well for a while, then was quite pants, retired again, and then came back again. Phew. Except this time, Brett didn’t go back the Pack. Or the Jets for that matter. He joined the Vikings of Minnesota. Remember that public sympathy and Green Bay lurrve I mentioned a moment ago? Yea, about that.

The Premier League equation is something like this:

Gary Neville (+ 44% more talent) joining Liverpool (x) Steven Gerrard lifting FA Cup for Man Utd = Brett Favre joining the Minnesota Vikings.

And what’s more, rubbing salt in the wounds of the Pack fans who had revered him for years, then mourned his passing, he played well. Really well. The Vikes almost made the Super Bowl. It was as close to a Hollywood blockbuster as a Peter Jackson directed Tom Hanks vehicle co-starring Colin Firth, George Clooney & the dog from K-9 in a comeback role.

Predictably, Favre (almost) retired again but came back for one last dance. Guess it was a little like those moments in life when you know the Jagerbombs are a bad idea but you just roll with it anyway. Favre coming back this year was a disaster with severe physical consequences and was more beaten up than a $40 a show jobbing no holds barred wrestler gigging out of Flower Mound, TX. It was sad to watch. The occasional bullet notwithstanding, it was a little bit like watching the outcome of your Dad standing up drunk at Christmas lunch and shouting “I’m gonna go play some NFL” and heading down, suited up, to Heinz Field.

And here’s the thing: because of this dramatic, almost pathetic fall, no one in Green Bay knows what to make of him anymore. Do they love him, loathe him, or feel sorry for him, much like how many of us English feel our team trot out wearing the 3 Lions. Sure, the rather odd and unclear sexual harassment allegations have added a less than salubrious tint to the whole perspective, but rational thinking tells us that this can’t have clouded too many fans minds given how quickly Michael Vick has returned to favour, among many of Favre’s peers proven guilty of far worse than the accusations levied against him.

And try as they might, the Packers – as a collective organisation, and particularly the hitherto formidable Rodgers – can’t quite seem break the shadow of Brett’s faded Wranglers. Rodgers has had a terrific season, yet inevitable comparisons with Favre hound him wherever he goes. It’s the way of the media in the modern world. Even by markedly not trying to draw a parallel between the two, hacks will hamfistedly do so. A self perpetuating prophecy if ever I saw one.

No surprise, because Favre was damn good – probably one of the all time greats, though to be honest, he broke most records going because he played about 47 times more than any other QB. He famously took the Cheese Heads back to the promised land, winning the Vince Lombardi Trophy in 1996. He even pulled Cameron Diaz in There’s Something About Mary for Christ sake.

And maybe the only way that the post Brett Pack will achieve closure is by going onto beat the Steelers in Super Bowl XLV. In an appealing twist of symmetry – despite not having worn the green & yellow for almost 4 years – Favre needs this win as much, maybe even more, than the Packers do. Lose and the purgatory remains. A Steelers victory will ensure a prolonged bout of apathy and emotional neutrality from Cheesheads to their long lost brother. Win and all is forgiven. The prodigal son can return. Beers are on Brett. About that Number 4 jersey? Retire it, pal. I’ll see you at the Hall of Fame dinner.

And as much as I’d love to see the latter, honestly, can we stomach the gush that will ensue? Mind you, we’ll have all sat through the Black Eyed Peas at halftime, so after that, if we’re still breathing, anything’s a plus, I guess.

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Crunch Time (or What Would Hogan Do?)

Posted on January 21, 2011 by mrgekko

Domination in sports doesn’t come along very often, but when it does, it comes in many shapes & sizes. Track & Field? Usain Bolt or Ed Moses for starters. Tennis?  Mr. Roger Federer ladies and gents. The nominees for “Best Strike Attack Ever” are: Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Joel Garner & Courtney Walsh (apologies to Alan Igglesden). Football? The Shankly/Fagan era Liverpool. End of list.  And as for the greatest sport of them all? Hulk Hogan circa Wrestlemania 3, naturally.

In the NFL a number franchises stake a claim to be considered the biggest and best. And the six-time champion Steelers, out of Pittsburgh in sunny Pennsylvania, are among those who are genuine contenders for the ‘Greatest of All Time’ crown. The Steelers made their name in the 1970’s with mean, hard nosed, championship winning football personified by a crunchingly brutal defense known as The Steel Curtain run by a man named Mean Joe Green. And lets face it kids, you don’t get called Mean Joe unless your idea of a good time is punching yourself in the face repeatedly whilst listening to Slipknott. On repeat. Yep, Pittsburgh is a tough, no nonsense steel town. So think Sheffield. Only a successful version.

Or put it another way: If your idea of a romantic comedy is Saw 5, then the Steelers are the team you’ve been looking for all these years.

As well as being a big sports city – alongside the Steelers, the Penguins & the Pirates have had their moments, though the latter is currently playing marginally better ball than my softball team the Chevy Chasers -record (Played : 15/Won : 1/ Lost : 14) – Pittsburgh is known for its glowing contribution to one of man’s most profound inventions: Fast Food. Home of the Big Mac and legendary Sandwich makers the Primanti Brothers, if you like your chow with questionable origins, you’re in business. It’s also the hometown of Andy Warhol, who allegedly was a tough tackling linebacker destined for NFL greatness, but chose to be the voyeuristic king of Pop Art instead. A dilemma currently being faced by Clay Matthews.

They’ve also got the 3rd best-named footballer in the league. And like any NFL star worth his salt, star receiver Hines Ward has his fair share of nicknames including Ketchup (Hines. Geddit?) and Psycho (as in Psycho Ward) presumably because he’s mad as a stick. But you didn’t hear that from me. Ward is the perfect mix of skill, athleticism and toughness, and perhaps most importantly always plays the game with a big fat grin on his face. Which of course, has the dual effect of winding the hell up out of his opponents and their fans. His never say die attitude typifies the fighting spirit that personifies the Steelers, and his veteran leadership in the locker room ensures that his influence will carry on long after he hangs up his mouth guard.

The Jets/Steelers clash on Sunday night promises to be a close affair, with the ultimate prize in sports awaiting the winner. By ultimate prize in sports, I mean a spot in the Super Bowl BTW, not a private mud-wrestling lesson with Kendra, Kim Kardashian and any other busty model whose first name starts with a K.

It’ll be messy – as two of the leagues meanest D’s beat the living crap out of each other. Much will depend on which QB can handle the pressure – and in Ben Roethlisberger, the Steelers have one of the best in the business at (libellous comment removed). Mark Sanchez, the young Jets slinger, is now officially the most exciting QB ever in the history of the world after taking down the vastly more experienced and successful Tom Brady last week, but he’s far from the finished article that every media outlet in New York would have you believe.

The cast of characters is as full, varied and compelling as an episode of The Wire. Braylon Edwards? The beleaguered wide receiver who as likely to drop a ball right on the numbers as he is to catch it. There should some kind of tie in with a Vegas Casino – Braylon: Catch or Drop? I can see it at the MGM now. We’d hire Lindsay Lohan to be guest croupier on the launch night. Millions would exchange hands over the course of the year. Then there’s Troy Polamalu. The best hair in the business. Although a poor second to the early 90′s Waddle mullet.

Naturally with a barnet like that Troy plays at Safety – which is the de facto position for the player who has the best combination of agility and “smash me in the face with a 4×4 and I’ll ask for another” toughness. He missed the last game between these two – and for that to have happened, he must have drilled a 10-inch screw underneath his toenail. By accident. And who will Darelle Revis, the best cornerback in the modern game, who incidentally possesses the best nickname in the history of sports ever (Revis Island) be covering? Man to Man? Why, Hines Ward of course. I just love the symmetry.

Dense sub plots and deft nuance? In a blue-collar smashsville of a game. The irony wouldn’t be lost on the Hulkster, that’s for sure.

I’ll be presenting the 2011 AFC Championship between Pittsburgh Steelers & New York Jets on BBC Radio Five Live Xtra from 11.00pm on Sunday 23rd January.

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(XXL) Shadows on Broadway….

Posted on January 12, 2011 by mrgekko

It’s not an easy place, being in the shadow of your next-door neighbour. Just ask Ateletico Madrid fans. Or Tyson Gay. Or the guy who replaced Steve Guttenberg/Mahoney in the Police Academy series.

And the New York Jets, despite the odd moment of ultimate glory, are very much the poor relations in the Big Apple to those mean old Giants from up the Jersey turnpike. They even played their homegames in a stadium named after, and used by, their rivals for 25 years. That’s gotta hurt.

It wasn’t always this way though. Broadway Joe Namath – who was doing Beckham or Brady before Beckham or Brady were in their Bonpoint babygrows – brought glory and glamour to the Jets and their only Super Bowl win, in 1969. Namath, who is possibly the only man in history other than P. Diddy to pull off wearing a fur coat – was all bravado and sound bites and famously, and unbelievably cockily guaranteed their victory against the Colts, prior to the game – a statement which sparked a media frenzy and cemented Namath as bona fide icon transcending the sporting arena.

Lean times since Joe though, with the odd spark of dazzle and excitement never amounting to too much, and even a recent cameo from, err….Broadway Brett Favre (shurely Red Dirt Road Favre? – Ed) in between his 19th retirement, promised much but faded fast in the home stretch.

Playing in the hyper competitive AFC East means that the Jets are always facing an uphill battle at the best of times. For “uphill battle” read: they’ll never do anything whilst the New England Patriots exist. The Giants may be their physically superior meathead older brother, but the Patriots are the Jets’ overachieving debonair Ivy League educated, way cool cousin, who turns up at Christmas with a surfer blonde chick on their arm, a signed copy of On The Road in their pocket & stories of how they got s***faced on location in Italy with the cast of Oceans 12.

But this weekend, the 2011 AFC Divisional playoff no less, give the Jets the chance to redress the balance. Now under the reins of Head Coach Rex Ryan – the kind of guy who Cousin Paulie would say has no taste – the Jets are packing more of a punch than usual. And whilst the highly favoured Patriots are expected to steamroll them yet again – think the Ivan Drago/Apollo Creed Exhibition match from Rocky IV minus James Brown – this may be the time that the Jets surprise us in more ways than just the recent Rex Ryan/Foot fetish”scandal”. Yes, really.

Like a $40million action movie that’s aiming to recoup it’s costs by TV sales to Estonia & New Zealand, the 2010/11 New York Jets are a combination of ageing, grizzled vets who’ve been written off (meet the mercurial LT, people of Norfolk) but have one last scrap in them, and young, raw dynamos who are good at the fight scenes – less so the sentimental dialogue. Their appearance on HBO’s seminal Hard Knocks series – which follows an NFL team through its pre-season, warts & all – cemented their position as a team to watch this year. The real soap opera, underpinned by extreme bravado and overbearing confidence from Ryan & co has led to inevitable highs and lows.

And despite more lows than anything else, they’ve scraped into the playoffs on the Patriots coat-tails via the ultimate sporting back door – the Wild Card. But a last second dispatch of Peyton Manning’s Colts in said round has set up what promises to be a gripping encounter between the hustlers from Jersey and the gifted New England golden boys. The Patriots have won 3 Super Bowls in the last 10 years, almost won a 4th, and got done for (illegally) filming their opponents signal calling, thus making them the Lifetime Achievement winners of the most loathsome sporting franchise this side of the 1919 World Series throwing Black Sox, the English bodyline cricketers and any team featuring El Hadj Diouf.

This is the sporting equivalent of John Candy vs. Brad Pitt. Coach Ryan has predictably added to the needle by calling out his counterpart, Bill Belichick – imagine Alec Ferguson mixed with Rainman if Rainman was obsessed with Vince Lombardi – despite not even coming close in the achievement stakes, and the list of similar mismatches are littered across the field. That said, a Jet win wouldn’t be a Buster Douglas/Frances Ouimet upset if it happens. But an underdog coming good, however brash, is always a treat, right?

I could now ask you if you’re going to “get on board this Jet plane” but my blog would probably be removed by WordPress within minutes.

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To Hit…or not to hit….

Posted on October 25, 2010 by mrgekko

The fascinatingly swift reaction from the powers that be that run the NFL to come down hard on any player who, well, comes down hard – ah, the irony – seems to have polarised opinion.

On the one hand -  presumably a hand held up and away, palms open – you have the group who feel that the spate of helmet-to-helmet “tackles” – such as this one from the Patriots Brandon Merriweather (watch?v=Zb1CmHk9GK0 ) – have no place in the modern game of football.

They argue that given the knowledge we now possess about the dangers of concussion, not to mention that most of these plays resemble the kind of move you’d see from one of Pacman Jones’ mob when told “not to touch the ladyeez”, it’s not just outmoded, but borderline criminal, to allow such acts of violence. Figures, really.

Our generation benefits from the ever improving pace, athleticism and finesse of our sportsmen & women (and El Hadj Diouf) but not without a cost. These guys run faster, but they hit harder. The pressure is on to be better to get the gig, and this isn’t always reflected in the flair plays by the token team diva – yes we mean you Dimitar Berbatov/Braylon Edwards/Kevin Pietersen.

But what’s really surprising is a growing number, including, interestingly quite a few players, who have come out in opposition of the new ruling. Take Bills Linebacker Paul Posluzny.

“In our game, we’re taught to play fast, we’re taught to be physical. So things like that are going to happen. For them to be able to say ‘Well, all hits like that are fineable, you can get suspended,’ I think they’re taking it too far,”

Or as Hunter S. Thompson put it “I hate to advocate drugs, alcohol, violence, or insanity to anyone, but they’ve always worked for me.”

Mike Golic, co-host of the Mike & Mike show on ESPN Radio outlined that Merriweather, or any player in that situation, would be welcomed back over by the sidelines as a conquering hero by his teammates.

Players have also voiced a reasonable point that any enforced hesitation for a defensive player is arguably more dangerous for the player that they’re trying to tackle.

This core argument permeates down to the message boards : NFL is turning into a pussy league says one YouTuber, who sadly isn’t being literal, and, furthermore, outlines that he’s had concussions in the past, which makes a fair bit of sense. But this fear that somehow the new ruling will soften up the game of football irrevocably, is as genuine as it is short sighted.

Most of the intelligent concern seems to stem from the subjectivity of a call – when does a “hit” move from being tough to psychotically unnecessary?

I’ve spent years defending NFL against a braying mob of Rugby loving Brits who hurl grenades polished with Dorothy Parkers eyeliner to the tune of “Why don’t they just pass it?” (in relation to the lack of laterals) or “if they’re so friggin’ hard why do they wear more pads than a Dynasty reunion?”

The blinkered argument has always been a bugbear of mine, but there’s no doubt that Rugby has its players following a “hard but fair” code – thumb-to-eye gouging and fake blood scandals notwithstanding – without losing any of it’s tough appeal. In Aussie Rules – another helmet & pad less game – players suffer less concussions than in the NFL, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Will the NFL ever revert to the removal of either?

Perhaps Old School Legend Mike Ditka put it best “let’s see how those pretty boys do without a facemask”. I hope to God he was talking about Defensive dirty hitters, by the way.

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Vote Harrington in ‘12!

Posted on September 27, 2010 by mrgekko

It’s no secret just how much I love the legend that is Joey Harrington. The much maligned prince of draft busts, who has had more NFL teams than a spritzer guzzling table dancer called Cindii (if I could add a love heart above the second “i” then I would), seems to be out of the pro’s for good.

Bittersweet, for sure, because it’s unlikely that we’ll ever see the Oregon boy on a pro field again, so kiss goodnight to the fairytale where he takes the Bucs all the way to SB XLVIII after coming off the bench following concussions to the first two QB’s on the roster, plus the guy from the practice squad. Hey, it’s made for TV movie gold starring Joey Lawrence as JH, no? For goodness sake, they’re both called Joey. It’s destiny. Or at least, it was…..

But JH’s enforced retirement is also great for this one, singularly beautiful reason. No professional career means that Joey can fulfill his true destiny, and begin his journey to complete fullfilment, and save the Western World – and selected parts of the 3rd World, and the Middle East too, but definitely not New Zealand – by marching his army of Harringtonites all the way to the White House. Yes, you read me right, gang. Joey for President. And it starts right here!

It’s what America needs. And I’m speaking as card carrying ,er, Brit. I’ve already approached Don Johnson to see if he’ll take the role of Chief Politcal Strategist. He’s gonna get back to me.

Spread the word – begin the revolution – #joeyharringtonforpresident

more at http://www.natcoombs.com

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Best Podcasts For the (NFL) Off-Season

Posted on August 27, 2010 by mrgekko

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.

My website

Follow me on Twitter @NatCoombs

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