Tag Archives: NFL

Sports news

Will Super Bowl match these games?

Whichever teams emerge next weekend from the NFL’s conference championship games will have a mighty steep hill to climb to match the excitement the football-watching public enjoyed this past weekend in the divisional playoff games.

This is my way of saying the Super Bowl, to be played two weeks later in Los Angeles, will have to go some to give us the same level of thrill.

Think of this: The Cincinnati Bengals beat the top seed in the AFC, the Tennessee Titans with a game-winning field goal; the San Francisco 49ers went to Green Bay to defeat the favored Packers after trailing the entire game — until the end; the LA Rams went to Tampa Bay and knocked the defending Super Bowl champs, the Buccaneers, with a game-ending field goal; then came the capper, with the Kansas City Chiefs defeating the Buffalo Bills in overtime with a touchdown pass in what many call the “greatest game in NFL history.” 

The conference championships will have plenty of drama. My favorite story line belongs to the Bengals. They hadn’t won a road playoff game in the franchise’s history, yet they beat the Titans in Nashville. They haven’t played in a Super Bowl since 1989, when they lost a thriller to the 49ers.

Whether it’s the Rams vs. the Bengals, or the 49ers vs. the Bengals, or the Rams vs. the Chiefs or the 49ers vs. the Chiefs in the Big Game, know this: The players will take the field knowing they are capable of delivering a Super Bowl for the ages.

Here’s hoping they don’t disappoint.

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Sports news

NFLers come to play

My football-watching tastes have evolved over the years, in that I usually watch little pro football and concentrate my attention on college ball.

However, this weekend has been one for the ages for those who love to watch the National Football League.

Three visiting teams won the first three divisional playoff games. They all were underdogs. Oh, and all three games were decided by field goals.

Cincinnati beat the AFC’s No. 1 seed, Tennessee, in Nashville; the San Francisco 49ers ventured to frigid Green Bay to beat the Packers after trailing them the entire game; Los Angeles traveled to Tampa to take on the defending Super Bowl champion Buccaneers and won that game as time ran out.

What’s more, Cincy won its first road playoff game in the history of the franchise.

As I type this brief post, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Buffalo Bills are playing for the final conference championship spot. It’s still early, but my hunch is that this one could down to the wire, too.

Yep, these high-priced millionaire athletes do have a way of stepping up to provide the kind of entertainment we all love to see.

Update: The Chiefs and the Bills put a wrap on the most exciting football playoff weekend I can remember. KC won with a touchdown in overtime; the game ended 42-36. So help me, that was among the best football games I ever have seen.

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Uncategorized

Dak offers real apology

Dak Prescott came under intense fire for a comment he made after the Dallas Cowboys blundered their way into a first-round professional football playoff loss.

He seemed to endorse the notion that it was all right for unhappy fans at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, to throw debris at officials who, in their eyes, gave the game to the San Francisco 49ers.

Then came what I believe was a first-rate apology from the Cowboys’ quarterback. He said he is sorry for his remark. He didn’t offer one of those phony “if I offended anyone” non-apologies. Oh, no. Prescott stepped up and said he blew it.

He said this, via Twitter: “That was a mistake on my behalf, and I am sorry.”

I am willing, therefore, to offer a bit of grace to the young man.

I don’t really care about whether the Cowboys will ever win another Super Bowl. Sure, I live in the Metroplex and I am bombarded with Cowboys news all the time by local media. I get that.

However, I do care when young, highly paid professional athletes are able to act like grownups after they blurt out regrettable statements. Dak Prescott demonstrated to me that he is a grownup and I hope that this tempest blows over quickly.

I believe it will, largely because the man at the center of it offered a sincere apology.

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Uncategorized

Fire the GM, Mr. GM

OK. I have shared this view privately with friends and family members, but I am going public now with this bit of, er, wisdom from the Peanut Gallery.

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones, who doubles as the team general manager, needs to fire the GM. He needs to find a competent, experienced and knowledgeable individual to serve as general manager. Then the owner needs to step back into the shadows — as much as his ego will allow it — and let the football brainiac assemble a championship team that can take the team back to the very tippy-top of the professional football ranks.

The Cowboys’ loss on Sunday to the San Francisco 49ers was an exercise in bumbling and bumbling followed by grumbling from fans, coaches, players and, yes, the owner himself about how the Cowboys couldn’t deliver the goods when it mattered the most. They fell out of the first round of the NFL playoffs … again!

Back to Jones.

He bought the team in 1989 and pledged to become involved in every aspect of its operation. I can’t recall the precise quote, but he said something about being involved with “washing jocks and making executive decisions.” He decided he would become the team’s general manager.

I do not know all there is to know about professional football, but I know enough to assess Jones’s performance as GM. Jerry Jones ain’t cuttin’ it.

The man made his fortune in business. He parlayed his millions into purchasing a professional football team. Jones transformed the team into his own image. He immediately fired the only coach the Cowboys ever had, the late gridiron legend from South Texas Tom Landry. The Cowboys struggled early in the Jones era.

Yes, they have won some Super Bowls since Jones bought the team. They won them in 1993, 1994 and 1996 with great coaching and great players. Who hired the coaches? Jones did. Then he would fire them.

Jerry Jones does not possess a brilliant football mind. He is brilliant businessman. A story in this past Sunday’s Dallas Morning News examined how much of his fortune he has given back to the community. I appreciate his generosity and his philanthropy.

But the man wants to build a championship football team. I do not believe he will get there if he continues to pretend to be a general manager who knows how to make sound football decisions.

Building a championship team is complicated in a way that Jones doesn’t understand. I certainly don’t. There are plenty of great minds out there who have what it takes.

Hire them, Jerry. Then get the hell out of the way!

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Sports news

Aaron Rodgers’s white lie still stings

We won’t call Aaron Rodgers’s deception about being “immunized” instead of vaccinated against the COVID 19 virus a “little white lie.”

It goes beyond little white lie status. Let’s just call it a lie.

The Green Bay Packers quarterback is continuing to pay the price in deserved recrimination for his refusal to tell the truth — to the public — about whether he had taken the vaccine. He had taken instead some sort of cocktail of drugs that included Ivermectin, the medicine prescribed for livestock as a de-worming agent. Yeah, yeah … I get that he was prescribed by a doctor who reportedly gave him some sort of “human form” of the agent that supposedly works against the virus.

He didn’t say that. All he said was that he is “immunized.”

My beef with Rodgers — who until now I had grown to admire as a Hall of Fame-quality QB — is that his moronic reaction to the blowback suggests he doesn’t get it. He won’t take ownership of the mistake he made in lying about his vaccination status.

Rodgers now becomes what politicians like to refer to as a “distraction.” His teammates are distracted by the furor over this matter. So are the fans and the media.

This damn story won’t go away. I am not sure it should go away until Rodgers’s comes clean and owns the controversy he has created.

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national news, Sports news

Let anthem stand on its own

The older I get the more of a fuddy-duddy I become.

There. I’ve admitted it. What caused this admission? It’s the inclusion of “Lift Every Voice and Sing” at professional football games which is now being sung alongside the National Anthem.

“Lift Every Voice and Sing” has become a sort of de facto “black national anthem.” It’s a lovely song. I don’t know the words, but I do hear it on occasion and I like the melody.

Do we need to sing it at pro football games as a statement that we recognize the injustice being done to African Americans to this very day? I don’t think so.

I prefer to sing only the National Anthem — the “Star Spangled Banner,” if you will — at sports events. How come?

We have one National Anthem. Just a single tune. Its lyrics were penned by Francis Scott Key in the early 19th century. It stands as the song we all learned as children. We sang it in school. We sing it today at public meetings and, yes, at sporting events.

I don’t want to dilute the meaning of the national anthem, which proclaims we are the “land of the free and the home of the brave.” Do I ignore the injustice that continues to occur? Do I accept that some Americans are treated unfairly? That they face discrimination? No! I reject all of that!

However, this notion that we sing “Lift Every Voice and Sing” alongside the “Star Spangled Banner” just doesn’t feel right.

OK. I’m a white guy. I also am a fuddy-duddy. Deal with it!

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Sports news

Cleveland … Guardians?

By John Kanelis / [email protected]

OK. I am fine with the Washington Football Team of the National Football League jettisoning the name it used to call itself: the Redskins.

But, something inside my old man’s body tells me the Cleveland Indians’ decision to change its name to Guardians is a step too far into the realm of political correctness.

The Washington Football Team’s former name clearly had been interpreted as a slur against Native Americans. Old-time western cowboys would use the term as an epithet against Indians.

However, to change the name of one of Major League Baseball’s more storied franchises to the Guardians? I don’t get where this is going or where it might go.

As a friend of mine noted earlier today on social media, a Native American suited up for the Cleveland team many decades, becoming the first indigenous American to play big-league baseball. Thus, it is believed the Indians named the team in his honor.

Maybe I shouldn’t tread onto this ground, given that I am the grandson of immigrants from southern Europe. I don’t understand how a Native American might feel about an MLB team named the Indians. It’s just that to my eyes and ears the team nickname has a decidedly neutral sound to it, unlike the former name of the NFL team that plays tackle football in Washington, D.C.

How many more teams are going to succumb to the pressure that continues to mount?

Sigh …

Sports news

Las Vegas Raiders? Please …

(Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)

By JOHN KANELIS / [email protected]

I once was a huge, fervent, zealous fan of professional football.

Not so much these days. My favorite football team in the old days was an American Football League team that became a National Football League outfit: the Oakland Raiders.

I loved the Raiders back in the day, when Darryl “The Mad Bomber” Lamonica was their quarterback; when Ben Davidson was terrorizing opposing teams’ QBs; when Fred Biletnikoff ran perfect pass routes.

Then the Oakland Raiders moved to Los Angeles. My loyalty to them subsided, but only a little bit. They eventually would find their way back to the East Bay, playing once again in Oakland.

I am watching the Raiders today on TV. Only these days they call Las Vegas home.

The Las Vegas Raiders?

Arrggghhh!

I cannot go there.

Then again, I’m still pi**ed that the Houston Oilers moved to Nashville, that the Cleveland Browns moved to Baltimore, that the Chicago Cardinals moved to St. Louis and then to Phoenix, that the San Diego Chargers moved to LA, and that the Baltimore Colts sneaked out of town in the middle of the night and relocated to Indianapolis. I know what you might be thinking: What about the Dallas Texans moving to Kansas City? I’ll give the Chiefs a pass on that one.

My favorite team of all time remains the Oakland Raiders. The Las Vegas Raiders are imposters.

Sports news

Get ready: no football

Aside

I believe football fans from coast to coast to coast need to steel themselves for some very bad news.

There might not be football this autumn. Two college conferences — the Lone Star and Mid-American — have “postponed” all football games until the spring. The Ivy League canceled its football season altogether.

The “power” conferences — such as the Big 12, the Pac 12, SEC, Big 10 — are set to play football. But wait! Are they really going to expose their student-athletes to the pandemic, to the coronavirus that continues to kill Americans?

I have this feeling in my gut, right along with my trick knee, that we aren’t likely to see college football this autumn. Or, perhaps, too the National Football League.

A lot of players are opting out of NFL play, citing concerns over the virus.

Am I dreading the thought of no football this fall? Yes. More so regarding intercollegiate football. I care less about the NFL than I care about NCAA football.

I care much more, though, for the well being of the student-athletes, their coaches, their family members, their friends and assorted loved ones who could be infected a potential killer that continues to ravage this nation.

national news

It’s ‘phony patriotism’

If the National Football League and the National Basketball Association are able to get their seasons started, we should prepare ourselves for another round of what I call “phony patriotism.”

It will come from those who object to players “taking a knee” while they play the National Anthem. Americans will object to the demonstration of peaceful protest against police brutality. They will assert that kneeling during the Anthem disrespects the flag, the men and women who fight to defend it as well as our way of life.

Donald Trump says he will turn off football games the moment he sees players kneeling. No doubt he will wrap himself in the flag, perhaps even hugging and kissing the cloth stitched in red, white and blue. He’s going to pitch for legislation making flag-burning a violation of federal law.

Except for this bit of history: The U.S. Supreme Court has stood firmly behind what the flag represents. The court has ruled that burning the flag is a form of political protest, which the Constitution protects in the First Amendment.

I want to stipulate once again that I revere the flag. I stand proudly for it. I went to war in defense of what that flag represents. No one who ever seeks to make a political point by burning that flag should do so in front of me.

But the return of pro sports may well be upon us. Major League Baseball has begun — more or less — and yes, players have knelt during the Anthem. The NFL and the NBA seasons are scheduled to begin soon.

I will await the phony patriotism and will dismiss it for what I believe it is: a demonstration of cheap showmanship.