Sports Then and Now

First and foremost, I am a Patriots fan and season ticket holder of 15 years. To say

It's all about respect between the Patriots and Colts.

the least, I am a die hard Patriots, but I DO NOT HATE the Colts.

I HATE the Steelers and Jets.

I want to BEAT the Colts.

There is a difference between hating a team and wanting to beat a team.

If you hate a team, you hate every player on the team and you hope they have a horrible season.

They may trash talk you and never can back it up.

Then there are teams you want to BEAT.

They don’t trash talk and they back it up on the field.

They are true professionals.

You want them to be competitive, so you have to bring you’re A game to beat them.

You don’t hate their players, you respect them.

You have to beat the best to be the best.

Because they are very similar to you.

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I wonder why there is so much fuss about a team that has reached the halfway point in

Rex Ryan and the Jets have their work cut out for them.

the season and has gone four and four. It must be a New York state of mind. Perhaps I’ve been away from the Big Apple too long to remember that all New York sports fans want to and expect their team to win every game no matter what. That’s what makes them New Yorkers.

There are many fans out there before the beginning of the season who would have been very satisfied with a .500 record before the bye week. The fact that the team started 3-0 including a huge win against the New England Patriots raised their expectations through the roof.

Well the Jets have backed down to earth despite the fact that they totally out played the Dolphins on both sides of the ball in their 30-25 defeat. Somebody, however must have forgot to tell them that Special Teams also need to be on the same page.

This is what Special Teams Coordinator Mike Westhoff said, ”This was the absolute worst performance by any of his units in his 27 NFL seasons.” Ouch!

When a return artist like Ted Ginn Jr returns one for 100 yards and a score that’s a pretty good deal. When he does a second one for 101 yards in the same quarter that’s certainly great for him and the Dolphins, but an unimaginable for Jets Special Teams Unit.

This was the first time in my memory that this achievement has been accomplished during my football watching days.

Now Head Coach Rex Ryan has beaten himself up and down and behind the barn, he has given his team the next 6 days to get away from football. He expects that the rest is a good thing and his team will come back invigorated and ready to make a run at the playoffs in the second half of the season.

The Jets have Jacksonville, Carolina, Atlanta and Cincinnati at home and New England, Buffalo, Tampa Bay and Indianapolis on the road.

A 4-4 record seems to be achievable but Ryan and his Jets expect more. They will need to go at least 6-2 and possibly even 7-1 to get tho this years dance. Based on the first eight games, the odds of the Jets getting to the playoffs this year are slim to none.

Jet’s fans will have to demonstrate a little more patience with their patient. He is right now in stable condition with a pretty good chance for a full recovery. How long until fully recovered remains to be seen. Consider this however, they are not on life support and in many areas showing marked improvement every week.

That’s okay by me.

The Bills dramatic victoy over the Jets is the lone highlight of their young season.

So far, at least, it’s been a very strange season in the NFL. Some have called it bizarre.  I think that adjective applies.

The one thing that distinguishes the NFL from other major professional sports is its parity. That is no accident. The league has gone to great lengths from its straight bottom up draft (compare to the NBA’s lottery draft) to revenue sharing to salary caps, the league has done everything other than working a handicap into game scores to establish and maintain relative balance. The result is that the NFL is the most watched professional sport in the United States, and pro football has supplanted baseball as America’s pastime.

That being said, what’s going on this year? We’ve had a string of lopsided victories, including a 59-0 routing of the Tennessee Titans by the less than peak-performing Patriots. And what’s more, how have the Titans gone from winning 13 games last year to being unable to score 13 points this year? In addition, we have as many as five other teams that threaten the maxim that on any given day any given team can beat any other. More than once, sportscasters have said of the game they were reporting, “this doesn’t even resemble the NFL.”

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It was snowing in Foxboro in October. How will the weather be for baseball in November?

Let It Snow!!!

For the first time, the World Series is actually scheduled to finish up in November. The Series did go into November in 2001, but that was because of 9/11, but this year for some reason the baseball powers think November baseball is a good thing.

Now I love baseball and will miss it when the season is over, but that doesn’t mean I think they need to be playing past Halloween.

Sports seasons used to be pretty clean. Baseball started in early April and ended in mid-October. Football started in early-September and ended in mid-January. Basketball started in early November and ended in mid-June. Hockey started in early October and ended in mid-May.

For some reason, in recent years each of the seasons seems to be gradually getting bigger, much like my waistline. They just keep extending further out little by little until eventually you don’t even remember when it wasn’t at its current (enlarged) size.

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Barry Sanders left the game as arguably the best running back in NFL History

Players like Brett Favre and Michael Jordan walk away then come back then walk away then come back yet again. They can not douse the competitive fire. They need the adrenaline rush. They aren’t ready for a “normal” life even though their body may be.

Not Barry Sanders. He retired at his prime and he was only 30 years old. He left the game as arguably the best running back in NFL history. He has been content with his decision and never attempted a comeback over the 11 years since his retirement.

Wow I wish he unretired and Brett Favre stayed retired. Favre should have left on a good note rather than with all dramatics over the past two years. Barry didn’t want that. It was not in his makeup.

A totally unselfish man, Barry Sanders left the game only 1457 yards short of Walter Payton’s record. He probably would have eclipsed the record in a year or two. In Barry’s absence, Emmitt Smith broke Payton’s record and finished his career with 18,355 yards.

Great accomplishment by Emmitt Smith, there is no doubt about it. However, as me and my friends argued for years, Barry Sanders did more with little. He did not have Troy Aikman, Michael Irvin, Jay Novacek, and an all star offensive line. He made due with the likes of Herman Moore and Scott Mitchell.

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