Archives for posts with tag: National Football League
I guess this makes it “Official”, as far as the consummate all-around football player goes, Tom Brady is the BEST there is, the BEST there ever was, and in all likelihood, probably the BEST there ever will be:
I realize some people might refer to this song as a, “Sports Bro-Mance”, others could probably refer to it as, just plain Gay, but it’ll definitely be the LAST TIME I post it here on the Internet. Besides that, I’m a big music fan of the late, great Kenny Rogers
From a perspective of a New England Patriot’s fan, watching Monday Night Football last night was sort of like attending a Funeral of your favorite sports team.
The Patriots, who literally dominated the past two Decades of the NFL’s American Conference Eastern Division, now found themselves on the receiving end of a humiliating beat down against the Buffalo Bills, a team they used to literally toy with for the past 20 years.
Since Bill Belichick became the Patriots’ coach at the start of the 21st Century, New England was never swept by a Division opponent in one season until, of course, the Bills changed that last night. In the Belichick regime, the Pats played in nine (9) Super Bowl championships and won six (6) titles.
This season, with future Hall-of-Fame quarterback (who’s 43 yoa) Tom Brady playing with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, the Patriots will have a losing record and won’t even make the Play-offs.
What’s especially funny about this whole situation is that just prior to either Brady signing with the Patriots, or Belichick becoming the Head Coach, New England was sort of like the joke of the NFL. To be perfectly honest, I never thought I’d live to see the day the Patriots would ever win an NFL title, YET, they’re now tied with the Pittsburgh Steelers on being the team with the most Super Bowls.
I never dreamed anyone would ever use the words “New England Patriots” and “sports Dynasty” together in the same sentence.
Needless to say, I know it might be a while before the Patriots are Super Bowl champions — I sure hope I’m wrong on that fact. I do feel, extremely blessed and fortunate to have been a Patriots fan, literally, as long as I can remember. For that, I’d like to thank current Patriot owner Robert Kraft, Coach Belichick, Tom Brady and the many others who helped make this past “Dynasty” possible. I hope and pray you guys will win another Super Bowl real soon.
Coach Bill Belichick’s response:
So as a diehard New England Patriots football fan, this current NFL playoff season is really tough for me. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love to see the Pats work their way from Wildcard weekend to win their seventh and league-leading Super Bowl title but I just can’t see it happening. Quarterback Tom Brady is 42 years old playing mostly against guys that are about half his age. His supporting cast of usual Hall of Fame caliber teammates just aren’t there this time around.
I’m just hoping, praying, believing somehow the Patriots will prove me wrong once again.
As Colin Cowherd talks about in this video, Bill Belichick was a better than average football coach who drafted Tom Brady in the sixth round in the 2000 NFL Draft. Brady wound up marrying a Victoria Secret model who actually grossed more money annually than he did — which enabled the Patriots to spend more money on supporting teammates.
Rumor has it that the Pats won’t make it to the Super Bowl this year, never mind winning the thing. Brady has made it his purpose in life to prove his critics wrong, despite the fact that he doesn’t have the flashy weapons of some of his opponents. Again, I’d love to see Brady prove them wrong one more time. But even if that happens, will the Patriots be willing to sign the greatest Quarterback of all Time till he’s 45 — which he’s said numerous times he wants to do?
Win, lose, or draw this year, I’m still grateful for having Brady here for about 19 years giving New England fans the absolute best quality football we could ever imagine. Take care and may God bless, Amigo.
Ex-Baltimore Raven running back Ray Rice and his beautiful “battered” wife, Janay Palmer
Ray Rice jokes for DAYS!
http://www.reddit.com/r/Jokes/comments/2fzpua/ray_rice_jokes_for_days/
There’s like maybe four or five jokes in this list that were already posted on the internet, but the rest of this list was pretty much made up by me while I was bored. Ray Rice’s incident is a gold mine of humor….just not for him. Easily offended need not apply here. Enjoy.
1.) Ray Rice’s wife just set up a website for victims of domestic violence.
She got 200 hits in the first hour.
2.) Ray Rice is gonna pursue a career as a rapper now.
I don’t think Janay is gonna like his hits.
3.) Ray Rice is getting his own show on the Food Network.
It’s called “Can’t Cook? Left Hook!”
4.) What’s Ray Rice’s favorite drink?
Punch.
5.) If you can’t beat em, join em. If you CAN beat em, it’s because you’re Ray Rice.
6.) If Janay leaves Ray Rice, she’ll literally be a hit single.
7.) What does Ray Rice and Chris Brown have in common?
“Beat it” on their iPods.
8.) Why is Janay Rice lousy with directions?
She can’t take a left.
9.) Bartender just made me a drink called a “Ray Rice”
Whew, this thing really packs a punch.
10.) Trapping youself in an elevator while a man twice your size beats you.
They call that the Rice Bucket Challenge.
11.) I cut the sleeves off my Ray Rice jersey.
Now it’s a wifebeater.
12.) Why does Janay hate smoking weed?
Because she can’t take a hit.
13.) What’s Ray Rice’s favorite song ever?
“Shut up” by the ‘Black eyed’ Peas.
14.) What’s Janay’s favorite song ever?
“Hit me with your best shot”
15.) What’s the difference between Janay and an elevator?
When Janay Rice goes down, she doesn’t go back up.
16.) What happens when Ray Rice gets in your elevator?
You don’t remember it.
17.) It’s a custom for people to throw rice at weddings.
It’s a custom for Ray Rice to throw punches before weddings.
18.) How do you heal a bruise left by Ray Rice?
You use a Ricepack.
19.) What do you call it when Ray Rice throws punches in an elevator full of Mexicans?
Red beans and rice.
20.) What happens when Janay Rice enters an airplane?
It goes the BLEEP down.
21.) How long does it take Ray Rice to get mad?
About 3 floors.
22.) How hard does Ray Rice punch?
Beats me.
23.) What do you call it when Ray Rice beats his pregnant wife?
Eggbeater.
24.) Janay Rice has her own line of headphones.
It’s called “Beats” by Ray.
25.) How did Janay find out Ray was cheating on her?
She could taste lipstick on his knuckles.
26.) What does Ray Rice do when his dishwasher stops working?
He beats her in an elevator.
Boston Globe writer Corey Gottlieb
(Why does one of the largest â and supposedly most respected â newspapers in the country allow such a brain-dead moron like staff writer Corey Gottlieb to publish an editorial on something he knows little-to-nothing about?
Earth-to-Corey: Michael Sam was picked in the 7th â and LAST â round of this yearâs National Football Leagueâs player draft. The reason Sam wasnât drafted in one of the earlier rounds is because â he ainât that good as far as pro football goes. Most, if not all, of the other college football players who were drafted in this yearâs 7th Round were probably cut by their respected NFL teams as well â NOT because of their sexual orientation, Corey, but because they werenât THAT good.
Secondly, how the hell is Massachusetts â especially the Boston area â on the same plateau with Alabama, Mississippi, and Texas when it comes to Gay and Lesbian Rights and Acceptance??? Correct me if Iâm wrong, but I believe Massachusetts was the very FIRST state in the country to allow âcivil unionsâ or marriages between Gay and Lesbian couples. In Massachusetts political elections, for example, being Gay or Lesbian doesnât seem to a major problem for a candidate getting elected â if you donât believe me, just ask former U.S. Reps Barney Frank or Gerry Studds what Iâm talking about.
So how the heck would a high-profile gay athlete playing on a local professional sports team improve the attitudes of most of the people in Boston 180 degrees on Gay and Lesbian Acceptance? In fact, if Sam should land a roster spot on his current NFL team â the Dallas Cowboys â I think the influence Mr. Gottlieb is stating this player would bring to Boston would be much more beneficial to Texas, and that region of the country, than it would be here.)
Michael Sam Could Have Changed Everything in Boston
By Corey Gottlieb
Boston.com Staff
September 3, 2014 — 3:17 PM
I am not a gay man.
I havenât walked a day in Michael Samâs shoes. I couldnât tell you what it feels like to be himâto be the most hyperbolic version of different.
What I am, instead, is a straight white man who grew up outside of Boston and bounced from one pocket of privilege to another â from Brookline to Cambridge to the South End, each a trendier version of the same homogenous landscape. In turn, Iâve spent the majority of my life in locker rooms where dudes count their conquests in bathroom-stall Sharpie and say âfaggotâ every time they feel awkward.
Michael Sam could have changed that.
This isnât to say that I havenât also seen progress. From the perspective of tangible change and increased tolerance, my generation is historic. That my high school graduation coincided almost to the day with the passing of same-sex marriage in Massachusetts was neither symbolically insignificant nor ignored by kids my age. This is not the Boston of busing past.
At least, not on the surface. There is a gap, though, between the intensely liberal values that have become synonymous with Massachusetts and the culture that is most pervasive among this stateâs young men.
Maybe itâs a prep school thing. Maybe itâs our fathers, our uncles, our coaches. Maybe itâs the vestiges of an Irish-Catholic community that fought tooth and nail to survive a century of poverty.
Regardless, it is. We donât do tolerance well. We talk about it and maybe even believe in it, but often our own insecurities ultimately prevent us from truly enforcing it among one another.
Michael Sam could have changed that.
In a city whose lifeblood is sports, the first gay male professional athlete could have been as powerful as the mayor. There is no conversation here that doesnât start and end with our teams and our players â say what you will about New York, but this is the most excitable, most embattled, most in-love-with-her-no-matter-how-crazy-she-drives-me sports town in the world. Period.
The Patriots could have changed all that.
The divide between us-in-locker-rooms and us-on-paper might have been bridged incomparably had the Patriots swooped in and signed Michael Sam after he was cut by the St. Louis Rams this past weekend, and before the Cowboys had a chance to scoop him up Wednesday.
Like it or not, the current role models for Bostonâs young men are either as alpha-dog as they come (read: GQ posterboy, husband to worldâs most celebrated supermodel), as salt-of-the-earth as they come (read: Red Sox captain who redefined the term âdirt dogâ) or as aloof and emotionally disinterested as they come (read: Rajon Rondo). They seem like good enough men, and we could do far worse than to have our sons emulate them. But they do not inspire change.
We need immersion by force. We are past the point of conversations or even education. Stop by the mandatory preseason diversity seminar at a high school football teamâs summer session in Brookline or Dedham or Walpole or Everett and I guarantee youâll see a bunch of kids cracking jokes as a coach rolls his eyes.
How could Michael Sam have changed all that?
You canât simply stick an openly gay player in a Pats uniform and expect open arms from the young men of Boston whoâve long cracked the same jokes.
The first wave of press and the initial ripples would have done little to nothing, except perhaps stir up a little drama.
For a little while, we would all have stood and watched.
And then weâd get over it, and that is what wouldâve made a difference. The normalcy. Not the first Michael Sam tackle or the first Michael Sam penalty, but the fifteenth time Vince Wilfork bear-hugged Michael Sam and none of us noticed. The hundredth photo of the team doing walk-throughs when our first instinct stopped being to spot Sam and check, against our own better judgment, if somehow he âlooks differentâ when he plays. The quiet dropoff in buzz the second and third years when Sam reported back to training camp. The way, little by little, we all stopped caring about anything other than the game, the team.
Our team.
What Boston needs is less Samâs bravery than his mortality. Not a name, not a celebrity, just a person. A man who laughs and gets hurt and makes mistakes and gets fired up â a man who happens to be gay, but whose gayness is a waning element of how we, as men, identify him. And that regular man needs to exist among a group of regular menâwhat our teenagers need is less a single hero than a collective social picture that looks a whole lot like theirs.
Thatâs it right there â thatâs our best shot at cracking the hyper self-protective exterior of every 13-year-old kid whoâs watched his brother throw touchdowns at Roxbury Latin and date pretty girls from Dana Hall. Show him 53 of the toughest, manliest guys in Boston and let him gradually forget that one of them is different. Get him to the point where ânoticingâ the gay guy doesnât make sense anymore, because why should it matter to him if it doesnât matter to them? Make him see, through them, that itâs not a big deal.
It wouldnât have changed everything, thatâs for sure. But to find the single thread that connects every conversation among the men in this town, to grab Bostonâs indisputable social equalizer and infuse in it a visible example of see-this-wasnât-such-a-big-deal acceptance â that could have begun to make a difference.
Michael Sam could have been that. I wish he had been.
 
(Please tell me this proposal is some sort of a joke â politicians mostly are trying to take one of the most storied franchises in professional sports, the Washington Redskins, and change the name under the guise of, âpolitical correctnessâ. Several popular sports commentators, along with a couple major newspapers, have already disclosed that they refuse to public refer to this football team as the “Redskins” but ONLY as “Washington” or “the team from Washington”.
Is this the type of stuff our media experts are now taught in Journalism 101? I don’t think so.
If this should ever take place, what would be next on the proverbial agenda for the P.C. police? How about publicly pressuring ALL high school, college, and professional teams nicknamed: Braves, Indians, Chiefs, Seminoles, Canucks, etc., to change their names? I tend to see a political âslippery slopeâ in America taking shape here. Where does the insanity end?
With all the major problems currently taking place in the United States such as: Unemployment, Health Care, Economy, Border Security, Crime, and Muslim Terrorism; donât you think weâd be a lot better off if some of these political opportunists like Hillary Clinton would address the more serious issues infesting our country than lobbying for a professional football to change its team name???Â
Does anyone else view this particular âPolitical Correctness pushâ to change the Washington Redskinsâ name as just a complete waste of time?)
http://thinkprogress.org/sports/2014/01/03/3116081/poll-showing-people-like-redskins-matters/
Why A Poll Showing Americans Support The âRedskinsâ Name Matters
by Travis Waldron — Posted on January 3, 2014 at 10:38 am
With the Oneida Nation and other Native American groups promising not to let their campaign against the name of Washingtonâs football team cease with the end of the teamâs season, the franchise is now touting a new poll showing widespread support for keeping the name Native American groups call a âdictionary-defined racial slur.â
Public Policy Polling released a survey Thursday showing that 71 percent of Americans do not want to change the name. 18 percent said they thought the name should be changed, while 11 percent said they werenât sure. Washington sent a release Thursday night highlighting the fact that âregardless of race, gender, age, or political affiliation, not one subgroup supported changing the teamâs name.â
âThis poll, along with the poll taken among Native Americans by the Annenberg Institute, demonstrates continued, widespread and deep opposition to the Redskins changing our name,â the team said in the release, pointing also to a 10-year-old poll by the Annenberg Institute that purportedly showed that Native Americans support the name too. âThe results of this poll are solidly in line with the message we have heard from fans and Native Americans for months â our name represents a tradition, passion and heritage that honors Native Americans. We respect the point of view of the small number of people who seek a name change, but it is important to recognize very few people agree with the case they are making.â
The Oneida Nation, which has led protests, run radio ads, and organized conferences against the name, immediately highlighted its own problems with the poll, pointing out that it makes no reference to the ongoing controversy around it and doesnât make it clear that prominent Native American groups like it and the National Congress of American Indians believe the name is a racial slur. Still, the pollâs top-line number would seem bolster Washingtonâs case for keeping it.
But that doesnât tell the whole story. That nearly one-in-five Americans want to change the name is a significant number. Ask Americans if other iconic sporting brands should be changed â those like Packers, Yankees, Dodgers, and Cowboys that have been around for decades and are associated with championship-winning franchises â and it seems implausible that 18 percent would be in favor and that another 11 percent wouldnât be sure. The support is also lower than a previous Associated Press poll that showed 79 percent of Americans in favor of keeping the name, so itâs possible a full season of awareness about the name has increased opposition to it.
It also doesnât address the major claim Oneida and other Native American groups are making against the name. Does it really matter that a majority of Americans donât consider the name offensive? Given our countryâs history, is public opinion really the way we want to settle questions of offense or injustice on racial and ethnic grounds? The vast majority of those polled arenât a part of the group being identified â or, as the franchise puts it, âhonoredâ â by the name. To them, âRedskinsâ has always been a football team, not a racial slur. Eni Faleomavaega, American Samoaâs delegate to Congress, made that point in July, calling the name a âmoral issue,â ânot a popularity contest.â
The franchise would counter such an argument by citing the Annenberg poll showing that a majority of Native Americans donât find the name problematic, but it has its own flaws: it was conducted 10 years ago and relies on self-identified Native Americans.
And even if polling on the issue should matter, the NFL and Washington never make it clear exactly how many people have to find the name offensive for it to qualify as such.
None of that means the poll should be totally discounted, because it matters even if the issue shouldnât be decided by what the public thinks. That Washington is touting the poll so aggressively is evidence that the name change debate â into which political leaders and media outlets have now waded â has gotten the attention of the franchise in ways past efforts to change it have not. That Washington keeps highlighting these polls, conducting focus groups, and petitioning season ticket holders shows that it is clearly concerned about the controversy and the publicâs perception of it. With that said, as long as a clear majority of Americans support the name, it will remain a financial winner for the franchise and the league, giving them the only reason they need to avoid making a change they donât want to make.
Thatâs not the way this debate should be solved, as Oneida noted in its statement regarding the poll. âNeither the Washington team nor its owner appears to understand that there is no poll or financial transaction that can solve a moral problem,â spokesman Joel Barkin said.
But that is the fundamental difference in the debate. While Native American groups and their allies see the name as a moral question about whether we should identify sports teams with racial monikers, Snyder and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell approach it in financial terms. So until the name starts costing them what they care about most, theyâll remain intransigent on the morality of the issue at hand. The good news is that, given the trademark suit, heightened awareness about the issue, and Oneidaâs promises to continue its campaign against the name, that day is no longer impossible to imagine.
Former Minnesota Viking punter Chris Kluwe on, The Ellen Show
Chris Kluwe can’t be moral crusader after his cruel Twitter rant
By Gregg Doyel
July 19, 2014 4:27 pm ET
How’s the little girl, Chris Kluwe? You know — the “underage girl” who was “caught in a compromising position” with “two very well known Vikings.”
That one. Her.
How is she, Chris? Who is she? Where is she?
Do her parents know what happened to her, or is that not your concern?
Maybe that girl is just like all those little boys who were raped by Jerry Sandusky — not your concern beyond being the punch line to a joke, or the hook to an edgy tweet, as you used that little girl on Friday night right here:
Chris Kluwe @ChrisWarcraft
Oooh, shall we talk about the time two very well known Vikings players were caught in a compromising situation with an underage girl?
8:50 PM – 18 Jul 2014
More than 1,000 people retweeted that one, passing around that little girl like a virus and not the human being Chris Kluwe seems to have forgotten she is. After all that encouragement, Kluwe issued a second tweet about her:
Chris Kluwe @ChrisWarcraft
Bet you didn’t hear about that one in the news. We can do this all day, Vikings. Special teams hears *everything*.
8:51 PM – 18 Jul 2014
No, Chris, we didn’t hear about the underage girl and the two NFL football players, presumably because there was no police report about the incident, only talk in the Vikings locker room, talk that you heard because special teams hears *everything*.
As for the rest of your tweet, Chris, no thanks. Let’s not do this all day. And let’s be done with the me-to-Chris portion of this column and open it up to include everybody else, and I’m hoping everybody else — or at least a lot of people — are like me today: Looking at Chris Kluwe in a different light.
Today I’m disgusted by two people: Mike Priefer, the Vikings special teams coach whose homophobia was so degrading and so public that the team suspended him on Friday for three games of the 2014 NFL season. And Chris Kluwe, who apparently did stuff in the Vikings locker room that was every bit as offensive, every bit as homophobic, as Priefer.
According to the report, whose public release Kluwe has been demanding, Kluwe used the Sandusky horror in Penn State as the set-up to his joke, which was to walk around the locker room with a hole ripped out of his pants — in the back, near his rectum — and said he was a “Penn State victim.”
Kluwe’s joke — get it? — was directed at strength coach Tom Kanavy, who is described by Kluwe on Twitter as “a big Penn State guy.” Kluwe confirmed that he made some such Sandusky joke “once” but said everybody was doing it.
Chris Kluwe @ChrisWarcraft
Over half the team did it for over a month, including asking him if he “raped any little boys lately,” repeatedly, in front of coaches.
8:46 PM – 18 Jul 2014
Over half the team did it for over a month? Well, that makes it all better.
No it doesn’t. And what Kluwe did in that locker room — and what he apparently did not do, as it relates to that underage girl — is in stark contrast to the fine work he has done on behalf of the LGBT community. He has been that community’s champion in the NFL, he and Brendon Ayanbadejo, and this doesn’t diminish that.
But this stuff does diminish Chris Kluwe, and is a reminder to all of us — me included — that noble intentions in some areas of life, even most areas of life, do not make any of us untouchable or incapable of becoming on occasion the very thing we hate.
And Chris Kluwe, it turns out, is the very thing he claims to hate: a jerk who traffics in cruel humor, homophobic jokes and look-the-other-way cowardice when the mood strikes. Now that he has been outed as such — and has outed himself with his own words on Twitter — he has sacrificed his position of bighearted moral crusader.
Seriously, can you look at Chris Kluwe the same way again? Not me. Can’t take him seriously now that we know he tore a hole out of the back of his pants and paraded around the locker room as a “Penn State victim.” That’s so awful, and so stupid, Richie Incognito may well have chuckled when he heard about it.
The next time something needs to be said on behalf of homosexuals in the NFL — on behalf of Rams linebacker Michael Sam — or even on behalf of the LBGT community, period, Chris Kluwe is not someone I want to hear it from. Not as the voice of compassion. Not anymore.
And I don’t know what to make of Kluwe’s assertion that an underage girl was in some sort of “compromising position” with two Vikings, a story that he threw out as tantalizing tweet-bait and then bragged about his insider info by adding, “Bet you didn’t hear about that one.”
Were the cops called? The girl’s parents? Were team officials told? These are questions I have for Chris Kluwe, and I tried to reach him Saturday on his preferred method of discourse (Twitter), but as of this story’s posting he hasn’t responded. If he does — if you do, Chris — I will update this story. It’s the Internet. Stories online are fluid.
So are reputations. Chris Kluwe, crusader for so many good causes, remains that — and so much less. But in case you were wondering, he seems to stand by his tweets from Friday. This is what he said toward the end of his Twitter barrage:
Chris Kluwe @ChrisWarcraft
People, please remember that I choose my words very carefully. Assumptions are your enemy.
9:25 PM – 18 Jul 2014
Not carefully enough, Chris.
Who’s the girl? How is she?
Do you know, Chris?
Do you care?
———–
Update, 5:37 p.m.: Kluwe responded to me on Twitter by providing an email address, and from there a phone number. We spoke, but he wouldn’t talk about the “compromising position” involving the “underage girl” — other than to say I had made an “assumption.” To which I said:
“Tell me what happened with the girl, or I’m leaving that part of my story as-is.”
Kluwe: “Leave it.”
Kluwe did talk about — and express some regret for — the Penn State joke.
Kluwe: “That one, the way the report presented it, it was presented in a way designed to make me look bad.”
Me: “There’s no way to present that without you looking bad.”
Kluwe: “The intent was to make fun of the culture of Penn State that allowed that to happen: Do whatever it takes to protect the team. If that offended some people, then yes, I’m sorry for offending those people. I realize some people may not like that sort of humor. If it comes to speaking truth to power, standing up to blind fanaticism, that’s what I’m going to do.”
As for his battle with the Vikings, Kluwe closed with this:
“I didn’t want it to come to this. It’s ugly, and it’s going to get worse.”
One Bad Decision Away From Homelessness 