CS&T/AllsportsAmerica Monday Sports News Update, 01/28/2013

Chicago Sports & Travel, Inc./AllsportsAmerica

 

This is America's biggest sports pre-game week, Super Bowl Week!!! We will be posting NFL & Super Bowl articles all week. However, they will not be your average NFL & Super Bowl articles. Read this blog Wednesday and Friday; then give us your take. Our articles will be different but very informative. Thanks for checking in and please continue reading. 

President Obama: ‘If I had a son, I’d have to think long and hard before I let him play football’

By Jay Busbee

The long-term impact of repeated collisions on the skull, health and psyche of NFL players has become one of the sport's paramount concerns, with lawsuits and allegations flying. Now, the nation's First Football Fan has weighed in ... and he's expressing some trepidation about the game's future. In a wide-ranging interview on violence with The New Republic, President Obama touched on the culture of sanctioned (and potentially damaging) violence in football:

I'm a big football fan, but I have to tell you if I had a son, I'd have to think long and hard before I let him play football. And I think that those of us who love the sport are going to have to wrestle with the fact that it will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence. In some cases, that may make it a little bit less exciting, but it will be a whole lot better for the players, and those of us who are fans maybe won't have to examine our consciences quite as much.

I tend to be more worried about college players than NFL players in the sense that the NFL players have a union, they're grown men, they can make some of these decisions on their own, and most of them are well-compensated for the violence they do to their bodies. You read some of these stories about college players who undergo some of these same problems with concussions and so forth and then have nothing to fall back on. That's something that I'd like to see the NCAA think about.

Conspiracy theorists are no doubt going to scream that THE PRESIDENT'S ALREADY TAKIN' OUR GUNS AND NOW HE'S COMIN' FOR OUR FOOTBALL TOO!!!!, but make sure you read his word choice closely: Football "will probably change gradually to try to reduce some of the violence," not "we have to change football." Hey, even the president doesn't pick fights with the NFL.

Obama will have a broad, football-rabid pulpit for his views next week. As is tradition, CBS News' Scott Pelley will interview the president before the Super Bowl. It'll be interesting to see if, on football's national holiday, Pelley will ask, or Obama will discuss, an issue that does not sync with the culture of football as it's existed for decades.

It’s Time for the NFL Pro Bowl To Change or Disappear?

By Michael Collins

As All-Star games go, the NFL Pro Bowl is by far the most boring and least fun to watch as a fan. We get players who are disinterested in the game, playing in front of a half-empty stadium, in a city that most fans can’t afford to visit.

It’s time for the league to make some drastic changes or just do away with the playing of the game in whole. Very few of the players who are voted in or selected end up playing due to the scheduling of the event, and the Honolulu venue makes it nearly impossible for most fans to attend the game.

The NHL, NBA and MLB all make their All-Star weekends a fan-involved event, hosted at one of the league’s home stadiums. The Pro Bowl has become nothing more than a Hawaiian vacation for the players who are chosen to go. Great fun for the legions of NFL fans who inhabit the Hawaiian islands, but for the rest of the football watching world, it usually ends up being a wasted few hours of television viewing they only wish they could get back.

While every All-Star game has some level of fan voting involvement, only the NFL basically excludes the fans once the team selections have been made. For a league that is as progressive as they come in professional sports, it would seem they are missing out on some extra goodwill and revenue from the fans by using the current format.

First of all, the game is scheduled one week before the Super Bowl is played. This makes little sense, given that usually more than a handful of the best players are on the best teams who are set to participate in the Super Bowl, which would preclude them from participating in the Pro Bowl for fear of injury. So once again, the fan’s voice (although at times misguided) is basically ignored. At least when the game was held after the season had ended, every player who was voted in or selected to play had the opportunity to actually play in the game.

Then there’s the question of location. Sure, it’s a nice perk for players to get an all-expense paid trip to Hawaii, and to enjoy a weekend with their families after the grueling season, but aren’t All-Star games supposed to be for the fans? Outside of some brave and dedicated fans on the west coast of the United States, you’d be hard-pressed to find many fans who are willing to invest the time and expense to go see a game as far away as the Pro Bowl that ends up being half-heartedly played.

Why not set the Pro Bowl venue as the city of the team who lost the previous season’s Super Bowl? Give the fans whose team came “close but no cigar” a treat for the great season their team had. Boost attendance by giving that city a full season to prepare for the festivities. Have skill competitions, fan-fests and other activities to make it a full-fledged All-Star event. Television viewership would go up, ticket sales would go up, and the desire for players to actually participate in the game would go up when they are actually playing for fans who care.

If the NFL isn’t willing to make changes to the Pro Bowl selection, scheduling and location, it’s best to do what commissioner Roger Goodell has talked about - just do away with the game altogether and make it nothing more than a paper honor for the players. The players will still get their bonuses, and fans will be spared being subjected to such a bland and meaningless exhibition. CS&T/AA would like to know, What's your take?

How 'bout them Chicago Blackhawks? 6-0-0. What a weekend!!! The Chicago Blackhawks improved to 6-0 - the best start in franchise history - with a 2-1 win over the Detroit Red Wings last night. The Blackhawks started 5-0 in 1971-72 - Hall of Famer Bobby Hull's final season in Chicago - and matched it on Saturday night with a 3-2 win in Columbus. I have a great feeling about this team. This is our year, remember, you heard it here first!!!!! Go Hawks!!!

Rule change: MLB bans annoying move.

By Mark Townsend | Big League Stew

Like a professional wrestler hitting his opponent with brass knuckles behind the referee‘s back, the surest way to draw an angry reaction from baseball fans is to break out the old fake-to-third, throw-to-first pickoff move.

Of course, the difference is the pitcher’s intent isn’t to draw a reaction from the crowd. Often times there is real sound strategy involved, whether it's attempting to dupe a base runner into making a mistake, a hitter into showing his hand too early, or even just buying some extra time to collect his thoughts or allow a reliever to warm up.

It really has served a purpose other than to annoy. But I guess that doesn’t change the fact the play rarely worked — you can count the successful attempts every season on one hand — and often killed the flow of a game. And that’s not to mention I've always felt the move fit the technical description of a balk since deception was involved.

It was with all of those factors in mind that Major League Baseball began a discussion to eliminate the "pickoff attempt" last spring. Now comes word from the New York Times' Tyler Kepner that the change is official, and beginning this season any such attempt to fake a move towards third base will result in a balk.

Under a rule change imposed by Major League Baseball for this season, pitchers can no longer fake a pickoff throw to third base. Pitchers who did this would almost always follow by wheeling and firing to first — or to second, if a duped runner had taken off in that direction. No more.

The play is now part of baseball’s graveyard, like the bullpen cart, the Montreal Expos, pullover jerseys and World Series games in the sunshine. It simply did not work often enough to be worth the wasted time.

It make not work enough to be worth the wasted time, but as former major leaguer Jeff Nelson alludes to in the same article, it definitely kept baserunners on their toes and will now work in their favor as they no longer have to worry about the embarrassment of being tricked by the move.

“The managers say it’s all about speeding up the game,” said Nelson, now a contributor to MLB.com. “I think now, the runner at first might get a little bit of an advantage. All it’s used for is to keep the runner at first close. I might have done it 100 times and gotten two guys on it.”

Ah, yes, he also mentions speeding up the game. That's another factor. But our own Kevin Kaduk made a pretty good point about that when this discussion first came up eight months ago.

Also, if it's something that's designed to speed up the game, it seems like a token move, at best. After all, if Bruce Chen can still throw 1o regular pickoff attempts in one at-bat, what good does getting rid of an occasional gimmick pickoff attempt do? (Outside of giving us the pleasure of yelling "BALK!" with the previously misinformed, of course?)

We'll probably never know what the true reason for the change is. I think a lot of people would actually accept it if they just flat out said the play was maddening, but it's more than likely a combination of all the aforementioned factors. And perhaps it's even done to make it look like they're working on something while they allow issues such as instant replay to hang in the wind.

Only those who approved the change know for sure.

Please let us hear your opinion on the above articles and pass them on to any other diehard fans that you think might be interested. But most of all, remember, Chicago Sports & Travel, Inc./AllsportsAmerica wants you!!!!!