American Sports Thread

[AZOffaly]

I think Boldin would be foolish to leave and I don't think Warner should retire. They should also try to get Edg games to change his mind about leaving and add a few new defensive acquisitons and they could win the superbowl next year. Warner is a class act and could play forever. They have a lot of salary cap room to invest in new defensive players or a running back free agent. Whisenhunt is also a good young head coach, things are looking good for this franchise.

You'd imagine the Cards should make a run again next season if they can hold onto most of their key men. They are in a weak division so should be favourites to at least reach the play-offs again.

Im not sure GBB. I cant help but feel that they got in there due to the other teams effectively blowing it at the end of the regular season, and in the playoffs. As they say, anything can happen in the playoffs, but they will only have deserved this year in my mind, if they can replicate the season next year.

Unfair Puckoon. The only team that broke 'for' them was the New York Giants losing to Philly. That brought the NFC game to Phoenix instead of New York.

they beat Atlanta and Carolina (away) the best two teams in the best division in Football. That's proper form.

They beat Philly fair and square, and came up 35 seconds short against Pittsburgh and their vaunted defense.

You can never tell what way the next year will go in the NFL, 'any given Sunday' and all that. But the Cardinals have made genuine progress this year.

[Puckoon]

Ack no doubt AZ that they are there on merit - but lets be honest, on paper they werent expected to get there. Hence all the talk about a fairytale ending and so on.

I dont begrudge them - they've certainly earned my respect - I just hope it wasnt a flash in the pan season. Who knows? The very fact that the falcons and panthers were the two best teams in the best division in football kinda suggest just how upset the applecart was this year in the NFL.

All the "good" teams seemed to beat themselves this year.

[orangeman]

Money talks in Super Bowl
Mihir Bose - BBC sports editor
2 Feb 09, 11:22 AM
Modern sports are a marriage between athletic activity and mammon.

The romantics among us like to believe that whatever the money men say, sporting endeavour honed on honest hard work and laced with brilliance, plus a bit of luck, will always triumph.

But no modern sports would be possible without sponsors, broadcasters and advertisers putting in pots of money.

The Super Bowl, the sporting party that brings America together, from the White House to living rooms up and down the land, is the ultimate expression of this.

Yes, the match itself was superb and America will long debate whether it was the greatest ever Super Bowl.


The script could have been written in Hollywood - the underdog Cardinals living up to their reputation for much of the match then scoring a touchdown in the last few minutes that seemed to win it for them, only for the Steelers to score in the final seconds.

But this sporting drama could not disguise the fact that the Super Bowl is ultimately about recognising the men with the purse strings.

The NFL underlined this when, at the end of this match, the Super Bowl trophy, having been carried to the stadium by NFL great Joe Namath, was presented not to the Steelers team or their coach, but the owner, Art Rooney. Imagine Manchester United winning the Premier League and the trophy being given to Joel Glazer.

But then a few days before the Super Bowl, the man who has been the songster of America in recent decades explained why he was attending. He has no interest in football, he just wanted to use the occasion to promote his latest product.

Over the years Bruce Springsteen has often been courted by the NFL. This time he finally consented because, as he admitted, "We have a new album coming out dummy; come on there is a new record out in the stores. So we have our mercenary reasons of course."

For all his disdain for football, Springsteen found this Super Bowl so useful that he held his first press conference for 30 years.

This talk of money was, however, laced with a new fear - that the downturn made this Super Bowl different.

In the week leading up to it over 50,000 jobs were lost in America. A few minutes' drive from the stadium at a union office for carpenters the talk has been about finding jobs. In a state which lost 88,000 construction jobs last year, laid-off workers living on $250 (£175) a week unemployment pay could not imagine getting tickets costing $1,500 (£1,053) each.

The effect of this was to be seen on the party scene that accompanies Super Bowls. The magazines Sports Illustrated and Playboy decided not to host parties, and a study by Price Waterhouse estimated that direct spending on this year's Super Bowl would be $150m (£105m), $50million (£35m) less than at Phoenix and Miami, the two previous Super Bowls.

So why, amidst all this gloom, does the NFL remain confident that the downturn will not seriously threaten its status as America's game?

The reason is that NFL is based on a unique American sporting socialism. It believes, as Cardinals president Michael Bidwell put it to me, in competitive balance between teams; that no team should get so much money that it overshadows the others.


All 32 NFL teams share revenues equally. Individual clubs can earn a bit more in their local markets but not a great deal more.

Neither the Cardinals nor the Steelers earned much more by reaching the Super Bowl. Contrast this with the nearly £30m extra Manchester United earned in winning the Champions League.

The salary cap means most club expenditures are in line. Salaries could be a problem in 2010 when new negotiations are due, there are murmurings about problems with the players union and season ticket renewals will have to be watched. Already clubs are freezing prices and even during this season's play-offs clubs struggled to fill seats.

But NFL bosses remain confident that the downturn will not see too many changes.

One major reason for this is the way the NFL's controls not only regulate debt but ownership. You cannot just fly in from abroad and buy an NFL club. Yes, NFL clubs can suddenly up sticks and move but the owner remains the same.

Look at the Cardinals. Arizona is their third home but they are still owned by the Bidwell family which bought the franchise in 1932. The Steelers have also been in the same family since the 1930s and such long-term family ownership, unknown in the Premier League, is common in the NFL.

This gives the owners a stake in the NFL and its structure. They believe that their clubs are not like restaurants in a high street trying to do each other down, but part of a chain that needs to do well collectively if the chain is to survive and prosper.

And owners like Robert Kraft of the New England Patriots believe that ideas like salary caps could also work in England.

For many in the Premier League this will seem an anathema. The Premier League is successful, it does not need lessons from anyone and the American model is very different - it cannot be imported.

Yet the American idea that sports and money work best not through unchecked capitalism but when there is sharing is an idea whose time may have come.

And with the downturn impossible to predict, even successful brands like the Premier League would do well to look at it.

[Declan]

Interesting piece from Bose alright. Read a great book last year - Forty Million Dollar Slaves: The Rise, Fall, and Redemption of the Black Athlete  - This review taken from Amazon

New York Times columnist Rhoden offers a charged assessment of the state of black athletes in America, using the pervasive metaphor of the plantation to describe a modern sports industry defined by white ownership and black labor. The title and the notion behind it are sure to raise eyebrows, and Rhoden admits that his original title of Lost Tribe Wandering, for all its symbolic elegance, lacked punch. And Rhoden isn't pulling any of his. Rather than seeing rags-to-riches stories where underprivileged athletes reach the Promised Land by way of their skills, he casts the system as one in which those athletes are isolated from their backgrounds, used to maximize profit and instilled with a mindset "whereby money does not necessarily alter one's status as 'slave,' as long as the 'owner' is the one who controls the rules that allow that money to be made." Rhoden's writing is intelligent and cogent, and his book's tone is hardly as inflammatory as its name. It's possible that his title and working metaphor will turn off readers who will simply refuse to consider young men making millions of dollars playing a game to be disenfranchised. Nevertheless, this is an insightful look at the role of blacks in sports they dominate but hardly control.

Any Black owners in the NFL??

[magickingdom]

Any Black owners in the NFL??

no, but theres a black coach, black q/bs and a black ..... president

[Declan]

I know there are black players coaches and yes even a president. Reason I asked about the owners was because of the original article by Bose and the thesis in the book I referred to

[thejuice]

SO going forward to 2009, who looks to be primed for making a play-off run. While the draft and the trades have yet to be settled going on what we've seen this year, I think next year the Falcons will be in there, Patriots might be back strong again, Pittsburgh of course, Tennessee, Miami (if Parcells is still there), Redskins possibly, Panthers, Cardinals clearly have the talent in some positions but I get the feeling Warner wont be there and they need a run game.

Colts are on a downward curve, Eagles, Giants, Chargers Cowboys too,

[DrinkingHarp]

SO going forward to 2009, who looks to be primed for making a play-off run. While the draft and the trades have yet to be settled going on what we've seen this year, I think next year the Falcons will be in there, Patriots might be back strong again, Pittsburgh of course, Tennessee, Miami (if Parcells is still there), Redskins possibly, Panthers, Cardinals clearly have the talent in some positions but I get the feeling Warner wont be there and they need a run game.

Colts are on a downward curve, Eagles, Giants, Chargers Cowboys too,

Hate to say it but watch for the Vikings, Ravens and Saints.

Hopefully the Bears if the D picks up a bit and a great QB & WR via trade or draft.

[DrinkingHarp]

Something fishy in Steelers' diet aids cardiovascular health
Monday, February 02, 2009
By David Templeton, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
And you thought it was the coaching.

But one fat advantage the Steelers have held over their opponents this year has involved a secret supplement that should offend no one but the Miami Dolphins.

The Steelers have been swallowing fish oil.

Thirty-six Steelers, ages 23 to 41, participated in a two-year study to determine the cardiovascular advantages of moderately high doses of fish oil. Results conclude that the omega-3 oil raised their high-density lipoproteins (good cholesterol) and lowered very low-density lipoproteins (a form of bad cholesterol) and triglycerides.

The study appears in the new journal, Sports Health: A Multi-Disciplinary Approach.

Experts say fish oil also is an anti-inflammatory agent, which allows athletes to heal faster from injury while improving attention span, reaction time and cognitive processing.

"[Steelers Head Coach] Mike Tomlin is an amazing guy, but I think there was something else going on there," said Dr. Michael Gross, an omega-3 expert and chief medical officer of Lifeguard Health LLC, a fish-oil supplement company in Plymouth Meeting, Montgomery County.

It's not known how many Steelers continued using the fish oil after the study, but doctors said participants were schooled on the beneficial results and competitive advantages it provides.

"This is very simple and safe therapy that's inexpensive," said Dr. James Ehrlich, chief medical officer for Atherotech Inc. of Birmingham, Ala. that developed the Vertical Auto Profile test used to analyze cholesterol levels. "Their numbers look very good."

The study says 82 percent of 233 retired National Football League players under age 50 were found to have abnormal narrowing and blockages of arteries, compared with the general population of the same age.

Dr. Ehrlich noted that many offensive and defensive linemen are obese and have the precursor to diabetes known as metabolic syndrome, along with high blood pressure and cholesterol. About 40 percent also suffer from sleep apnea. Football injuries often render them unable to exercise after retirement. Together, the factors are a formula for heart disease.

"The NFL athlete statistically is at higher risk for future cardiovascular disease and sudden heart attack," Dr. Ehrlich said. "The study demonstrated effectively and dramatically that fish oil improved good cholesterol and lowered damaging particles and triglycerides. It went in the right direction for all of them."

Two years ago, Dr. Joseph C. Maroon, vice chairman of neurological surgery at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, and Jeffery Bost, wrote the book, "Fish Oil: The Natural Anti-inflammatory." Dr. Maroon, who also is the team neurosurgeon for the Steelers, said he successfully used fish oil to reduce arthritis in his hands when ibuprofen use led to a stomach ulcer.

That led to discussions with Dr. Anthony Yates, a UPMC internal medicine specialist and Steelers team doctor. Drs. Yates and Maroon along with Mr. Bost, a physician's assistant, approached Steeler Trainer John Norwig, who helped to get the study underway on a random sampling of Steelers. Some were placed on fish oil while others used a placebo as the control group.

Highly purified fish oil supplements with mixed levels of EPA (eicosapentaenoic acid) and DHA (docosahexaenoic acid) -- the two healthful polyunsaturated fats in fish oil -- were used for 60 days.

Good cholesterol, or HDL levels, rose on average by 26 percent in the treatment group compared with 14 percent in the control group. The treatment group also experienced an 8 percent decline in triglycerides, while the control group had a 44 percent increase. High triglyceride levels are a good predictor of coronary heart disease.

Although no significant changes in LDL or bad cholesterol were noted, declines in damaging particles -- including very low-density and intermediate-density lipoproteins -- were noted in those using fish oil.

Despite the small number of participants, "rather dramatic improvements in blood lipid profiles were achieved using moderately high doses of omega-3 fish oil supplementation," the study states.

The results suggest that "the professional NFL player should consider continued use of omega-3 supplementation throughout his active years and in retirement."

The study notes that Dr. Maroon, as a study coauthor, has a potential conflict of interest as a member of the advisory board for Nordic Naturals, which produces fish-oil supplements.

"The first role of a physician is prevention of disease," Dr. Maroon said. "I'd much rather prevent disease than treat it after it occurs.

"These athletes are intelligent and know what's best for their bodies and minds. With the scientific reports of the benefits of fish oil, they were quite enthusiastic to participate," he said.

[the Deel Rover]

Tickets for Wembley 09 on sale next wednesday. Great timing, just after christmas and before most people get paid. Wow, real considerate. Why do they even bother selling them so early in the year anyway.

Lads did any of ye get them ? I didn't get any email this time were they advertised differently this year

[thejuice]

I got 3, same as last year upper tier near midfield

[anportmorforjfc]

is the pro bowl on tv over here?

[Minder]

is the pro bowl on tv over here?

Sky Sports at 9pm on Sunday night.

[anportmorforjfc]

Thanks, never watched the pro bowl before, do the players take is seriously?

[Minder]

Thanks, never watched the pro bowl before, do the players take is seriously?

No its just a nice end of season holiday for them. There are some modifications in the rules too i think, no rushing the quarterback, blocking kicks. The score is usually about 45-41.