Golf Majors Come To a Close NFL Training Camps NCAA Media days are going on. The summer is coming to a close already and the fall sports are on the horizon. It is all moving in quickly. Seems like it was just April and we were talking about the Masters. Now for most of us the golf season is over. I mean who really cares about the FedEx Cup? I am sure the winner does but not sure who will be watching. Baseball is still stuck in denying that they have a foul ball problem. Not sure what is taking them so long to act. College football had its conference media days. You always get some interesting quotes but really there is nothing useful as far as the season goes. You just know that you are going to get pretty much the same canned answers. Nick Saban and Jim Harbaugh will say something that makes you scratch your head and say Huh? All this and more in The Week That Was.
NFL Training Camps Begin
NFL training camps started last week. Well one team started. The Denver Broncos. Almost everyone else is starting over the next few days. This is when you realize that the season is almost here. All that waiting is almost over and we are just over a month away from games that really matter. The first week of training camps are always pretty exciting. To see where everyone stands. Who is coming in to camp. Who is going to hold out. Some just don’t want to do training camp and you really just can’t blame them. After you have done it a few years and established yourself. You probably just don’t need it.
The Hall of Fame game is just over a week away. The Broncos and the Falcons will start the season this year. I like that Football is starting but really getting that extra pre season game in it probably not the favorite thing of most teams. For the starters it will be just a kick the rust off for a few plays. For the guys trying to make the team it is a nice opportunity to show what you have and what you can do for the team. Other than that it is just tying to avoid injury. Anyway, big excitement as we move that much closer to the season.
Madden Ratings
It is comical to think about how upset some of the players get over the ratings that they are given in the Madden game. It is also pretty amazing that it is a news event the day that the Madden ratings come out. EA Sports has done an amazing job with this. The NFL has been smart to embrace this. It is another thing that just shows the power the NFL has in generating interest. E:60 on ESPN did an interesting story about the team that does the ratings. I did not realize that they updated the ratings though out the season. If you don’t like the rating you are given. Don’t complain about it. Play well each week and your rating will be adjusted to get you to the rating you want.
NFL Consistency
The only real consistency the NFL has shows is that it will be very inconsistent in how they do things. Specifically talking about the NFL Domestic Abuse policy. The thing that this really shows is that the NFL is really all about the money. That is fine but they send some very mixed messages. What we really want to see here is sticking to what they say they are going to do. At this point it really does not seem to matter what the NFL does. It all seems to turn to gold.
College Football Conference Media Days
Nick Saban excuse. He is good at the excuse every media day. After he gives his excuse as to what happened the previous year. The medias heads all seem to explode. Did you hear what Nick Saban said????? It is comical to see what the out rage is each year. This year Saban said that part of his problem last year was that coaches had lost interest because they were thinking about the new jobs that they had for the following season. It is possible that is true. It is also possible that Alabama just got beat by Clemson and this is the way that he copes with that. There is no way that we can know for sure. What we do know is that he uses this to distract people so they don’t think or ask about things that are going on now with his team. He has been doing this for years and the same thing happens every year. I am sure that he has a good laugh once he sees what people are talking about.
On the other end of it is Jim Harbaugh he came to Michigan with huge expectations. He is starting season five and has yet to beat Ohio State. They have been in a few of the games but have lost every one of them. Last year when they were favored to win they got blown out. Harbaugh has always said some strange things. I am not sure if he says them on purpose or if he just talks for the sake of talking. Going after Urban Meyer after he has retired is just not the way to go about things. The time to go after him would have been last year when he was still coaching. That did not work out so well.
Michigan also points us to another problem in College sports. James Hudson wanted to transfer from Michigan to Cincinnati. He will have to sit out a year due to Michigan blocking his ability to play immediately. It is a bit confusing how this happened but the reality is that the rules here need to be more clear. This is not just a Michigan problem. It is a college sports problem. The reason a player wants to transfer really should not matter. In this case Hudson said it was due to mental health issues. Harbaugh said players are using that as a crutch to beat the system. That is not for the coach or the school to decide. Mental heath in this country is a serious issue that needs more attention paid to it. Maybe this fail by the Michigan program will have a good result and bring more attention to how we handle mental health issues.
Golf Majors for 2019 are over already
Seems we were just talking about the Masters and if Tiger could win. it was still an amazing tournament. It appears that he used all his energy to win that one. Maybe he should just concentrate on the Masters for the next few years. That tournament seems to fit his playing style better than the other ones. I could see him having at least one more win in him.
The amazing thing this year was the play of Brooks Koepka. He won two of the Majors and finished in the top 5 in all four of them. The question will be can he do it again next year. It is a very impressive run. We have seen this before. Players go on an amazing one or two year run but then can’t keep it going. It will be interesting to see if Koepka can come close to repeating this next year or any time in the near future. There were four different winners this year. Two of them were first time major winners. With Gary Woodland winning the U.S. Open and Shane Lowry winning the Open Championship. Both of them were feel good stories. Both have had interesting journeys in their golf career. Lowry winning as a home town hero was pretty amazing. It will be difficult to match the same interesting story next year.
I know the Gold season is not actually done. There is a ways to go and the FedEx Championship to give out yet. I am not sure that the Championship is ever going to reach the same interst that the majors have. I am actually pretty sure that it will not. It is a nice way to finish out the Golf season. It comes up against football though and lets face it there will not be a lot of people paying attention to it. Really they should try to end the season either right before or right after the first weekend in September. That is just me though I am sure they are not going to listen to what I have to say.
Baseball What would you Rather have
The balls now with lots of homeruns or the dead ball with a ton of no hitters. It does not matter what the answer is. Someone is going to complain about it. The key here is what do the fans want. Baseball of all the major sports has a huge problem where the players seem to forget why they are there. Baseball players seem to think that the fans are an after thought and sometimes an annoyance. Not sure how the players got to that point. They seem to forget that without the fans there would be no game to play. Well they could play it but the pay would not be that great.
I am not sure what the split is between fans that like the homeruns compared to the fans that like the pitching duels. I am sure there are a few that like the pitching duel. Pretty sure that there are more that would like to see a bunch of homeruns in a game. It is funny that the pitchers are complaining about the live balls and there are still hitters that are complaining about huge ball parks that they don’t hit as many homeruns at. I get it you get paid based on homeruns if you are a power hitter but really come one man. The ball is live you are doing well. Specifially I am talking about Nicholas Castellanos complaining about the size of Comerica Park. I get it but really come on. You are on a team that is doing nothing and most of the time it seems like you are not trying. Maybe you are complaining because you are frustrated. It would hold a lot more weight if it appeared that you were actually trying. As bad as the Tigers are this year. They are still a half game ahead of the Orioles. Both teams could break their team record for least amounts of wins in a season. The Tigers won 43 games in 2003. They have 30 wins so far this season. The Orioles won 47 games last year. With 31 wins they are on pace to be bigger losers this year. I am not sure how tanking pays off in Baseball but it appears that both of these teams are tying to find out. We have talked about tanking before and it is not something we have a problem with. As long as the teams have a plan. Fans will only take missive losing so long before they bail on the team.
I have not Checked the MLS in a While
There are now 24 teams in the MLS. The league is split in to two twelve team conferences. The Eastern conference and the Western conference. In those conferences seven teams make the playoffs. That leaves five teams that do not make the playoffs in each conference. I don not have a problem with more than half the teams making the playoffs. I actually think that in a league like the MLS they should have every team make the playoffs. Use the regular season for seeding. You could do something that gives the top two teams in each conference a bye or something like that. What a league like the MLS needs is exposure. They need to do something that is different than other leagues to make them stand out.
The other thing I thing is interesting in Major League Soccer is the way that teams have been named. Eight of the teams have FC or Football in their name. Being that the MLS is a North American League and that they have Soccer in their name. It is odd that teams would choose to put Football in their name. Yes in the rest of the world this is Football. In North America the game is Soccer. Two of the teams that use initials in their name got it right. The Columbus Crew SC and Orlando City SC. Yes I get it in the rest of the world this is Football. It makes sence since it truly is a game where you have to primarily use your feet. But in North America it is Soccer so it would make sense the teams would use SC rather than FC. I am sure the teams that are using the FC want to be more like their counter parts in the top leagues around the world. Where a lot of the teams have FC or Football in their name. To that I say Stop it.
You can find last weeks post here
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