March Madness comes to an end. April showers can you believe we are already a quarter of the way through 2019. Baseball spent a lot of money and it looks like it was worth it. After eight weeks with the AAF I actually missed having games this weekend. Other than the people involved in the League I may be the only one. I had no idea how much I was actually enjoying having football in the Spring. I only really noticed when it was no longer an options. Funny thing where I live. The local sports guys were all complaining about the AAF and how we don’t need football in the Spring but then they were all about the Spring game coming up at the end of Spring practice for college football. I just found that a bit humorous.
AAF The End
It was sad to see the AAF go. Thank you for the eight weeks of games. The Failure was caused by many things. Probably the biggest thing was how the league gained or lacked to gain the funds it needed to survive. I did miss having football on this weekend. But I am sure that will be a short lived thing. It as nice to have a game there just in case I wanted to watch. The league did not last long enough to have any affiliation with any of the teams. The football was ok. Not great but I did not expect great football. The coverage was decent. There were two problems I had with the coverage. The games on Bleacher Report Live were difficult to watch with the poor quality of the stream. The other problem I had with the games were the start times. With most of the games being late afternoon or night games. It caused problems for us to be able to watch the games. Most of the time for the night games I ended up watching on a tablet while we were watching something else on TV. Guess that does not really matter now since they will not have to fix it for next year.
There were some big things and some small things for the AAF to fix to be abel to make it. They really should have taken more time to get everything in line before going live with the league. They should have had the funding in place. Having an agreement with the NFL or NFLPA or at least talking to them about it before starting play would have helped as well. AAF you had potential sorry to see you go. Yes they are gone. They said they are on hiatus but the truth is that with the way they stopped there is no way to recover from this. They alienated all of their partners and no one is going to want to deal with them with out assurances that the AAF will not be able to give. Chalk this up to another failed pro football league. Hopefully the XFL paid attention here and can learn from their mistakes. We will see. I am guessing that they were high-fiving each other rather than paying attention.
NFL Picking up the AAF Pieces On to the Draft
Initially teams were told not to contact any of the AAF players after the league announced they were halting operations. The AAF then said go for it. So NFL teams started to sign a few of the players. So at least the AAF gave a few players the platform they needed to get back into the NFL. Well they signed with teams. We will see how many of them are able to make a team. I am sure at least a few of them will. Again this shows that the AAF was a good idea that just failed. See above for why we think it failed.
In the off season we talk all the time about how the NFL is able to stay in the news no matter what else is going on. Some of it you would think is not that right kind of attention. In the long run it really does not matter. The Bleacher Report put out a smear campaign against the Packers. Making all kinds of crazy accusations. Of course Bleacher report and Pro Football Talk ran with it and were all about what a dysfunctional organization the Packers are. What this really seems to have done is given the Packers and the NFL all kinds of momentum going into the draft. While I do think that some of the stuff in the report was probably true. I also believe that there is goofy stuff like this going on with every other pro sports team out there. It is rich people with unlimited funds that get paid to play a game. It is going to happen.
The other crazy thing going on in the NFL is Antonio Browns crazy feude with the Steelers. It is to the point where it is just comical. This kind of behavior is hardly new. For some reason a lot of the times it seems like it comes from wide receivers. Look at Terrell Owens when he left any team that he played for . Greg Jennings did similar stuff when he went from the Packers to the Vikings. It happens. It is a bit odd that Brown is keeping it going though. From the NFL point of view they are thinking. Antonio keep it going for another week or so. We are getting ready for the draft so bring it.
Speaking of the draf. There is always crazy amounts of information out there about who a team is going to draft. It is very difficult to determine what information is real and what information is just to try and trick some one. There is always one player who starts out high in the draft and then for some reason falls like a rock. Look at Aaron Rodgers and Brady Quinn. For Rogers it worked out alright. For Quinn it did not. I guess in the end it worked out alright for Quinn. He is turning into a great analyst on games and has a pretty good radio show. Which I can no longer get where I live because the radio station decided to change formats… The player that is dropping like a rock this year is Dwayne Haskins. This report is coming from Peter King who has Haskins going as low as the fourth Quarterback to be taken. I am not sure what is causing this to happen. He set Ohio State and Big Ten records for passing this year. He had an amazing year and may be the best quarterback to come out of the Big Ten in quite some time. Hey if he drops that far. Some team is going to get an amazing value pick. I see him as being the best pure quarterback in the draft this year. I get the Cardinals and Kyler Murray. He does have the potential to be a pretty good quarterback in the NFL. But so does Haskins. Then again Aaron Rodgers dropped all the way to the 24th pick in the draft. It seems to have worked out alright.
NHL Playoffs are set
The long grind of the NHL has finally ended. It was a pretty interesting end of the season. Tampa Bay was able to win their last game and tie the record for the most wins in a season since the NHL went to an 82 game schedule. The record has been set by the 1995 -1996 Red Wings. The 62 wins are an amazing number. As good as that team was. They did not make it to the Stanley Cup Final. They lost to the Avalanche in the Western Conference final. So as good as a team is if they don’t stay focused it does not matter. The Lighting are going to have to stay focused. In the first round of the playoffs they are going to have to play the Columbus Blue Jackets. Going into the playoffs the Blue Jackets are one of the hottest team in the NHL. The other thing that the Blue Jackets have going for them is that no one is picking them to win this series. They are such an underdog that there is no amount you can bet on the Lighting and get a pay out if they win the series. Truly no one is picking the Jackets to win. It is times like this when a heavy favorite can get caught off guard. It could happen but in reality I really do not see it happening. The other interesting thing about the win record is that even though Steve Yzerman is not the GM of the Lightning anymore. He is the architect of this team. So he was a part of both teams that hold this record. He played on the Wings team and built the Lightning team. Pretty impressive.
NBA Golden State should just Stick it out
The Warriors clinched the best record in the West once again. Pretty sure that for most of the season they were not really even trying. They are getting a bit bored with the regular season. That can come back to bite them in the playoffs. It is not always that easy to turn it back on. Saying that I am pretty sure that this team can do it. The Warriors were not able to get to the best record in the league this year. The Milwaukee Bucks took that crown this year. It will be Interesting to see what they can do in the playoffs this year. Their first round series really will not amount to much. It will be what happens in the second round on. The Bucks are light on playoff experience but I am not really sure that is going to matter much. At least it will not matter till they get to the Eastern conference final.
It is looking like this is going to be the last year of the Warriors team as we have known it for the last few years. People are going to go their own way so they can either win it on their “own” Or get their big pay day. Well from my point of view they have all go the big payday. If you make $10 million or $35 million you are still set for life. Why go out on your “own” when you can’t win it by your self and you could win two to three more with this team. The Warriors have won three championships and will probably win one again this year. That would give them four. If they could win two more after this year that would put them at 6. That matches the Bulls and puts them ahead of the Kobe Lakers. That would be quite the amazing accomplishment. I know they will probably not do that and will end up going their own way. That is fine but just think what could have been.
March Madness Comes to an End
With Virginia beating Texas Tech in overtime 85 – 77 the March Madness has come to an end. This win is redemption for a Virginia team that lost in the first round last year to a 16 seed. The first one seed to ever lose in the first round. What they have done over the last two years will probably never be repeated. Have the worst loss in the tournament one year and then the ultimate win the next year. From the Sweet Sixteen to the end of the tournament the games were all a win for the NCAA. What may not be a win is the teams that made it to the final. It is exciting that the two teams that were in the final would be first time winners of the tournament. What was not a win. Unless you were a Virginia, Texas Tech or huge College basketball fan there really was not a lot to pull you into the game. It will be interesting to see how the numbers come out. Both teams play a slow style of defensive basketball. Not super exciting but clearly pretty effective. Way to go Virginia. Imperessive that this team was able to put last year behind it and focus on th future. Not an easy thing to do.
On the Tube Not You but TV
With the Walking Dead done we are moving on to other shows. If AMC had been smart they would have had Fear the Walking dead ready to go now. So we could have went from Walking Dead into Fear the Walking Dead. For some reason they can’t seem to get that done. Now we have to wait till June for that. We are a family that loves our reality shows. We were really bummed when American Idol was off for a year. Now that it is back we have been all about it. They are into the Duet round. I am not sure if I agreed with all of the people that made it to this round. There were some that seemed to be pretty good that got cut already. I am sure that there is a lot more that goes into it than what we know.
We were debating about if we should watch the Million Dollar Mile. In the end we had other stuff going on so we decided against it. Looking like we made the correct decision. They are moving the Mile to a different time slot and starting Amazing Race a month early. The Amazing race is one of our favorites so we are pretty happy about that. Wish they still did the Amazing Race twice a year like they do Survivor. But I guess it was just not meant to be.
Looking for your assistance
I am trying to figure out if people like the long post like this or if they would rather have each section broken out into individual posts. If you have any ideas on that though let me know in the comments. On that note. When you are posting a comment there are two check boxes under the comment section. One of them is to notify you when a new post is made. If you check that box a notification will be sent to the email address you put in every time a new post is made on biglakesports.
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