NFL Combine is in full swing. Kyler Murray only did two things and he is the talk of the combine. The NBA is in huge trouble. Not sure what they are going to do to fix their issues. NASCAR is already in week three. The NHL is now in high gear. It seems that the trades did not work out very well for some teams. MLS gets off for the 2019 season. It is amazing that Columbus was able to win the MLS off season and keep The Crew in Columbus. Soccer in the United States has a long way to go but they are slowly getting there. I lost my second sport radio channel. I talked about this earlier but did not realize how much I was going to miss it. Now when the other station has a show on that I am not interested in I have no other sports shows to turn to. Such is the way of the air waves. I do miss it though.
NFL Wins the Week Again
This is starting to sound like a broken record. The NFL once again dominates and they are not even playing any games. The NFL Combine started this week. It drew so much interested that two networks are aring the whole thing live. Granted one of them is the NFL network. It still counts. ESPN has done large parts of the NFL Combine for years. This year they even aired the Quarterback drills on ABC. It was a two hour show that just showed the quarterback drills. It will be interesting to see what kind of share it did. I am pretty sure it will rival just about anything else that was on in the time period.
The big winner for the NFL Combine was Kyler Murray. The only thing he did was be taller than 5’10” and weigh more than 200 pounds. It was smart of him to not do any of the drills. He can do those during his pro day when he has a controlled environment. After the combine he is guaranteed to go top five and more than likely will go number one. It is pretty amazing that a team is going to base their pick on some measurements at the NFL Combine but that is the way it goes. Yes they will look at the tape of his play in college. But really the thing that pushed him over the top was how tall he was. We will see how it goes.
The NFL is now set up to win the next few months. Next week teams will be able to sign free agents. There are already players that will be traded and signed right when free agency opens. There is already so much about the draft with Mock Drafts. Then in April it will be time for the draft. The NFL has things set up to win almost every month of the year. This even though they have the shortest season. Pretty amazing.
NBA Trouble Brewing
Maybe it had already brewed and it is already served up. The NBA is in some trouble. Once proud franchises are doing the in thing and blaming the media for their problems. It is odd that one of the leagues prime teams would be blaming the media for their problems. Yest the media forced you to draft the players you did and then sign LeBron James. They also told you it would fix all the problems you have had. That you would now be contending for a championship. LOL Comical at best to take that stance. What this really shows is that the Lakers are acting like a team that is not that good. Oh look they are not that good.
This is all just a symptom of much bigger things for the NBA. The whole league has an interesting problem. Not that the problem is interesting. More that the game in its current form is not that interesting. Especially to young people. With the beast ESPN behind them you would think that they would be doing better. However they are not. A few years ago media outlets were all over the numbers drop for the NFL. There has been little to no coverage of the NBA numbers drop. There is a big difference between the numbers drop between the two leagues. The NFL was a blip and did not take into account the shift from traditional viewing and the streaming that younger people are moving to.
The problems with the NBA actually look even worse when you take streaming into account. The numbers for streaming viewers are down 50% over a year ago. In a society that is moving toward streaming that is not a good thing. The problem with the NBA is that it is a product that is getting less interesting rather than more interesting. I caught the end of sports center this morning when they are doing the top 10 plays from the previous day. Three of the top ten were slam dunks. On the surface that sounds good. It really was not. None of them were great dunks and the NBA is still counting on a play from 40 years ago to make them interesting. The NBA has huge problems and the players are not going to let them fix those problems.
AAF Standing Strong Except with Bleacher Report
For the fourth week in a row the AAF played some interesting football. Once again I tried to watch the Saturday 4PM game on Bleacher Report Live. Once again it kept stopping and I had to keep starting it up and refreshing my page. I also had a different problem this week when the player kept telling me my game would start shortly when the game should have already been on. I am all for streaming the games but come on. You have to do it on a platform that can handle it. Twitter has shown they can do it. Facebook has shown they can do it. So has Amazon and Yahoo. If Bleacher Report can fix their problems more power to them. I am at the point where it may not be worth trying anymore if they can not get it going.
Ok on to more interesting things here. It is funny that ESPN does not even have a page for the AAF yet. To that I say. Your loss ESPN. I watch less and less ESPN as time goes on. It is all due to them becoming less and less relavent. The AAF is playing some decent football and putting up some decent numbers. Like it or not they are going to make it for at least a few years. I am also convinced that if they can grow this relationship with the NFL they are in this for the long haul.
I am not sure what happened with the pay roll issue last week. Not sure that it really matters. It would be nice if there were a few more people in the stands. I am sure that will come as the teams get better known. Looks like a lot of the tickets available are under $20. So they are not pricing them too high. That will help down the road as interest grows. I am not sure why but I really do feel that interest will grow.
The other thing that happened this week was that Johnny Manziel was fired by the Canadian Football League. At first I thought what a dumb ass getting in trouble again. But then I started to think about it a little more. Maybe he wants to play in the AAF. He would do more to help himself to get another chance at the NFL by playing in the AAF then he would playing in the CFL. I may be off base on this but it would actually not be a bad choice on his part to get into the AAF.
Over time I have talked about the local sport radio host we have here in Columbus. I listen to them for a few reasons. They say some interesting things and they also say some really stupid things. The kind of things that just make you scratch your head a bit. One of them said about the AAF trying to get known but washed out talent from the NFL. “They are just trying to get more attention.” I almost screamed at the radio. Really did you figure that out on your own dumb ass?????? YES of course they are doing it for attention. It is entertainment after all and with out attention they make no money. Way to Go you figured out the secret formula.
NHL Trade Fail
There was a lot of promise after the trade deadline. Especially for the Columbus Blue Jackets. They went all in to push toward the playoffs. So far keeping their unhappy players and adding two key pieces. They have gone on to lose 4 out of 5 games and drop out of one of the wild card spots. Not sure it would really matter in the big pictures anyway. They could sneak into the playoffs but they really need to go on a run now to push past the Penguins and the Canadians. The trades looked good on paper but really have not just panned out. It could still work out for the Blue Jackets if they somehow sneak into the playoffs. Win a series and then manage to sign half the players they traded for and at least one of their unhappy players. We will see how it goes.
The rest of the NHL is going pretty much the way it was. Boston had a great last 10 games going 9 – 0 – 1 which as you know is fantastic. With all that great work and the fantastic record. All they did is gain 1 point on Tampa. Tampa went 9 -1 – 0 in the same time period. Does not seem to matter how well you play. Tampa is loaded for the regular season and there is no chance that anyone is going to catch them.
On the bottom of the NHL world The Senators, Wings and Kings are bringing up the bottom. They are all well positioned to get a top 5 pick in the draft and pretty sure that one of these teams is going to get the top pick in the draft. The problem with Ottawa is that they do not get their pick in the first round. It was traded to th Avalanche. There is little doubt that who ever does get the first pick is going to take Jack Hughes. He is the best prospect to be in the draft in a long time. He will be a player that you can build a team around that will be able to compete for a long time.
MLS Tie Tie Tie Tie Tie
Major League Soccer made its return this weekend. There are a few new teams and an old team that is new again. The Saturday start of the MLS season featured 10 games. There are 24 teams in the league now so that means 20 of the teams were involved on the season opening day. So a pretty nice start to the season. I am not a huge Soccer fan so there is a lot that I do not understand about the sport. One thing I do know is that if you want the sport to gain audience in the States you can not have half the games end in a tie. Fifty percent of the games played ended in a tie. I will say that again. Fifty Percent of the games ended in a tie. Not only that but three of the five games ended in a 1 – 1 tie. In Soccer terms I guess that makes for a good game. Maybe it means the teams were evenly matched. With out having watched the games that means BORING to me. Please someone tell me why a 1 – 1 tie in soccer is not boring.
Don’t get me wrong I am not rooting against the MLS and I would like for it to succeed and start to draw better players. I really don’t understand the obsession that the large sports networks have with the Premier league. Yes I get that it attracts the best players so there will be some attraction to it. But ignoring the MLS makes it difficult for people to get into the league. The big win for the MLS is that the Crew are still in Columbus. The fact that the fans in Columbus were able to keep the team rather than them moving to Austin is amazing. Very few fan bases have been able to to keep a team from moving once an owner had decided they want to move the team. This shows that there is hope for the MLS. They do need to make it more interesting and figure out how to grow their fan base. In time they may be able to do that. Cheers to the start of their season and here is to success.
NASCAR Three Races Three Winners
This week NASCAR moved out west to Las Vegas. While I am all for moving out west. I want the country to be covered. It leads to late start times. I like when teh races start at 1:30pm Moving out west the start time is moved to 3:30 PM. This always interferes with other things that I want to do on a Sunday afternoon. Not as much as the Saturday nigh races but still annoying. Come on it is all about my viewing needs and no one else. I get it and understand why they have to do the start times. But I will still complain about it.
I still think that having stages in the race make things very confusing. It is supposed to make things more interesting but it really does not. It just adds confusion and makes the races jumbled. NASCAR would be much better off doing dual races that are shorter or even three races. What ever they want to do. That would make it much easier to follow than having the stages. Maybe it is just me and my old ways of thinking.
The thing that does help is that in three races there has been three different winners. Joey Logano had a nice race in Las Vegas and was able to cross the line first. This win was nice for him to show that he is stilla round. After he won the cup last year this shows that there is no hang over for him. The next two races are going to be out west. Next week at ISM Raceway in Phoenix and then the following week at Auto Club Speedway in Fontana, CA. It would be nice to see two more different winners before heading back to the east.
The way that NASCAR is racing is still pretty confusing to me. Since Dale Jr. retired I really have not found a driver to follow yet. It seems that mostly I am rooting against certain drivers rather than rooting for someone. I wonder how many other people are doing that.
On the Tube – Television not You
Several shows that I watch were not on last week. For some reason The Resident was not on. This has become one of my favorite shows. I have a tendency to pick shows to watch that get cancelled. The other one I watch that was not on last week is New Amsterdam. This is also one of my favorite shows now. If you have not watched these shows yet. You really should check them out. They have some very interesting characters great acting and some nice writing. If you have been reading my posts then you know that I am also a big Walking Dead fan. The second half of this season has been fantastic. I think that they must have brought back the A list writers. I really thought that I was going to miss Rick. They have more than made up for his absence. The other character I thought I was going to miss was Maggie. I do miss her character but I was able to catch her new show Whiskey Cavalier and it is pretty good. It is difficult to tell for sure after one show but it really does show some promise. So we will see where it takes us. American Idol is back another of our favorite shows. Again after the first audition show you have no idea where it is going to go.
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.
I am also looking for people that are interested in writing posts on biglakesports.net If you are interested you can send me an email at jbigalke at biglakespots.net and we can go over what I am looking for and see if you are a fit. There would be no pay at this time but you would be able to put your writing out there and could post it on other sites if you wanted to.
Loading ...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
Recent Comments