Day: May 30, 2007

New league ready to compete with NFL? Oh boy…

A new football league is apparently in the works and ready to rival the NFL, according to FOXSports.com. The United Football League, which was created by Bill Hambrecht, a Wall Street businessman, and Tim Armstrong, a senior executive at Google, apparently wants to kick off its preseason in August of 2008. Hambrecht and Armstrong already have one owner on board: Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban.

“(Former NFL coach) Bill Walsh used to tell me that the last 20 players cut from every team were almost interchangeable with the last 20 players to make the team,” Hambrecht says.

So let me get this straight, these two boy wonders are standing around the water cooler one day and say, “Hey, we’ve got a ton of money, let’s start a new football league to rival the NFL!” One of the major complaints in the NFL now is that the league is too watered down. Yet these guys think people are actually going to tune in to watch the NFL’s scrubs? Nevertheless compete against the NFL during the NFL’s regular season? I could see a league trying to challenge the NFL in its offseason, but not parallel to America’s most popular regular season. I believe the last football league to attempt this feat was the XFL, and anyone unfortunate enough to actually remember that debacle recalls it only lasted a year and because nobody gave a crap.

Not to rain on your parade fellas, but I think it would be easier to resurrect Britney Spears’ career right now than trying to compete with the popularity of the NFL.

Sincerely,

“He Hate Me”

Another shot at ESPN

I know I’m turning the middle of this week into pick on ESPN time, but I’ve got yet another grip about the infamous, “Word’s leader in sports” network.

Why does it feel like I’m watching the NFL Draft every time I tune into SportsCenter? I appreciate the idea of having all of the highlights and stories listed along the right side of the screen, but it just seems like too much. Anyway, that’s not my real gripe. The real issue I have is with the way the network stacks the news for SportsCenter. Why was a meaningless regular season baseball game ahead of Marquise Hill’s death on Tuesday? Why is a 0 for 2 with three walks Bonds-night or a recap of Roger Clemens’ third minor league appearance ahead of the Stanley Cup series? I realize hockey isn’t the most popular sport these days in the US, but come on already.

It’s not that these things are keeping me up at night (I’m positive in nature, I swear), but I just shake my head with what ESPN finds to be newsworthy these days.

Is Deron Williams better than Chris Paul?

The Utah Jazz took a lot of heat for drafting Deron Williams over Chris Paul in 2005, especially when Paul ran away with the ROY award while Williams spent half the year on the bench. But now that Williams has the Jazz in the conference finals, the doubters have been silenced.

In my latest column, I explore the reasoning behind the pick and take a look at the numbers both players have put up since they entered the league.