Author: Anthony Stalter (Page 85 of 1503)

      Kevin Carter talks NFL lockout, Steve Spurrier and SchoolOfTheLegends.com

      June 6, 2011 /

      In his 14-year NFL career, Kevin Carter handed out plenty of punishment for opposing quarterbacks. He totaled 104.5 career sacks, reached double digit QB-takedowns four times (1998-2000, 2002), and led his team in sacks five times (1996, 1997, 1999, 2004). He also never missed a game in the NFL, which is a testament to his training habits and toughness.

      Now that he’s retired, Kevin is helping to promote the website SchoolOfTheLegends.com, which offers fans a chance to interact with not only current players, but legends of the game as well. The site also offers instructional videos from some of the best in the game, which is a great tool for high school athletes or players of any age who want to get tips from the pros. (If you’re a young defensive back, how can you pass up the opportunity to get instructional lessons from Pro Bowler Brian Dawkins?) The site is free to join and in minutes you could be interacting with NFL stars.

      Kevin sat down with me recently to discuss not only SchoolOfTheLegends.com, but I was also able to pick his brain about the current lockout mess and get his reaction to the recent comments made by his former Florida coach Steve Spurrier, who says college players should be paid.

      The Scores Report: Hey Kevin!

      Kevin Carter: Hey there, how are you?

      TSR: Very good. You enjoying this ongoing lockout? I know as a fan, I sure am. It’s not nauseating at all.

      KC: What a mess.

      TSR: Do you think this secret meeting that transpired with the NFL and union officials can be viewed as a positive thing for fans? Are we finally pushing forward here?

      KC: I really do, because there’s a certain portion of this fight that needed to be brought to the American public’s attention. There was a lot of posturing on both sides, but really a lot of posturing from the owners. Doing things like securing television revenue money, that even if there’s no season they’re still going to get their money. Doing things like lobbying on Capital Hill to try and influence the lawmakers so a lot of the things like tax laws that they enjoy still remain in place. So there was a portion of it that needed to be fought and brought to the American public’s attention. But ultimately, we’re not going to be able to negotiate through the court systems. At some point we’re going to have to sit down, have a conversation and get down to the brass tacks in order to make a deal for the greater good of the game. Our fans don’t deserve this. They’ve been too great to the sport of football. We’ve been able to grow exponentially; the NFL owners themselves have been able to enjoy a 400% increase in the equity of their business in the last 15-20 years, so the fans have been loyal. They’ve gone through strikes and CBA extensions, and near-scares and whatnot. But this is like nothing else in our history: this is a lockout. Basically the owners are saying, ‘We don’t like the economic structure the way it is set up, even though we’re the ones that have enjoyed this 400% increase in the equity of our business.’ Nobody can say that they’ve enjoyed anything close to that unless you own oil. A certain portion of this fight needed to be done in the courts. But now, with them having a private meeting and talking real numbers, and real dollars, and talking about how we can get this thing out of the courts and people back to work, I’m all for it. I think this is the first real step from a negotiating standpoint that we’ve taken on both sides.

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      External Sports, Interviews, News, NFL

      Plaxico Burress released from prison

      June 6, 2011 /

      Plaxico Burress was released from the Oneida Correctional Facility on Monday morning after spending over 20 months in prison. Agent Drew Rosenhaus, who was wearing a throwback Phillies hat and gave a brief statement to the media before heading to a reunion with his family, apparently greeted Burress when he got out.

      Burress will now fly to Florida and start training in hopes that a NFL team will give him another shot. At 33, it’ll be tough for him to find a gig but the Rams, Jets and Eagles have all been mentioned as potential landing spots. His best attributes are his size (6’5”, 232 pounds) and his ability to win matchups with shorter defensive backs in the red zone. But he’s never been a burner and thus, he’ll have to go to a situation where a team already has a pair of good receivers on the outside. (Thus, the Rams might not be the best fit.)

      Even though many observers remain skeptical that a team will give him a shot, Burress should draw some interest. NFL teams aren’t going to turn away talent and if he still has something left in the tank, his phone will ring when the lockout is lifted.

      External Sports, NFL

      Giants GM only making Posey situation worse with comments about Cousins

      June 3, 2011 /
      San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey reaches for a ball in the eighth inning against the Philadelphia Phillies during Game 3 of their Major League Baseball NLCS playoff series in San Francisco, October 19, 2010. REUTERS/Mike Blake (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT BASEBALL)

      Who can blame Giants general manager Brian Sabean for being a little sensitive these days when it comes to the topic of Buster Posey? A little over a week ago he lost his star catcher for the season when Scott Cousins blew him up during a collision at the plate. From the GM down to the fans, many folks are a little touchy right now in ‘Frisco.

      But Sabean seems hell bent on making the situation worse. His club is coming off a successful road trip – one that saw the Giants take three of four from the first-place Cardinals – and yet all anyone can talk about today are the comments Sabean made on KNBR radio.

      On Thursday, Sabean said that he didn’t blame Posey for not wanting to hear from Cousins following the play. Then he got personal.

      “I don’t blame the kid,” Sabean said of Posey on his weekly KNBR radio program. “Why not be hard-nosed? If I never hear from Cousins again, or he doesn’t play another day in the big leagues, I think we’ll all be happy.”

      Ouch. At first, you almost can’t blame Sabean for protecting his young player. But suggesting that “we’ll all be happy” if Cousins doesn’t play another day in the big leagues is a bit much. When asked if he was being harsh with his comments, Sabean didn’t back down.

      “No,” Sabean said. “He chose to be a hero, in my mind. If that’s his flash of fame, that’s as good as it’s going to get, pal. We’ll have a long memory. We talked to (former Giants catcher) Mike Matheny about how this game works. You can’t be that out-and-out overly aggressive. There’s no love lost and there shouldn’t be.”

      Cousins’ agent Matt Sosnick was quick to respond to Sabean’s criticism of his client.

      “What Cousins did was not malicious,” Sosnick said. “A statement that anyone makes implying that he did something on purpose to be hurtful or malicious to Posey is untrue. Those people are misinformed. You can’t determine on a replay if there was a sliding lane for him to get into. It’s impossible.”

      Something that always happens in situations like these is that fans choose sides. There are many people who believe Posey was trying to block the plate and therefore was fair game. Furthermore, it wasn’t Cousins’ hit that caused the injury, but Posey’s improper footing. (There are also many people who feel as though this wouldn’t be a story if it didn’t involve Buster Posey and they’re probably right. But it did involve Buster Posey, so discussing whether or not it’s a story is a waste of time.)

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      External Sports, MLB

      Even though there’s still plenty of work to be done, secret meeting is positive news for NFL

      June 2, 2011 /
      NFL commissioner Roger Goodell (C) enters a federal courthouse to resume talks regarding labor and revenue issues between the NFL and the NFL Players Association in Minneapolis, May 16, 2011. REUTERS/Eric Miller (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL EMPLOYMENT BUSINESS)

      Just try and halt my enthusiasm after reading about this little clandestine meeting that took place between union officials and NFL owners on Wednesday. The moment I heard about the news I ran up and down the streets screaming, “DING DONG THE LOCKOUT IS DEAD, SNITCHES!”

      All right, so I’m not that excited. But the fact that DeMaurice Smith and other NFLPA union officials (or whatever they’re calling themselves these days after decertifying back in March) met with top NFL owners and commissioner Roger Goodell can only be viewed as a positive sign when it comes to the current labor strife.

      The details are murky and it doesn’t appear that anything imminent is about to happen with the lockout, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that progress wasn’t made. The fact that the two sides are even talking is good enough. It may mean that they’re laying the groundwork for a new CBA deal and while the lockout may not end soon, the two sides have to start somewhere.

      Look, there’s still a lot of work to be done. There’s still a lack of trust on both sides, there’s still the small matter of the owners wanting the players to take a paycut and the players wanting the owners to fork over financial statements from the last X amount of years, and there’s still billions of the fans’ money that needs to be fought over. But again, I’m encouraged.

      Personally, I think the best piece of news that has come out of this is that Panthers owner Jerry Richardson was one of the five owners who attended the get-together. If you remember correctly, he was the one that ticked off many of the players early in the negotiations by treating Peyton Manning like a man who couldn’t even figure out which one of his shoes belonged on which foot. When ESPN’s Adm Schefter tweeted Thursday morning that the meeting was so secretive that there were other NFL owners “that didn’t even know about” it, I thought for sure Richardson was left off the invite list. But maybe his heart is starting to thaw, too.

      So where do we go from here? The two sides will now head down to St. Louis where their lawyers will argue in front of a three-judge panel on Friday. The NFL is appealing an injunction that was grated by Judge Susan Nelson to block the lockout and the appeals court has already granted a full stay of that injunction. Thus, the owners are expected to emerge from this round of court-related nausea as the victors.

      But maybe after their trip to the Eighth Circuit, the two sides will reconvene again and start actually making progress on the CBA. It’s frustrating to think that during this time, the owners and players could have been working on a new labor deal instead of fighting in courts about the lockout. But in the end that doesn’t really matter. What matters is that the two sides actually start to make productive strides to ending this charade so that everyone can enjoy professional football come fall.

      External Sports, NFL

      Maybe it would be best for Ohio State if Terrelle Pryor moved on

      June 1, 2011 /
      Ohio State University quarterback and MVP Terrelle Pryor (2) celebrates after his team defeated the University of Arkansas during the NCAA BCS Allstate Sugar Bowl football game in New Orleans, Louisiana January, 4, 2011. REUTERS/Sean Gardner (UNITED STATES – Tags: SPORT FOOTBALL)

      For the moment, let’s refrain from calling Terrelle Pryor an entitled “punk kid” who just got his coached fired. That may be an accurate statement but that isn’t what this is about.

      This is about the Ohio State football program and more specially, what’s best for the Ohio State football program. Gerardo Orlando touched on this briefly when Jim Tressel resigned on Monday but the statement is worth revisiting: Ohio State is bigger than just one player. It’s bigger than Terrelle Pryor and it was bigger than troublemaker Maurice Clarett. Whether the Buckeyes suffer the same fate as USC did for the Reggie Bush scandal remains to be scene but nevertheless, they will recover. Ohio State is still going to be Ohio State in the end, even though their rivals to the north would like to believe that the program is falling apart.

      With that in mind, maybe it would be best if Pryor got lost – left Columbus with his bags packed and headed for destinations unknown. The Buckeyes have enough to worry about these days without fielding questions about whether or not their star quarterback will be under center after he serves his five-game suspension for trading his sports memorabilia for free tattoos.

      Is Terrelle Pryor a special player? No doubt. Since he’s arrived in Columbus, the Buckeyes are 33-6, which includes two-straight bowl victories over Oregon and Arkansas. He’s the type of player that, had he and his tattoo buddies not been suspended for five games, could have taken the Buckeyes to a national title.

      But again, he’s only one player. He also represents a massive headache for a program that needs to do some major damage control right now. After Tressel announced his resignation on Monday, Pryor, while being investigated for possibly receiving free cars from a dealership mind you, had the stones to show up at a players-only meeting driving a Nissan 350Z with temporary tags. I guess if he thinks he hasn’t done anything wrong then there’s no reason to take the bus or carpool with a teammate, but is he serious? That ride is valued around $30,000, which is hardly the type of money that a college athlete would have between his couch cushions.

      Ohio State doesn’t need this. Not right now, not ever. Pryor might be able to help them win but, as rare as this is, winning might not be the most important thing right now. And again, the Buckeyes will recover.

      USC is currently in year two of a two-year bowl ban thanks to the Bush infractions. And while their recruiting has taken a hit, Lane Kiffin isn’t going to have trouble getting California kids to come to Southern Cal. That’s not to say that they’ll win under him, but he won’t need to try very hard to convince high school athletes to be a Trojan.

      The same can be said for Urban Meyer when he starts recruiting as the head football coach at Ohio State. (I’m kidding – relax.) Let me start over: The same can be said for whoever takes over as head coach of the Buckeyes. Even given the current state of the program, they’re still on the top step of the Big Ten ladder. Prospects in Ohio and surrounding regions aren’t suddenly going to flood Purdue, Illinois or even Notre Dame (which has high academic standards) because Ohio State is in turmoil. The Buckeyes will still be able to recruit after this.

      That’s why it may be beneficial for OSU if Pryor applied for the NFL supplemental draft. Or was suspended indefinitely. Or drove one of his 12 new cars to South Beach to hang with LeBron and never return. Many people in Columbus are already blaming him for the program losing Tressel and chances are he is guilty of violating NCAA rules. With that in mind, maybe Pryor can do OSU a favor and exit stage left.

      College Football, External Sports

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