Retirement has proven to be little respite for living NBA legends Karl Malone and Chris Webber, and former NFL starsBarry Sanders and Ladainian Tomlinson, who are reminded of their ring-less professional careers in the new spot from Foot Locker, “No Rings”.
Airing today and throughout the start of playoff action, the new commercial features Portland Trail Blazers’ Damian Lillard on his phone talking about how he hopes not to end up ringless like some athletes of the past. To his surprise, iconic (and ringless) sports legends Sanders, Tomlinson, Webber, and Malone are hanging out in his living room, noticeably affected by the reminder that the coveted championship ring has slipped through their fingers.
Foot Locker’s new commercial is part of Foot Locker’s successful “Approved” marketing platform and can be seen here.
The spot features the newest performance footwear from Adidas basketball, including the Lillard Edition Crazy 1, Crazy 8 and D Rose 4.5, as well as the latest apparel styles from Adidas Originals.
We are a quarter of the way through the NFL season, and there are lots of wacky things happening. The Chiefs are 3-0 and the only undefeated team. That’s a far cry from last year, when the Colts and Saints were unbeaten almost all the way to the end of the 2009 campaign. There are also some interesting candidates emerging for MVP consideration, as well as for Coach of the Year and Rookie of the Year. And like last year, we’ll start to analyze them in power rankings fashion. For this week and maybe the next few, we’ll put this in one post and give three names for each category. Around the halfway point of the season, more candidates will emerge so we will separate things out. Sound good? Right. Let’s go……..
MVP Power Rankings
1. Michael Vick, Philadelphia Eagles—Do we even have to spell this out? He steps in for Kevin Kolb in Week 1 and almost leads the Eagles to victory against the Packers. Then he wins against Detroit and Jacksonville before having his ribs crushed on a meaningless play vs. Washington last Sunday, knocking him out of the game early. Kolb comes back in, and the Eagles lose. Vick is averaging 200 yards passing per game, has 6 TDs and no interceptions, and is also averaging 7.2 yards per rush on 26 carries and one TD on the ground. He has a QB rating of 108.8 while Kolb’s is 71.1. Simply put, this team is dangerous with Vick, and not scaring anyone without him. That’s the very definition of MVP.
ESPN.com did a cool feature recently when they asked SportsNation to select an all-time player for each NFL team. Some players were obvious choices for teams, including Brett Favre for the Packers and Barry Sanders for the Lions, but there were some question picks, as well.
The site added links to video of each player, as well as a chance to debate each choice.
As a colleague pointed out, it’s hard to argue with any of these picks because they were chosen by fans. But Matt Stover over Ray Lewis? Bobby Hebert over Archie Manning?
Lewis has been the face of Baltimore’s franchise for almost a decade and Stover is a kicker (albeit a very good kicker) for Jonathan Ogden’s sake. And I know Hebert was a fan favorite that led the team to the playoffs in 1988, but if Manning had a better team around him, he might have led the Saints to their first ever Super Bowl. I thought Pat Swilling would have gotten more love, too. (Swilling only got 2.4% of votes.)
