Random Classics: Larry Bird fouls Bernard King

We all know those great 1980's basketball teams like the 76ers, Lakers, Pistons, Suns, and Celtics. A lot of competitive basketball and bad blood was never lost. Players were never afraid to leave everything on the court, no matter how much more or less was on the line. A good example is Larry Bird. Here is an example of Bird stopping Bernard King on a fast break:



Nothing was on the line between these two teams, but Larry Bird was willing to give King a good message that things were not going to be easy against his team.

Random Classics: When little ol' Steve Largent hit the crap out of a Broncos DB

From 1988, Seattle playing a Sunday Night Game on ESPN and destroying John Elways Broncos 42-14.

Soul Glo Hall Of Fame - Eric Dickerson

With Michael Cage being the first inductee into the Soul Glo Hall Of Fame, we now look back at another athletes career that displayed his soul glo proudly for a point in his career,our 2nd inductee,Eric Dickerson.


If we made an athletes with goggles hall of fame then he'd also be on that Mount Rushmore, but back on topic here...Erics flashy lifestyle, even since his college days at SMU ,fit perfectly with his hair.(ESPN's 30for30 documentary on SMU's Football program was just amazing,vid below of Dickersons segment)



Dickersons career while with the hair in Los Angeles was a great one



so good in fact, at one point Dickersons Rams made a hilariously awkward music video featuring 'Top Gun' Dickerson himself and his teammates telling us how they RAM IT


yes Eric if we had your hair we'd be Ramming it all night with the ladies too.

European football

thursday night parties at platini's place! guest list includes: ajax afc, valencia, manchester utd, manchester city, fc porto, olympiakos.

sorry liverpool, maybe next year.

(daily mail/AP)

NFL the way it USED to be

watching some of the videos in butters' piece about chester mcglockton made me think, man, the presentation of the NFL on sundays has come a long way over the years. my first football memories definitely involved pat and john on NFC games on CBS, and paul maguire doing nfl games on NBC (and later he worked with joe theismann and mike patrick on sunday night football on espn). i don't remember much about monday night football growing up because it was usually way too late for me to stay up and watch the whole game, but i do remember a combination of al michaels, frank gifford, and dan dierdorf. well, commenting about the old broadcast teams isn't what i wanted to write about.

i wanted to comment on the 80 minute gap between the late pm and sunday night games. it used to be that espn would present the sunday night games, and would have the NFL highlight show all to themselves in the lead-up to SNF. chris berman was MADE for NFL primetime, and tom jackson would provide insightful comments during the highlights. there wasn't much bull from what i remember, just the meat and potatoes of every game that happened at 1 and 4 EST. it was appointment viewing for me every sunday night during the football season at college.

with NBC buying SNF, i guess the NFL awarded NBC its own exclusive highlight show, so now we have the pretentious football night in america pregame show. the presentation of the day's games just don't seem as slick or well narrated like what chris and tom did. i also feel like there are just too many people on the set. in the show's first year, nbc had jerome bettis, cris collinsworth, bob costas, peter king, and sterling sharpe. do you really need that many voices for an 80 minute show? jeebus!

it's a comfort still to watch chris berman and tom jackson do their own highlights in the blitz on sunday night sportscenters, but you never know when the two are on because they are intertwined with the rest of sportscenter for the 11pm edition. i want them to go back to doing primetime at 730pm. how i miss those days.

R.I.P. Chester McGlockton

Rest in peace to one of the top NFL defensive tackles in the 1990s. Chester McGlockton passed away on November 30, 2011 due to a heart attack at the age of 42. While at Clemson University, he was a perennial player which led to being the 16th pick in the 1st round of the 1992 NFL draft by the Los Angeles Raiders.

He was in the NFL for 12 years with 4 different teams (Raiders, Chiefs, Broncos, Jets) with a total of 551 tackles, 51 sacks, and 4 interceptions. His best years were from 1994-97 where he was selected to the Pro Bowl in each of the years. In 1995, he was selected to the First-Team All-Pro team.


Growing up, I remember that random Raiders defense who had a ferocious front 4 with Jerry Ball, Nolan Harrison, Anthony Smith, and McGlockton.



These are hilights of the Raiders defense in the 1990s. They had a good number of playmakers who had a nose for the ball.



This is a NFL Primetime from 1995 that reviews a Week 8 game between the Indianapolis Colts and Oakland Raiders. A good clip because it brings back memories of the Colts and Raiders players from 1995. In 1:03, Anthony Smith and McGlockton crush Harbaugh, taking him out of the game. The Raiders win this game 30-17 to go 6-2.



Here is another NFL Primetime from 1995 that reviews the Week 15 game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Oakland Raiders. As we can see, the Raiders front 4 were able to apply pressure to O'Donnell, but unfortunately the Raiders fell short at the end. They lost the game 29-10 to go 8-6.





This is an NFL Primetime clip from 1994 Week 6 that reviews the game between the Oakland Raiders and New England Patriots. Once again, we see the Raiders front 4 were able to apply pressure to Drew Bledsoe and cause havoc. The Raiders win the game 21-17 to go 2-3 for the year.

Watching these clips, I do miss the old mid 1990s quarterbacks: Jim Harbaugh, Drew Bledsoe, Kordell Stewart, Neil O'Donnell, Billy Joe Hobert, and Jeff Hostetler. Rest in peace to a solid defensive tackle who will be missed. Chester McGlockton.

NHL's proposed realignment

the NHL board of governors just approved a radical 4-conference alignment that could possibly begin as early as next year. this guarantees that all teams will play at minimum a home-and-home with every other team in the league. i'm glad this is coming back, as i didn't like the idea of having to wait a few years for say, the avs or red wings to make their way to madison square garden to play the rangers. ultimately, travel plans were put into consideration, and the move of the atlanta thrashers franchise to winnipeg seems to have been a considerable factor in this new realignment proposed by the league.

the nhl proposes the following conferences:

Conference "A"	Conference "B"	Conference "C"	Conference "D"
Anaheim	Chicago	Boston	Carolina
Calgary	Columbus	Buffalo	New Jersey
Colorado	Dallas	Florida	NY Islanders
Edmonton	Detroit	Montreal	NY Rangers
Los Angeles	Minnesota	Ottawa	Philly
Phoenix	Nashville	Tampa Bay	Pittsburgh
San Jose	St. Louis	Toronto	Washington
Vancouver	Winnipeg

i think for the most part, the teams out west seem to be aligned fairly well geographically, and seems to keep intact long standing rivalries, such as edmonton-calgary, calgary-vancouver, and local rivalries (LA-Anaheim). i'm bothered more by the eastern conferences. i'm fairly disappointed that the rangers do not have another original six team within the same conference. why is carolina lumped into the conference with mostly mid-atlantic teams? why are the panthers and lightning in the same conference with mostly northeast US and southeast Canadian teams? originally this was how i thought the eastern conference SHOULD look.

Eastern Conference "1"	Eastern Conference "2"
Boston	Buffalo
Montreal	Carolina
New Jersey	Florida
NY Islanders	Ottawa
NY Rangers	Pittsburgh
Philly	Tampa Bay
Toronto	Washington

in this instance, you would keep all the eastern original six teams together, and keep intact most regional rivalries except for pittsburgh-philly. pittsburgh has had a budding rivalry with washington the last few years, obviously coinciding with the emergence of crosby, malkin, and ovechkin, so i think this would kind of offset the keystone state rivalry. but this kind of makes no sense. the more i thought about it, the better the following alignment looks.

Eastern Conference "1"	Eastern Conference "2"
Boston	Buffalo
New Jersey	Carolina
NY Islanders	Florida
NY Rangers	Montreal
Philly	Ottawa
Pittsburgh	Tampa Bay
Washington	Toronto

this seems to make the most sense geographically, given the i-95 corridor in the northeast (except for pittsburgh). you get to keep the philly-pittsburgh rivalry with this alignment. rangers-bruins and montreal-toronto are classic original six matchups that would never get old. montreal, ottawa, and toronto can battle it out for eastern canada supremacy; buffalo is close enough to toronto obviously to have a regional rivalry there. and then you have carolina, tampa bay, and florida battling it out in the southeastern part of the US. it's true that the second eastern conference seems to have two separate pods of activity, but it's kind of hard to do the eastern conference teams without breaking up existing rivalries. what do you think of the proposed alignment by the NHL?