Coffins are boring. Give me a live one anyday

Pro football keeps tweaking its rules. Sometimes it's for the safety of the players, such as clamping down on helmet-to-helmet contact, or outlawing "horse-collar" tackles and crack-back and chop blocks.

Other times, it's to make the game more interesting. Field goals were getting too easy with the advent of soccer style kickers, so they moved the goal posts back 10 yards. That was so more teams would try for touchdowns, rather than take the easy 3. 

Kickoffs used to come from the 50 yard line, but stronger kickers were booming it out of the end zone. So they moved it back to the 40, then the 35, and now it's at the 30. All of this was meant to ensure the kick returners would get a chance to actually run the ball, rather than the offensive team automatically taking it at their own 20, because returning kicks is a crap shoot. Sometimes very little happens, but once in a while, the guy just might break free and go all the way.

Knowing this, the NFL rule makers put in another penalty. If the kickoff goes out of bounds, then the receiving team gets the option of taking the ball at their own 40. That could conceivably be a 39 yard penalty. Pretty severe.  But they wanted, just like the fans, to see what might happen when a really fast guy started sprinting upfield into the oncoming herd. Maybe he gets blown up at the 10, or maybe he "takes it to the house". Only one way to find out so, for the most part, nowadays when a kickoff goes out of bounds, it's a mistake.

That said, how come punts are treated so differently? They're similar to kickoffs, given some dude with a strong leg boots it way up in the air, another fast guy waits for it to come down, risks his life, or at least a few body parts, and attempts to return it, while the same thundering herd heads downfield with malice aforethought.

If a punter kicks the ball out of bounds, intentionally or not, there's no penalty, but there should be. It denies the punt returner, another potential game-changer, and the fans, a chance at yet another electrifying play. Ya never know. If this happens, the receiving team should have options. They can take the ball where it went out of bounds, or at their own 40, like kickoffs, or given better field position, have a 15 yard penalty assessed from where it went out of bounds in the first place.

Put another way, if the punter is booting it out of his own end zone and the ball goes out of bounds at midfield, then the receiving team gets it at the 35. They're already in field goal position without even having to run a play. Teams might rethink this strategy and we get to see a return. More action.

Besides, the ultimate punt winds up in the "coffin corner". That's probably because most teams are dead once they get the ball there. Usually they'll run 3 plays for short yardage just to get enough room for their OWN punter. Boring. 

Sure, 99 drives yards have occurred, but they're about as rare as Peyton Manning turning down a TV ad.

Weird bounces happen close to the sidelines, you say? I don't care. It's 11 on 11 and they're called "special teams". If they're so special, then handle it. Punt it down the middle and let's see what happens.

C'mon, Lions' fans. Own up. When you see Devin Hester of the Bears waiting on a punt to come down -- don't you get a little nervous? Bet you wish he played for your team.

That's what I'm talking about. Ya never know. 

 

The hairiest thought of all

No pun intended, but this hair thing in the NFL has gone on long enough. There's blond locks, dread locks, straight locks, and frizzy locks. Here's hoping Detroit Lions' defensive lineman Ndahmukong Suh (pronounced Sue) never grows it out. He might displace a lot of water and require a wide berth, but Michigan already has the Soo Locks connecting Lake Superior and Lake Huron to accommodate large freighters carrying a big load, so he would hardly be an original.

Now far be it from me to say how men should wear their hair, because styles change and I've gone through a few phases myself. In college, mine got to be very long. Then I had to cut it off. Near as I can remember, it had something to do with getting a (gasp) job.

Many years later, for some reason, I grew a pony tail. After a while it just got to be too high maintenance. Or maybe it was that time in the barber shop getting trimmed up, when I held a small mirror in front of me, and could finally see the back of my head in the big mirror on the wall. Things had thinned out back there some. The pony tail looked like a long rotten hairy banana in bondage growing out of the bad side of a peach. Not good. So snip. That was gone.

But back to the NFL. I don't begrudge these guys doing whatever they want with their hair, but there's a reason all of them have their names and numbers on the back of their jerseys. It's so fans in attendance, announcers, and TV watchers can tell who's who. Lately, a lot of them have got to the point where their names are completely covered and, left unchecked, the numbers will disappear soon.

This is the same league where they mandate players dress "appropriately" coming and going from the stadium, have their fashion police strictly regulate everything from tucked in jerseys, to what color and style shoes, socks, wristbands, and even mouthguards they can wear; everybody has to have their chin strap snapped on both sides of their helmet before a play begins -- but yet it's OK with them if hair gets in the way of identifying players? Something is wrong here.

Sure, making a tackle by dragging a guy down by his hair is technically legal, but that rarely happens. It's the macho thing. Maiming is fine, but don't mess with the hair. Too sissified. So the running backs and receivers don't worry too much about it. On the defensive side? They know that grabbing their hair is off limits. It's called holding. Tweet. 10 yard penalty. And you'll notice very few offensive linemen with flowing manes. Given what goes on in the trenches, they know better. Same for quarterbacks. A few games like that with defensive linemen coming at them grabbing, ripping and tearing at anything they can get hold of for an advantage, and the back of their heads would look worse than mine.

Bottom line? In the interest of freedom of expression and all that, these guys should be able to grow their hair as long as they want, but it shouldn't get in the way of the ID things on their backs. A few suggestions:

They can get a bigger helmet and cram it all up underneath.

They can braid it and snap it down with the chin straps mentioned above. Just don't cover up the team logo. The fashion meter maids would not approve. Tweet. 10K ticket.

They can get creative and weave it through their face masks. As long as they can still see, this has the advantage of making them even more intimidating looking, but the disadvantage of, once done, no matter how bad they might want to take off their helmet for a breather while on the sidelines -- well -- good luck with that.

There's a much simpler way. Just tuck it inside the jersey in the back. It will eventually come out and fly around anyway, you say? Got it covered. Duct tape. No, not on the undershirt. It won't stick so well there. Tape the pretty boy's hair down directly to the dry skin of his back before the game starts. That hair's not going anywhere.

These guys pride themselves on being able to deliver and absorb vicious hits and popping right back up with nary a whimper. Macho men indeed. 

Just make sure the cameras are rolling and the audio's turned up when that tape gets ripped off. We'll see about that.

As for me? Not so macho. I'll stick to key locks, combination locks, maybe even occasionally eat a bagel with lox -- and I'm not looking in that mirror again.  

This is personal

If this results in me having to face the paper's cyber firing squad for getting personal, then so be it. I'll worry about that later.
For now, I made a couple promises and they will be kept.
First, there's my long-time Florida friend Mel, a transplant from Brooklyn, NY, and a die-hard Jets fan. The times we've had on the bikes over the years.....  The promise was to give him a shout-out if the Jets made it to the Super Bowl. I'm hollering at ya, bro.
The other concerns my local friend Debbie, an equally die-hard Chicago fan, that got the same promise if Da Bears also made it. It's not right to shout at a woman, so here's to you, Deb.
But wait a minute. Both their teams lost, so why did I say that? For a couple reasons.
If there's anything better than a true friend in this world, I don't know what it is. Just because the scores of the games didn't obligate me to keep my promises, doesn't mean I didn't want to take this opportunity to do so anyway.
What does this have to do with sports?
Mel and Deb have something Detroit fans don't. Contending teams to root for. Love him or hate him, in just 2 years, Rex Ryan has transformed the Jets from nobodies into the talk of the country. They beat Indianapolis and New England on the road, and were dominating the Steelers in the second half before time ran out. They're young, and will be back. The Bears seem to plod along under the radar, but when the dust clears, they always seem to be around. Both teams have not only played in the Super Bowl before, but won it.
What do football fans in Detroit have? The Lions. Since the first Super Bowl over 40 years ago, the Lions have never even advanced to a game for the right to PLAY in it, let alone win it. They went 6-10 this year, a major improvement over years past. Their coach will probably get a contract extension, season ticket sales will rise, along with the prices, and fans will pack the stadium, clad in Lions' paraphernalia, to cheer the team on. If a 6-10 record for the Jets or Bears had happened this past year, the coach likely would have been fired, and the teams would have been booed off the field.
It all depends on your level of expectations.
Personally, I'm hoping Mel packages up a little of that Florida weather and sends it my way. His idea of cold these days is a lot different than mine.
And Deb? See you at the office.
A cold one once in a while is a good thing.

Ron Artest is coming back to kick butt and it's going to hurt

The Beach Boys had a hit song a long time ago called Help Me Rhonda. I'll get back to that.
Remember Ron Artest? The dude that played the lead role in Malice At The Palace a few years ago during a game against the Pistons? He stormed the stands in a rage after getting hit by a few kernels of popcorn and maybe a few drops of soda, while laying on his back, and tried to wreak major bodily harm on a terrified kid. Yeah. That guy.

He's had a new part for a while playing for the LA Lakers. You know, the land of glitz, Kobe, courtside movie and rap stars, the Zen Master, and all that.

Turns out, Artest might have another career move in mind. He's got 3 more years left on his Laker contract, at which time he'll be 33, and when that expires, thinks he might give the NFL a try as a tight end.

I hope he does, for several reasons.

First, he'll quickly find out that while the NBA might be somewhat of a contact sport, comparing that to the NFL is like comparing a fender-bender to a train wreck. Those personal fouls he whines about in the NBA will take on a whole new dimension in the NFL. My guess would be the only thing he knows about chop blocks is associated with his in-house chef carving up an expensive piece of beef.

Speaking of prime meat, trying to box out a tall, skinny 180 pound guy from getting a rebound is light years removed from picking up a musclebound, blitzing 250 pound linebacker, much less finding himself in the position of trying to block a rushing defensive end. Either one goes way beyond a few kernels of popcorn hitting him, and that liquid won't be soda. It might be spit, sweat, blood, or maybe something embarrassing in his own britches, but I think we can safely rule out Coke, Pepsi, or Gatorade.

Finally, there's a better reason I'd like to see him try this. Tight ends have to catch passes too. Sure, they can run the easy 5-yard and out routes, but eventually he'd have to go over the middle into a zone defense, where linebackers and hard-hitting safeties would, in effect, take him back to the beginning.

Ron Ron would get steam-rolled like he did that kid at the Palace and, ironically, he'd find himself in the same position he was in when it all began. Flat on his back -- but this time it would hurt. A lot.

While looking out the earhole of his helmet and trying to readjust the body parts that were still functioning, being the smart guy he is, I have little doubt he would do the same thing he did once before.

Namely. he'd run into the stands again, but not for the same reason.

He'd be looking for that kid, or anybody else for that matter, to hide behind.
And that song? It would still plead for help, but this time it would be SUNG by Ron-duh.

A scary sports name

My name is Leach. As you can probably imagine, I've been teased a lot about that over the years. The junior high school mentality was brutal. But it could have been worse.

Some sports teams have nicknames that seem odd or don't even make sense. I'd bet you can come up with lots of them if you thought about it for a few minutes. Though it's old news, I'm going to pick a couple, as an example. 

On Christmas Eve, the Hawaii Bowl was played. The University of Tulsa came-a-calling to Honolulu. 

Hawaii's football team is now called the Warriors, but not that long ago, it was the Rainbow Warriors. That was a pretty cool name. Beats me why they changed it because, after all, there's lots of rainbows in Hawaii, and not that long ago there were indeed many warriors on those islands.

When Captain Cook sailed through there about the time we were fighting our own Revolutionary War, he named those territories the Sandwich Islands. So I guess it could be worse. In the end, even without the rainbow, just the name Warriors sounds a heck of a lot better than the Reubens or BLTs.

What really puzzles me, though, is the Tulsa football team's name. They're called the Golden Hurricanes. Last time I looked, Tulsa was still in Oklahoma, and while they may get their not so fair share of nasty weather in the form of  tornadoes or draughts, I don't remember any storms with names blowing through those parts. Put another way -- the chances of a hurricane happening in Tulsa are about the same as a volcanic eruption in Pontiac and, if I may exclude Mt. Patterson, there's no molten lava just beneath the surface. It's impossible. Can't happen.

And what's up with the "golden" bit anyway? I saw a hurricane in Florida once and there was nothing golden about it. It was gray.

Then again, as the Hawaiian football team's name could be worse, so could Tulsa's. Tornadoes usually bring unwanted torrential rain, but during draughts, people pray for it. Either way, it's mostly all about water. Some you welcome and some you don't. So if the good people in Tulsa insist on sticking to the golden color they chose for their team, but admit they never have hurricanes, and only occasionally get undesirable showers, then connect the dots, and that team just might be called the.... Tulsa Golden Showers???

Yep.

It could be worse. A lot worse.

If I'm Ryan -- I'm flyin

In case you haven't noticed, there's been a very sinister conspiracy going on for a long time to take over our minds. It's called the Ryan Syndrome.
Everybody loved Irene Ryan as Granny Clampett. Ryan Seacrest is all over the airwaves. Rarely does a year go by without Meg Ryan in a blockbuster film. Ryan O'Neal was part of the best "love story" of all time. Jack Ryan is the hero of renowned author Tom Clancy's books and films. Buddy Ryan came along and won the Super Bowl in 1986 with the Chicago Bears. Tom Hanks got in the act with Saving Private Ryan. I clicked over to ESPN and who was spouting off?  Bob Ryan, of the Boston Globe. There's even a soap opera named Ryan's Hope.
Maybe it started in 1951 when J. D. Salinger wrote the classic book Catcher in the Ryan. Roy Orbison woefully crooned about Ryan in 1961. The rock group Eagles followed up with Ryan Eyes in 1975. Not exacty true, you say? Close enough. They were merely subliminal references planted in our minds by the Evil Ryan Empire.
They're everywhere, I tell ya.
Now, love him or hate him, and there's probably little middle ground, we have Rex Ryan, head coach of the New York Jets.
What he's accomplished is impressive. In just a couple years he's taken a mediocre Jets team and turned them into very serious Super Bowl contenders. They appear to be as good as anybody right now.
Consider: Come playoff time, they went into Indianapolis and knocked off the Colts. No small feat. They followed it up by whipping the Patriots in their own back yard. An even larger feat.
How did this happen? A few reasons.
The Jets have lockdown cornerbacks that effectively remove the opponents' wide receivers from the game plan. They stick to their man like a federal indictment.
Second, future Hall of Famers like Manning and Brady are given a lot of credit for their passing games, but none of that happens without protection from their offensive line. Those guys are used to dropping back, and going through 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and maybe 4th reads, before having to throw the ball. The Jets don't allow that. Opposing QBs get to look at their first choice, maybe the second, and then BOOM happens. Peyton and Tom found that out the hard way. Get them out of their comfort zone, make them speed everything up, and they start looking more like Joey Harrington.
Now the Jets go to Pittsburgh, where Big Ben and his Big Bad Steelers await with their terrible towels. Can they pull it off? Beating them would complete an awesome road win trifecta, and be a colossal feat. We'll find out next Sunday, but I wouldn't underestimate these guys, given their last 2 games.
One last thing. If you happen to know how to get in touch with Rex Ryan, please don't tell him about my repeated references to "feats". Some say he has a fetish about such things.
I wear a size 11, but he doesn't need to know that.

Rip Hamilton exposed

Richard Hamilton of the Pistons recently got benched. Was it lack of productivity on the court, keeping him healthy for a possible trade, or something else? Beats me, but a lot of folks have been saying he got disrespected by not being allowed to play. For all those people, I have 2 words. Shut up.
This is a guy, at age 32, that's made well over ONE HUNDRED MILLION dollars, and counting, to play pro basketball for 11 years. To put that in perspective, that's probably more than your grandparents, your parents, you, spouses past or present, significant others, children, and maybe even grandchildren have, or will ever have earned in the course of their entire lifetimes -- COMBINED.
He likely lives in a house most of us would consider a mansion, replete with butler, maid, chef, pool boy, and gardeners. Also likely is a fleet of high-end imported cars, and a fancy boat or 2 moored in places we in the Detroit area would rather be right now, for whenever he gets around to them.
As an NBA player, he's had world class medical treatment, with no copay, and his family probably has similar coverage. Top of the line training facilities and a free massage at the snap of a finger? No problem.
At that, what did he ever have? A broken nose? Big deal. Maybe he should talk to his much lesser paid NHL brethren about their teeth, stitches, and other things they man up about and never mention -- or the NFLers about ACLs, broken bones, concussions, and the average length of their pro careers.
While on the road with the team, he's flown on a plane that would put normal first class accommodations to shame, stayed in 5 star hotels, and been provided meal money while out on the town, as if he needed it.
Now, certain folks are pining and whining away because he didn't play a game or two. It's disrespectful, they say.
So let's all have a sob fest for poor Richard. Oh, boo hoo hoo. The poor man. How will he ever survive? R.I.P. Mr. Hamilton.
Shut up.