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Oakland's Rich Gannon led the victorious AFC
team to two first
quarter touchdowns, earning himself the game's MVP award.
NFL closes out season
Surprises, disappointments mark topsy-turvy
year
With the AFC's 38-17
victory over the NFC in the Pro Bowl, the league
officially concluded it's first football season of the
new millennium. It was a season that ended the way few
had predicted. Preseason Super Bowl favorites Tampa Bay,
Tennessee, Indianapolis and St. Louis fell short of their
goals, while the Washington Redskins, the choice of many,
failed to even make the playoffs. For the New York
Giants, Oakland Raiders and New Orleans Saints, it
represented a major step upward and for the Baltimore
Ravens, it was truly magical. The Ravens, going into the
season, were viewed as a good defensive team, one with a
fair chance at qualifying for post-season play for the
first time in their existence. The defense, however,
adding an arsenal of take-a-ways to their repertoire,
became great….amazing….one for the books.
Record after record was set by Baltimore's defenders and
the unit dragged the offense along for the ride.
Culminating with their historic win over the Giants in
Super Bowl XXXV, the Ravens defensive unit rose to a new
level in the postseason, allowing just a single touchdown
in four outings. The offense was spotty in 2000 but rose
to the occasion numerous times when needed. Baltimore,
led by head coach Brian Billick, in only his second year,
overcame many team hurdles and roadblocks. In week 2,
they defeated the Jacksonville Jaguars for the first time
in 9 tries. That game, a thrilling come-from-behind 39-36
victory seemed to exorcise the demons that the team had
long carried and forged an unbreakable bond with the
citizens of Baltimore. A new era had arrived and the
Ravens began to play with that "We know can do it"
attitude. The team rolled out to a 5-1 record and seemed
nearly unbeatable. Just as soon as the invincible feeling
sunk in however, it vanished. October brought an
inexplicable offensive swoon in which the team could not
muster a single touchdown during a five-game stretch. The
on-top-of-the-world feeling seemed to be replaced by the
bottom-of-the-barrel, same old false-start team that had
meandered through four previous seasons. Another
milestone game faced the Ravens. A week after the team
had finally broken the touchdown-drought, they faced the
AFC Champion Titans at Tennessee, a place in which they
had never been beaten. Baltimore, on that day, replaced
their "We know we can do it" motto with "We
will do it". Winning in dramatic fashion before a
hostile Adelphia Coliseum crowd, the Ravens never turned
back. They would not lose again. Mustering just enough
offense to compliment their stellar defensive unit,
Baltimore reeled off 9 more victories, all the way to the
Vince Lombardi trophy. There will never be another season
like the one just witnessed. The exciting wins, the
outpouring of a city's love and that first championship.
The marriage is made and the task now is to maintain. For
the fans, it will be a spring and summer of savoring and
for the team and staff it will be hard work. Coach
Billick and his squad face the unenviable task of keeping
focus, improving and perhaps the most difficult
assignment in all of sports: Repeating. Baltimore, love
affair now consummated, awaits.
SuperBowl.com
offers history for fans
For Super
Bowl buffs, SuperBowl.com is most certainly the place to be. With
streaming highlights of all of the past games, records,
history, trivia and much more, the site is a must visit
for all fans of the championship game.
Goodies from NFL.com
NFL.com offers some very valuable
information and insight for the football nut in all of us.
They provide a free newsletter, tailored to your
favorite team. In addition, they have available for sale,
The Record and Fact Book. ($15.95). Many of
the records included in the book however, are provided
free of charge here. The Digest of Rules, Quarterback Rating Formula and the Coaches Club give fans an
invaluable look inside the game.
NFL Hall of Fame
Web Site
History of pro football on
display
There are
many things to see and enjoy at the official Pro Football Hall
of Fame web site. Learn about the roots of the
league in a decade-by-decade look at the NFL or study a
team-by-team look into football's great history. Visitors
to the site can view listings of football's greatest
heroes alphabetically, by team or by position. It is a
cyber-trip well worth the taking.
Mel Kiper's Top 25
With this
year's NFL Draft scheduled for April 21-22, ESPN's
longtime college football analyst Mel Kiper takes a look
at the hottest prospects. Read what Mel has to say about
the NFL's stars of tomorrow and watch video clips of
their collegiate accomplishments. [Mel Kiper's Top 25]
THE FIELD OF LINKS
XFL:
"Not Ready For Prime Time"
New football league fumbles in
inaugural telecast
The XFL at last made its
much-ballyhooed national TV debut on February 4th. The
joint venture between NBC and the WWF's Vince McMahon had
for months built up hopes with its promise to provide
viewers with "real football". Instead, a
dumbfounded audience was left to wonder if the network
had mistakenly aired "Saturday Night Live" a
few hours early. With inferior players, bad camera
angles, screeching microphone feedback and live, in-game
in-your-face type interviews, the league did little to
validate its claim of being a legitimate football entity.
Viewers could sense that something was amiss when they
saw the words "He Hate Me" stitched across the
back of a player's jersey in lieu of a surname. It was
reminiscent of the ole high school prankster who used to
slap a "Kick Me" sign onto the back of the
class nerd. Perhaps it was prophetic though, as NBC had
enlisted Jesse Ventura, the Minnesota governor and ex-WWF
wrestler as their color man for the big telecast.
Ventura's exaggerated voice inspires inadvertent laughter
and Minnesota residents may have been wondering just who
was minding their store....or simply enjoying the night
off. In a stroke of genius or a half-witted attempt to
defray attention from the inferior product on the field,
NBC spared no gimmick. Combining "This is Your Life",
"Who Wants to Be a Millionaire" and "Survivor",
the network took great pains to interview players' family
members and tout the league's "play for pay"
salary structure and "no fair catch" rule. A
Vince McMahon product would not be complete without
scantily clad women and thus, the cheerleaders rooted on
their teams bearing just a smidgen of clothing. What may
have been the most puzzling component of the XFL's "inside
approach" to the game, however, was the public
broadcasting of the offensive play calling to the
onlooking nation. It appears that anyone who can get
their hands on a workable Sony Watchman can become a star
defensive coordinator in the new league. NBC, their once-proud
association with the NFL now history, has brought pro
football down to the same level of half-sport/half
sideshow as that of their partner McMahon's professional
wrestling. With the sub-par athletic talent unmistakably
in the forefront, the gimmickry is expected to continue
and in the spirit of goodwill and charity, I offer the
following crowd-pleasing enhancements:
1) Cheerleader mud-wrestling matches at halftime.
2) Equip the defensive players with boxing gloves..…or
at least water balloons.
3) Add more politicians to the broadcasting booth. Jesse
is fairly contentious but how about some real
heavyweights: Clinton….Gore…..Newt Gingrich……all
of whom are available.
4) Make the on-field cameraman an eligible receiver. He
already wears a helmet, let him play.
5) More catchy phrases on the backs of jerseys. Names are
boring. "He Hate Me" is admittedly an attention-grabber
but what about …."Why's Everybody Picking On
Me?" …."I Gotta Be Me", ….."Oh,
Lonesome Me".
The Good Ole Days of Football
A tribute to the days of
blood, guts and dance-free touchdowns
Ohhhh....Old days, good
times I remember, Gold days, days I'll always treasure....Take
me back, to a world gone away....Good memories,
seems like yesterday....", goes the Chicago song.
Ah yes, the good ole days. As Archie and Edith sang,
"girls were girls and men were men". Those
wonderful times before gold hoop earrings, endzone hula
dances and post-touchdown hugfests took over. When
scoring and great plays were expected of professional
players and not celebrated as if the winning lotto ticket
had been found. I'm not that old a fella but times sure
have changed in the NFL. Call me old-fashioned but what
troubles me is that I know in my heart that somewhere,
somehow, in some dimly lit locker room, some tough guy
has asked, "Do these earrings go with this jersey?"
or "Does this wiggle make my butt look fat?"
Who can picture Unitas saying, "Hang on a sec there
Weeb, I can't get this hoop to slide in" or "How
'bout if I hit Berry in the corner of the end zone, then
do the foxtrot"? Oxymorons, I tell you. A bunch of
big, tough guys doing their Madonna and RuPaul
impressions in public. Jack Lambert, one of the roughest
middle linebackers of all time, once said of
quarterbacks, "maybe they should put dresses on them".
Well Jack, we're getting there. Perhaps George Carlin
needs to update his classic "football vs. baseball"
routine, for little did he know that the golden era of
football would one day refer to jewelry. Could the
pioneers of the NFL have envisioned that the league would
some day institute a rule outlawing certain "dances"?
Believe you me, Vince Lombardi would be doing the flip. I
don't want to take my kids to the Hall of Fame some day
only to overhear some proud dad say, "Son, that
there is the earring that Deion Sanders wore in the Super
Bowl" or "Looky here, this is Mark Gastineau,
inventor of the sack dance". Pink Floyd once sang, "When
I was a child, I caught a fleeting glimpse, out of the
corner of my eye. I turned to look but it was gone, I
cannot put my finger on it now, the child is grown, the
dream is gone". I don't ask for much. Perhaps
the NFL could steal a page from one of Major League
Baseball's "turn back the clock" promotions and
leave the dangly earwear and goose-stepping on the shelf
for a week. Take it away Archie and Edith...."Those
were the days".
"He's a dancer...and
he sparkles and he shines..." --Crack the Sky, 1975
For a complete and
comprehensive listing of
official and independent football sites, visit:
