Why the Redskins’ name should be left up to… the Redskins

UPDATE – June 18, 2014: ***[In light of the 50 Senate Democrats who recently sent a letter to the National Football League and demanded the Washington Redskins football team change its name, as well as the U.S. Patent Office having just cancelled the Washington Redskins’ trademark registration (by calling the team’s name “disparaging”), we’ve updated the post below accordingly…]***

The feelings that a sports team’s fans have about their team’s nickname/logo are incredibly strong, maybe more so today than even in years past. In the old days and in every sport, plenty of athletes would spend their entire careers with one team, whereas that’s incredibly rare now. So when we’re rooting for a team, it may consist of almost entirely new personnel from one year to the next.

THIS makes the team nickname one of the only consistent aspects with which to identify. We end up rooting for an icon and an image, whether it’s a Giant, a Viking, a Bruin, or a King.

And that’s why this brouhaha over the Washington Redskins’ nickname has folks so thoroughly steamed.

The best hockey commercials EVER, …and how we MIGHT be seeing more of ’em, sooner than we think

The commercials are at the bottom of this post. But if you’ll allow me just a moment, I’ll explain what got me thinking about ’em in the first place.

As a lifelong fan of all things hockey, I’m well aware that it’s the black sheep of the United States professional sports “family”, viewership-wise. To illustrate, the NBA’s playoffs ratings are destroying the NHL’s right now; it’s not even close. Even the NFL draft (the freakin’ draft?!?!?) crushed the Boston/Montreal Game 6 Semifinal in the ratings by a 5-to-1 margin.

And this has been the trend, unfortunately. Heck, the first two games of the 2012 Stanley Cup Finals (both nationally broadcast on NBC, by the way) got soundly thrashed by RERUNS of the following programs: ‘Dogs In The City’, ‘America’s Funniest Home Videos’, ‘Secret Millionaire’, ‘America’s Got Talent’, ‘Grimm’, ‘2 Broke Girls’, …and a rerun of the rerun of ‘America’s Got Talent’.

Yikes.

That’s the difference between getting beat …and getting a beat-down.

And yet, both the league and the sport are positioned for success, perhaps now more than ever before.

It’s back: the NHL Winter Classic!

We were denied the opportunity to see it last year, but thankfully it’s back. And if you haven’t seen this event before, you owe it to yourself to watch.

It’s gonna be special, especially with having skipped a year.

Even if you’re not a hockey fan, …try it.

Just once:

An Open Letter to the #NFL: your officials are incompetent, corrupt, …or both

Dear NFL,

I think we need to stop seeing each other, and you deserve to know why.

It’s not as if we haven’t had some good times together, I’ll admit. We’ve shared joy and sorrow; anger and elation. You played, I watched; it worked out well. All in all, we’ve been pretty compatible.

But now, things are …different. You’re lying to me, and you’re lying to yourself. You have a problem, and until you deal with it honestly, we can’t go on this way.

The #Redskins are merely the latest target of the PC crowd, …but they won’t be the last.

The feelings that a sports team’s fans have about their team’s nickname/logo are incredibly strong, maybe more so today than even in years past. In the old days and in every sport, plenty of athletes would spend their entire careers with one team, whereas that’s incredibly rare now. So when we’re rooting for a team, it may consist of almost entirely new personnel from one year to the next.

THIS makes the team nickname one of the only consistent aspects with which to identify. We end up rooting for an icon and an image, whether it’s a Giant, a Viking, a Bruin, or a King.

And that’s why this brouhaha over the Washington Redskins’ nickname has folks so thoroughly steamed.

The Death of Wisdom; or Zero Tolerance = Zero Common Sense

Again with this?

Courtesy of WeaselZippers:

COLUMBUS, Texas — An act of faith has cost an area track team a win and a chance to advance to the state championships.

This past weekend, the Columbus High School Mighty Cardinals had just won a boys relay race when a runner’s final gesture got them disqualified. As he was crossing the finish line, Derrick Hayes pointed up to the sky.

His father believes he was giving thanks in a gesture to God.

“It was a reaction,” father KC Hayes said. “I mean you’re brought up your whole life that God gives you good things, you’re blessed.”

Columbus ISD Superintendent Robert O’Connor said the team had won the race by seven yards. It was their fastest race of the year.

Though O’Connor cannot say why the student pointed, he says it was against the rules that govern high school sports. The rules state there can be no excessive act of celebration, which includes raising the hands.

If that is what counts as “excessive”, exactly what qualifies as a sufficiently “moderate” act of celebration: sweating?

Obviously, Sports Logos mean more to us Fans than to the Owners

It’s not that I’m against change, but I don’t like changing stuff just for the sake of changing it.

And it’s official: the Miami Dolphins have changed their logo, which for my money was one of the most enduring, and endearing, left in sports today. They went from this:

…to THIS:

Ten Best Super Bowls of all time (VIDEO)

I am blessed/cursed with a weird memory.

Regardless of my efforts to the contrary, I still struggle to recall specifics of history or dates. For instance, I can’t tell you with absolute certainty when the Spanish-American War started, or if Martin Van Buren was president immediately before William Henry Harrison, or immediately after.

Yet with zero effort, I can tell you the name of the fill-in drummer that Kiss used when recording their ‘Dynasty’ album (Anton Fig), or where the first indoor Super Bowl was played (the Louisiana Superdome in Super Bowl XII).

It wasn’t completely without merit, I suppose: I won a decent amount of money back in college with Super Bowl trivia, in particular.

Thus I could completely bore you with facts about all of the Super Bowls which are included in the clip below. But rather than that, I’ll let you enjoy just a few minutes of the most thrilling games ever played on football’s biggest stage.