I had the pleasure the other day of attending a talk given at the New York Law School by NFL Players Association Executive Director of External Affairs George Atallah, who was joined by Jets fullback and player rep Tony Richardson to discuss the recent developments regarding the NFL lockout.
I enjoyed the talk, though there really wasn’t very much of a substantive nature to say while they wait for everything to sort itself out after Judge Nelson’s bizarre ruling. It’s interesting to see the underlying weirdness of the two sides still being very far from each other, and yet having to go through the motions at NFL facilities to satisfy a judge’s ruling that has a pretty decent chance of being overturned.
I thought Atallah and Richardson seemed bemused by the idea that public opinion is probably mostly in their favor. After all, the players didn’t ask for anything more than what they already had, and then Roger Goodell had that weird op-ed piece with all the fear tactics. They also seemed amused that they could potentially mess with the Draft, though there’s obviously no way they’d do that and screw with their positive standing in the court of public opinion.
A couple of videos after the jump:
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I got a call today from Sig, a longtime friend of SportsAngle, who offered up his NFL mock draft services for the site. I wasn’t planning to run a mock draft here since I don’t really watch a whole lot of college football — and there are always so many trades and such, I think it’s impossible — but I saw no downside to using Sig’s first-round mock. Conversely, the upside is he gets a decent amount of these right and it looks like we know what we’re doing here.
What qualifies Sig to be SportsAngle’s version of Mel Kiper? Well, he watches a ton of both college football and the NFL. That’s basically the equivalent of the qualifications I consider myself to have in order to do NBA mock drafts, so that’s good enough for me.
Plus, he gave my beloved Dolphins another guy named Mark Ingram, and they did pretty well with the first one. I’ll be honest, I don’t know a whole lot of the guys he listed down there, but provided Miami doesn’t draft Pat White again, I think I’m okay with whatever they do.
Note: We didn’t have time to put together any commentary on the picks, but I’ll keep tabs on how he does, and I’ll try to get his opinions on things after the draft. And let this serve as a reminder that I gladly take guest submissions on SportsAngle, especially when it’s about something I have little to no knowledge about.
Sig’s picks after the jump:
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Our good friend and budding sports mogul Elliot Solop, proprietor of The Sports Tomato, has been doing some great stuff at New York Law School. He got in touch recently to tell me about a couple of really interesting events this week that he thought I would be interested in, and would perhaps like to share with SportsAngle. Elliot was absolutely right, as I hope to attend both events, work permitting.
Here’s the information, after the jump:
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I often have my packages delivered to my parents’ house since I live in an apartment, and when my father recently dropped off a delivery I had been eagerly awaiting, I immediately tore it open and pulled out a jersey I would consider a holy grail.
My dad took one look at my new Barry Bonds “Turn Ahead the Clock” jersey and said, “Son, that’s the ugliest jersey I’ve ever seen.”
I couldn’t quite argue. Beauty is most certainly in the eye of the beholder, and yet even I had to admit this thing was hideous.
Hideous like a fox.
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They seem to have specialty shops of every kind at the shopping mall surrounding the diamond at Citi Field. For example, I’ll bet you never knew there was a Mets Kids Store at Citi. Or maybe you did, but I sure didn’t — at least until my good friend Mike, a devoted Mets fan, had his first daughter three days before my first trip of the year to Citi Field.
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All this drama about Kobe Bryant using a homosexual slur piqued my interest, mostly because I’ve learned from that same mistake.
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As a compendium to my thoughts on WrestleMania 27, here are my favorite photos from the event and the surrounding atmosphere. I was going to include some videos I uploaded to YouTube, but the WWE filed a copyright claim against me. The least they could have done was a personal cease and desist call from Vince McMahon, right?
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As I get older, I feel it’s important to do things once in a while that make me feel like a kid again, that evoke the things I enjoyed back when my main responsibility was to have as much fun as possible while still learning my multiplication tables.
That’s why you’ll find me eagerly anticipating every new Spider-Man and Batman movie, why I remain a Big Bird apologist, and why you’ll never hear me say a bad word about brooding Mets flameout Gregg Jefferies, whom the fifth-grade version of me adored.
And that’s why I found myself — albeit in a slight state of disbelief — among 71,000 screaming enthusiasts at the Georgia Dome for WrestleMania 27 on Sunday night.
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