I found this piece of the past while looking for something else in my office’s archives today: a proposed domed stadium intended to lure an NFL team, circa 1986. This project, which would have been included the usual hotel/restaurant/other development stuff we always hear attached to stadium proposals today, would have been built in southwest downtown Phoenix. It never was, obviously, and I can’t find any information on when the whole thing went up in smoke. (As it happens, the St. Louis Cardinals moved here anyway and played at Sun Devil Stadium in Tempe for 18 seasons before University of Phoenix Stadium opened in Glendale in 2006.)

The design resembles what eventually became CenturyLink Field in Seattle (except for the complete roof – a necessity here). I don’t know if they hoped it would house JUST an NFL team or an NFL and, eventually, an MLB team (tough to tell the dimensions on that drawing and if there would have been enough space inside for a proper baseball field, and the chances of building two domes in downtown wouldn’t have been great).

I just found this piece of history that never came to pass was interesting.

Apparently on tonight’s Inside the NFL, Phil Simms made a point of saying Bronco quarterback Tim Tebow got “cut a lot of slack” for his 13 of 27, 161-yard, 2 touchdown game (the bulk of which came in the last five minutes) in – HELLO – an actual win by his team on Sunday.

Said Simms:

“If Joe Flacco, Mark Sanchez, any of those guys played a game like that, how would it have been taken? You know, even in their rookie years, they would have been destroyed for it.”

Yes, Phil, indeed. Had Mark Sanchez, say, gone 7 for 15 for 104 yards and a touchdown in a narrow victory over a bad team, he’d have been laughed out of the league. Even as a rookie.

Well, what do you know? Turns out Sanchez didn’t just have a game sort of like that – he had that game. On December 3, 2009, the rookie Sanchez turned in those numbers in a 19-13 win over the 4-8 Buffalo Bills. Did he get destroyed? Don’t see it in this recap. How about this one? Nope. This one? Uh-uh. (Though coach Rex Ryan did call Sanchez a “knucklehead” for diving instead of sliding while trying to get a first down and hurting his knee. Is calling someone a “knucklehead” destroying them?)

Not seeing where Sanchez got destroyed for having pedestrian numbers in a game his team won.

How about Flacco? What if you had to go all the way back to….October 2nd of this year to find Flacco having a 10-for-31, 163 yard, 1 interception performance in a win? Man, I’ll bet his coach, John Harbaugh, really lit into him after that performance.

“I think we played against a really good defense, and you want to be smart about the kind of throws you make when you have the corners out there covering receivers real tight. Do you want to know what I remember? I remember the third down completion to LaQuan Williams, where we were running the ball about 14 times in a row, and then we got that third down conversion to get about three more minutes off the clock. So, to me that was a great throw and a great catch against really good corners. Credit our offense for finding a way to win a game.”

Well, yeah, you can choose to remember a third down completion to convert a third down and eat more time off the clock if you want. Just like you can remember two touchdown throws and a run for a two-point conversion, all in the last five minutes. In a game your team won. I guess you can do that. If you want. But, really, why not just make something up about how other quarterbacks who performed like that would get destroyed? It’s television, you have to say stupid stuff.

As you watch countless hours of NFL Draft-related programming over the next three days, just remember not to get too high or too low about whichever players your team selects. History tells us this is far from an exact science and that even people with years of experience in the game sometimes fumble what they think is a good call.

Case in point, the 1998 NFL Draft, whose big drama was “Peyton Manning or Ryan Leaf?” It’s hard to believe now, given what has happened in the interim, but there was actually a debate on this. And ESPN The Magazine‘s Stephen Rodrick probably wishes he had at least one throw back. In the cover story for the April 20, 1998 issue, Rodrick compared Manning and Leaf and concluded:

“Sorry, Archie. I’m taking Ryan. Maybe it was watching Leaf against Arizona as he implored the coaching staff, ‘Call my number, I’m hot. I’m hot.’ Or Ryan running by Coach Price during his first Washington game after a completion into double coverage and chuckling, ‘Didn’t think I’d get the ball in there.’ He possesses an ‘I don’t give a crap’ attitude that has proven essential to Super Bowl quarterbacks from Stabler to McMahon to Favre. Come 2018, Ryan Leaf, not Manning, will be strutting up to a podium in Canton.”

Turns out that ‘I don’t give a crap’ attitude wasn’t the boon it was made out to be. Manning’s the guy with the MVP awards, a Super Bowl ring and a date with the Hall of Fame. Who knew? The Colts, for one. Mark Malone, for another, who wrote in that same issue, “you don’t look at (Manning) and wonder if he will reach his potential.”

Ron Jaworski, meanwhile, wrote, “Leaf has the body and the heart to hang in the pocket when a lot of quarterbacks won’t.” Wasn’t it Leaf’s body and heart that turned out to be the real problems, after all?

You remember the World League of American Football, right? Later called NFL Europe and NFL Europa before being shut down after the 2007 season, the WLAF made its debut the weekend of March 23-25, 1991, with the first game on ABC being played in Barcelona on the 24. Here are highlights, with Brent Musburger and Dick Vermeil on the call:

The Knights only lasted two years, but the Dragons made it to 2003.

Completely coincidental, I’m sure, but three consecutive stories on USA Today’s sports website front page today feature prominent NFL figures practicing freedom of expression:

There have been things I’ve been thinking about things that have happened lately, but as I’m on sabbatical from social media for a bit and I’ve been focusing on some other things since the start of the new year, I’ll just dump them all into one post for now:

• I could write a whole bunch (and have, in comments here) on the whole USSF/NASL/USL thing, but Fake Sigi does his usual thorough job here, so just read that and I’ll get back with you on that. (BTW, FS, if you’re really coming to AZ for spring training, get in touch.)
• Devo has a good take here on part of that situation. Decisions and consequences, indeed.
• I’m going to guess ESPN won’t have a problem hiring Andy Gray (who’s been sacked by Sky) because…well, he’s got an accent. (BTW, this whole incident was the reason for this short post the other day. Brits may have invented the game, but some of them sure know f***-all about the rules.)
• I’m sorry, but putting Marta in Rochester is like having Luciano Pavarotti sing at the Burt Reynolds Dinner Theater in Jupiter, Florida.
• I have to admit, it was kinda hard to root for Ben Roethlisberger on Sunday, but it’s harder to root for Rex Ryan and the Jets, so there you are. It used to be easy to pick a Super Bowl winner: you just identified the better team and picked them to win big. They usually did. Since the era of free agency (note to any readers under 30: NFL players didn’t always have free agency), it’s been harder to pick Super Bowls. Green Bay’s hot, though. I wouldn’t bet against them.
• Along those lines, do you think NFL fans should be as embarrassed as MLS fans with internet access screamed that they were when low-seeded teams advanced in the MLS Cup Playoffs last season? I mean, a six seed made it to the Super Bowl, and a 7-9 team not only qualified for the playoffs, they hosted a playoff game (which they won, congrats). Surely the same embarrassment applies, right? Once again, boys and girls: playoff systems don’t determine who wins, teams determine who wins.
• If you don’t well up when you read this, you’re either not a father or not human.
• And, speaking of fathers and sons: my terrific son, Zach has chosen a college after a year-long series of visits and re-visits and discussions. He’ll be an Arizona State Sun Devil this fall, and I couldn’t be happier for him or more proud. I love you, Buzz.

Dan Dierdorf went on and on Sunday about how Peyton Manning gave himself up on his game-clinching 27-yard bootleg to avoid risking injury (even the flacks on NFL.com agreed, apparently). But to most people it was obvious he knew that if he slid short, the game was over. Manning even said if he’d wanted to score, he’d have scored.

How can you get paid to be an NFL analyst for so many years and yet be so out of touch with the game? How many more stupid things does a guy have to say before someone at CBS pays attention?

The first thing I thought when I read that the Steelers had been awarded a phantom first down in their game against the Jets Sunday was, “Wow. Two weeks in a row.”

Then I read the story and saw it was Pete Morelli’s crew that made the mistake. The same crew that gave the Redskins a first down they didn’t earn the week prior against Tampa Bay.

This latest SNAFU happened early in the second quarter on a 1st-and-10 play from the Jets’ 35, so it’s not quite the same as scoring on fifth down to nearly tie a game with just seconds to play. But this has to be addressed. Where is Mike Pereira on this?

It turned out not to matter, and not a lot of you saw it happen (few who did are likely to care), but the Washington Redskins apparently did get an extra down and used it to score their nearly-game-tying touchdown against Tampa Bay yesterday. Only one of the stranger endings to an NFL game that I can remember kept the mixup from mattering.
(more…)

Here’s a cautionary tale for all the broadcasters out there: It’s about Indianapolis Colts’ broadcaster Bob Lamey just crushing quarterback Peyton Manning off the air, which wouldn’t have been an issue, really, had a local Indianapolis radio station not played what he said on their air. (I don’t know if it was “inadvertently” played or “inadvertently” made available, the Indianapolis Star story on it could use some clarification.)

Having known Bob Lamey for many moons, I can tell you without question this was nothing more than the flip side of intense passion for something. There simply IS no one in our industry who cares more deeply for the team for which he broadcasts than Bob does. (Let’s put the wisdom of that aside for a second; yes, it’s homerism, that’s life, Bob’s too old to change now.)

Only something you deeply care about can move you to extremes of love and (at times) hatred. If you’ve ever had an argument with your wife, you know what I’m talking about.

The NFL has “figured Manning out?” Come on, that’s crazy talk. He’s been in the league 13 years, they figure people out before that. (And nobody wants to see Curtis Painter starting in the NFL. Not even Curtis Painter’s family. Nobody would suggest you bench Peyton Manning for Curtis Painter unless they were temporarily insane.) Manning is on the other side of thirty, he has no supporting cast and things happen. This was totally about frustration. Bob wants – and has always wanted – the Colts to win every game, either going away or in dramatic fashion and when they don’t, it’s the worst thing that’s ever happened.

Whether he should feel that way – or whether any of us should get to that point in our coverage of a team – isn’t my point. I personally can’t get THAT worked up about wins and losses, and if I had a Super Bowl ring, I’d probably be even less inclined to. But YMMV. Bob’s certainly does. You can call him whatever you like, but you can’t call him fake. What you hear is what you get.

I tell my students at ASU: If you make a living speaking into a microphone, always assume that sucker’s live and everybody can hear what you say. Not all of us have had long enough and impressive enough careers that we could survive ripping the star player of the team we work for.