Are you ready for some football! It is the end of July and football season is starting with the opening of training camp. There are two major football stories in the news this week. On Monday, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell conditionally reinstates Michael Vick following the end of his prison sentence for running a dog fighting operation. Vick will be allowed to play in preseason games and practice, provided he can find a team that will sign him, and Goodell will decide on Vick's full reinstatement no later than Week 6 of the 2009 season. Vick did say this week that he is close to signing with a team. But of all the 32 teams in the NFL, only 6 teams have interest in the troubled QB. I hope he doesn’t sign with an NFL team but goes to the new UFL that starts play this fall. I think Vick needs a year or so to mature while playing in a minor league.
The other big football story this week is that Brett Favre, who was considering coming out of retirement for the second consecutive season and playing for the Minnesota Vikings, announces that he will remain retired, saying that he does not feel physically able to play for a full season. I’M glad Brett is not coming back this season because I want to remember him as a great QB and not the one that came back last year with the Jets. Unfortunately as Peter King of Sports Illustated said, “We will probably have to revist this after the season.” Please just leave the stage Brett.
The major baseball steroids story of the week is that in 2003 former Red Sox Manny Ramirez and team mate and current star, David Ortiz had tested positive for performance-enhancing drug. 2003 was the year to test to see if Major League Baseball had a steroid problem. The positive tests should have been private. There were supposedly about 100 ballplayers that tested positive that year and only about a quarter of the names have come out, so, why not publish the whole list so we can know and just end this drama. Some people think the Red Sox and any other team that won the World Series in the steroid era ( I would say 1995 to 2005) needs to give back their Championship. Let me know how you feel about it. In the record book I would just have a section called Steroid Era and have all records from that time peroid listed. As far as the Hall of Fame goes, no player from that era should be allowed in.
Media Watch
ESPN became the story last week on two occasions. Frist, Erin Andrews was the victim of a “peeping tom” who took a nude video of her in her hotel room. ESPN made the decision to ban all New York Post sportswriters from it’s shows because the paper printed photos of Erin from the video. This decision was reversed because the Editor of the Post decided not to print the photos. That was the good news for ESPN.
The bad news was the way they handled the Ben Roethlisberger civil lawsuit story. ESPN in the initial days of the story, issued a “Do not report” order to its jouranlist. Why? When a lawsuit is filed in a courtroom in the United States of America and the person being sued is the current Super Bowl winning QB it needs to be report. If it was any other football player in this situation, it would be reported and be the first thing on SportCenter. ESPN needs to look at their policies and procedures to make sure this does not happen again. Oh wait, ESPN doesn’t have any policies or procedures, only when it comes to social networking sites like twitter or myspace. Just last night (Tuesday August 4) ESPN sent a memo to all employees for using Twitter unless it was for ESPN purposes. This could be a good thing I guess. I will keep my eye on this story.
This just in to the laznet news room. Aussie Rules Football is back on ESPN. The network reached an agreement with the Australian Football League to cover up to three live games each weekend for the remainder of this season and the next two after that. Most of the games will be online at ESPN360.com but a select number of games will be televised on ESPN2. This includes this year’s championship game (the Grand Final) in September. I’M so exticed, I grew up watching Aussie Rules Football on ESPN back when we were both growing up and I have miss it since. Can’t wait for the fall!
This Weekend
Next week I will be on Cape Cod for our family vacation, Don’t worry I will have TV and will be bringing my laptop, so if there is any breaking news I will be on it.
The major sports events this weekend is another round of the Red Sox against the Yankees. After a shakey month of July for Boston, the Yankees lead in the American League East is 2 and a half games (entering Thursday). It is a 4 game series that starts Thursday at Yankee stadium. It is always fun when these two teams get together.
There are two big MMA events this weekend. UFC 101 from Philadelphia Saturday on Pay-per-view. The main event of the night is a bout for the UFC Lightweight Championship, Champion B.J Penn will take on Kenny Florian. This should be a great fight as both guys have a ton of experience and are both Jiu-Jitsu specialist. I wish I could see it or better yet I wish I could be there live.
Sunday night in Las Vegas is WEC 42 live on Versus. The main event on this card is a fight for the WEC Bantamweight Championship. The champion Miguel Torres taking on Brian Bowles. The lighter weights are always exciting and this fight should be more of the same. One of the great things that makes MMA so exciting is that it is so unpredictable and anyone can win on any given day. I hope to catch this fight.
And that is the way it is.
Jamie Lazaroff
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