killjoy32 wrote:here you go SB sports-fans, lets see if you can answer this one....

which MVP had the biggest shoe size?  

Al

My guess would be Harvey Martin.

bombadil wrote:
The guy is bigger than most NFL linebackers...and fast!

so how does all that draft thing work cos i never really got my head around all that.

when and where can you find out who the jets are going for? would be nice to be able to follow things a little i guess..... cos over here, you generally dont hear a thing like that...

Al

bclarkie wrote:
Actually Al, what do you think about Beckham coming to play in the US.  We discussed it briefly here before, but you were absent.  What are your thoughts?  

It is certainly a great move for Beckham.  The size of the deal and the fact that he is coming to the end of his career means that it must have been a no-brainer for him financially.

I've been interested by all the talk about him being an ambassador for football in the US and the drive to popularise football over there.  I read an article (in the Economist I think) that said that actually LA Galaxy were already one of the most popular "soccer" teams although their following, like the following of many of the Major League Soccer teams was primarily hispanic.  The article suggested that this was soccer's core audience in the US and it was unlikely to expand beyond that core, with or without Beckham.

I can believe that as I lived in the States during the Italian World Cuip in 1990 and I had to watch some of the games on Spanish language TV channels complete with spanish commentary.  The games were simply not on English language channels although on cable given the number of US sports channels one could watch all manner of (what seemed to me like) minor interest sports but not world cup football.

Has his move to LA Galaxy actually been big news in the US?

In other news England beat Scotland in the Six Nations Rugby.

i think it will make the US soccer scene a more world-wide scene generally. thats what beckham will give you, so that it won't probably matter to a massive degree with regards to the US punters watching as the worldwide audience will more than make up for it i would imagine.....

as for england v scotland - great game and i am very relieved to see that england FINALLY got their finger out and toughed it out for a win. nice to see some of the older heads back and they look a much stronger unit already. italians next, so that should be an interesting game to see how they go about their game, as last year was such a poor struggle.

lets see how they fare against the french and the irish.....that will show us how good they are.

nice to have something to cheer for once more.

though i watch rugby league and the super league is off and running again - far more interesting  

Al

Xaxaxe wrote:I'll play the curmudgeon card and point out that recorded history did not begin on Jan. 15, 1967, the date of the first Super Bowl. The NFL played its first season in 1920 and the league has had some sort of postseason championship (often, just a single game) since 1932. The AFL also held entirely separate championship games from 1960 to 1969.

Any discussion of "all-time" championships should begin with the Packers, who have won 12 NFL titles (from a span of 1929 to 1996).

I don't why this bugs me, but it always has. When people talk about "Super Bowl champions," it just leaves some great teams ineligible for the discussion — including, ironically, the 1965 Packers, who were actually the first of three straight championship teams for Green Bay. Everyone knows about the second two teams, as they won the first two "big games," but the poor '65 team gets kicked to the curb every time ...
.

I'm sure a lot of football fans feel the way I do:  Pretty much all pro football pre-WWII, both records and championships, are totally bogus.  Some years the league had 10-11 teams...that's right, you had a 10% chance every year right off the top of winning the championship!  No black players.  No passing to speak of.  Some seasons a team might play 10 games, another team might play less. Crazy clubs based in cities even smaller than Green Bay (Providence, RI for one).  It was basically a beer league until the mid to late 30's, and didn't really come into it's own until post WWII.  Being as the Packers won six of their "championships" in that time period, I'm just not very impressed.  To put it perspective, an average sports fan can probably off the top of his head name a dozen pre-WWII baseball players.  Only diehards can do the same with any pre-WWII professional football players.  There just is really no type of comparison with the type of grueling season teams must go through now to reach the superbowl as there was back when it was merely a championship game after the regular season.
  That being said, the Packers get shorted on the dynasty they built from 1960 on that is only partially shown by the first few Superbowls.  If there had been a true "Superbowl" from 1960 on, the Packer would surely have won the 1961, 1962 and 1965 games and perhaps more as well as the first two superbowls in 1966 and 1967.  Imagine if some team now reeled off five superbowls in 7 years, including three in a row. That's basically what the Packers did in the 60s.  Essentially the Packers were right in the middle of an incredible run when the "superbowl" started, and their early 60's dominance is sometimes forgotten.  Ditto with the New York Giants that had some amazing late 50's teams.  
 So, while the Packers might get the short end when it comes to their 60's teams, don't tell me those 30's teams that started Carl the local postman at RB and Fargo the butcher at QB, playing against no black players and running the ball 75 times a game, were anything resembling a professional sports franchise.  
 Throwing more fuel on the fire, weren't the 1929, 1930 and 1931 Packers so-called "Championships" just a fancy word for they finished the season with the most wins?  Am I wrong or were there not even a post season back then?  
 Also Packer haters like to point out that if the Packers won more "real" superbowls they wouldn't have to be digging around into pre WWII mythical championships to pad their totals      

Mike B.

Does anyone on the other side of the pond know of a TV program called The IT Crowd?

Kamelion wrote:Is that the sitcom about a small IT department in some crappy office, where the manager doesn't know anything about computers?

I saw something like that here .... not sure if it is the same show.

killjoy32 wrote:
as for england v scotland - great game and i am very relieved to see that england FINALLY got their finger out and toughed it out for a win. nice to see some of the older heads back and they look a much stronger unit already. italians next, so that should be an interesting game to see how they go about their game, as last year was such a poor struggle.

lets see how they fare against the french and the irish.....that will show us how good they are.


Al

England have had good players for the last three years but the coaching and attitude has been crass. Learn from the ozzies at cricket: it's not about just winnign it's about keeping on winning, always keeping the standard high. the English took a three year sabattical because they won in 2003.

As for this year ...well the scots hadn't beaten the english in 20 odd years at Twickenham. Our lads played OK against the Welsh. I thought that would be a difficult one. And the French predicatably stuffed the Italians in their own backyard.

Now for the Irish: the French at home ... O'Driscoll seems fit, as do Murphy & D'Arcy.

England have the easy start against the two weakest teams ... Scotland and Italy: the perennial whipping boys of the six nations tournament.

We (Ireland) have the three toughest: wales (away), France and England. Our biggest challenge is living up to the billing as favourites. We are notoriously bad at that.

Xaxaxe wrote:Wow, 100 pages for an "off-topic" thread. Foul is going to have to cut this bad boy off pretty soon ...

Thread locked due to excessive off-topic conversation.  Or maybe it's just because we're at 100 pages.  New thread started.

Foul