Periodic Table of the NFL
What happens when a football fan with a scientific bent gets bored….
Draft Day Movie Review
Draft Day is a 2014 movie starring Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner, and directed by Ivan Reitman. The movie was released on April 11, 2014. The story is centered on Sonny Weaver, Jr. (Costner), the general manager of the Cleveland Browns, and how he orchestrates his player selections after acquiring the number one pick in the NFL player draft.
Kevin Costner and Jennifer Garner star in the 2014 movie Draft Day
The acting in Draft Day is poor. Mind you, Costner and Garner are fine, but the supporting acting is weak to say the least. Remarkably, NFL commissioner Roger Goodell might have done the best acting job of them all. Although Goodell’s cameo appearances are brief and essentially non-consequential to the plot, in all cases Goodell is natural and believable.
NFL Cheerleading Squad Names
26 of the 32 NFL teams currently have cheerleading squads. Through the years, most cheer squads simply took on the rather blasé moniker of their team. For example, the Cardinals Cheer team is known as the Arizona Cardinals Cheerleaders. (Yawn.) Some cheerleading squads are a bit more imaginative with their names. Listed below is a list of the innovative cheerleading outliers, past and present, that blazed their own moniker trail. (Source: Wikipedia)
Cool NFL Rebrand Concepts
Jaw-dropping! Actually a replacement helmet concept for the Utah Utes football program, but would work beautifully for the Chiefs.
The Bucs’ new uniforms are a perfect example of rebranding
Every so often, a NFL team will try to make changes to their football club’s image. This is known as rebranding. These changes can be subtle, such as a slight shift in messaging that better communicates the direction a team is heading, to radical, like an overall name, logo, and uniform revamp following a move to a new city. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers’ new uniforms are a perfect example of rebranding. Rebranding keeps a team’s image fresh and exciting.
I recently scoured the Internet for interesting and eye-popping examples of potential NFL rebrands. I found ideas for new helmet designs, concepts for clever new logos, and imaginative redesigns of uniforms. There are some very talented people out there! I’ve compiled a few of my favorites into a slideshow. Enjoy!
Tagged with: concepts, new helmet, new logo, new uniform, NFL, NFL concepts, NFL rebrand, NFL rebranding, rebrand
A Football Joke
Have you ever heard of Voki? It’s a website that allows a person to create animated flash videos. You can check it out at www.voki.com. Anyway, I was playing around there today and made a video of a football joke. Enjoy!
Display a Vintage Football Calendar
Football memorabilia is cool. It can take you back in time and effect fond memories of a favorite player or magical season. It’s even cooler when it serves a purpose. A great example is an old, vintage football calendar. The fact that calendars repeat every few years is an excellent happenstance that allows a person to reuse calendars from the past. There’s something natty about displaying a venerable football calendar from years ago.
Except for leap years, calendars typically repeat every 6 or 11 years. For example, this year’s 2014 calendar is a repeat of 2003 and 1997. I.e., January 1st falls on a Wednesday in each of these years, and Christmas day is on a Thursday. They are all duplicates of one another, and hence can be reused. The only discrepancies you may find are a small smattering of differing holidays, most of which are related to the Easter and the Lenten season: Ash Wednesday, Palm Sunday, Good Friday, etc. A few sticky notes affixed to the calendar will cure that ailment. See figure 1 for a list of calendar years that are repeats of 2014, as well as repeats for the years 2015-2017 for you proactive types.
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42 Yard Extra Point
Extra point attempts used to be exciting
Last season, NFL kickers successfully converted 99.6 percent of their extra point attempts. It’s become so automatic that the NFL Competition Committee is considering making changes to add difficulty to the extra point attempt, and hence create more excitement.
One idea the NFL may experiment with this preseason is to place the ball at the 25-yard line for extra point attempts rather than the 2-yard line, where it’s currently positioned. Because of the placement of the ball when kicked, that works out to the equivalent of a 42-yard field goal. For reference, last season saw 83 percent of field goal attempts between 40 and 49 yards split the uprights, so a 42 yard extra point attempt certainly would not be a gimme.
Tampa Bay Buccaneers New Uniform
The Bucs new uniforms are modern and flashy
The Tampa Bay Bucs unveiled new uniforms on Monday. My first reaction was that they’re too flashy. My personal tastes are throwback style. If it were up to me, the Bucs would be sporting simple pewter pants, white or red home/away jerseys, and a pewter helmet with a plain Jolly Roger, sans the flag. There’s something about a bare, blue-collar uniform that reflects toughness. Think Monsters of the Midway. Black pants, jersey, and helmet with a lucid, white “C” adorning the side. Now that’s intimidating.
The Most Beautiful NFL Cheerleader, Final
Congratulations go out to Casey of the Houston Texans Cheerleaders for being voted the Champion of Football Weblog’s First Annual Clash of the Pro Bowl Cheerleaders tournament! Once the final matchup was set, my money was on Casey to win the voting in a runaway, but it turned out to be a very close contest. Casey slipped past the Charger Girls’ Anjelica by a slim 8-6 margin. Nonetheless, it was Casey that prevailed. See the full tournament bracket HERE.
The voting for this entire contest was based on one picture for each cheerleader. Of course each gal is more than just a pretty picture, so here’s a short bio of your 2014 Clash of the Pro Bowl Cheerleaders champion (from www.houstontexans.com). Below that is a quick video from this year’s NFL Pro Bowl that provides a peek at all the gals in our tournament. Fittingly it features our new champion Casey.
Congratulations Casey!
Online Football Game
Hey, give this online football game a try. It’s called Running Back Attack. The object of the game is to weave your way through a host of rabid defenders intent on giving you a smack down. The game is played with a mouse only. I made it to the Super Bowl, and came close to pulling the game out, but couldn’t quite do it. See if you can!
The Most Beautiful NFL Cheerleader, Round Five Championship
Go Spartans!
It’s been a long and grueling playoff, but we’ve finally made it to the Super Bowl of our 1st Annual Clash of the Pro Bowl Cheerleaders tournament. (See the tournament bracket HERE.) It will be Casey, representing Houston, versus Anjelica, the redhead representative from San Diego, in the championship matchup.
The pictures for Casey and Anjelica are shown below. Vote for your fave. Polls will remain open until Friday, February 21.
Girl Football Star
It’s not every day that I’m inspired by a 9-year old girl, but Samantha Gordon is no ordinary girl. Sam is from the Salt Lake City area in Utah and plays football with the boys. But to simply say that she is on the same team with the boys is an injustice. Sam dominated her peers on both sides of the ball.
Sam gained notoriety for her football skills after her dad posted highlights of her 2012 season on YouTube. The video went viral. After being on YouTube for only two days, there were almost 5 million views. This alone is testament to the magnificence of her game.
In 2012, Sam scored 25 touchdowns and 10 two-point conversions. She scampered for 1,911 rushing yards on 232 carries – an eye-popping 8.2 yards per carry. Additionally, on defense, Sam notched 65 tackles.
Star Wars Football Helmets
AFC South
A long time ago, in a football league far, far away….
It is a period of gridiron battles. A young and boisterous squad, striking with quick hitting slants, has dominated the first quarter action against the grizzled veteran stalwarts.
During the contest, the young guns managed to steal the details of the experienced team’s ultimate offensive game plan, the Death Star Shotgun, a high-powered offense with enough command to obliterate the best defenses in the league.
Pursued by the veteran team’s assistant coaches, cheerleader Leia races toward the home team’s sidelines, custodian of the stolen game plans that can save her team from sure defeat and restore parity in the league…
The Most Beautiful NFL Cheerleader, Round Four Semi-finals
We’re a gettin’ down to the nitty gritty! 26 gals started this competition, and only four remain.
We are guaranteed that a blonde will advance to the championship matchup. Ashlee-TB and Casey-Hou are both blondes, and they square off this week for the chance to represent their teams in the championship contest. Ashlee had little trouble slipping past Maigan-Was in a 8-1 rout. Little Casey, too, dominated in her matchup against Melissa-SF with a 7-1 win.
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NFL Keyboard
I was thinking about my keyboard the other day and had an idea. Rather than a plain Jane keyboard, how awesome would it be to substitute letters from NFL team logos for each key? I decided to lay out a keyboard, and this is what I came up with. (See the image below.) It was fun to do, and I hope you agree that it’s kinda cool! 🙂
As always, run to daylight.
~Randy