National Football League (NFL)

Are you glad Brett Favre retired? Will he stay retired? Will the Steelers repeat? Anything else on your mind?

Feel free to let us know what you think.

Can't stand Brett Favre. Steelers have as good a chance as anyone to win next season. This season made me hate the division system because the Patriots should have been in the playoffs at 11-5. The NFL should eliminate divisions and go to two conferences, top 4 teams per conference make playoffs.

I couldn't stand Favre for the longest time and then I started to like him as his career winded down in Green Bay, then i hated him again once he came back. if he retired when he said he was going to i would have respected him so much more, but he just couldn't do it...all those crocodile tears for nothing.

as for the steelers, they are going to be tough to beat next season. the pats will be back doing their thing of course, so that could be a fantastic AFC title game in the making right there. only time will tell.

i like your idea for the playoff system. i'm not saying that for the sake of the pats...it would give every team that performs well a much better shot at making the playoffs. it's too bad that a team that has a break out year can miss the playoffs after all that, but it also shows how well solid the league is that you can miss the playoffs even being 11-5.

Have to say i have never understood this sport at all, i remember being younger and the Fridge was the man and Dan Marino, that's all my NFL knowledge gone! lol

ya the legends of the nfl are so much more respectable...jerry rice, walter payton, emmitt smith...all classy hard-working guys. that's what i look for in any professional athlete.

Bills RB Marshawn Lynch has supposedly been arrested and charged with felony possession of a concealed weapon. Do you think anything will come of this? Probably not since he's a professional athlete, but we will have to see.

Football players always have that sort of off the field trouble. It's all that artificial testosterone they inject into their bodies.

Matt Cassel and Mike Vrabel on the Chiefs?!?!?! way to go Pioli. take all of our awesome players from us. it's ok though. the pats are contenders every year. the chiefs can't win 5 games let alone make the playoffs and a super bowl.

what does everybody else think?

you're a patriots fan i take it?

yes very much so...all boston teams...patriots...red sox...celtics...revolution...bruins. i don't really follow that last 2 as much, but the first 3 most definitely!

Reading this i am becoming more frightened, i forgot about the Rev's lol

NFL i can't do though, just seem's dead slow and complicated to me. One thing i have never understood is why Americans call NFL "foot"ball when most of the game is played with the hands, and you call football, soccer even though it's played mostly with your feet lol

that's just us americans being slightly stupid at times hahaha.

Don't be so hard on yourself Taylor, you didn't come up with the name yourself. (a) It was some guy a hundred and fifty years ago. (b) That guy was English. Wikipedia!

hahaha thanks for the support pini...wikipedia solves all problems!

Yeah...basketball was invented by an American, but baseball and American football both date back to England.

Without doing a "wiki" would baseball be a derivative of "rounders". The girls at our secondary (high) schools, used to play "rounders" which is pretty much a simplified baseball.

Well you may have to do a "wiki" because i have absolutely no idea lol

Rounders (Irish: cluiche corr) is a game played between two teams, each alternating between batting and fielding. The game originates in England and has been played there since Tudor Times, with the earliest reference being in 1744 in "A Little Pretty Pocketbook" where it is called Baseball. It is a striking and fielding team game, which involves hitting a small, hard, leather-cased ball with a round wooden or metal bat and then running around four bases in order to score.[1][2] The first nationally formalised rules were drawn up by the Gaelic Athletic Association (GAA) in Ireland in 1884. The game is regulated by the GAA in the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and the National Rounders Association (NRA) in Great Britain. Both have different, although similar, game-play and culture. Competitions are held between teams from both traditions with games alternating between codes, often one version being played in the morning and the other in the afternoon.

Game-play centres around innings where teams alternate at batting and fielding. A maximum of nine players are allowed to field at one time. Points ("rounders") are scored by the batting team by completing a circuit around the field through four bases or posts without being put 'out'.

The earliest nationally formalised rules of play were devised by the GAA in Ireland in 1884. In 1889, associations were formed in Liverpool and Scotland. The NRA was not formed until 1943. Baseball (both the "New York game" and the now-defunct "Massachusetts game") as well as softball are likely to share the same historical roots as rounders (see origins of baseball) and bear a resemblance to the GAA version of the game. Rounders is linked to British Baseball, still played in Liverpool, Cardiff and Newport. Although rounders is assumed to be older than baseball, literary references to early forms of "base-ball" in England pre-date use of the term "rounders". Rounders is now played from school-level to international

Very interesting blackburnbob...i had never heard of rounders until yesterday...hmmm....i guess there is quite a strong connection between the two...good pick up on that!

i do think it's funny that we are having this in depth discussion in the NFL section of the forum hahaha!

Nevermind this section, it's bonkers full stop! lol

i support the Miami Dolphins mainly thanks to Taylor for recommending them.

Thanks Taylor

Don't bother. First of all, if you have to pick a team, pick the New England Patriots. Taylor is from New England, so I don't know why he recommended the Dolphins. The Patriots have had the best head coach in the league for the past nine years, Bill Belichick. He's the main reason I still follow the team, having become less and less a fan of the sport over the past couple years.

Secondly, NFL is going down. American football is an inferior sport to begin with, and the commercialization surrounding it is ridiculous. An NFL game has so many commercial breaks that only about one third of the TV broadcast shows the game; the other 2/3 are commercials. That's not a new development, it's how it's always been, at least as long as I've been alive. NFL fans accept it without thinking twice. Now that soccer is making what looks like a sustained run in the American sports landscape, NFL will die out. NFL is, RIGHT NOW, still huge of course. But soccer is the sport of the future here, in my estimation. You'll have to take my word for it, because it's up against what look like impossible odds amidst some huge sports. But I'm sure it will happen.

j6pini wrote:Don't bother. First of all, if you have to pick a team, pick the New England Patriots. Taylor is from New England, so I don't know why he recommended the Dolphins. The Patriots have had the best head coach in the league for the past nine years, Bill Belichick. He's the main reason I still follow the team, having become less and less a fan of the sport over the past couple years.

Secondly, NFL is going down. American football is an inferior sport to begin with, and the commercialization surrounding it is ridiculous. An NFL game has so many commercial breaks that only about one third of the TV broadcast shows the game; the other 2/3 are commercials. That's not a new development, it's how it's always been, at least as long as I've been alive. NFL fans accept it without thinking twice. Now that soccer is making what looks like a sustained run in the American sports landscape, NFL will die out. NFL is, RIGHT NOW, still huge of course. But soccer is the sport of the future here, in my estimation. You'll have to take my word for it, because it's up against what look like impossible odds amidst some huge sports. But I'm sure it will happen.

I dont mind nfl going down to be honest because i support it as another sport besides soccer, i used to only think about 'soccer' but now i have another sport to like.

If you want the MLS to be really succesful you need to improve the way its run because at the moment the way its run is ****. Don't blame Taylor about the Miami thing. I asked him to recommend a team which isnt the best but also isnt the worst because i dont want to be a glory hunter.