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Peewee Football Team Fined for Breaking Mercy Rule

Peewee Football Team Fined for Breaking Mercy Rule

You’re an eight-year-old playing your first season of peewee football. You’ve never scored a touchdown in your brief, little life.

All you want in this sweet world is to catch a football and run into the end zone. That’s the only instinct humming around in your tiny body.

This was the extent of one youngster's impulses when he caught a pick-six in the fourth quarter of a recent peewee game and the resulting touchdown earned his team a $500 fine.

In a story that would make Roger Goodell slaver at the mouth, a Georgia peewee football team is facing fines and a coaching suspension after breaking a league-ordained mercy rule.

CBS 46’s Mike Paluska (h/t Andy Isaac) reports that the Lawrenceville Black Knights were winning 32-0 in the fourth quarter when eight-year-old Elijah Burrell caught an interception and took it to the house.

WSMV Channel 4

The resulting touchdown put the team over the 33-point mercy rule limit and triggered a $500 fine and an automatic one-week suspension for Elijah's coach.

Elijah's mother, Brooke Burdett, maintains that her son had no idea he was breaking any rules when he scored his first peewee touchdown.

“We were all super excited, [Elijah] was beyond excited and we were fined for it,” Burdett told Paluska. “[Elijah] had no idea [he was breaking a rule]. This is his first year. This was his first touchdown. He is an eight-year-old boy making a pick-six.”

Chando John, a mother of another Black Knights player, says there’s no way they could have stopped Burrell from scoring.

“How do I explain to an eight-year-old kid that your coach has been suspended because your teammate unintentionally scored?” John asked. “It’s hard having an eight-year-old in flight to think of everything everybody has said, other than I need to make a touchdown.”

At risk of joining the wussification of America saber rattlers, it’s clear that league rules ruined a good thing in this case.

Elijah now finds himself on the receiving end of the James Harrison treatment for the crime of doing everything he was told to do. As for the rule itself, I have less a problem with mercy rules than I do with the fact there are player-triggered fines in the constitution of a youth recreation sports league.

This isn’t New Orleans. No one gets an extra juice box for taking out knee caps. There isn’t a fixer in the top of the five-row portable bleacher rubbing his greasy hands as the Purple Geckos cover the spread against the Blue Dragons.

Don’t fine the kids. Don’t fine the team. Send an email and ask for the coach to "maybe try" to get their kids to score less, and get on with life.

Don’t ruin football for eight-year-olds. They have the rest of their lives to learn to hate pointless fines.

Original Article at www.bleacherreport.com

Slava Voynov suspended indefinitely

Slava Voynov suspended indefinitely

Slava Voynov was arrested Monday morning on domestic violence charges and has been suspended indefinitely from the Los Angeles Kings pending a formal investigation by the NHL.

A rule in the collective bargaining agreement states that, during a criminal investigation, "the League may suspend the Player pending the League's formal review and disposition of the matter where the failure to suspend the Player during this period would create a substantial risk of material harm to the legitimate interests and/or reputation of the League."

Reached by telephone Monday morning, Voynov's agent, Rolland Hedges, declined to comment about the situation.

"I'm sorry, I really can't," he told ESPN.com.

Hedges said he was working on gathering more information about the situation.

The defenseman will continue to be paid during the suspension. Voynov has two assists in six games this season.

When asked about the issue of domestic violence at the beginning of this season, commissioner Gary Bettman said the league had been working with the union on the policy for over a decade.

"We as a league have more than enough authority and mechanisms to punish, if necessary, in the appropriate case. Fortunately we haven't seen too many. But more importantly we focus on counseling and education, and in the joint programs we have with the Players' Association we've been counseling and educating on domestic violence for more than a decade, I don't remember the exact date," he said. "The security department does it in their annual meetings with each team, and the behavioral counselors from the substance abuse, behavioral health program also counsel and educate the players on those and many other issues.

"So I'm not sure for us there is any need for any code of conduct other than our players, who overwhelming conduct themselves magnificently off the ice -- we deal with it on a case by case basis. I don't think we need to formalize anything more. Our players know what's right and wrong, and as I said, we have the mechanisms in place to hopefully not get to that point."

Original Article at www.espn.com

Why Won't You Die Already....NBA LIVE

Why Won't You Die Already....

The case for NBA Live, the series, is also the case against NBA Live 15, the game hitting stores in 10 days. Sean O'Brien, the game's executive producer, knows this.

"I'm not selling you, or anyone, this game," he told me. He knows NBA Live's embarassing history, knows that everything he says sounds self-interested, knows that any claim he makes is pfft-worthy, especially with this year's game delayed three weeks past its announced launch date.
Here is the guarantee O'Brien will make, though: NBA Live 15 will be better than NBA Live 14 by about this much, he says, holding one hand about a foot above the other. And then NBA Live 16 will be here, he says, sitting up to reach higher.

"So, you're guaranteeing there will be an NBA Live 16," I say.

"Guaranteed." O'Brien says. "We've already started development on 16. We're staffing up. We're actually increasing investment on what 16 — and 17 — look like."

I have heard the water cooler talk, and so have others I talk to, some of whom worked in the studio where NBA Live is built, some with very desirable offices in that building. They have all said EA Sports is in the final year of its deal with the NBA and its players association, and once Live 15 launches, EA Sports will GTFO of a poker game dominated by 2K Sports, even with the online troubles facing its game.

Not so, says O'Brien, who has gone through hell with NBA Live before. Thirteen years ago he was a producer NBA Live 2001, which limped to a release on PlayStation 2 after the holiday season, and more than three months after the league's opening day. "It was a disaster, the game was terrible," he growled to me in another conversation in April.

Two years ago, NBA Live was in the same despair, following a thoroughly disastrous closed-doors showing at E3 2012. What the press saw had the chance of doing irrevocable harm if it ever released. O'Brien was working in independent development in Vancouver that summer and EA rang the batphone, asking him to right the ship. O'Brien, mid-40s with a wife and kids, was in a take-it-or-leave-it posture. He agreed to move his family to Florida for this project on one condition: Shitcan NBA Live 13.

They did.

Not that NBA Live 14, published under his leadership last November, was some messianic work. It was awful, as any simulation sports game made in a year would be. It needed six major post-release updates to stabilize into some kind of understandable playability. The plasticky player models reeked of vinyl action figures and their animations looked like something out of Monty Python. A title update three months later was celebrated simply for the fact it added a tutorial.

Then the rumors came, that NBA Live 15 would try to chisel as much as it could off the eight figures EA guarantees to pay the league, maybe roll a couple patches after Christmas for all the kids who got the game from grandma or Aunt Betty, then fire everyone and walk away.

"Part of me wishes people could hear the conversations I'm in," O'Brien said. "I wish I could snap my fingers and it would be two years from now. Right now, you're saying, 'Really, you guys are going to keep spending X dollars a year, to make X dollars a year? The math doesn't add up.'"

It doesn't and it does. O'Brien described NBA video games as a $350 million addressable market. More importantly, it's global, like FIFA, not a niche, North American-only sport like Madden NFL, baseball or ice hockey. EA Sports, despite its calamitous mismanagement of the license going back to NBA Elite 11, still has a strong relationship with the NBA, O'Brien says, and it also has strong ties to ESPN, whose broadcast package provides a huge shot of legitimacy. China, where the NBA has significant inroads and which recently opened up to western-manufactured game consoles, is as much an opportunity as it is an unknown (though Xbox One going to Shanghai did not by itself save NBA Live's bacon, O'Brien said directly.)

The potential is apparent, which is why EA Sports' squandering of it has been so exasperating. O'Brien knows this, which is why he is trying to stay away from direct sales pitches until he knows his game has brought the goods. He thinks NBA Live 15 will. It won't be better than NBA 2K15, because god damn, that is just a great video game — when it works right — regardless of genre. But the controls, the visuals and, most importantly, the online experience, will make a respectable showing that earns the chance to improve next year.

"We're a work in progress," O'Brien admits. The three-week delay this year, embarassing though it is, basically means the game can ship with a bunch of stuff that would have to be polished in a day-one patch anyway, O'Brien said. That's probably why there is no pre-release demo, which is rightfully held against the game, but it's not a statement of no confidence from the developer. It's just an admission the thing needs all the time it can get before release.

Without the tuning, O'Brien said, defense was too difficult given the level of ballhandling control Live 15 offers to players. And, yes, on day one, there will be another patch polishing even more things the team is uncovering right now, O'Brien admitted. NBA Live 14 launched with the Xbox One and PlayStation 4 in November 2013, meaning this edition's gestation is shorter than 12 months. Some of O'Brien's optimism for future years of NBA Live is knowing that it will get a full one-year development cycle before hitting the court.

 

 
I ask how it sits with his bosses — Andrew Wilson, the CEO of Electronic Arts, and Patrick Soderlund, the boss of EA Sports, both came up through development — to acknowledge the elephant in sports gaming's living room, and say next year's game will be better than this, which effectively means don't buy this year.

"It's a long term strategy," O'Brien said. "Building a high-definition game is not easy. I think the game we're creating is dfferent, and I think as we mature as a product, you'll see that difference come out more and more.

"The analogy is, I envision what Sam Presti [general manager of the Thunder] said when they moved to Oklahoma City. Is he selling season ticket holders on the promise that they will win a championship this year? Or is he selling them on the vision, what they want to do, and do you want to be a part of this," O'Brien said. "In our case, it's building a game, not a team."

The Thunder had a sad first year in Oklahoma, but have been to the playoffs every year since, including a finals appearance two years ago. They have Kevin Durant, the best player in the league, who stars on the box of NBA 2K15. He was also on the cover of NBA Elite.

Originally posted at www.polygon.com

Websim Hockey: Great Browser-Based Sim

Websim Hockey: Great Browser-Based Sim

Living in the US as a hockey fan can sometimes be a challenging task. People often overlook the sport or write it off as just a niche thing that only requires a passing glance.  For that reason, it makes sense that there are a plethora of (American) football or basketball team management sims out in the world that will pit human GM’s/Owners against one another via a grand fantasy league. 

Trying to find one that focused on hockey was no easy task until about 4-5 years ago I stumbled up WebsimHockey (websimhockey.com).  With the discovery I had finally found a hockey version that used real NHL players and allowed me to show off just how inadequate I was at juggling line-ups and remaining under the salary cap.

Over the years the site itself has undergone massive changes for the better. A few UI overhauls and more than a few tweaks to the mechanics themselves have turned what was once a pretty rough and clunky site into one that is extremely streamlined and easy to navigate. I have really enjoyed bringing friends along and, once I can talk them into spending the $20 to get their first teams, beginning leagues with them to determine just who is able to pull out those head-to-head matchups.

The few hiccups the site still has probably have to start with that $20 fee per season.  To someone on the outside looking in it may seem like an extreme fee for such an experience, but I can promise that the game more than makes it worth the price of admission.  For starters, each season can last 6-12 months (with some leagues actually going the full calendar year and running concurrently with the actual NHL even going so far as tying in the players attribute advancement/regression into how they perform during the real NHL season). Of course this means the people who are looking for the “instant seasons” that you get in EA Sports NHL franchises, you’ll sadly be left with lots of down time where you’re just making small tweaks to your lineup.

For new users, the learning curve can be a little steep but there is a decent community on the forums and I’ve never had any problem asking a question and getting a timely and polite answer in return. Any hockey fan would be doing themselves a favor by joining a league (one from the beginning so you get to be involved in the entire team drafting process) and giving this a try.  Even individuals who have a casual interest in the sport but really enjoy sports simulations may really enjoy some of the mechanics in play here as well.

I look forward to seeing you at the rink when we matchup in a league in the future.

In Dallas, Sidestepping Peril Off the Field, Too

In Dallas, Sidestepping Peril Off the Field, Too

ARLINGTON, Tex. — To watch a game with all its pregame and postgame trimmings in Texas, in Jerry Jones’s Temple of Excess known as AT&T Stadium, is to highlight what is deeply entertaining and not so modestly depraved about the N.F.L. game.

The Cowboys-Giants match, or what you could see of it beneath the blinking electronic scoreboard that hovers over the field like the Starship Enterprise, featured a glorious quarterback duel. The Cowboys’ Tony Romo and the Giants’ Eli Manning, who have battled each other since what feels like 1963, were throwing off their back feet, across their bodies, improvising jagged scrambles, muscling tosses into triple coverage.

In the end, Romo and the Cowboys prevailed, 31-21. But it was difficult to draw a conclusion more lasting than that Romo’s cupboard was more fully stocked with talent, with healthy receivers, a resilient and smart defense, and a transcendent running back, DeMarco Murray.

Time and again, Murray hurled himself against the Giants’ defensive line, a vast and collective mass of flesh and sinew and muscle. The Giants would stuff him once, and stuff him again, and hurl him to the turf for good measure.

Then on the next play, or the next sequence, he’d spin and squirt and tumble for 6, 7, 8 crucial yards. On the occasions when he broke free on the outside, and could wheel and spin and deke and feint, well, watch out.

For the Giants, Odell Beckham Jr. tossed down his claim as successor to the injured receiver Victor Cruz. He is a darting, slicing, frenetic sort, and when he catches the ball and can lay down the moves, he resembles a nervous breakdown.

The tailgating begins here at breakfast, moves through lunch (the men with blue-painted faces who wore hockey masks as they chopped vast slabs of barbecue were, in truth, a little bit disturbing), breaks for the game, and resumes in the twilight.

Once the game begins, violence begets violence, and the players claim to groove on it. So Giants defensive end Jason Pierre-Paul spoke afterward of his face-off with Cowboys tackle Tyron Smith. “He gave me some punches in the mouth, and I gave him some punches in the mouth,” he said.

But the injuries come galloping in. There were no season-ending torn ligaments and tendons. But the game had barely begun when the first announcements came of the bent and the mutilated. Defensive tackle Cullen Jenkins and linebacker Jon Beason each made the journey, over the course of the game, from “questionable” to “doubtful” to “out for the game.”

Behind it all are the men who make money off these games. At which point we can invite Jones, the Cowboys’ white-haired billionaire owner, to amble on in.

He talks and talks and offers excellent larger-than-life copy. “I sure am proud of those guys in there,” he said after Sunday’s game. “This was as fine of an hour that we’ve had for our crowd.”

At the same time, he makes you wonder, again, at the marvelously flexible document that is the N.F.L.’s behavior policy.

This past week Jones received a bit of good news, as a judge dismissed a sexual assault lawsuit lodged against him by a former stripper. She accused the owner, with photographic evidence to back her claims, of grabbing her genitals and forcibly kissing her. She also said Jones paid her hush money.

Two months ago, Jones said that “someone has misrepresented photos.”

The judge ruled that the lawsuit was barred not because it was false, necessarily, but rather because it was filed too late. Which in the eyes of the N.F.L. was not exactly the same as receiving a clean bill of health. Or maybe it was.

Jones’s good cheer and spirit of forgiveness has rippled throughout the organization. A few weeks ago, he announced that Josh Brent, a defensive tackle, could begin practicing with the team. Brent had been on an extended sabbatical after he was convicted of intoxicated manslaughter and served more than 100 days in prison. While driving drunk, Brent crashed his car, killing his passenger, Jerry Brown, a linebacker on the practice squad. (Brown’s mother later would plead with the Cowboys to keep Brent on the team.)

Brent apparently was truly repentant. He is also 6 feet 2 and 320 pounds and can, truly, hurl large men to the turf. That combination hits the N.F.L. sweet spot and moved Jones — an emotional man — to let Brent return. With a little more healing balm, Brent just might be able to play the final six games of the season, the Cowboys’ playoff push.

“In no way does this diminish our sorrow for Jerry Brown, his family and his mother,” Jones said recently. “If he gets the work done and get his weight right and gets himself in condition, he may get a chance to get on the field. We’ll see.”

Brent can’t actually practice with the Cowboys until Week 9. But he could travel with the team to London in early November. Jones hasn’t made his mind up on that one yet, although he assured the Dallas news media that Brent was “very contrite.”

It’s all enough to make you want to set your earphones to white noise and wander back up to the field to watch Romo and Manning duel mano a mano.

Original Article at www.nytimes.com

Welcome to The Sports Book

Welcome To The Sports Book

We hope that everyone enjoys reading and commenting on our articles.  Our information comes to us from places all over the web and personal experiences.  The writers on our blog are big time Sports geeks, Fantasy Sports players, and just normal sports fans who love the game.