NFL BlindSides: Super Bowl Edition

Published February 8, 2010 Colts , NFL , Saints 1 Comment
Tags: , ,

by Tony Bosma

If you saw my Super Bowl pick from Sunday, you already know I picked the wrong winner and MVP, but nailed the Super Bowl halftime review. The NFL may have featured two quarterbacks living in The Who’s generation this year (Kurt Warner and Brett Favre), but it didn’t take much thought to know that when you rely on older gentleman to perform at a high level, the chances of a let-down are high. Don’t get me wrong, I like The Who, but when the stage surrounding a band is more captivating than their performance, it doesn’t say much for the band. And this is coming from a guy who fully embraces classic rock and is sick with the state of music today.

Since I play by my own rules in this column, I’ll be holding off on game comments to cover a few parts of the Super Bowl spectacle. You know how I felt about the halftime show, but let’s dig a little deeper.

Best Commercials (in no particular order)

  • Google: Search On. Who knew you could tell such a nice story through a search engine? Creative and kept you watching to see how it would end.
  • Bridgestone: Your Tires or Your Life and Whale of a Tale. A guy gives up his wife before his car (classic) and a bachelor party group ends up with a killer whale in the bed of their truck (even more classic).
  • Carmax: Monkey/Dog. Profound looks on an animals face will always make me laugh.
  • Hyundai: Ten Years. The fact that this could actually happen made it 50x better.
  • Motorola: Megan Fox Photo. Good premise and I’d like to see the results in real life.
  • CareerBuilder: Casual Friday. Any office worker would appreciate this commercial.
  • E-Trade: Girlfriend. The E-Trade baby is a certified pimp and I hope if I have a kid one day, he is a clone of the E-Trade baby.
  • Coke: Hard Times. It’s nice to see Mr. Burns down-on-his luck. It just is.
  • Doritos: House rules. Look, any time you have a trash-talking child smacking a grown man after he looked at his scantily-clad mother, you have a winning commercial.
  • TruTV: Punxsutawney Polamalu. If Polamalu were the size of a ground hog, he’d still blow up suckers in the NFL.

Continue reading ‘NFL BlindSides: Super Bowl Edition’

The Super Bowl Pick

Published February 7, 2010 Colts , NFL , Saints Leave a Comment

by Tony Bosma

You’ll have to excuse the late posting of my Super Bowl pick, but I simply forgot to click the “Publish” button earlier in the day.

I won’t get into stats and facts you already know, all I’ll say is when you make picks like this, go with your gut feeling and never turn your back on it.

Colts 34, Saints 28

MVP: Peyton Manning

Halftime show: horrible

Think The Unthinkable

Published February 7, 2010 Colts , NFL , Saints Leave a Comment

Hardly anyone is picking the Saints today.  If they do 3 simple things, they can shock the world.

By Scott Pharr

I have been carefully following all the usual football expert suspects over the last two weeks to try and get a feel for the general consensus regarding their opinion on who will prevail in today’s Super Bowl.  From Peter King to Chris Collinsworth to Trent Dilfer to << enter your NFL Network or ESPN personality name here >>, today will be all about the blue horseshoe and number 18.

Peyton Manning

Overwhelmingly, those who follow pro football for a living are predicting victory for the Colts, and most who see that happening are saying the Vegas line of 5 ½ will be easily exceeded.  There is just not a lot of love to be found for the consummate overachiever Drew Brees and his band of pinball-machine-scoring Saints.  Let me rephrase that..there is plenty of ‘love’ for the Saints, in fact maybe more love than just about anytime I can recall recently, in any sport.  Just not a lot of hardcore football faith that they can actually pull this thing off today.  Watching the Colts systematically take apart the Jets in the 2nd half of the AFC championship game does make it truly hard to imagine any team better than the Colts for 60 minutes of football.  I offer 3 reasons why the Saints can in fact do what so many say just can’t be done today.

Continue reading ‘Think The Unthinkable’

Five Super Bowl story lines that need to end

Published February 4, 2010 Colts , NFL , Saints Leave a Comment

BOSMA’S BREAKDOWN

by Tony Bosma

The Super Bowl has become a national holiday. Like Christmas, it is being exploited and advertised to the point that you can’t escape it. Now, there is no reason to ever want to escape football – it’s the best sports entertainment on television since Stone Cold Steve Austin left the WWF. However, the endless media cycle and repetition of the same commentary has me to the point where I’d like to kick every ESPN football analyst and finish them off with a Stone Cold Stunner. But like the rest of you, I’ll refrain, and continue to watch like a zombie no matter how many times I’ve heard the same analysis.

Here are the five Super Bowl story lines that need to end before I lose my mind:

1. Peyton Manning may or may not be the greatest quarterback of all time

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here. Manning has won one Super Bowl, four MVP’s and plenty of NFL records, but while he’s still playing it’s too early to give him the greatest-of-all-time title. At least wait until AFTER the Super Bowl. If Manning grabs a second title he’ll give the media even more incentive to call him the greatest, and at that point we can have the conversation. I’ll have an in depth look at the best playoff quarterbacks of all time after the Super Bowl and will highlight where Manning stands amongst the greatest playoff quarterbacks of all time. Until then, just enjoy the game.

Continue reading ‘Five Super Bowl story lines that need to end’

The List: Worst Sports Movie

Published February 3, 2010 The List 6 Comments

Last week, GCS gave you our Top 10 list for best sports movie of all time (you can see that here). As we continue our quest to rank every and all things, we’re going from best to worst and presenting you the worst sports movies of all time according to GCS.

In our best sports movie list, we agreed on many. But this week, varying opinions were submitted by our writers and many didn’t make the cut. One thing we did agree on with this list is that you should never waste your time watching the following movies (1 = worst of all time):

  1. Rocky V – Stallone nearly ruined the Rocky franchise with this movie. Tommy Gunn? Are you kidding?

    How did Stallone let this happen?

  2. Caddyshack 2 – Never had a chance.
  3. Juwanna Mann – The worst idea since Clear Coke
  4. The Replacements – Keanu Reeves is not an athlete. Nor can he pretend to be.
  5. Eddie – Whoopi Goldberg….
  6. Rookie of the Year – Dungeons & Dragons is more realistic
  7. Summer Catch – Had Jessica Biel, but even that couldn’t save it.
  8. Slap Shot 2 – This is why sequels should rarely be made
  9. Fever Pitch – Almost ruined the glory of the Red Sox finally winning the World Series
  10. Mr. 3,000 – Bad x 3,000

Honorable Mentions: The Air Up There, Radio, Rollerball, Next Karate Kid

Give us your feedback in the comments section

Bears and Martz both need to win now

Published February 2, 2010 Bears 1 Comment
Tags: , , , , ,

By Wes French

Mike Martz is the new Bears offensive coordinator after a long, rough search by the Chicago braintrust.

Martz has ties to Head Coach Lovie Smith from their time spent together in St. Louis; time spent taking the Rams to the playoffs and winning a Super Bowl in the process.  Martz was tabbed as the odds-on favorite to become Chicago’s OC even before Ron Turner was goated out of his job, yet it took over three and a half weeks for him to get an interview.  So why was a guy with a successful history with the coaching staff, a Super Bowl ring and a reputation for high-powered offenses the EIGHTH candidate inquired upon?  Something smells off in Halas Hall. Continue reading ‘Bears and Martz both need to win now’

In The History Books: Some Gamblers In, Some Gamblers Ineligable

Published February 2, 2010 Bio , MLB Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , , , ,

PART THREE POINT SIX SIX REPEATING:

Rule 3E: “Any player on Baseball’s ineligible list shall not be an eligible candidate”

Some of the game’s biggest cranks and gamblers do not appear on the ineligible list and are actually in the Hall of Fame. This is another reason why one could easily question the credibility of the Hall and its practice of defaming some people while immortalizing others.

The Hall of Fame is a private institution. If it saw fit, the Hall could cut any and all ties to Major League Baseball. By all means, they can allow anyone they want to be inducted into their museum and plaque room, but at what point are we going to stop caring what they do?

Continue reading ‘In The History Books: Some Gamblers In, Some Gamblers Ineligable’

Charity efforts of two extraordinary QB’s difference between being a man and just a QB

Published January 29, 2010 NFL 2 Comments

Patrick McGuire

As we all know, professional athletes make more money than any one of us can imagine.  Some athletes find ways to spend their money, most of the time on things they don’t need and often find themselves in financial or personal trouble because of it.  However, some athletes spend their money in efforts to help others and those in need.

Over the next few weeks, I will be focusing on particular athletes and/or organizations and charities sponsored by athletes that aid in efforts to help those that are less fortunate.  A lot of these charitable acts by high-profile athletes are not well promoted by the media, but appreciated by so many.  It’s important to let people know exactly what some of these athletes do to help their respective communities and charities.  I hope to enlighten some skeptical minds and give people a new appreciation of some of these high-profile athletes and the influences they are to the others.

Continue reading ‘Charity efforts of two extraordinary QB’s difference between being a man and just a QB’

In The History Books:The Character Clause and Cocaine

Published January 27, 2010 Bio , MLB Leave a Comment
Tags: , , , , , , ,

PART THREE POINT THREE THREE REPEATING:

Rule 5: “Voting shall be based upon the player’s record, playing ability, integrity, sportsmanship, character, and contributions to the teams on which the player played.”

Steroids and HGH were not the first drugs to take over the major leagues. It’s just about guaranteed that they won’t be the last ones either. Drugs addictions have proven to be a recent enough trend that a barometer has not been created to measure how much damage they can do to a players Hall of Fame chances. It could take a series of decades to create such a scale for judgment.

Sportswriters haven’t been presented with many cases where an addict’s career was so impressive that they should be inducted despite their vices. Dave Parker might come close, but even he is enough of a borderline case that he wouldn’t do the Hall too much damage if he were never to get in. Some players like Ferguson Jenkins, who I will discuss below, have had run-ins with drugs, but caught a break and made it into the Hall anyway.

Where is the line? Why do some players get breaks? What criteria will put a player over the line where drugs and vices stop mattering?
Continue reading ‘In The History Books:The Character Clause and Cocaine’

The List – Best Sports Movie

Published January 25, 2010 The List 7 Comments

Here at GCS, we’re unveiling a new feature called The List. Every week or two, we’ll publish a list solely based on our opinions, and no others. You’ve seen some of these lists before and you may even have your own, but when you want the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, you come to GCS.

Seven GCS writers developed their Top 10 lists. In order to fairly score each movie based on where it landed in each person’s list, the following system was developed:

  • Selections were scored based on the following points system: 1st place vote = 10 points, 2nd place = 9 points, 3rd = 8 points, and so on.
  • Any movie given a No. 1 overall rating received 5 additional points.
  • No movie receiving 1 vote total was eligible for the Top 10, no matter what.

Without further ado, here are the Best Sports Movies of all time according to Grand Central Sports with tweet explanations following (total points in parentheses):

  1. Hoosiers (50) – Jimmy Chitwood. Enough said.

    #15 Jimmy Chitwood

  2. Bull Durham (39) – Minor League hero jacks homers and dreams big. Downfall = women. What a surprise.
  3. Field of Dreams (37) – If you film it, we will love. Put Iowa on the map.
  4. Rocky (36) – Ultimate underdog story. Rocky might be illiterate, but he knocks fools out.
  5. Caddyshack (35) – Gopher. Rodney Dangerfield. Bill Murray. Absolute gold mine.
  6. Rudy (30) – Tear-inducing, but no one wants to play for Notre Dame that bad anymore.
  7. The Natural (29) – Bad book-to-movie adaptation, but still classic. Roy Hobbs = power hitter with no steroid connection. Lights out.
  8. Brian’s Song (20) – If you watch and don’t cry, you have no heart. Rips you apart inside… in a good way.
  9. Slapshot (18) – Will make you want to play hockey, just so you can drop the gloves and brawl.
  10. Remember the Titans (14) – Brian’s Song 2.0, but not quite as good. Great depiction of overcoming racism in a cynical society.

Honorable Mentions: Miracle, Chariots of Fire, Major League, Days of Thunder, White Men Can’t Jump

Listed, but not quite: The Sandlot, Varsity Blues, Glory Road, Without Limits, A League of Their Own, For the Love of the Game, Rocky IV, Over the Top, Raging Bull, North Dallas 40, Tin Cup, Mighty Ducks, Cool Runnings, Ali, The Express, Blue Chips

Next Page »

Features

Bosma's Breakdown

In the History Books

Teams

Photobucket

Blog Stats

  • 12,468 hits