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Beetlebum said:
It was a hell of a draft class that's for sure.
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and the Bears Richard Dent went in the 8th round!! Always a diamond in the rough back in the day.
 

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Beetlebum said:
Even the second half of the Marks Brothers went in the 8th round..some amazing quality early and some real quality late on as well.
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Good pick up that one Beetlebum. Totally overlooked. Didn't realise that ex-Jags HC Mike Malarkey was drafted by the Niners (I only recall him playing for the Steelers & HC of Bills) then doing other coaching gigs.
 
Just been watching the Jets season of Hard Knocks, quality idea for a series, not sure why I havent gotten into it before. Liverpool kind of did the same idea last year too. Any suggestions of what season of Hard Knocks to move onto next?
 
I've been looking for some off-season reading to keep me entertained, and I'm curious to ask whether anyone has read or heard anything about these books.

Amazon is $78, but $42(!!!) in shipping, totalling $120. Book Depository is about $99 with free shipping.

It probably doesn't sound like much... but my car needs new brakes and a new headlight. Hence they'd want to be good!

League of Denial: The NFL, Concussions and the Battle for Truth by Mark Fainaru-Wada

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0770437540/ref=ox_sc_act_title_1?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

Fourth and Long: The Fight for the Soul of College Football by John U. Bacon

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1476706433/ref=ox_sc_act_title_2?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

The System: The Glory and Scandal of Big-Time College Football by Jeff Benedict

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0385536615/ref=ox_sc_act_title_3?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

America's Game by Michael MacCambridge

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0375725067/ref=ox_sc_act_title_5?ie=UTF8&psc=1&smid=ATVPDKIKX0DER

This last book was asked about on the first page of this thread, but the only responses seemed to be "that author has also written ... "

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Sub question - you can get them at an even better price from Amazon on Kindle, and obviously without the postage.

What can people tell me about Amazon Kindle? Are you "allowed" to buy their Kindle Books in Australia? Do you have to have a Kindle from Amazon? Is there another way to read these as ebooks? (I obviously wouldn't just be buying a kindle for this... I'd find other uses for it.)
 
Amazon develop and sell the Kindle as their own product, so you either buy books as physical books from Amazon or you buy them for the Kindle in Amazon's own format. Kindles can also handle text files and pdf files (with varying degrees of success in terms of formatting). Although I haven't tried them, you can find software online that will convert ebooks between different readers.

I've not tried the competition to the Kindle (Kobo, etc) because I'm happy with my Kindle.

However, I've found that Amazon divides the world into various markets so it's worthwhile keeping a US address up your sleeve in the event a book you want isn't available in Australia. For example, I've been banging on about Collision Low Crossers in a couple of other threads on this forum, which is a book about written by an author who spent 2011 embedded with the Jets and really went behind the scenes (so to speak).

With an Australian address, I could only buy the physical version of the book, which isn't what I wanted (the Kindle slips into my suit pocket so I can take it and read it anywhere). I gave Amazon a US billing address and lo and behold, I could buy Collision Low Crossers for my Kindle.

If you haven't already, I'd sign up with HopShopGo (part of PayPal, IIRC) or a similar service and use their US address as your billing address and you should get around most problems.
 
Another thing about the Kindle - if possible, buy it direct from Amazon. Amazon's customer service is amazing, whereas if you buy a Kindle in Australia (eg., Woolworths) you have a battle on your hands to get any faults fixed, even if it's ostensibly under "warranty". The Big W person told us that they can't fix the faults and for some reason they won't send it back to Amazon to have it fixed.
 
Wasted 90 mins of my life last night watching Kevin Costner in Draft Day. The draft moves were more unrealistic than GG's fantasy trades as hard as that is to believe. And the token female role (salary cap specialist) played by Jennifer Garner was horrendous.
 
TheGreatBarryB said:
Wasted 90 mins of my life last night watching Kevin Costner in Draft Day. The draft moves were more unrealistic than GG's fantasy trades as hard as that is to believe. And the token female role (salary cap specialist) played by Jennifer Garner was horrendous.
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C'mon man!
 

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Woodson said:
The 1983 'First Round' Class exhibited SIX HOFers...

#1 John Elway
#2 Eric Dickerson
#9 Bruce Matthews
#14 Jim Kelly
#27 Dan Marino
#28 Darrell Green
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Following that the next years draft had ZERO HOFers in the first round.
However the 1984 Supplemental draft first round (for USFL/CFL players) had THREE HOFers.
#1 Steve Young
#2 Gary Zimmerman
#4 Reggie White
 
I've still got a spare copy of this if anyone would like to read it, just PM me your deets:

friday-night-lights2.png


the "catch", once you're done you need to send it on to someone else.

It's a cracking read, really helps you understand (or be even more amazed/confused by) how much importance is placed on high school football in the US.
 
Amazing Racer said:
It was only on once on 7mate but the 'Road to the Super Bowl' doco is always worth a look - they make the game look so good. And makes the Australian TV coverage of our sports look third rate
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our TV coverage is third rate, although since the re-launch of Fox Footy its been slowly getting better with things like the GF rewind and some of the pre/post game coaches talks they show up on 360 every now and then.

But on the other hand 7 is doing one hell of a job of making it look worse than 3rd rate.
 
Phillip Buchanon’s cautionary tale: My mom demanded $1 million
Posted by Michael David Smith on April 11, 2015, 9:50 AM EDT
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AP
When Phillip Buchanon was a first-round draft pick in 2002, his mom decided that his payday would be her payday, too.

Buchanon, who has written a book offering cautionary tales about athletes going broke despite multimillion-dollar contracts, says that once he was drafted, his mom began to demand money. Buchanon says his mom told him the bill for raising him was $1 million, and she wanted it paid back right away.

“Soon after the draft, she told me that I owed her a million dollars for raising me for the past 18 years,” Buchanon says, via FOXSports.com. “Well, that was news to me. If my mother taught me anything, it’s that this is the most desperate demand that a parent can make on a child. The covenant of having a child is simply that you give your child everything possible, and they owe you nothing beyond a normal amount of love and respect. There is no financial arrangement. If you get old and infirm, and your kids are around to help you out at that point, then you’re lucky. It’s not written in the social contract.”

Buchanon wisely declined to write his mom a $1 million check, but he did buy his mom a house, which turned out to be more expensive than he expected when she also started demanding money for upkeep not only on the new house, but on her old house, which she declined to sell.

“I bought my mother a house,” he says. “I also advised her to sell the old one I grew up in when I put a new roof over her head, but my mother had other plans. Instead of selling my childhood home, she decided to rent it to my aunt. So I had to finance my mother, the budding landlord. Only this wasn’t an investment. It was an encumbrance, because I didn’t share in my mother’s profit-making scheme. For the next seven years, I continued to make mortgage and maintenance payments on both homes.”

Eventually Buchanon stopped giving his family money, but he says he lost several hundred thousand dollars before he reached that point. His book, New Money: Staying Rich, is designed to teach others who come into money at a young age how to say no.
 
Ex-NFL star lifts the lid on being a ‘New Money Millionaire’

THE NFL Draft is now just a few weeks away, which means a whole new crop of former college football stars “is about to get paid”.

But while we as fans only think about the cool side of being a pro athlete — the cars, the houses, the women — there is a very real, and much darker, side.

It’s one filled with everyone from friends, family members and agents trying to get a piece of these young athletes coming into new money.

It’s something that most of us could never imagine, but it’s also something Phillip Buchanon experienced first-hand.

Buchanon, a former first-round NFL Draft pick of the Oakland Raiders, played nine years in the NFL and experienced it all: family turning on him; friends stealing from him; and even a robbery that nearly took his life.

But Buchanon survived, and decided that he wants to help the next NFL rookies, who will hopefully avoid all the pitfalls.

Buchanon has released his first book New Money: Staying Rich, an in-depth, and at times very scary account of what it’s like to be a professional athlete.

Buchanon discusses everything that comes with life in the NFL, and most importantly, what it’s like dealing with the pressures of family members and friends who think that just because you made it big, they did too.

“When I got to the NFL, I was all dollars and no sense,” Buchanon explained to FOX Sports.

“I want to make sure the next generation of athletes doesn’t make the same mistakes.”

The book is the latest venture for Buchanon, who also wrote a comic book on the same subject, and who is continuing to do whatever he can to educate a younger generation.

Buchanon provided FOXSports.com an exclusive excerpt. Here is Buchanon, discussing how his relationship changed with his mother, once he made it big.



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Phillip Buchanon played nine years in the NFL. Source: Getty Images



BUCHANON BOOK EXTRACT

SOON after the draft, she told me that I owed her a million dollars for raising me for the past 18 years. Well, that was news to me. If my mother taught me anything, it’s that this is the most desperate demand that a parent can make on a child. The covenant of having a child is simply that you give your child everything possible, and they owe you nothing beyond a normal amount of love and respect. There is no financial arrangement. If you get old and infirm, and your kids are around to help you out at that point, then you’re lucky. It’s not written in the social contract. The mothers and fathers of the world have been rearing their kids for generations — in every culture imaginable — and it’s a one-way street when it comes to money. If they pay you back someday, and you really are going through hard times, then that’s just a bonus, a gratuity for being a great mother or father.

My mother had said my debt to her was a million dollars before, but this time she was more serious than ever. If you do the math, one million dollars divided by 18 years of raising me was approximately $55,555.55 a year in restitution. Except, at age 17 I decided to move out of my mum’s house, choosing to live with a close friend and his father because I no longer felt secure in my own home. Why, you ask? Because my mother let people come in and out of our house and take what they wanted. So technically, even if we went by her logic, I only owed her $944,444.44 for her services over 17 years.

Is it petty that I’m knocking a year off her calculation? The fact that I have written this paragraph enrages me, merely because I’m entertaining the thought that her argument had any logic at all. Maybe if I had become super rich, I could have written the cheque and been done with it. But, like blackmail, there is never any end, is there?

Please do not think I’m being ungrateful or cheap. I had already followed the unwritten rule of any NFL New Money Millionaire: I bought my mother a house. I also advised her to sell the old one I grew up in when I put a new roof over her head, but my mother had other plans. Instead of selling my childhood home, she decided to rent it to my aunt. So I had to finance my mother, the budding landlord. Only this wasn’t an investment. It was an encumbrance, because I didn’t share in my mother’s profit-making scheme. For the next seven years, I continued to make mortgage and maintenance payments on both homes.



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Buchanon in action for the Washington Redskins. Source: Getty Images



I learned from this expensive lesson that big-ticket purchases for family members, such as houses and cars, should be evaluated with the following questions in mind: If you were unable to make payments for these purchases, would that particular family member be able to make the payments? Twenty years from now, who will be paying the upkeep on the house? You or your family member?

Then there’s the respect part of the equation. Are these family members respecting the gifts you give? For years, my mother left the lights on in the house without a thought as to how much I paid for electricity. This is a corollary of an old cliche that I’ve heard many times, that your kids won’t turn out the lights when leaving a room until they grow up and have to pay their own utility bills. It used to refer to kids, but in my case it fit right in as applicable to my family of Adult Abusers.

Anger built up inside me as my mother collected rent from our old house and never offered a cent to offset the expenses. It got to a point that I had to kick her boyfriend out. She accused me of messing up her life. What she didn’t see was that her boyfriend was pimping her and me out. He wasn’t bringing anything to the table, just taking.

When I told my mother she would have to take care of the maintenance after I paid off the mortgage on her house, she told me she would not be able to afford the upkeep on a house that big. In fact, she made it seem like it was my fault for picking out a house that big. In part, she was right. I bought her a house with my luxury taste and no real wisdom behind it. It was an uneducated purchase. Many NFL players choose a wiser route: they buy a reasonably sized home, pay for it in cash, keep it in their name, but gift it to their mother.

I tried giving my mother that option the second time around. I offered to buy her a comfortable house in my name for her to live in. This way she wouldn’t have to take out any loans or put my little sister and brothers in a situation where the roof over their heads could be taken away. She’d move out of the house that was too big for her and into this new one. Instead, she opted for $15,000 cash. She told me that if the new house didn’t have space for two living room sets, she didn’t want it.

Here’s what she really meant: She did not want to be embarrassed by downsizing from the home I’d originally bought for her. She was stubborn (a trait I get from her) and decided to take the cash despite my advice. I told her that if I gave her the $15,000, not to come calling when she got into trouble. Needless to say, she ended up calling. And, what’s worse, she lost the house.



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Buchanon misses a tackle. Source: AFP



I found it ironic that my mother thought she could manage my finances better than I could, yet she could not provide proof of making any money from the schemes she had set up. One day I let my anger get the better of me and asked her, “If you’re so smart, why haven’t you put together a plan to make money off of the money that you are saving from the expenses you aren’t paying?” The year I became a New Money Millionaire, I took every expense off of her hands except for food and fun money. This led her to challenge me to a money-making contest.

“Oh, so you think you Phillip f***ing Buchanon? Since you think you’re smarter than your mother, we’re going to have a competition,” she said. “You give me a certain amount of money and you budget yourself a certain amount, and we will see who makes the most money from it.” I laughed, giving her credit for another attempt (a creative one at that), but she tried to fool me again. She even played upon my weaknesses because she knew that I rarely turned down a competition. Of course, I never went for this little scheme because I knew there was no way I could win. My mother would never win either because she’d simply go through the cash in a hurry. Then she’d need another clever idea to get another check. I wasn’t going to make the same mistake again.

I eventually learned how to deal with the numerous “family emergencies”. Early on, I found myself in too many situations where some relative would come to me and claim they needed something fixed. So I’d write them a check; of course, the problem never got fixed. The check, however, always got cashed. By trying to fix a problem, I created an additional one for myself.

I finally learned how to cope with this type of request. I paid the bills directly to the company or handyman doing the work. It was amazing to see how my family responded when I told them I would take care of it. They tried to lay the heaviest guilt number on me. I can still hear their muttering tones with tinges of disgust: “Nah, man, I’m cool. Forget about it.” This response meant they knew I was on to what they were up to. I had caught them red-handed, committing an act of adult abuse.

It took hundreds of thousands of dollars, far more than the cost of an Ivy League education, to learn this lesson. I can at least attribute it to my mother. It’s true: mothers have a way of making you learn the most important lessons in life.
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New HBO series uses NFL team names, logos without NFL consent
Posted by Mike Florio on June 7, 2015, 9:51 PM EDT
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Getty Images
For the first time since Playmakers, a series based on the world of professional football will appear on TV. For the first time ever, a TV series will use the names of logos of NFL teams without the express written consent of the NFL.

PFT has gotten has advance look at Ballers, the new HBO series starring Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson. Debuting on June 21, the pilot episode of the weekly half-hour show begins with Johnson’s character laying in bed, having flashbacks to his career as a member of the Miami Dolphins, playing in a game against the Buffalo Bills. Both team uniforms are used, without alteration.

The first episode includes a scene from a conference room with a Packers logo on the wall. Later, one of the characters visits the fictional coach of the Miami Dolphins, who is wearing a hat with a Dolphins logo (the old logo, not the current one). The second episode includes multiple scenes at a Dolphins offseason practice, with the players wearing helmets bearing the Dolphins logo (the current one, not the old one).

“HBO is always mindful of other intellectual property owners, but in this context there is no legal requirement to obtain their consent,” an HBO spokesperson said in a statement issued to PFT on Sunday afternoon. HBO confirmed that the NFL has no involvement in the series.

The NFL initially declined comment, and then reiterated its position after being informed of HBO’s official comment.

Playmakers was based on the fictional pro football team known as the Cougars. Even though Playmakers used no NFL team names or logos, ESPN dumped the show under direct pressure from the NFL, given concerns regarding the manner in which the show depicted professional football players. The first episode of Ballers focuses in part on an NFL player who has sex in the bathroom of a nightclub with a woman he had just met, and who then beats up a fan who confronts the player about keeping the bathroom occupied for an extended period of time.

Even if HBO is within its legal rights to use NFL team names and logo (past films like Any Given Sunday and The Replacements surely would have liked to use real team names and logos, and presumably didn’t due to legal concerns), HBO has a separate business relationship with the NFL, through the annual Hard Knocks series. So for the same reason the NFL squeezed ESPN more than a decade ago, the NFL could squeeze HBO now.

Since the NFL currently has no comment, it’s hard to know what the league will (or won’t) do about the situation. But the first two episodes of Ballers definitely have a Playmakers vibe to them, and it’ll be interesting to see how the show will be received by the NFL, the NFL Players Association, and individual NFL teams.
 
Dolphins have no comment on HBO’s use of team name and logos in Ballers
Posted by Mike Florio on June 8, 2015, 8:51 PM EDT
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Getty Images
Of the NFL teams whose names and logos are used in the upcoming HBO series Ballers, the Dolphins’ names and logos appear most prominently. But like the league, the Dolphins no comment on the matter.

“HBO is always mindful of other intellectual property owners, but in this context there is no legal requirement to obtain their consent,” an HBO spokesman told PFT on Sunday.

On Monday night, the Dolphins informed PFT that the team has no comment at this time.

In the show, four episodes of which PFT has gotten an advance look at, the Dolphins appears prominently in both name and logo, from the opening scene onward. In the pilot, a character named Ricky Jerret (played by John David Washington, Denzel’s son) is cut by the Packers and signed by the Dolphins. Several scenes in later episodes depict Dolphins practices, including a locker-room fight between two teammates.

Apart from the question of whether HBO can legally use NFL team names and logos is the question of whether HBO wants to jeopardize its relationship with the NFL via the Hard Knocks series. Depending on the specific language of the HBO-NFL contract, the league could characterize the conduct as a breach of the license provided by the NFL to use team names and logos on the air. At a minimum, the NFL could be less inclined to renew the relationship with HBO once the contract expires, shifting the series to another network, like CBS-owned Showtime.

Look for the issue to stay under the radar until Ballers premieres in 13 days. By then, chances are the NFL, the Dolphins, or both will have something to say.
 
HBO not wavering on use of NFL team names and logos in Ballers
Posted by Mike Florio on June 12, 2015, 6:04 PM EDT
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In the wake of the news that the new HBO series Ballers includes NFL team names and logos without NFL consent, several PFT readers have noticed that trailers for the series have scrubbed out the NFL logos.

Those observations are correct; a scene that includes series star Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson playing for the Miami Dolphins and hitting a player on the Buffalo Bills omits any NFL logos in the preview appearing below. Per a source with knowledge of the situation, however, this isn’t a new development. HBO specifically decided to omit NFL logos from any commercials or other promotions featuring clips from the show. HBO fully intends to use NFL team names and logos in the first episode of the series, which debuts on June 21.

Possibly, HBO didn’t want the presence of NFL team names and logos to become an issue before the show debuts. With HBO making the first four episodes available for review by multiple members of the media, it was inevitable that someone would: (1) notice the presence of NFL team names and logos; (2) ask whether the NFL authorized the use of NFL team names and logos.

To date, neither the NFL nor the Dolphins (the team most prominently featured in the first four episodes of the series) have commented on the situation. It’ll be interesting to see whether they continue to be silent as of Monday, June 22, the day after HBO officially pulls the sheet off the de facto successor to Playmakers.

 

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