March 2009 – Important Events

I started doing this with February and still intend to do it each month.

1 – WGC Match Play Championship

1 – Los Angeles Marathon

2 – World Baseball Classic starts

2 – FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships begin

Apparently, Manny Ramirez Doesn’t Want to Play Baseball in 2009

I don’t know how else to put it than the title of this post. The only other options are: 1) Scott Boras is the Dumbest and Greediest Man on Earth or 2) Scott Boras is a Magical Sports Wizard Agent That is 15 Times Smarter Than Us Mere Mortal Sports Followers.

Because today I thought for sure Manny would be saying yes to a 2 year $45 million offer to stay in Dodger blue. The first year of the deal paid $25 million and it had a player option for the second year at $20 million. If Manny and Boras thought he could get more on the open market, they could opt out. Tonight, I read that once again Manny and Boras are turning down the Dodgers. That makes four offers from the Dogders and four “no’s” from Manny and Boras.

Fan Mock Draft

Alright, now that the Combine is over, we’ve started our fan mock draft.  We’re planning on going three rounds, so check in often.  Drafters will have 12 hours to email us a pick for their respective team.

1.  BJ Raji – DT- Boston College - “It came down to three players; Raji, Aaron Curry or Jason Smith. I went with Raji because Detroit had huge problems stopping the run last year after trading Shaun Rogers to Cleveland. Detroit was dead last in defense among the 32 teams. At least the offense was 27th !”

Never Question His Fanhood

We all know Weller is a Tennessee Volunteers fan.  I’d say he spends 90% of his day talking about Tennessee with people who probably don’t care that much.  His wardrobe is orange.  He dreams in orange.  His life is orange.

Finally, he got a chance to prove his love on a national stage.  ESPN listened. This ensued.

Best Live Sport?

Hello again, kids.  It’s been a while since I’ve posted around here.  I’ve been locked away studying for the GRE so I can go to Grad School.  I took it on Friday and did well enough, so that’s over.  I also had a massive computer problem and I had to restore the system, which I’ve been trying to recover from as well.  Luckily, in that week that I have been gone I’ve missed…well, nothing.

EPSN is doing their annual Bracket Buster thing, which I don’t get at all.  Earlier today Wright St. played Northeastern.  I don’t care how hard they play, neither of these teams will be busting anybody’s bracket.  Frankly, it’s just boring.

So while we wait for the Combine to get over, there’s not a whole lot to talk about.  Unless, of course, you’re a hockey fan and we all know that there are only like 9 of us left in the world.  So naturally, that’s what I want  to talk about.

When Sad Things Need To Be Done

Things like showing Phillip Fulmer the door, and now things like saying goodbye to Marvin Harrison.

According to Adam Schefter, a writer for NFL.com, Marvin Harrison will be let go by my Colts here within the next few days. Harrison who will be 37 by the time the 2009 regular season starts will go down as one of the greatest wide receivers of all time. However he would also be getting paid 13.4 million dollars this year and with his significantly decreased productivity over the past couple years makes it hard to justify spending that much money on him.

2009 NFL Scouting Combine Participants

With the NFL Combine officially starting today, I thought it would be a good idea to go ahead and put up a list of all the players who were invited. I have listed each player alphabetically by last name along with his position, height, weight and school.

Here it is:

2009 NFL Combine Preview

With the NFL Combine starting tomorrow, I thought that now would be a good time to take a look at what we have to look forward to over the next week. For those of you that don’t know, the NFL Combine is an annual event held each year for players entering the NFL Draft. They are put through a series of workouts and tests so that their results can be recorded and viewed by teams interested in the prospects.

The year’s prospects participate in general workouts that test their overall athleticism and position specific drills that demonstrate the players skills. The players are also measured and weighed so that they are all under the same conditions, and can be given their official size.

There are six general athleticism workouts that go on at the Combine: 40-yard dash, bench press, vertical jump, broad jump, 3 cone drill, and shuttle run.

Tennessee Coaching Staff

On New Year’s Day I wrote a post about Tennessee Football’s new coaching staff despite the fact that there were still quite a few vacant positions. Two weeks later, I wrote another post to bring more news of the Tennessee coaching staff but there were still vacancies. Then, shortly after that the complete coaching staff was in place, and for whatever reason I didn’t write about it. So now here I am, nearly two weeks after National Signing Day and finally getting around to report on the complete staff for the Tennessee Vols Football team. Here it is:

NFL Teams Biggest Needs for 2009 Draft (Version 2.0)

I did one of these a while back, and this one is just like that one except I’ve updated it. I’m listing each team and giving about 3 to 5 positions for each team that I think would be considered that team’s biggest needs. I tried to list them in order from what I thought was the teams biggest need and then second biggest need, but I didn’t really put too much thought into that part of it, I just picked the top few positions for each team. There are still a lot of things that have to happen between now and the draft, but as of right now this is what the top needs look like for each team in my opinion: