Giving Back...A touching story of a player who cares

Now a days every professional sports league has a program in which they give back to society. It is a very nice gesture but I often ponder the motive of these programs. Are these programs designed to actually give back to the people who need it most or is it just to make the league and teams look good in the eyes of the public? While ticket sales might be the reason for the teams funding them I believe that the players really feel that it is their duty to give back to society.

Miami Heat superstar Dwayne Wade showed what caring and giving back can really do to help someone in need. The following clip is of a 10 year old boy named Michael Stolzenberg whom my brother knew. Over the summer Mickey contracted a rare and potentially fatal virus. In order to survive doctors were forced to Mickey's hands and feet. This video will show what a professional athlete can give to a kid that has had so much taken from him.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gIBawxlMOio

Undrafted...No Problem

Now that the NFL draft has come and gone the next few weeks will be spent analyzing who were the winners and losersof the draft as we head into mini camps. Football analysts will explore every pick rank each team on what they did and did not do. Personally I believe the team that had the best draft was the Philedalphia Eagles. The team with the worst draft by far was the Oakland Raiders who squandered the seventh overall pick on a mediocre receive.

This being said I am not going to write about the players who were chosen in the draft but rather the ones who were passed up on by all 32 teams in all 7 rounds. This year in particular there were an abundance of very skilled players who were not drafted. Here is the list of my top 5 undrafted free agents:

1) Graham Harrel- Threw for an all time high total of 134 total touchdown passes in his college career. He also posted multiple 5000 yard passing seasons. Additionally he was named the Walter Campman award winner as well as he won the Johnny Unitis golden arm award.
2) Chase Daniels- Threw for over 100 touchdowns in his career as well as over 12,500 yards. More importantly he helped bring a struggling Tigers program back to contention in the Big 12.
3)CJ Spiller- This free safty out of Marshal is one of the fastest players in the country. He is also a great cover safty and his a strong hitter. Spiller also had the second highest vertical jump forr a safty at the combine. How this did not propel him ino the draft I dont know.
4)Javon Ringer- This year the Spartan running back lead the nation in touchdowns and in rushing attempts. He is a work horse and ran for over 1,600 yards. The man can also block very well.
5) Drew Willy- The signal caller out of Buffalo led the Bulls to the best record in team history. He also had the best passer rating in the country. The guy has a rocket arm and has the size and arm strength to be a quality quarterback in the NFL.

While it is unfortunate for these players that they didn't get drafted some of the best players in the league were undrafted out of college. Guys such as Kurt Warner, Willie Parker, and James Harrison are just a few of the many that have wen on to have pro bowl careers. Another up side is that by not getting drafted a player can choose to sign with who they want to play with. This will allow a player to pick a team they like with a system they fit in. So while all the hype is centered around the big name drafted players the undrafted players who fly under the radar might actually have it better off.

Post draft...A Game of Numbers

The date April 25 is one of the most important days every year for any NFL franchise and for all football fans regardless of the team they root for. At 12 pm every year on this day the NFL rookie Draft begins. It instills hope in every single fan and lets every team say this may be the year.

In total 256 players are selected in the draft. Of these 256 players only 32 will receive the illustrias title of being a first rounder. Not only are these players almost guaranteed a spot on the team they are also guaranteed a huge contract. Most of these players will be making upwards of 20 million dollars of guaranteed money. I have a serious problem when unproven rookies are receiveing such huge contracts before they ever step onto the field. Mean while veterans who have been in the league for years are lucky to make in the 7 digit range. These men have proven themselves to be quality professionals and they are being being payed dirt (reletively speaking of course). If anything these are the players who should be making the big bucks. Rookies should have to earn their salaries from hard work and long term sucess in the league. This should eventually lead to a big contract.

All this being said I can see why rookies do receive the massive contracts they sign straight out of college. Because football is such a physically demanding sport the guys most suited to play are the younger players who have not yet have to deal with the grind of playing in the NFL. These guys are least prone to injury and are therefor safest to give a long term contract to. Also if a player shows a team enough promise to succeed why not sign him to a big contract. If you don't sign him then someone else will.

Write in and tell me if you think rookies are being payed too much...

The Art of Broadcasting

Many people over look the difficulty it takes to create a sporting game. All the players, coaches, and stadium staff must work together to have a function event. TV personell go through the same difficulties in order to broadcast a sporting. One of the toughest most underrated in difficulty jobs in sports is commentating a sport especially a sport like hockey. In this blog I will try to commentate a few minutes of a playoff hockey game. I will have the game on mute so I don't get any idea. Wish me luck......and excuse the spelling errors, this will be difficult.

Hi and welcome to today's broadcast, my name is Josh Orlan and your tuned into game three of the playoff series featuring the New York Rangers and the Washington Capitals. There is currently 14: 25 left int teh second period and the Capitals have just brokent the game open to a 2-0 lead. Now lets get you down to the game action...

Alex Ovechkin win the draw...Its sent into the low boards, back around to Lombardi who sends it back in...Dubinsky with the puck and he gets tripped up....There is a delayed penalty on the ice. The net minder Lundquivst leaves the net for an extra attacker... and Federov touches the puck to stop play.... Jurincawill be serving two for tripping.... The puck gets dropped int ehj Washington zone... Naslund wins the draw to Avery.. He hands it off to Redden who blasts a shot... ITs blocked in front of the net....Puck comes back out and gets sent down by Mike Green...There is a little scrum in the boards and Avery takes down Semin... That will be another penalty for one of the most heavily penalized men in the game.... The Puck gets dropped in the neutral zone and it is won and brought in by Federov....Federov passes it into Backstom who passes it back to Federov...The puck gets sent to the left boards for Ovechkin who makes a nice move and gets stopped by Lundquivist....The Rangers Naslund then takes it out of the zone...He has some speed and he goes offsides....

This officially ends my broadcast of the Washington Capitals and the New York Rangers... That was about 2 minutes worth of broadcasting. Not only is it missing so much detail a conventional listener would get but it is also only two minutes worth of broadcasting. I was already tired of broadcasting at that point. Anyway the moral of this blog is that we need to appreciate the jobs that commentators do because very few people have the ability to do the job....

Oh and btw the Capitals just scored again making it 3-0 looks like a blow ou to me.

Coming off the Bench

In football more than any sport the favorite player on a bad team tends to be the back up quarterback. The back up quarterback is the guy who everyone looks to as the possible savior of the franchise. If the main guy is struggling the fans make it immediatly known who they want in the game. Being the back up quarterback if you ask me is the absolutly worst position on the team. I know this from personal expience.

It has been my dream for longer than I can remember to play organized football. I had played for years in the street with my friends but I had always desired to be the quarterback on an actual football team. Finally come sophmore year my parents finally let me try out. Because Cypress Bay Football is a walk on program I made the team and for all of spring and most of the summer I was the starting quarterback. At this point my confidence was high and I was performing very well on the field. Then towards the end of the summer a new guy came in. His dad was a football coach for the University of Miami and he had far more expirience than I did. From day one we started splitting reps and within a week he was named the starter. This shattered my confidence and no matter how hard I worked from then on I was never the same. Come the end of the season the kid who took my spot hurt his knee. It was the toughest thing to have to come ino the game completely cold and be expected to preform.

It was from this point on that I have the utmost respect and sympathy for back up quarterback and back up players for any sport. It is one of the most difficult tasks to be expected to preform at a top level even after sitting on the bench an entire season. There are a few advantages to being a back up. First off it is a very humbling expirience. Next it allows you to learn from the startes mistakes so that when you get your chance you don't make them. Last it teaches you to be a stronger individual. Being able to fight off the emotions of being second was tough for me as it is for any competiter. Overcoming these emotions not only makes a person a better athlete but also a better person

2009 Masters Recap

While the names of Tiger and Lefty echoed through the greens and fairways at Augusta National this weekend, it was neither of these names that would be making a sound come the end of the 2009 Masters Golf Tournament. Rather this event belonged to three relatively unknown PGA tour members. Angel Cabrera, Kenny Perry, and Chad Campbell were able to outlast Tiger and Phil Michelson and were all tied for the lead at the end of 72 holes at 12 under par. For only third time in Masters history and seventh time in a major event had the championship come down to a three way tie break. After one playoff hole Argentinian born Angel Cabrera came out victorious when he scored a birdie on 18 will both other players got par.

While I was happy to see Angel Cabrera win his second ever green jacket, I was very much rooting for Kenny Perry to win. The man is turning 50 years old at the end of the month and is running out of time to win a major tournament which has eluded him for the past 30 years. Realistically this was probably his last chance to win a Masters especially since he will most likely join the senior tour in just a few months. Kenny Perry is one of the most down to earth people in sports. He has three daughters and still lives in the same Virginian town that he was born in. The population in this town is roughly 7000 and Kenny Perry has devoted much of his winning to building and maintaing a public town golf club. A man like this deserves to win such a tournament, and I would have liked to see him pull off the upset.

The question for many aging sports athletes is when to hang up the cleates or in this case the clubs. While Kenny Perry says he would like to try agin later this year for another Masters win it is highly unlikely that he will ever get the chance that he just had to finally get over the hump and win a green jacket. The question then becomes is it better to end off a career so close to the top or risk continuing to play knowing that chances are you will never win but there is in fact still a chance. NHL players like Ray Bourque or Dave Andrychuch or NBA star Alonzo Mourning will attest to the best career move they made was to come back even past their prime and these men finally one championships. NFL quarterback Brett Farve might tend to disagree. No matter what there is never a right answer you just got to hope that what ever and athletes decision is they choose not to regret it.