Roger Goodell Should Resign

NFL Office                                                                                                                                              Roger Goodell, NFL Commissioner                                                                                                                                  345 Park Avenue
New York, NY 10154

January 11, 2016

Dear Mr. Goodell,

When you first took the reins as NFL Commissioner, I was initially in favor of your appointment. I figured at least on paper you would be a good fit. However, after considering what has happened since then, I was wrong. So I am human.

The NFL in the span of ten years has gone from professionalism to being run by the inmates. This falls on your shoulders. But as long as you are raking in the tens of millions and the NFL is raking in the billions, you, the owners, TV execs, etc… could care less about professionalism. The NFL used to be fun. Under the current commissioner however, it is very profitable. But other wise, turned into a joke across the board.

After watching the end of the 4^th quarter of the Bengals-Steelers game, it was apparent that the fix was in. There are ways to influence the outcome of games and betting that don’t literally involve exchanging money between active participants just as there are ways to cheat at cards.

Here is the rule: Non-player personnel of a club (e.g., management personnel, coaches, trainers, equipment men) are prohibited from making unnecessary physical contact with or directing abusive, threatening, or insulting language or gestures at opponents, game officials, or representatives of the League. Representatives of either team are prohibited from entering the field unless they are incoming substitutes, or team attendants or trainers entering to provide for the welfare of a player, and any game-type activities are prohibited on the Field of Play.

Not even head coaches are allowed on the field. (So basically Steelers broke two rules and not flagged for it.) Then you have Ryan Shazier’s helmet to helmet hit on Bernard.   If any other team had done this, they would have been penalized for it.

Sure, I get that the NFL owners are your boss. I get that you may be warm and cozy with certain owners and teams. However if impartiality and objectivity were criteria for being an NFL Commissioner (or any other comparable position), you have failed miserably. You are no Pete Rozelle.

On top of that, your recent blackmail attempt towards stadiums and the teams involved in possibly relocating to L.A. was uncalled for as well.

So based on your job performance over the years, you should step down.

When baseball, football, etc… were starting out, they were created by mostly blue-collar people in the late 19^th century in places like Ohio and New Jersey. As its popularity has grown over the past 100 and something years, it has also gone more corporate and thus with it the strengths and pitfalls that go along with being corporate. In today’s game, the pitfalls out weigh the strengths. Is it really worth spending $100 for a game these days? It is funny compared to say paying $2 to see a Yankees game when Babe Ruth was playing. He was “overpaid” around $500 a game.

But in a nutshell, the bigger problem is ultimately with the fans and their rabid obsession with sports and the fact that we collectively are too blind and deaf to recognize it. So in a way we are all guilty. While I would personally love to work as a scout or assistant coach, I don’t envy the nonsense that the head coaches and players have to put up with. Coaches can’t discipline players because it has been taken of their hands. NFL front office doesn’t proscribe certain conduct when you arbitrarily enforce the rules. Look at how Josh Norman and Odell Beckman went on acting like they did. Yet no penalties. No ejections. Coaches didn’t (or couldn’t discipline them). If this had gone on back in the days of Paul Brown or Tom Landry, they would have been kicked off the team. So what gives? You are solely interested in how it affects your bottom line.

You would make a good politician and ought to run for public office. But stop pretending with the fair and impartiality act. No one is buying it and if anyone else is, they are blind and deaf too. We all know what Jesus said about blind guides and why we shouldn’t follow them.

I shall end with this statement from none other than George Patton: Follow the “Golden Rule.” Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Good Knights were an example to all time. So it is with a good officer. You have no idea how men watch you. If you stand up, so will they. If you curse, so will they. If you are habitually late, how can you in honor try men for following your example? You are a model, whether you like it or not, hence; be a good model.

Thank you for your time.

Sincerely,

Chris Fortner

The Idolatry of Modern Sports

Where is the wise person? Where is the teacher of the law? Where is the philosopher of this age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world?   1 Corinthians 1:20

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

As a child of the 1980’s, I was a huge baseball fan. My favorite team was the Mets. I also watched many Braves, Reds and A’s games.  I could remember all the rosters, stats, who did what. My interest in basketball and football were casual. I mostly watched the Cowboys and Dolphins. The only other southern teams at that time were the Falcons and Bucs and neither of them were particularly good nor a national draw.

I have a copy of the above issue that I bought at Nostaglia.  In the related article, it expands on the growing popularity of the NFL.  Keep in mind, that the NFL always ran second place to MLB up until about 50 years ago. For the rest of the 20th century, they both had their share of glory, highlights, publicity and all the other elements.  Nowadays, with the exception of perhaps New York, Philadelphia or Boston, football is the topic of daily conversation and especially in the Southeast.  We even have the new SEC Network in order to appeal to the “millions of fans of who can’t get enough coverage of the most powerful conference in college sports, and SEC officials think it will increase revenue.”

My personal opinion is that since about the turn of the century, while there are still some good baseball players and they still try their best, they are overly mechanical (due to fear of failure and paralysis by analysis).  They seem to have forgotten how to swing the bat and pitchers are on pitch counts.  Managers are second fiddle to Sabermetrics and second-guessing in the front office. This is one downturn to relying too much on technology and eliminating the human element altogether.

When it relates to football, I still enjoy the game itself.  I went out for football as a high school sophomore.  Due to being too small, I lasted just one year.  Other than that, I enjoyed the practices, the camaraderie, the studying of the playbooks and game-planning, travel, etc… Sports entails many of the things that I desire to do in a profession or work.  My dream job would be a scout for an NFL team or simply an assistant coach probably mostly with defensive backs or special teams.  I generally don’t care to be a head coach in today’s environment.  They spend more time having to deal with things other than coaching.  Too many bruised egos and wishy-washy personas to soothe over.

Too much of modern sports (as well as society in general) is prone to Bloviation and

Circumlocution 🙂 There is also

Equivocation.  Look it up!

What do we expect football coaches to do aside from winning enough games? Okay so at the college ranks, it is about getting an education, degree, developing people of upstanding character and all the other finer points.  Those are all fine if it were strictly about that.

When it comes to watching games on TV, I will generally pick one college and one NFL game each week. I used to watch back when we basically had just three or four channels to choose from and felt just fine. Today, I think there are way too many channels and most of them are not particularly useful.  In recent years, I have enjoyed going to games in person. I also like diversifying my experiences and have taken in more women’s sports softball and volleyball in particular.

So without much more left to write, I will just say to enjoy the finer things in life. But keep everything in their proper perspective.

Tips for Traveling Abroad

“Fights between individuals, as well as governments and nations, invariably result from misunderstandings in the broadest interpretation of this term. Misunderstandings are always caused by the inability of appreciating one another’s point of view. This again is due to the ignorance of those concerned, not so much in their own, as in their mutual fields. The peril of a clash is aggravated by a more or less predominant sense of combativeness, posed by every human being. To resist this inherent fighting tendency the best was is to dispel ignorance of the doings of others by a systematic spread of general knowledge. With this object in view, it is most important to aid exchange of thought and intercourse.” Nikola Tesla, THE TRANSMISSION OF ELECTRICAL ENERGY WITHOUT WIRES AS A MEANS FOR FURTHERING PEACE, Electrical World and Engineer (7 January 1905)

Traveling can be a wonderful experience IF done correctly.  First and foremost, do thorough research on the particular nation or continent that you are interested in traveling to.

Set aside savings to cover your trip. A general rule of thumb is $2,000 for every week you plan to be abroad.  Never use debt to pay for a trip. Use traveler’s checks instead of a credit/debit card.

With social media, it becomes easier to make personal connections with people around the world.  Ask for recommendations from them and consider going off the beaten path.  It is less of a crowd and would make for more interesting sights.

Make sure you have your ducks in a row with regard to clothes, camera, passport and all the things you may need. However, do not take the entire house with you.  The less stuff you travel with, the better.

Keep important numbers handy. The nearest US consulate or embassy. You can find a list here.
— Local police and fire stations
— Nearby hospital or medical center
— A local cab company
— Any other numbers you may need in a pinch!

Every country has their own specific customs and traditions. Although being immersed in a culture is the best way to learn what is appropriate and what is not, try to research some of the major faux-pas Americans commit in your destination. Even if it seems normal to you, it could be highly offensive to locals. For example, some places, like China and South Korea, shy away from tipping, while the French would be shocked by a hug (although kisses are totally fine).

Don’t dress like a tourist.  Don’t flaunt your wealth.  Don’t be loud, obnxious and rude.  You certainly don’t want to create the impression that you are a rich American who is inviting being kidnapped for a sizable ransom.  Ladies, especially if you are in a nation where the average income is about $600 a year, it would be better to not worry too much about your hair, makeup and nails. After all, you are on vacation.  Don’t take the whole house with you either.  Americans in particular are used to loudness and the sensation of being in a hurry.  In other parts of the world, especially those that are not industrial beat to a different drummer.  Slow down and enjoy your stay.  You are on vacation after all.

The Tramp at 100

For those who read my blog, you would know that I feel as if I should have been born about 100 years ago.  It is like a living nightmare at times where my mind and heart belong to this time period, yet my physical existence was misplaced.  Scottie, beam me up!

While the rest of the world indulges in Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus and Kim K., I have looked at clips of Charlie Chaplin and pictures of Greta Garbo.

Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp turned 100 this year.  From “Easy Street” (1917) to “Modern Times” (1936), he made many of the funniest and most popular films of his time. He was best known for his character, the naive and lovable Little Tramp. The Little Tramp, a well meaning man in a raggedy suit with cane, always found himself wobbling into awkward situations and miraculously wobbling away. More than any other figure, it is this kind-hearted character that we associate with the time before the talkies.  The individual clothing items themselves are nothing extraordinary.  But when combined and a real human being living in it, this human cartoon comes to life in a way that only Charlie Chaplin could make it work.

Born in London in 1889, Chaplin first visited America with a theater company in 1907. Appearing as “Billy” in the play “Sherlock Holmes”, the young Chaplin toured the country twice. On his second tour, he met Mack Sennett and was signed to Keystone Studios to act in films. In 1914 Chaplin made his first one-reeler, “Making a Living”. That same year he made thirty-four more short films, including “Caught in a Cabaret”, “Caught in the Rain”, “The Face on the Bar-Room Floor”, and “His Trysting Place”. These early silent shorts allowed very little time for anything but physical comedy, and Chaplin was a master at it.

Chaplin’s slapstick acrobatics made him famous, but the subtleties of his acting made him great. While Harold Lloyd played the daredevil, hanging from clocks, and Buster Keaton maneuvered through situations using risky stunts, Chaplin concerned himself with improvisation. For Chaplin, the best way to locate the humor or pathos of a situation was to create an environment and walk around it until something natural happened. The concern of early theater and film was to simply keep the audience’s attention through overdramatic acting that exaggerated emotions, but Chaplin saw in film an opportunity to control the environment enough to allow subtlety to come through.  In Jeffrey Vance’s excellent book Chaplin: Genius of the Cinema: “The ‘thrill’ comedy of the Tramp skating perilously close to the edge of a balcony without a balustrade was achieved with a glass shot to create the illusion of height.

(A glass shot involves a painted scene on a pane of glass that is placed in front of the camera and precisely aligned with the existing set to achieve the desired effect.) However, no illusion is involved with Chaplin’s considerable skating skills, first demonstrated in The Rink nearly twenty years earlier. He devoted eight days to filming the roller-skating routine.”

Chaplin was known as one of the most demanding men in Hollywood. Regardless of the size the part, Chaplin walked each actor through every scene. Chaplin knew that a successful scene was not simply about the star, but about everyone on the screen. He demanded that the entire cast work together in every performance. Without this unity he could not express the subtlety of character that was so important to him. The only way to achieve that unity was to maintain complete control over every scene. This constant attention to detail ran many features over-time and over-budget, but the public reaction assured him and the studios that what he was doing worked. As his popularity increased he took more liberties with filming. Movies such as his 1925 hit, “The Gold Rush”, demanded unending reworking of scenes and rebuilding of sets.

Chaplin typically improvised his story in front of the camera with only a basic framework of a script. He shot and printed hundreds of takes when making a movie, each one a little experimental variation. While this method was unorthodox, because of the expense and inefficiency, it provided lively and spontaneous footage. Taking what he learned from the footage, Chaplin would often completely reorganize a scene. It was not uncommon for him to decide half-way through a film that an actor wasn’t working and start over with someone new. Many actors found the constant takes and uncertainty grueling, but always went along because they knew they were working for a master.

Though Chaplin is of the silent movie era, we see his achievements carried through in the films of today. With the advent of the feature-length talkies, the need for more subtle acting became apparent. To maintain the audience’s attention throughout a six-reel film, an actor needed to move beyond constant slapstick. Chaplin had demanded this depth long before anyone else. His rigor and concern for the processes of acting and directing made his films great and led the way to a new, more sophisticated, cinema.

“I’m as Mad as Hell!”

“You get up on your little twenty-one inch screen and howl about America and democracy. There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM, and ITT, and AT&T, and DuPont, Dow, Union Carbide, and Exxon. Those are the nations of the world today. What do you think the Russians talk about in their councils of state, Karl Marx? They get out their linear programming charts, statistical decision theories, minimax solutions, and compute the price-cost probabilities of their transactions and investments, just like we do. We no longer live in a world of nations and ideologies, Mr. Beale. The world is a college of corporations, inexorably determined by the immutable bylaws of business. The world is a business, Mr. Beale. It has been since man crawled out of the slime. And our children will live, Mr. Beale, to see that… perfect world… in which there’s no war or famine, oppression or brutality. One vast and ecumenical holding company, for whom all men will work to serve a common profit, in which all men will hold a share of stock. All necessities provided, all anxieties tranquilized, all boredom amused. And I have chosen you, Mr. Beale, to preach this evangel.” Network, 1976

I am a child of the 70’s-80’s. That could be an entire article or two for another day.  One of the most popular fads of the time was ladies mud wrestling (and its related matches like baby oil and pudding). There is Las Vegas Mud Wrestling Championships (like who would do this today?), “All The Marbles” starring Peter Falk to a scene in CHiPs where Bonnie describes female mud wrestling as “vulgar, demeaning and debasing”. I did not see Stripes during its original run, but have seen it plenty on cable over the years. John Candy was a good sport J Of course, various movie and TV shows took advantage of the fad and it seemed to work pretty well.

My favorite TV show was the Dukes of Hazzard.  It was from this show and the episode “The Treasure of Hazzard” (original air-date January 25, 1980) that the concept of mud wrestling came into mind. The fad started taking a hold beginning in California bars/nightclubs around mid 70’s and gradually grew to other parts of the country.  Granted, it was a rural version of it, but all the same. Daisy in quicksand was interesting too.

I liked how Daisy performed in these scenes.  She had this fun-loving attitude towards it like “Hey, Daisy, let’s go play in the mud!” “Alright!”  I am merely assuming based on no actual evidence, but my perception that this kind of talk today wouldn’t go over as well today.  The combination of hard times, political correctness and people taking themselves too seriously can take a toll on us.

Mud wrestling while still viewable in various places and on the internet, it has loss some of its appeal since the close of the 80’s.  I think the bad economy, oversaturation of media, political corruption, etc… has worn people down.  People most certainly were livelier then.  You can tell by how they get into the action be it mud wrestling, a baseball game, and a number of other events.  Now people prefer to stay indoors.  All we’ve known for the past 10-15 years has been war, rumors of war, economic depressions, outsourcing, etc…

One of my friends and fellow messy wrestling aficionado Bill King has done a number of articles on messy wrestlers.  We have discussed possibly open a wrestling club of some variety eventually.  But that is another story for another day. I am Facebook friends with several of these former wrestlers.  One of them is Ruby Tuesday.  Here she is wrestling Andy Kaufman.

Again notice how the people follow the action and are participants.

My personal favorite of the catfight/messy wrestlers is Quisha Page.

She also participated in a spaghetti match against Robin Hendrickson and Thunder and Mud.

In another interview, Quisha states in part:

“WOW! good question, back at the Tropicana I would have to say Lisa. She was my best friend we knew how to wrestle real well together in the mud and oil…What was so cool is when Lisa and me Quisha got matched up to wrestle and fight each other the crowd would go off! Mick had to hold the money I was making because I couldn’t hold on to it with my own two hands it got that crazy. All the wrestlers would come from the dressing room to watch our show in the background rather it was in the mud or oil Lisa and I mastered it. She was a great actor I miss her. I wish I could get her in the ring I would pay her big bucks for that match.”

I also wish they would have another match and I would be willing to pay big bucks to see it.  Hopefully we can prod Lisa into doing so.

I like this match because of the good chemistry between them.  You have your regular competitions just like any other.  But in certain situations like Ricky Steamboat-Ric Flair or Ali-Frazier, the contestants are intimately familiar with and their styles compliment each other.  I would put this match held at the Hollywood Tropicana sometime during the summer of 1989 on the top as far as female oil wrestling matches go.  If I had one particular wish, I would liked for this match to have been a few more rounds.  Plus less interference from the refs.  I never liked it when refs involved themselves too heavily into the matches. It ruins the momentum and intensity.

The pre-match oiling session was a big winner.  You can tell Quisha and Lisa were enjoying themselves and looking forward to this match.  Both of them had a fantastic selection of wrestling attire.  Overall, it was a good match with kicks, holds and various other wrestling moves.  My favorite part was the wedgie Lisa gave Quisha.  I liked the competitiveness of the match and thought both of them were pretty equal. For the record, while my commentary about their attire and oil wrestling itself may seem sexist, I should point out that no one claims that men wrestling in tights and sometimes even blading (something that I personally disapprove of) would be offensive. Men are able to get away with doing certain things that women can’t.

With that being said, what really needs to happen in this country and worldwide is some resurgence of sorts.  It will take not one big step, but many small steps getting pointed in the right direction again.  Entire political systems will have be overhauled.

Local agriculture and currency will become necessary. We will have to adapt and adjust our ways. I would like to see fewer cable cables or at least the option where the customer can pick say 5 channels and be done with it.  People need to get out more. It is sad when I in my late 30’s can outwalk and outhike a 19 year old while carrying 50 pound of gear through an unfamiliar mountain range and manage to finish the course of 20 miles in six hours.  The average foot-speed barring injury is 4 MPH. So you do the math.

Pointers When It Comes To Porn

Storms come down, houses are wiped out, people drown, but every last little palm is there after the storm. Man is always saying, “I will overwhelm”. Why can’t he bend like the little palms? And rise again. Isn’t that better than being washed away? Kim Novak

In a nutshell, I think basically 99% of porn material is essentially useless.  It merely titillates for the sake of titillation.  Just like fast food and instant oatmeal, it has this stimulating, but ultimately temporary effect.  From there, the viewer either keeps craving and will seek it out even more to feed his/her desires to the point where it will have to be more sensational and graphic.

So how does this effect the husband-wife or boyfriend/girlfriend relationship? Some couples enjoy watching certain kind of porn.  Watching some pornography here and there won’t necessarily harm you and in some cases, it can be helpful.  But overall, pornography as portrayed in the overwhelming majority of cases is deceptive and damaging.  The man has been deceived into believing that porn is more stimulating and interesting than a deep, committed relationship with an actual woman.  The woman is basically left clinging in self-doubt and empty.  Do I get breast implants? Do we get divorced?

Men don’t seek to harm their wife or girlfriend on purpose.  But they are seeking answers or seeking to fulfill certain desires in the wrong places.  One question that has become apparent in recent years is “What do women want?” Ultimately, women (speaking generally here) desire a committed relationship.  Men historically have been the power-brokers.  We wield the ax, gun, work hard be it on oil rigs, logging, sports, pretty much any blue and white collar job.  We drink, eat, party hard. We take an interest in and use a variety of machines as we build roads, drill holes, blast our way through rock, and many other things.  But there are certain times when we need to learn to pull back and relax.  Women obviously are smaller and not quite the same physical specimen as men. So why do men try to conquer a woman in the same way they would a mountain range?  The poor lady will wind up with broken bones and who knows what else if you do that.  It doesn’t help that especially in recent years, women have either been portrayed as or emulating the examples they see in the media with breast implants, Keeping Up with you know who, twerking, etc… Mass media is rarely a good place to find accurate, truthful information.

So here are some points to keep in mind:

1) Sex should not be the every day, ten minute quickies as it is portrayed in porn.  It is better to give than to receive. There is a beginning, middle and end (Warning: contains graphic content).  The main event should not be at the beginning.  Like a properly done movie, you should have proper pacing and a buildup so that will retain interest.  Ideally, sex is to be done once a week for anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour or more.  It will ultimately come down to what you and your partner want and being in the right mood for it.

2) Sex should not be about ejaculation and pounding.  Sex should be about relaxation and sensuality.  If she has had a hard day at work and is simply not in the mood, you are wasting your time trying.  You would do better to give her a kiss or a massage.  Save the sex for a better time.

3) Guys, learn to relax. There is a time to work and there is a time to play. A woman is a woman. She is not an oil rig.

The Staging of Porn: Its Unrealistic Premise and Distortions

“The love scenes I did years ago were sensitive and romantic, but in today’s (filmed) lovemaking, couples are trying to swallow each other’s tonsils.” Lillian Gish

I’ve seen my share of porn over the past twenty years and and quite frankly, I think it is uninteresting minus a few scenes. Unrealistic and totally staged. Girl on girl porn is done to fulfill most straight guys fantasy. Oddly enough, the biggest increase in gay porn has been married women. They too have a fantasy about seeing their boyfriends/husbands engage in sexual activity with another guy or a threesome. But that is the movie/TV production guy talking. I am keenly aware of what goes on behind the scenes that the average viewer doesn’t. For the very same reason, I can’t stand “reality” TV shows too.

Erotica has always been a form of entertainment and pleasure. It is just that technology over the past 40 years or so has added several layers of complexity. Sex used to be a very private matter. Most scenes in x-rated stuff is not what most average people would do during the course of sex. But given that there is so much misinformation out there, people are seeking answers and getting it from bad sources. I don’t blame men for being confused as to what they should do or what women may want. But the sex is taboo stigma hinders any real frank discussion about the issue.

Access to pornography (which is defined as being more explicit sexual acts) usually meant watching at an adult theatre (such as Deep Throat and Behind The Green Door) or walking into an adult bookstore to pick up a VHS tape of your favorite actress.  Today—in addition to bookstores, topless clubs, magazines—it’s available on the internet, with vast amounts of content available at no charge such as RedTube. The pornography industry profits have increased from around 10 billion a year in the late 1990’s to around 100+ billion today mostly due to internet growth.  The desire for sexual content has no limits.  For example, it is no surprise that straight men fantasize about a threesome with two women and gay men watch gay porn. But here is something interesting: the biggest increase in gay porn in the past ten years (percentage-wise) has been married women and we could presume they are mostly straight. Why do men get condemned for having lesbian fantasies, but for women to view gay porn, it is innocent fun? Thus, we have a double standard. But hey, women have been dealing with this for a long time. Besides, gay porn is just as fake as straight porn.

Due to a lack of comfort on the part of parents, misinformation from the mass media and the overall lack of honest discussion about normal human sexual behavior, many teenagers and young adults don’t have a solid understanding of sexual relationships. The majority of pornographic movies don’t even show the face of a man, just his privates with the camera centered on the woman’s “enjoyment” of oral sex.

The thing to keep in mind that when it comes to pornography, 99% of the scenarios are not realistic.  Looking at it from a behind the scenes perspective, here is what happens: you basically have the actors on a set, a natural location or what not. There are crew members numbering usually around 10-20 doing their jobs which involves basically the same aspects of regular motion picture/television production such as set design, hair and makeup, camera operation, etc… The fakery of overacted orgasms, ripped abs, and silicone breast implants, along with the fact that you have a crew of anywhere from 10-20 people on the set — and from that simple fact, the act is obvious. These are people getting paid to perform a job just like anyone else getting paid to perform a job.

The average scene lasts around 10 minutes after it is in the can and edited.  The actual production time usually takes a few hours.  You would get the impression that a porn actor’s erection is about as long as the scene. Actually they are no different than the average man whose erection is usually no more than five minutes at a time. So how does he do it? Basically, when he achieves an erection after being given instructions by he director, the camera is already rolling.  He does his best to hold it and appear to be enjoying it while the actress or actresses do their thing. But should he not rise to the occasion on cue or take longer than desired to get hard, this can be aggravating.  Male porn stars usually last for a few movies.  Only a handful have a long career and what we basically end up with now is 60 year old Ron Jeremy and a 19 year old woman or Randy West having a threesome with women whose combined age is less than his.  But hey if your desire is to make a career out of it, you are welcome to try.

Pornography thrives partially due to people’s desire for Exhibitionism and Voyeurism. Instead assumptions are made based on what has been viewed and what’s shown as “normal” in popular culture.  Endless movies/TV shows and music brag about sexual activities. Men want to be like Ron Jeremy and women want to be any number of countless female porn stars.  Americans keep up with Kim Kardashian  and MTV needlessly replays Miley Cyrus twerking and grinding on Robin Thicke and symbolically stating, “I’m not a Disney Girl anymore! I’m empowered!”  Women are gold diggers and men are useful pawns.

Men end up believing that all women enjoy giving oral sex, like rough intercourse, enjoy being hit, and achieve orgasm without the slightest bit of foreplay, emotional connection, and/or intellectual investment. He’s doing what he was taught women like… so of course she’s going to like it; why wouldn’t she? (To be clear, there are many people who enjoy sex this way. This observation isn’t about them. It’s about the countless others who don’t enjoy sex like this, and don’t say anything, thinking they can’t or shouldn’t because this is “the way it’s done”.) One former porn star, Rebecca Lord commented on her website a few years ago that she had decided to give up doing porn in the United States because she was repulsed by the level of violence in more recent productions.

Here are some distortions from the porn industry:

Women are ALWAYS wanting to have sex. Porn is flawed right from the start. Just rush in, get your clothes off , get it on and rush out.  The average scene is around 10-15 minutes.  There is no or very little dialogue and horrible at that.  It’s going to take a little more than that to get a woman to relax enough to forget about the grind of daily life like work,  the kids, boring chores, etc…

The woman does all the work. In reality, it is the man who should be working to please her.  That would be kissing, massaging, hugging, not receiving a blowjob right off the bat. Like she had been sitting at home all day waiting to perform that act.

Foreplay is not necessary. No need for all that pesky foreplay — kissing is overrated, sensuality is pointless, creating any kind of a mood is just a waste of time. Just give it to me now! We live in a time of instant meals and everybody is in a rush.  Many women would be happier if he rushed home to feed the baby and clean the house instead of walking in expecting oral sex.  Porn leaves the impression that we should have ten minute sessions 5-6 days a week. A more realistic way is once a week or every other week and for it to last for anywhere from 30 minutes to several hours. In order to make this work, plenty of foreplay is necessary.  Think of it like piecing a movie together where the grand finale isn’t the first thing you see.

All women are naturally attracted to other women. the Big Bang of sexual fantasy for straight men: The threesome. Generally if she’s into it, that could be fine. But you won’t find most women hanging out a with a friend, waiting around all day just to perform it while dressed up like a Catholic schoolgirl, teacher, secretary while they bang the poolboy.  But like I mentioned, many women are also attracted to gay porn because they have the same fantasy. So all is fair is fair.

These examples highlight the massive disconnect between what most women say they really want from men, and what men have been led to believe women want.

Porn may be good entertainment (maybe).  But great sex requires a more intimate relationship between the people involved. Foreplay is the best way to get it started and that only works if the people have a very good relationship to begin with.  So in a nutshell, you would be better off not watching porn.  People have been having sex for thousands of years and they did just fine. It has actually been in recent decades that this has become an issue.

Pro Football HOF (and others) Does Have A Credibility Problem

 I watched about an hour of the Pro Football Hall of Fame induction ceremony last night and overall I agree with the choices.  Five out of the seven were around the majority of the 80’s-90’s, so they didn’t need any introduction to most of us. Two of them however would be a bit more obscure. David Robinson and Curley Culp.

I often feel as if I should have been born in an earlier time. It usually fluctuates between Colonial America/Revolutionary War period, a frontiersman, a variety of 19th archtypes, etc… In the 20th century, I would have loved to have been a cinematographer, movie/TV producer or what not.

The other thing I would have loved to have been was a football player and coach. I’m good with baseball too.  Given my physical size of 5’9″, 160 pounds or so, I would have would have played sometime around 1920’s-40’s, then gone into coaching. I would have absolutely loved to have been a head coach during the 60’s-80’s and have to go up against the caliber of Landry, Lombardi, Madden, Bum Phillips, Shula, you name it from week to week. I think a great fit would have been the Saints (or Falcons) and perhaps if Archie Manning had a better supporting cast around him, who knows what might have been. Of course, that was a different era.

One of my particular questions that doesn’t seem to be asked very much (at least in more mainstream circles) is for the merits of the coaches, executives and players who are voted into the Hall of Fame, who doesn’t get voted into the Hall of Fame who ought to? Being a Bengals fan, I wonder why doesn’t Ken Anderson or Ken Riley get in?  Is it because Anderson’s passing statistics aren’t the jaw-dropping figure that Dan Marino or Peyton Manning have?  Does Riley not get consideration because he played corner at a time when corner was considered something along the lines of a 2nd class citizen?  Is it because you can’t just pull up an interview of theirs on YouTube or read countless newspaper articles since they played in a city that isn’t exactly the media capital of the world. Now if they had been Dolphins, Steelers or Raiders, it would have been a different story.  Donovan McNabb and Boomer Esiason have more passing yards than Troy Aikman and Anderson has around the same number of passing yards plus his Yards PPA is the same as Marino’s 7.3. Yet what is the perception: Marino was the long ball thrower where Anderson was a short range passer. At least, his game against the 49ers was interesting when the Dolphins blew a big whopper in their SB because of a bad quarter. Hell, 95% of pass attempts are going to go within 10-15 yard range. But because those long touchdown passes (of which was a defensive back blowing the coverage or mis-tackle) make the highlights, that has too much sway with voters who are no different than the average person.

Highlight reels and big statistics are overblown especially when considering that in today’s football, it is a given that quarterbacks will attempt 40-50 passes a game. The set-up enables such a thing and big offenses sells tickets.  In another time, ball control and strong defenses were preferred.  If today’s quarterbacks and receivers had to play football the way it was played anytime from 100 years ago up until about the 20 years ago, obviously statistically speaking, they would be along the same lines.  Anybody notice that today you don’t have the great fullbacks and middle linebackers?  1,000 rushers are becoming a sideshow rather than the featured attraction.  That is because today’s football is passing friendly and so it is bound to happen.  Many of the HOF voters themselves grew up during the era of TV highlight reels and soundbites and are swayed unduly because of it.  The style has changed from running pretty much all the time, then it shifted to the 50/50 “balanced offenses” to today’s 40+ passing attempts per game.

So how does Curley or Robinson manage to get in now when if based on the merits of their careers, how come they didn’t get voted in 10 or 20 years ago? Did they uncover something that made them stand out to voters now that didn’t stand out way back then?  Your guess is as good as mine.  Until the people who sit on these committees explain their rationale a little better, we can come to our own conclusions as to why they vote the way they do.  Shoeless Joe and Pete Rose don’t get in because of gambling (and iffy as to whether they actually did), and we raise questions about whether Barry Bonds, McGwire or Clemens are HOF worthy because of connections to performance enhancing drugs.  But O.J. Simpson  remains even after being connected to two murders.  Beats the heck out of me.

Are NFL Players Really Faster Than College Players?

One regular comment made in the past 5-10 years is that the NFL game is faster than college or that certain kinds of offenses don’t work in the NFL because the defensive players are faster overall than their college counterparts. But wouldn’t pro offensive players also be faster than college offensive players? I find this theory often stated as fact to not hold water. Actually my feeling is that the college game is played at a faster pace than the NFL. Or why do high school games have a better pace than either college or NFL games? There are several factors such as TV timeouts, subsitution rules, regulation time, etc… But what about the notion that NFL defensive players are overall faster than college players? Is the proof in 40 yard times? 40 yard times are vastly overrated and way too much hype surrounds its significance. There is a big difference between running sprints like you do in a track meet and running at angles while wearing about 30 pounds of gear on you. Also overall, college and NFL players tend to get bigger due to improved weight-lifting techniques, nutrition, and they are still growing physically into their 20’s,

Why are the same style of offenses that seem to work very well at the college level like the various option offenses, spread type of offenses, “Fun ‘n’ Gun“, etc… don’t mesh in the NFL? The biggest reason is the way field is arranged. This can be gleaned from a little known comment that was made by a well-known quarterback almost 25 years ago:

The biggest difference Aikman has noticed between college and the pros is how much easier it is for NFL defensive backs to disguise their intentions. “Because the hash marks are narrower in the pros, the ball’s always closer to the middle of the field,” he says. “So if you’re a defensive back, you can wait a lot longer before committing to a certain part of the field.” As a result, NFL quarterbacks must read defenses as they drop back. “In college I was making a lot of presnap reads,” says Aikman. “It was much easier.” Troy Aikman, August, 21, 1989

In American football and Canadian football, the hash marks are two rows of lines near the middle of the field that are parallel to the side lines. These small lines (about 1 yard long) are used to mark each of the 5-yard lines, which go from sideline to sideline. All plays start with the ball on or between the hash marks. That is, if the ball is downed in between a hash mark and the nearest sideline, it must be reset on the hash mark for the next play. Prior to the adoption of hash marks (which were first utilized at the first NFL playoff game in 1932), all plays began where the ball was declared dead, including extra point attempts.
In most forms of professional football, including the National Football League, Canadian Football League, and most forms of indoor football, the hash marks are in line with the goal posts, both being 18 feet 6 inches (in the NFL and CFL) apart. Both high school football and college football have hash marks significantly wider than the goal posts. The college football standard is 40 feet apart; the high school standard is one-third of the width of the field (53 feet, 4 inches).

The Use of Technology in Modern Football (and Life) Is A Matter of Perspective

James Marsters with a teletype machine and acoustic coupler in 1971. 

(Originally published in American Football Monthly Magazine)

“[B]asically, I knew nothing. There were films, lectures and endless drills on fundamentals”. Ken Anderson, former Cincinnati Bengals quarterback (1971-86) commenting on his rookie year

In the old days, coaches basically draw up plays on a chalkboard, the players wrote down notes feverishly in their big three ring notebooks, and if a team happened to have a film projector, they used it occasionally.

However, like with just about everything, things change.  The days of Sid Gillman clipping football footage from film reels that played in movie theatres while he worked as an usher in the 1930’s or Paul Brown and Bill Walsh viewing some grainy film of a college player taken by a spectator have given way to professional recruiting and scouting services, desktop video, iPads and many other technological innovations.  For many years, teams at all levels were slow to adapt technologies for use in their operations.  The reasons varied from being too bulky, too costly or the uncertainty of how to use it.

Gradually as technology improved and the costs were reduced plus dealing with a more tech savvy population, the attitude towards it has shifted to a more positive aspect.  The players of today having been mostly born around the mid 1980’s or later are finely attuned to the daily use of technology and enjoy the rapid advances that are made in terms of applications, features, and upgrades.  They basically expect it!

When determining whether to use a specific technology as part of your team operations, you should ask some basic questions such as “Will I use this on a regular basis?”, “Is the cost for using this product or service justified or is it just a gimmicky thing to have around?” or “How are the company’s customer service, tech support, and overall management?” The old question of “What is the best product?” isn’t so simple anymore.

There are a variety of sports technology companies such as DragonFly Athletics, DVSport, and XOS Digital that each offer their own unique products and fill certain niches in the marketplace.  Over the past year, iPads have been adopted more often for digital playbooks.  Initially beginning in an experimental phase with the Baltimore Ravens and Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2011, about half of the NFL teams now use them.  Some of the companies that make iPad apps for the NFL are Global Apptitude LLC, PlayerLync LLC and DragonFly Athletics LLC.

According to Kirk Miller, Founder and CEO of DragonFly, the company’s initial vision was to find a way to exchange video with other teams or the conference that could eliminate the need for a courier or being put on an airplane.  Thus the team could have the video ready by Saturday night or Sunday instead of mid-week. Initiallly the challenges were “Can we do this through the internet?  Can we transfer content that has large data requirements and to do it reliably?” After the intiial prototype was promising, the company landed contracts with several colleges including Alabama and LSU.  “Most other technology companies focus on viewing and editing of video and coaching analysis.  Our purpose is primarily management and distribution of video to different organizations.  Security is good in part because it is not a consumer network. It is an internal network between coaches.  It is not available to the general public.”

Since the company started in 2006, the clients have included teams from a variety of sports and conferences, half a dozen NFL teams and a number of media organizations such as the Big Ten Network and CBS Sports.

XOS Digital’s Matt Marda, Executive Vice President of Product Strategy and Marketing comments that XOS’s focus since its founding in 1999 has shifted from doing some analysis work for the Orlando Magic to focusing on software development for a variety of purposes from software for recruiting, Playbook Applications and its ThunderCloud product which enables media asset management to be utlized via a cloud network.  “We have focused mostly on top of the line, NFL and Division I teams use it. It is used by coaches for video analysis, tag data, and to scout self and opponents. We would like to work down market to high school, smaller colleges with products that are cost effective and could further our reach.” Mr. Marda states that the company attends several conferences yearly such as the AFCA and Collegiate Sports Video Association (CSVA) and has a field team that does training on-site including set-up, webinars and tech support services.

The advances in video production hardware had led to innovations such as digital cameras and disk based camcorders via flash memory cards as opposed the traditional method of shooting on tape.  The advantages cited using this method have been the ease of being able to search for clips and it results in a more streamlined post production effort as footage is imported for editing and viewing.

This in turn directly affects how the post-production process is handled.  One of the major advances over the past 20 years has been the utilization of Non-linear editing systems for both the consumer and professional market.  The first true non-linear editor, the CMX 600, was introduced in 1971 by CMX Systems. However, due to the limited storage space of desktop computers of the time and applications that could be utlized, the move to non-linear editing didn’t really start to gain traction until the 1990’s as both the hardware and software improved to the point where it was feasible to do editing in this manner.

The concept behind Non-linear editing is all assets are available as files on video servers or hard disks, while Linear editing is tied to the need to sequentially view film or hear tape.  Non-linear editing enables direct access to any video frame in a digital video clip, without needing to play or scrub/shuttle through adjacent footage to reach it.  When ingesting audio or video feeds, metadata are attached to the clip. Those metadata can be attached automatically (timecode, take number, name of the clip) or manually (players names or down and distance).  For example at the end of the game, the coach could ask the video production people to retrieve all the clips related to a certain player or a particular quarter and it could be available in as little as five minutes.

The forerunner of the modem and modern text messaging was the acoustic coupler and TDD (Telecommunications Device for the Deaf).  Developed in 1964 by James Marsters and Robert H. Weitbrecht as a way to enable deaf and hearing impaired people to communicate, it wasn’t until the mid 1990’s that these methods would become used on a mainstream basis.  While chat slang such as BRB or OIC are associated with modern internet and text message usage, this is simply a carry-over from deaf and hearing impaired people who were using these devices.

Jackie Morgan, Director of Marketing for Ultratec, Inc. which has made products for deaf and hearing impaired people since 1978 thinks the widespread use of technology that was originally intended for deaf and hearing impaired people has been wonderful.  “It has been good to see that a technology that was intended to solve a specific problem now has widespread use and application.”

The main advantage of using modern technology is that simply today’s players have basically grown up with it their whole lives and are receptible to it.  It should help with communication and being able to complete tasks in less time.  Technology, like weightlifting, practices, and nutrition are methods to help increase your chances of reaching your ultimate goal.  However using technology does have its drawbacks.

Andre Gispert, Assistant Video Coordinator at Florida International who also previously coached at University of Tennessee-Chattanooga and Southern Virginia University, states that handling video and multimedia operations for a sports team can come with many challenges especially at the college level.  Often times, equipment purchases and upgrades can be complicated and involve a number of departments.  Communications involving third parties can at times be an issue especially over what kind of computers or video equipment are to be purchased.

“Protocol is approved by the IT department and sometimes can be a nightmare. They can decide who gets a laptop for editing. Who gets editing equipment and cameras.  They may not deal with the coaches directly.” Gispert said.

The biggest downside is the sense of disorientation and inability to concentrate when you have so many things competing for your attention.  The constant feeling of being rushed to complete tasks and fear of failure if you don’t get your tasks done instantly can in fact causes a downward spiral in quality and the quality particularly as it relates to relationships between people.  There is also the sense that just having technology itself will make your performance better.  There are no gimmicks or secret methods for winning more games or winning championships.  Keeping the horse before the cart is still the most important principle.

While the major selling point of technology like most products is the style, substance is still more important in the long term.  But they in and of themselves are not substitutes for the basics like preparation, execution and teamwork.  After all, while General Neyland, Bear Bryant and Don Shula didn’t exactly have these technologies, but they didn’t fare too badly.