Displaying items by tag: NFL

After a year of needless controversy concerning player protests of the National Anthem, the NFL finally decided to act. At the owners meeting this week, a decision was made to require players to stand at attention during the National Anthem if they are on the playing field. Otherwise, players will be given the option to remain in the locker room. If players show disrespect during the National Anthem by sitting or kneeling, their team will be fined by the NFL.

“Best available” could mean Draft surprise for Saints 
  
I will admit that I am no different from you when it comes to an opinion on who the Saints should draft when the 2018 NFL Draft kicks off on Thursday night. All things being equal, I would pick a pass rusher or a tight end. Options will be available at both positions when the Saints are on the clock at No. 27 in the first round. However, the players still available at those positions might not necessarily be the best overall player left on the board.

Let’s face it. The owner of the New Orleans NFL football team and NBA basketball team, Tom Benson, was indeed, a Saint.

And now, he moves on to his next winning season and the state of Louisiana mourns.

If vengeance is a dish best served cold, the Saints’ next playoff game will be played in the right spot. The Accuweather forecast for Minneapolis and vicinity is for eight inches of snow late in the week followed by a high of zero and low of minus-14 on game day. If you’re thinking of attending, “put on two of everything,” as Jim Finks, the only man who ever headed up both franchises, would have advised. 

The New Orleans Saints have a wonderful 50-year relationship with long-suffering fans that have supported the team through mostly losing seasons. Unfortunately, the team is putting that relationship in jeopardy with their asinine position on the National Anthem controversy.

For some unknown reason, the Saints have decided to support the right of disgruntled players to kneel or sit either before or during the playing of the National Anthem. In week 3, it was ten players who sat and since that time multiple players have been kneeling before the National Anthem is played and then standing for the Star-Spangled Banner.

Look out sports fans!  Maybe, just maybe, baseball is making a big comeback.  Now I know we are in the middle of football season.  Down my way in the Bayou State, both the Saints and the LSU Tigers are on a roll.  And a hyped-up basketball season is just beginning.  But baseball is drawing record crowds with the World Series ringing up the largest TV audiences in years.

It has been a great postseason for Major League Baseball (MLB). The World Series will feature one of the league’s premier teams facing off against a perennial underdog from one of the nation’s largest TV markets. Ratings are up substantially this year for baseball, in fact, MLB attracted the most postseason viewers since 2011. The final game of the Astros-Yankees series drew 9.9 million viewers, the largest audience in the history of Fox Sports 1 network.

 by Lou Gehrig Burnett, Publisher of Fax-Net 

A Tale of Two Parishes
    The national controversy over whether athletes should stand for the National Anthem has hit home  in Bossier and Caddo parishes.  And there are stark differences in how it is being handled in each parish.
    Bossier took the lead.  In a statement, the  Bossier Parish School System said any student who does not stand during the National Anthem while participating in extracurricular activities will face consequences.

President Donald Trump has hit a nerve that could hit some NFL owners in the pocketbook. His comments about the National Anthem and the American Flag has send shockwaves and clarion calls across the NFL nation. Communities all over are beginning to question the wisdom of helping to help subsidize National Football League teams.   Much of the outrage against the popular American sport is in response to the NFL’s action this weekend of “taking a knee”.

For most of their 50 years, the New Orleans Saints have been a losing franchise. It took 20 years for the team to make the playoffs and other another 13 years to secure the first playoff victory. It took a total of 42 years for the team to finally win the Super Bowl.