Find Your Favorite Place on the Couch and Love the ones you Love

12/23/07 - 1/7/08


Its Christmas time once again; as well as the count down for the final week and days of the year 2007.

It is bowling time once again in college football; as the bowls games will be in full force threw out this whole coming week. As they will be 14 bowl games as 28 college teams will battle it out and if that’s not enough.


To start out on Christmas Eve night, which is this coming Monday; there will be an NFL game on the tube, which has implications on the shape of who is going to be playing who come playoff time. It will be between the Denver Broncos and The San Diego Chargers.


As of right now the San Diego Chargers are currently in the No. 3 spot in the AFC playoff bracket, only behind the Colts of Indianapolis. The Chargers will need a win to stay ahead of both the Pittsburgh Steelers and the Cleveland Browns in the AFC playoffs bracket.So sit back and enjoy what this final week of 2007 has to offer and enjoy your time with your love ones. Because that could be the final and last time you see them. I know this from recent past experience.


On Christmas Eve of last year at my house, it would turn out to be the last time that my dad side of the family and mine included, included saw my great Uncle Dennis; you might remember him better as Dolfan Denny. Three months later he died in his sleep at his home in Sarasota Florida.


So enjoy the time that you will be spending with your family or your friends on Christmas/New Year, because you never know what could happen to them in one year.


Also enjoy all of the football games that are on television threw out the week and let me be the first to wish all of my reader’s great success in the New Year of 2008. Have a safe and fun last week of 2007, As well as a great Christmas day.

Marry Christmas to you and a Happy New year!!

RJ

THE NFC SOUTH IS A JOKE

For the week of 12/17/07 - 12/23/07


The NFC south is a joke these days, need poof you ask? The NFC south has four teams in the bottom part of the schedule for this National Football League season. In case you are wondering on how many teams, are in the NFC south division, it goes like this ah four!! That’s right four; call them the Bucfalpanaints (Bucs, Falcons, Panthers and Saints) if you like.


One has a whenever you need a frothy four year old quarterback; another one has a thirty eight year old savor/quarterback and the saints have a quarterback who throws it like his last name would suggest and that is in the air and like a Bress and the dirty birds wish they had Jeff George back on their roster.


Considering that the NFC south has the easiest strength of schedule of the entire NFL, you would think that it would at lest have two teams over 500 and yet they come up short in that category as well. The Saints are 7-7; the Panthers are 6-8 and the Falcons are in so much disarray at 3-11.


So that leads us with really one team from that division that has a record above five hundred and that is… the Tampa Bay Buccaneers who are 9-5, who many including myself and the rest of Tampa had the then up coming season, already in the back of there pirate headed brain .


As their were so many question at that time and at this point in the season so far the answers have been giving and it also helps with this weak division that the Bucs are in and by that they are taking full advantage of it, by wining the games that matter most right now and that is why the Bucs will be a having home field advantage in the first playoff game which they will be having in the next few weeks.


With all of that said, the NFL did what it could do to make the NFC south a good division. But now with the season almost over it’s up to the teams in that division to step up and get the wins that they should be getting instead of losing the games they should have won. But that will have to wait until next fall.



RJ

THE AMAZING BROWNS FROM OHIO

12/10/07 – 12/16/07

Anyone who has been a fan of the NFL in general over the past ten years or so will know that the browns have been a team; in which if you could, you would schedule them for your home coming game, for your high school football team.


That sentence pretty much sums it all up, right there; Over the past say decade or at lest until they came back into the NFL in 99, the Browns have been known as “the other NFL jokester” from Ohio, But then something amazing happen and I would say it started to change during the NFL Draft, all the way back in April.


The reason for that is because of what they where about to do during that NFL draft, what they had done at first surprise everyone, considering that all the so called experts had the Browns taken the hometown, quarterback the almighty Brady Quinn and when the Browns did not the experts bashed the Browns for not taking the almighty Quinn. Instead they had taking Joe Thomas an offensive lineman out of the University of Wisconsin.


Many of those same called experts and this time I think they are right said that Thomas could become the next Tony Boselli of the NFL. Tony Boselli who played for the Jacksonville Jaguars during his career and in my view, Tony should be a Hall of Famer in the next few years. But back to the browns and in what would be one crazy turn in events during that first round of the NFL draft. The Browns then made this move they traded their second-round selection (36th overall), that was used to select Kevin Kolb and their first-round selection in the 2008 NFL Draft to Dallas, for Dallas' first-round selection (22nd overall), in which they then selected the almighty Brady Quinn in this year's draft.


The funny thing about all of this is that it is now week thirteen in the NFL season and the almighty Brady Quinn has yet to start his first career NFL game.


Why you asked? It’s because of the emergence of another Cleveland quarterback and no Bernie Kosar did not suddenly came out of retirement, this quarterback is name Derek Anderson and right now he has a Quarterback rating over 85% which means he is pretty darn good and right now he is leading Cleveland to a wild card birth for the playoffs.


So right now the Cleveland Browns are on the edge of becoming a playoff team and I believe with in 5 years the browns will be in the super bowl one day, because right now Cleveland is no jokester and teams who teams who take them lightly will be the ones who are seating at home come playoff time.


RJ

THE MAGIC ARE MAKING THEIR MARK ON THE COURT

                                                           12/3/07 – 12/9/07

Do you believe you in magic? No not the song made famous by John Sebastian's but rather the National Basketball Association (NBA) version of magic.

I am talking about the Orlando Magic, the professional basketball team, who are off to there best start in franchise history at 14 and 4 and after being completely high jack and stolen of their identity from the flip flop that Billy Donovan is.

When he decided that after three days on the job as head coach for the Orlando magic that it was not in his heart as he said and that he wanted to instead go back and coach the Men’s college basketball team, at the University of Florida.

So at what had become a completely waste of time and excitement for all Magic fans myself included. The Orlando Magic front office went with there second hand candidate and that was Stan Van Gundy.

So with the touch of a button and with the help of a fax machine, Coach Stan Van Gundy took the job and was heading back to the state of Florida, from a short visit to California from visiting another coaching position there.

The Orlando magic then made another big move by getting Rashard Lewis who arrive in Orlando, by a sign-and-trade, in which landed him a whopping six-year contract worth $118-million dollars. From the Magic and it has so far been a great investment. Lewis is averaging about 20 points per game and has great ability, as a shooter who can not only hit the big and timely shots but he also can do it when he is called on.

But Lewis is just one part of the puzzle as reasons the Orlando magic off to their best start in franchise history.

The other parts in the puzzle Along with Lewis are center Dwight Howard and point guard Jameer Nelson. Nelson provides the outside shots and Howard is the big man inside. It was the same position that Shaq filled for the magic during his time.

Nelson, Howard and Lewis are what Penny Hardaway, Horace Grant and Shaquille O'Neal where for the Orlando Magic during the early 90s.but this time around, the Magic hope it pays off in a NBA championship title.

The Orlando Magic and their fans will not know what the rest of this long NBA season will bring them, let alone Dwight Howard career. But there is one thing that is certain and that is that the good times are back and rolling again in O-Town. Just Like it did once before, when Shaq was in Orlando in the Early 90's.

So if you’re looking for an NBA team to root for this season. Join me and let’s hop on Dwight Howard shoulders together and enjoy what has so far become: a season to remember for all fans of the Orlando magic.

RJ
rjintampaweeklysportsarticles@hush.com