Non Super Bowl Sports thoughts

Basically for the next two weeks, your going to be inundated with Super Bowl, and a large majority of it won't have much substance to it, and if it has any substance to it, it will probably be shoved down our throat so excessively we wish it wasn't even brought up in the first place. Case in point, the New Orleans Saints' 'a city and its team' storyline has some actual merit to it, and is worth being discussed, but not to the degree it actually will be covered over the next two weeks.

And really, don't get me started on Super Bowl Media Day. It might as well be renamed 'Late Night Talk Show doing their 'Man on the Street' bits with jocks' day.

But thats enough about the Super Bowl, you'll get plenty of coverage of it elsewhere, but if you need a safe haven, just for a little bit, you came to the right place. So here are my thoughts on random topics that have nothing to do with the Super Bowl.

-Please take all this NFL Labor strife with a grain of salt. I don't doubt that there is some truth to the owner's and player's being far apart on a new CBA, but some of these statements coming out from both sides are simply jockeying for position at the negotiating table. I think the Players and Owners are reserved to the fact that the 2010 season will go uncapped, but the way NFLPA President Kevin Mawae and NFLPA Executive Director Demaurice Smith make out the situation, you'd think the 2011 season was only a month away.

And when I say take everything that comes out of this story with a grain of salt, I include those who cover and commentate on the NFL. Obviously, they need something to report on this story, and if they say to take these dire forecasts with a grain of salt, then they're pretty much undermining their own story.

At this point, the American viewing public doesn't think they can live without NFL on fall sundays. I would like to think Roger Goodell would be smart enough to foster negotiations between the two sides so as not to actually test this hypothesis out.

-There's just something about watching a team that does all the little things right. That is the 2009-10 Houston Rockets, a team I found myself rooting for, for that one reason only.

-For those of you who watched HBO Boxing After Dark on Saturday Night, does it really get much more impressive than what Yuriorkis Gamboa did to Rogers Mtagwa?

-At some point, the Calgary Flames won't underacheive anymore. Maybe those guys just aren't that good? Did somebody tell GM Darryl Sutter that adding a player like Jay Bouwmeester shouldn't cause a playoff team to miss them the next year. Even if they do end up making the playoffs, would another first round playoff exit be an acceptable outcome to the Flames' front office?

-Nothing against a wonderful city like Vancouver, but these Olympic Games already appear to look like a dud. Someone should've told Pierre De Coubertin that sometimes global financial meltdowns happen. Oddly enough though, I don't see it dampening the rest of the world's mood for World Cup Soccer later this year.