The Las Vegas police department has made an arrest in the Javon Walker case. Hotel surveillance tapes show Walker getting into a car with at least two other men; subsequently, Walker was found beaten and robbed on a street corner with significant facial injuries including a possibly fractured orbital bone. Walker claims he was robbed of $3K in cash and that he lost $100K worth of jewelry.
I can understand people in Vegas walking around with $3K in their possession. Not everyone in the city does that, but it is not an outrageous horde of cash in that town. What I guess I will never understand is why anyone would wear $100K worth of jewelry and then get into a car with two unknown/unidentified men. Sounds to me as if Javon Walker is a few shingles short of a full roof. On the other hand, perhaps we shall hear some further info from the man who was just arrested…?
The NY Giants released corpulent back-up QB, Jared Lorenzen. The Giants’ website had listed him at 6’ 4” and 285lbs. Many folks believed that weight was pre-breakfast. Lots of players have nicknames but Lorenzen has to be the all-time leader in that category. Some of the handles attached to him were:
J-Load
The Abominable Throwman
The Pillsbury Throw-boy
Lord of the Ring-Dings
Hefty Lefty
For the moment, he will simply have to be known as – - unemployed. However, if the Oakland Raiders were to sign him, the Raiders would certainly set an unofficial NFL record. The #1 QB in Oakland at the moment is JaMarcus Russell about whom rumors circulated in the off-season that his weight had gone north of 300lbs. Russell and the team denied those rumors; but if you put Russell and Lorenzen on the same squad, that would have to be the heaviest tandem of QBs in NFL history on one team. Given the Raiders’ performance over the past 5 years or so, they may be looking to set records however they can.
Speaking of the quarterback position, I can never recall a situation similar to the one that exists in Green Bay at this time. With training camp not all that far away, the Packers have three QBs on their depth chart – Aaron Rodgers, Brian Brohm and Matt Flynn. I can never recall a time when none of the quarterbacks on a team’s roster had ever started an NFL game. [Obviously, this was the case for every team in the year the NFL was started but let us not be pedantic today.]
ESPN has the Packers/Vikings for its opening week MNF telecast this year. That is the night when the Packers are scheduled to retire Brett Favre’s jersey. Early indications are that ESPN will take this game over the top:
The entire Monday Night Countdown bunch will be at Lambeau that night – not in Bristol.
There will be two hours of pre-game hype from this crew meaning the telecast of the “game” will start at 6:00 PM EDT.
There will be halftime stuff of course and then these folks will do a postgame show from Lambeau Field.
Pardon the Interruption will originate from Lambeau Field that night.
You just know that Brett Favre will join the “guys in the booth” for a while. Actually, that will be refreshing to have a “football guy” there as a guest as opposed to the star of some soon-to-be-released Disney movie.
But wait, there’s more… There is a second MNF game that night. ESPN will do the Denver/Oakland game after the game in Lambeau Field. Therefore, if I have the math right, football coverage will start on ESPN at 6:00PM on September 8; Green Bay/Minnesota will go from 8 – 11:30; Denver/Oakland will begin at 11:30 and run until 3:00AM EDT. Are you ready for some football?
The NFL and ESPN are reportedly in negotiations regarding the late season package of games that have aired on NFL Network the past few years. NFLN has been unsuccessful in getting on many major cable systems; the disputes are all about money no matter how either side tries to portray that they are the ones trying to best serve the viewing public. NFLN found itself in a bind last year with the late regular season game between the Pats and the Giants. It was the game that the Pats needed to win in order to complete their 16-0 regular season and NFLN had the game. That raised a clamor from football fans who wanted to see the game but could not. Politicians got involved and the NFL allowed over-the-air telecasts of the game.
That annoyed some of the satellite providers who thought they had paid for exclusive rights to the games. Dish Network used to have NFLN on its basic package; after the “give away” last year, Dish Network now has NFLN on a premium package so NFLN is available to fewer homes through that channel than last year. NFLN has not turned out to be the cash tsunami that the league owners thought it could be because the NFL has not been able to strong-arm the cable networks into paying top-shelf rights fees and putting NFLN on the basic packages everywhere.
In contrast, MLB is about to start its 24/7 baseball channel and it will open with almost 50 million homes connected to it. How did MLB get it done? Well, they gave a part ownership stake to Time Warner and Comcast and Cox and etc. The NFL seems not to be able to bring itself to a “sharing posture” and so they are reportedly talking with ESPN – and maybe other broadcast partners – about those eight games that have been fenced off for NFLN. Stay tuned, this should be interesting.
One more note about the NFL and television… NBC has the Super Bowl next February. That network is hoping to charge $3M for each of the 30-second commercial slots in the Super Bowl telecasts. In case you didn’t do all that well on your SAT Math test, that works out to $100K per second. How can that be worth it?
Finally, Greg Cote had this note related to football and radio broadcasts in the Miami Herald:
“FIU [Florida International University] football broadcasts will switch this season from WMCU to WINZ. What that means is, the 99.9 percent of South Floridians who have never listened to FIU football on radio and don’t plan to will now have a different station to ignore.”
But don’t get me wrong, I love sports…