LeBeau, Little Nominated for the 2010 Hall of Fame Class

by | Aug 25, 2009 | Hall of Fame

Former Detroit Lions cornerback and famed assistant coach Dick LeBeau and former Denver Broncos RB Floyd Little were named as the first finalists for the 2010 Pro Football Hall of Fame Class of 2010 by the senior committee earlier today (special thanks to commenter boardgame for bringing it to our attention).

Write ups on both LeBeau and Little follow the jump…but before we get into those details, while both Little and LeBeau were on the list of possible 2010 Senior Candidates assembled by Tony P. back in January, I’m not sure if either would be at the top of my list today.  Little embodies to me the type of player who apparently you had to see play to want in–his statistics alone don’t do much for me, and simply “saving a franchise” doesn’t do much for me in terms of the Hall of Fame. LeBeau was a solid player who never won much in terms of post-season honors, and has probably been bumped up a level with his defensive coaching record.  Overall, I’d say they are two ok selections, but probably not the best–and I’d be surprised if both made it in next winter.

Let us know what you think in the comments.

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Coming Soon: Los Angeles Jaguars?

by | Aug 21, 2009 | Business of Football, NFL News

They stole the Dodgers from Brooklyn, the Lakers from Minneapolis, and the Clippers from San Diego.  They stole the Rams from Cleveland, before losing them to St. Louis, and they stole the Raiders…well, ok, Al Davis did most of the stealing in that one, before eventually taking his ball and going back to Oakland.

In fact, only two major pro sports teams have ever been formed in Los Angeles–the Angels, who moved to Anaheim (before Los Angeles “stole” them back, without even needing them to move), and of course the Los Angeles Kings–because when you think Southern California, you think hockey.

So, despite not really showing that they could support one (or two) NFL franchises in the 1990’s, ever since the Rams and Raiders packed up and left, there has been speculation about who Los Angeles would steal to put a team back in the #2 television market in the United States.

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Hall of Fame Contest

by | Aug 20, 2009 | Hall of Fame

Tony Parslow, one of our regular Hall of Fame commenters, sent us over an idea for a kind of contest post, as it relates to the Hall of Fame and the fact that they are behind in electing some qualified players.

To be honest, I’m not sure I agree with 100% of the list that Tony and other commenters have put together–I think all the guys on the list are very, very good, but not necessarily Hall of Fame worthy.

But, at the same time, we always love a good contest–and while Tony offers the prize of sending the winning entry to the Hall of Fame committee for veterans committee consideration, I’ll take it a step further and offer some Zoneblitz.com memorabilia for the winning entry–because who doesn’t like free t-shirts?

Explanation of the contest & rules are after the jump…and good luck (especially finding punters worthy of Hall of Fame consideration)!

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Buccaneers Finally Going Throwback

by | Aug 17, 2009 | NFL Uniforms

One note that somehow got past me this summer, but I discovered last week while on the road to Canton, was that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are finally going to unveil their throwback uniforms this season.

For some reason, the Bucs old creamsicle-orange jerseys and Bucco Bruce logo have always been amongst my favorite NFL uniforms–so much so that I even have a Derrick Brooks throwback hanging in my closet.

I haven’t been able to find confirmation, but it appears from the Pewter Report article above that they are targeting the November 8th game against the Green Bay Packers–renewing the old “Battle of the Bays” from the old NFC Central days.

I can only hope that the Bucs throwbacks, combined with the AFL throwbacks to be used this season in honor of the 50th anniversary of the league, and the 49ers going back to a uniform design more in line with their glory days will be the spark needed to finally do away with pastel and monochrome in the NFL.

Zoneblitz Visits “Hallowed” Ground

by | Aug 7, 2009 | Football Road Trips, Football Stadiums

Our road trip to Canton for Saturday’s Pro Football Hall of Fame induction has thus far been mostly baseball focused–hence our posting updates primarily over on our baseball blog.

But yesterday, while cruising through Indiana, we took a brief stop in South Bend to visit the beautiful campus of the alma mater of a friend of Andy’s.

And, while we were there, we took a quick jaunt through Notre Dame to check out their football stadium too.

Last time we were in this part of the country, we visited THE Ohio State University to check out their stadium-and I have to admit, I was a lot more impressed by theirs.  Although Notre Dame’s stadium appeared to allow better close up access (although we chose not to park and walk around, as we were a bit behind schedule thanks to traffic in Chicago), it wasn’t nearly as impressive in size, and it really appeared to be just a basic bowl from the outside.

We were able to see just a little bit of the field through the open tunnel that the players make their famed walk through on game days, but the whole area, including Touchdown Jesus looking down from above, just wasn’t that impressive to me.  Granted, it’s probably a lot better atmosphere on game day, rather than a random Thursday afternoon during summer.

Other than that, South Bend seemed like a quaint little college town-we didn’t nearly explore it to it’s fullest, in part because we were looking for a place for lunch-and from the highway to downtown, all we found was McDonalds and Burger King (although, we finally found a little restaurant/bar right by campus called Mulligans that had some decent  stacked sandwiches with fries in the sandwich.

Today we’re off to Cleveland-it was our original intent to tour Cleveland Browns Stadium today, but when we called last week to make reservations (per the instructions on the Browns’ Web site), we found out that they are not doing tours any more “this season.”  Thanks for keeping that part of the site up to date, Browns-although, I guess that’s the way your organization has been run since you got back in the league.