NFL 2018 changes

[The_Admiral]

5 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

Serious question - can fans in New Orleans sue the NBA because they were duped into supporting a team that actually was piling up stats that belonged to Charlotte? The league essentially said that the franchise the fans thought they were buying tickets for wasn’t really who they thought they were, since the games they spent money on were for a team that they were just keeping warm until the pelicans started up “from scratch”.

 

Altering the timeline is a force majeure.

[DCarp1231]

Not that this really counts toward a franchise moving then another franchise taking it's place, but a little perspective:

 

After the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis, Johnny Unitas cut ties with everything that had to do with the Colts. Hence why he has a statue outside M&T Bank Stadium and not Lucas Oil or anywhere in Indianapolis. Also, I'm 99% sure I haven't seen any Ravens players wear 19 either.

 

 

[WSU151]

4 minutes ago, DNAsports said:

Not that this really counts toward a franchise moving then another franchise taking it's place, but a little perspective:

 

After the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis, Johnny Unitas cut ties with everything that had to do with the Colts. Hence why he has a statue outside M&T Bank Stadium and not Lucas Oil or anywhere in Indianapolis. Also, I'm 99% sure I haven't seen any Ravens players wear 19 either.

 

 

 

Two games.

 

[Gothamite]

1 hour ago, BringBackTheVet said:

 

Eagles wore

white over white for color rush 

 

As did the Packers.  Wasn't a throwback for them either. 

[OnWis97]

16 hours ago, andrewharrington said:

 

Good luck finding a sane person on this Earth who would prefer to see Jim Brown’s name on top of the Ravens’ all-time rushing list rather than the Browns.’ 

 

 

I do.  Just like Walter Johnson is the all-time winningest pitcher in Twins FRANCHISE history.  We also can talk about who has the most wins as a Twin.  That's fine.  But we're not pretending that Walter Johnson is the all-time winningest pitcher in Nationals history (or that the Expos just ceased to exist).

[OnWis97]

26 minutes ago, DNAsports said:

Not that this really counts toward a franchise moving then another franchise taking it's place, but a little perspective:

 

After the Colts moved from Baltimore to Indianapolis, Johnny Unitas cut ties with everything that had to do with the Colts. Hence why he has a statue outside M&T Bank Stadium and not Lucas Oil or anywhere in Indianapolis. Also, I'm 99% sure I haven't seen any Ravens players wear 19 either.

 

 

That's Johnny's right and I have no issue with that nor his statue being in Baltimore, the city in which he played.

 

Some of the others have made all of my points, but I'll say that I'm not convinced the Browns example is any better than the Charlotte/New Orleans mess.  It's a bit cleaner, but mainly because of the "musical names" issue in both cities.  In terms of intellectual dishonesty, they're pretty much in the same boat.  Nobody's asking me (a Twins fan) to celebrate the 1924 Senators.  Hell, nobody's asking Twins fans to even know that the Twins used to play in Washington.  We're just asking for honesty with the records.  Thank goodness a Cleveland Deal was not done for the Nordiques.  Or the Avalanche would be considered to have won a Cup as a first-year expansion team (which would water down Vegas's upcoming accomplishment).

[DeFrank]

Look I'm someone who thinks that every NFL team should be mandated to have socks that are a different color than their pants.

 

And I couldn't give less of a whatever about these records/franchises/histories. I mean, unless a team stays in the same place but loses its history/records, who really gets upset about it in practicality?

 

Like, is there someone who moved from Cleveland to Baltimore in 1999 and was like "oh, great! I can just follow my favorite [franchise].... BUT WAIT they don't have the same records! AGH"? I feel like that's the situation where it actually matters to someone.

[fgoodwin]

On 1/21/2018 at 11:27 PM, Ditka said:

 

I don't think this has happened before. 

 

I only researched for about 30 minutes, but the closest example I found was the 95 Cowboys who beat the last Kelly Eagles in the Divisional. They then played the Packers in the NFC championship the next week who had beaten the last Cherry Red 49ers the week before. It's indirect and not exactly what you were looking for, but that's as close as I could get. 

 

Teams that made the playoffs a season before major uniform changes:

2016 Lions

2006 Chargers 

2002 Falcons

1999 Rams

1996 Broncos

1995 49ers

1995 Eagles 

1971 Redskins

1980 Cowboys before switching from royal to navy blue in 1981?

[The_Admiral]

1 minute ago, DeFrank said:

And I couldn't give less of a whatever about these records/franchises/histories. I mean, unless a team stays in the same place but loses its history/records, who really gets upset about it in practicality?

 

Like, is there someone who moved from Cleveland to Baltimore in 1999 and was like "oh, great! I can just follow my favorite [franchise].... BUT WAIT they don't have the same records! AGH"? I feel like that's the situation where it actually matters to someone.

 

The strange inverse of all this was when the Winnipeg Jets rejoined the NHL and people who were not Jets fans nor Thrashers fans got this weird bug up their ass where they were like "YOU NEED TO RESPECT ILYA KOVALCHUK AS YOUR FRANCHISE'S BEST PLAYER OR ELSE," which, well, no one's really gonna do. I don't think it was rooted in any reverence for NHL franchise lineage, which is a mess, or love for Ilya Kovalchuk, who quit the NHL and has scarcely been missed, so much as just yelling at Winnipeg fans for...I dunno, being briefly happy about anything in life for once.

[BBTV]

I used to be about the most anti-Cleveland-deal person out there.  I still kinda hate it, because as a little kid, I used to read baseball history books (honest to gods legit books!) and be fascinated by franchise relocations and how modern teams came to be (at that point of my life, the thought of a relo was unthinkable.  In fact, I was just a tad too young to be aware of the Colts move, so the first one I ever witnessed was the NFL Cardinals to Phoenix (which nobody cared about), and then the mess that was the mid-90s NHL.

 

I can only imagine how confused I'd be if I was reading those same books today, with all the legal nonsense and "deals" worked in there.

 

That being said, sports just isn't real and doesn't matter.  It's "history", but not really.  As someone mentioned, canon in fiction can be changed at will, and professional sports is basically just a TV show that people bet on.  If it makes Cleveland people feel better to suspend belief and root for their team, the same team that jim Brown (didn't) play for, then cool - go for it.  

 

If fans in Charlotte see teal and want to just forget that their wife cheated on them and now that they're back with her, just want to feel good like they used to?  Then fine.  YOu're still the only man that's been inside her... just keep telling yourself that.

 

As long as there's some record of what actually happened - like for fact books or something - then at this point, I couldn't care less how fans want to treat it.  They're going to treat it how they want anyway, so all the leagues are doing by "recognizing" these "deals" is making it OK for the TV networks to display "inaccurate" records.

[DustDevil61]

There's a commonality between the 3 pairs of pictures:

 

 

 

 

 

The top picture is an older version of a person/character/sports team that shares the name/title of a different, newer person/character/sports team that is not the same (OK, maybe not the best way of wording it). Basically, I'm saying that the term "Cleveland Browns" has become simply a legacy title like "Ceasar" or "Donkey Kong" that has been handed down from one person/character to another.

 

I'm OK with the Cleveland Deal, right up to saying that today's Browns are the same franchise and organization as the original Browns, as we all know that's not true. That includes records; while Jim Brown played for the organization/franchise now known as the Baltimore Ravens, he did it as a member of a team named the Cleveland Browns while wearing a Cleveland Browns uniform. The city of Cleveland fought for--and won--the right to hold the Browns' name and records for a future franchise, while the original Browns organization forfeited its right to the Browns' title upon leaving the city of Cleveland, leaving the title for a future Cleveland organization (which was founded in 1999). But let's keep the organizational lineages straight, please. The Ravens organization's roots as an NFL club originated in 1946 as the (original) Cleveland Browns organization and only became the Ravens in 1996 when they left Cleveland for Baltimore and had no other choice but to pick up a new name.

 

While it's true that I'd rather see the Baltimore Browns (despite wiping out the great identity of the Baltimore Ravens) in a universe where the original Browns left Cleveland--we have the Los Angeles Lakers, Utah Jazz, Indianapolis Colts, Los Angeles Dodgers, and so forth, after all--I'm OK with holding a team name and its associated records within the city if it means that much to the city to keep the team name. The 1999 expansion team would become the Bulldogs or something, but given that everything's been said and done and a time machine hasn't yet been invented to go back and change it, I'm happy to settle with this except for calling Cleveland Browns v1.0 and Cleveland Browns v2.0 the same organization. (Of course, I'd rather have the original Browns franchise stay in Cleveland and the Colts in Baltimore to avoid this awful historical revisionism.)

 

[Broken Record]

4 hours ago, The Impaler said:

I know the Denver rumor is likely false. I haven’t seen or heard anything about the switching. But I would absolutely love it if they did this.  Minus the chrome face mask. 

 

I love that look.

[Broken Record]

11 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

Good point.  So let’s set them aside, since theyre a sort of Browns-like anomaly (that Paul Brown, man). 

 

If you want to find the last time a team introduced a helmet logo different than their primary logo, it’s the Vikings in 1961, right?  The Eagles’ wing goes back to the 1950s, and the Rams’ helmet to the 40s.  Would be most unusual for an NFL club to do it today. 

 

Very interesting conversation. I guess we can glean that while it's extremely rare, it's not against any public, written rule. Who knows about unwritten rules, though. I remember when the Oilers announced the move to Tennessee, one of the nickname options was the Copperheads. I heard around that time that the NFL had an unwritten rule about not allowing reptiles.

[Captain Poncho]

2 hours ago, BringBackTheVet said:

As someone mentioned, canon in fiction can be changed at will, and professional sports is basically just a TV show that people bet on.

 

Holy crap stop speaking reality into my delusions. It ruins everything.

[Gothamite]

3 hours ago, Broken Record said:

Very interesting conversation. I guess we can glean that while it's extremely rare, it's not against any public, written rule. Who knows about unwritten rules, though. I remember when the Oilers announced the move to Tennessee, one of the nickname options was the Copperheads. I heard around that time that the NFL had an unwritten rule about not allowing reptiles.

 

We can’t glean anything of the kind.  The NFL’s written rules are not public. 

 

Never heard that.  And since “Vipers” was another finalist, I’m not sure we should presume that rumor had any basis in fact. 

[Broken Record]

7 hours ago, Gothamite said:

 

We can’t glean anything of the kind.  The NFL’s written rules are not public. 

 

Never heard that.  And since “Vipers” was another finalist, I’m not sure we should presume that rumor had any basis in fact. 

 

I wish I could remember where I heard that, but alas, it was 1998 and I fear my years of routine drinking diminished the long-term brain cells. I also remember reading something around that time regarding the NFL poo-pooing singular team names like you see in other sports (Heat, Avalanche, etc.).

[leopard88]

15 hours ago, WSU151 said:

 

Two games.

 

 

. . . with Johnny Unitas' specific blessing.

[whitedawg22]

12 minutes ago, leopard88 said:

 

. . . with Johnny Unitas' specific blessing.

"Well, I guess Scott Mitchell is the perfect person to carry on my legacy."

 

Did anybody check him for CTE?

[BlueSky]

19 hours ago, Broken Record said:

 

I love that look.

 

It's pretty sweet. I'd change the face masks and use the original "D" logo on the helmet. Just like it better than the crazy-looking detached horse head.

[Teal]

Are the Jags the only team changing their set?