Ferdinand Cesarano

A draft assigns the rights of players to the various teams; it doesn't compel those players to sign. Furthermore, teams can presumably still sign players who were not taken in the draft.

The Reds' hats at that time, while beautiful, had inconsistencies with the placement of the pinstripes.

I think this is the problem. Even with San Antonio just down the road, they can't have players going back and forth for community events once the season starts, unless they do something the day of the game. And no player wants to do a meet and greet when they are trying to get ready for a game. But the teams' presence in the Arlington hub doesn't explain the absence of the types of promotion which do not require players to be physically present, such as interviews on sports talk radio stations — not to mention billboards, print ads, and ads on television and radio.

I was surprised to find that none of the teams has a local radio deal, whether a rights sale or a time-buy. I know that last season (meaning 2020) at least one team, Houston, had an arrangement with a local station, in that case ESPN 97.5 KFNC-FM. I listened to a couple of games on that station, including the week 4 game against Dallas that felt like a pretty big deal, and I really enjoyed the presentation. But this season, when I went to that station's stream in order to listen to a Roughnecks game, I found a talk show there discussing some weird obscure league. (I think it's called "NFL" or something like that. Whatever. It'll never catch on.) The absence of local radio is no doubt a symptom of the XFL's lack of effort at advertising in the teams' cities. Surely the Dragons would be helped by even a meagre few billboards; and if a Seattle station were broadcasting the team's games, that station would presumably promote those games and would program around them, such as by discussing the team on the station's other shows. Speaking as someone who enjoys games on radio, I am sad to say that the XFL's only "radio" (if you can call it that) is on the ESPN Xtra channel on Sirius XM channel 81. But that's only the audio track of the television call, so it's a pretty poor way to follow a game. What would be nice would be if those TV announcers, who are aware that their calls are going out over radio, adjusted those calls to account for radio. But, alas, you can't expect Vin Scully-level professionalism from everyone. Still, even as a radio lover, I would watch the games on television if I could. But I only recently dropped cable, after those thieves priced me out. I have some streaming apps, but not ESPN, which I do not want. So watching on TV is not possible for me. Luckily, I found a guy on YouTube who just live-streams his television. (Don't tell anyone.) The guy shoots his TV from clear across the room — and in portrait orientation, to boot; so it looks like crap. But, thanks to the new YouTube functionality of zooming in on a video on a phone or tablet, I can blow up the picture to a visible size, and then synch the stream to the audio track on Sirius XM, and watch the games, albeit with terrible video quality. But it's still enough to follow everything. (Fortunately, the USFL is on Peacock, a streaming service which I do have.)

While I will agree with almost all of your points, including the point that Apollos was a great name, I have to quibble with the notion that the name Guardians had a particular fit for New York. The name doesn't really fit in one city more than any other. Cleveland found a way to contrive a connection to the Guardians name with its bridge statues; and New York did likewise with the New York Public Library lions. But, really, the name Guardians is as generic as Tigers, and could equally well be used for a team in any city. Still, it's curious why the league, in moving both the New York and Tampa Bay teams, didn't elect to keep the Vipers' name (and green colour scheme) in Florida and, to use the Guardians' name (and that team's black and red colour scheme) in Las Vegas. Surely the attraction of the alliteration "Vegas Vipers" couldn't have been so irresistable; there must have been some other reason.

As though the Olympics is a naturally-ocurring event. Egad. The WBC is the baseball equivalent of the World Cup. For those who didn't read the earlier messages, it bears repeating that even that tournament took several iterations to reach the stature that it eventually attained.

I get the nostalgia of it, but it wasn’t a good logo I strongly disagree. The old logo beautifully abstracted the look of a riverboat wheel. It definitely deserved to be retained, not to be replaced by a logo appropriate for a team called the Speedboats.

I understand the Showboats moving away from red in a league in which so many teams use red. But there was no reason to change the logo. Just recolour the classic logo and helmet. Here are my crude attempts to show that.

I think the gold looks better next to the Astros' orange than it looked on the uniforms of the Red Sox or of the Giants (which, yes, include orange) or of any other team that I can think of having seen it on. In my opinion the whole practice of adding gold shouldn't be done at all; but aesthetically that colour goes well with the Astros' set.

I thought the GB moniker was used in some international competitions because in those Ireland competed as one team It is indeed the case that athletes from Northern Ireland can choose to complete at the Olympics either for Ireland or for Great Britain. But I don't think that that is connected to the Olympic convention of using the name "Great Britain". The same option for athletes from Northern Ireland could perfectly well exist even if the Olympics used the name "United Kingdom". I can understand the point that Old English or Blackletter script is more associated with European countries than with China. But I look at that lettering as part of traditional baseball design, and I strongly suspect that China chose it on that basis. I am thankful that I was able to get a China hat with the Old English initial. And, unlike with my Italy hat, I bought the China in the right size, so I can actually enjoy wearing it.

To call the WBC "meaningless exhibitions" is embarrassingly clueless. That tournament is for the championship of the entire world. It's also for the growth of the global stature of baseball. The WBC is important for countries where baseball is already huge, such as Japan, Cuba, Mexico, and Venezuela (and, of course, the U.S.); but it is more important for countries where baseball is still small but growing, such as China, Italy, and the Czech Republic. Comparisons to the World Cup ignore the reality that even the World Cup wasn't immediately regarded as huge. England didn't send a team to the first several iterations of that tournament.

Many cities don’t have great - or at least warm - weather year round with beach activities available every day. im willing to be that the entertainment activities available in Miami or Tampa in March are a little more than what’s available in Kansas City or Minneapolis or Philadelphia or… etc. It's true that not every city has the beaches that Florida cities can boast. But if you look at the full breadth of things to do instead of going to sporting event, a list which includes restaurants, live music, theatre, museums, etc., I think that you'll find that every place that we think of as a city will have an enormous variety.

Well, every city has plenty of entertainment options. Indeed, that's the nature of a city.

That perception is the entire problem. The denial that hockey is a Canadian cultural institution, and that the NHL is morally obligated to preserve it as such, would at one point have been considered positions beyond the bounds of decency. But here we are, and certainly not for the better.

I'm asking nothing of the sort. If the defender thinks he can withstand being pushed away, then he should go for the ball. If he does not think so, he should concede the catch and go for the tackle. In either case, the laws of physics remain intact.

I have watched that play many times. It so perfectly embodies the type of contact that should be legal that I put the clip aside just so that I could use it as a reason to revive this thread. If a receiver could legally push off in the manner of the receiver in that clip, playing defence would certainly be harder (which is a desireable thing); but it would by no means be impossible. The defensive back would just have to be stronger than the receiver, or else he'd have to concentrate on out-positioning the receiver on a ball that is underthrown or overthrown. Nope, have to disagree on that. One shouldn't be allowed to do one thing that the other can't. As I mentioned earlier in the thread, the principle at work is that it's the offence's damn ball, so the offence should be in an advantageous position with respect to going up for a catch.

This is where I'm at. World Series runs for both teams. A new stadium for one of them. New branding for both. If it's not working, it's not working. Right. Few things in life have been proven more conclusively than the notion that Florida is for spring training only.

Saskatoon came to mind becaue the St. Louis Blues at one time considered moving there. And Atlantic Canada (I don't know which city, maybe Halifax?) was formerly being considered for a CFL team. Still, even if you want to claim that the only viable unoccupied Canadian cities for an NHL team are Quebec City and Hamilton, then the league should deal with those cities before going to places where people call the sport "ice hockey". For the NHL to have no teams in the two Canadian cities that you acknowledge as viable, even as it props up a floundering team in f-ing Arizona, is absolutely absurd. We all know that Phoenix and Atlanta and Houston are bigger cities than Quebec City and Hamilton. But more important than the sizes of the television markets is the fundamental reality that hockey is culturally Canadian, and that therefore the interests of Canadian fans should take precedence. The league's choice to abandon this principle is rightfully the cause of some degree of disgust.

Yes, but that is their set. They have 2 pair of red pants, one with stripes that have only been worn with red jersey, and plain red that have only been worn with white jersey. Ah! I didn't catch that. Good observation.

Note that I am not advocating that the offensive player be able to wrap the defender up and throw him to the ground, or push him in the back. I am saying that the receiver should be able to push off the defensive player's chest or (as Willis did here) push off the defender's side. It should be a formalised principle that there exists some level of contact that the receiver can initiate but that the defensive back cannot initiate, a good example of which is contact of the type that is shown in this clip. For an analogy, look at the line of scrimmage, where there is a degree of movement that is allowed only to a defensive lineman but not to an offensive lineman.

D.C. has worn both the white jersey and the red jersey with the red pants.

My bias is that Canada should have priority in the NHL. So a team in Atlanta or anywhere else in the southern U.S. should not even be considered until there are teams in Quebec City, Hamilton, Atlantic Canada, Saskatoon, and any other viable Canadian locale that I am not thinking of right now.

This is what I'm talking about. That move by Damion Willis of Seattle should be perfectly legal.

The WFL's Philadelphia Bell had more than 50,000 at their first game in 1974. It was mostly papered by giveaway tickets; but the people were there.

The Seattle - San Antonio game was the first good-looking matchup of the season. How nice it is when there is no monochrome! And, even though I prefer Seattle's original logo, this look overall is so much better than the original look.