Itch to Scratch

If you pay attention to sports in this area, you'd know that the Phillies just kicked off the baseball season. You'd know that the Sixers, in spite of lacking a true super-star and picked by most experts to be bottom dwellers in the East, have turned things around with an impressive young nucleus of players and are in the playoff hunt. Ditto for the Flyers, who went from the worst record in the league last year to being a possible playoff team this year.

We're approaching one of the busiest periods in sports, where one season begins and two others move into the hunt to crown a champion.

And yet, I'm excited about football.

As a general sports fan, I'm somewhat embarrassed, but I can't help it. The free agency period has been active, teams have been making moves and rosters are taking shape. Plus, one of my favorite events of the year, the NFL draft, is quickly approaching (April 26th, mark the calendar!) and with it the chance to see someone I know personally get drafted, on the first day no less (a couple different websites have Flacco going to either Atlanta or Baltimore in the first half of the second round, and no, this still just doesn't seem real).

With the owners meeting ending this past weekend, and compensatory picks awarded to finalize the draft, here are some lingering football thoughts. . . you know, in case you really cared:

Owners Meeting - As far as I can tell, there was no decision made by the owners on the current issue with the CBA, which means that we'll probably have to wait till the last minute in November to find out whether football will be dead in 3 years. In the current agreement with the players union signed two years ago, there was an option for the owners to opt out in 2008, which would translate to business as usual in '08 and '09, an uncapped season in 2010, and then football's funeral in 2011. The owners have found that the increase in revenue funneled to players (now 60%) and an escalating cap are severely cutting into profits and creating a situation where players are being compensated too much.

Surprisingly, I agree with the owners on this one, although I sincerely hope they can find a way to resolve the issue as soon as possible, and not to just save the sport, but also the cap. I love the salary cap, in every form in every sport, because it financially levels the playing field and promotes good economics by the teams. If the cap goes away in 2011, the players will fight tooth and nail to make sure it never comes back, and then we'll have baseball (I'm throwing up a little in my mouth right now). Being a fan of one of the Big Five franchises in the league, you'd think that I'd welcome an uneven playing field where the wealthier teams can field all-star rosters, but you'd be wrong. Very wrong.

Rule Changes - When they aren't discussing the future of football at the owners meetings, they are voting on proposed rule changes in the league. The rules that were changed can be found here, and there are three that I have issue with:

1. The force-out rule should have never been removed. Coaches complained that it was too subjective, but so are half the rules that the refs have to enforce, so why is this one any different. In my mind, it's ridiculous to say that if a receiver is jumping to catch a ball, all a defender has to do is shove him out of bounds while in flight to nullify the catch. To me, the worry now is that we'll see offensive coordinators and QBs around the league shy away from pass plays to the sidelines, as defenses will now have a much easier time defending such plays.

2. The elimination of the 5-yard facemask penalty is a concern. Watching games last season, Phil and I would often complain about how quickly 15-yarders were handed out for penalties that looked to be of the incidental, 5-yard variety. It was a rule that was often unenforced, which to me was always an issue of misinterpretation by the officials. Now the motivation behind this rule change is that if a defender grabs the facemask incidentally and quickly lets go, then the referees are not going to call a penalty, but if they couldn't even distinguish that as a 5-yard penalty before, why are they going to be able to do so now. The real issue with the rule was that the difference between the two penalties was clearly not understood well enough by officials, but rather than the league addressing that issue, they simply removed the rule. I hope that they really will just let the incidental stuff go, but I won't be surprised at all if we still see the flags fly, with game-changing consequences.

3. A rule that was not changed was the proposed ban on hair player hair length, which I'm happy about as long as they don't make it illegal to get tackled by the hair. If the league wants guys like Troy Polamalu to hide the hair under the helmet for safety reasons or to just present a cleaner image to the public, then I'm fine with that. John Smallwood of the Daily News recently addressed this issue:

Still, some might view these things as freedom of expression issues. They aren't.

Many constitutional freedoms are to protect citizens from intrusion of government, not private industries. More important, people often confuse freedom of speech and expression with meaning that saying or doing whatever you want is without cost.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Chalk it up to a uniform issue. Instead, the owners decided to pass on the rule and not risk confrontation with some of their more prominent stars, and that's fine too. At the same time, if you want to have a flowing mane of hair that reaches the small of your back, I don't want any complaints if a chasing defender dives to catch you and only comes up with a bundle of hair to bring you down. Chalk THAT up to an occupational hazard.

Compensatory Picks - I love the compensatory system. You let players go, sign others to replace them, and based on the salaries and impacts of players coming and going, the league uses a mysterious system to award teams additional, untradable draft picks in compensations. The most a team can get is 4, and the Eagles snagged three in this years upcoming draft. This means they will have 11 picks overall in the draft, putting them in a good position to move up in a few places and grab some better talent. By the way, you know you really have a football obsession when you not only know what the hell a compensatory pick is, but you also look forward to them being announced.

The Draft - As I mentioned, Flacco is probably getting drafted in the second round, which will be a surreal event. Considering most of the people that read this are from Audubon, I doubt this even needs to be addressed (for the record, and mark this down, let me make it clear that I will not root for Joe if he finds himself on the Cowboys roster, and I will not budge on this).

Currently, I'm strongly considering taking off from work so I can watch the first day, something I love to do. Two issues that would arise would be where I'd watch the draft and whether I should rock the live draft blog again, to which I'm leaning towards yes.

Either way, it'll be a funky adventure.