Never Give Up On The Dream


August 16th, 2012
Never Give Up

Never Give Up

It was a 29-yard touchdown pass in Super Bowl XLV to open the scoring on what would be another Lombardi Trophy for the Green Bay Packers. But it’s not the touchdown or the Super Bowl win….it’s the men that made it happen.

Aaron Rodgers grew up in a hotbed of high school football talent in California. From his high school alone, three players received scholarships to play college football. He and two of his teammates were given the opportunity to play for…the local community college.

That’s right. Rodgers, like several other NFL stars, did not receive one Division I offer coming out of high school. But, he did not give up on the dream. Instead, after considering giving up football, he enrolled at Butte Community College where he was discovered by California coach Jeff Tedford, who immediately signed the future Packers QB.

Rodgers had a solid career as a Golden Bear leading Cal to a 10-1 record and a top-five ranking in 2004. He decided to forego his senior season at Cal, entered the NFL Draft, and was expected to be the first pick. Didn’t happen. But he was picked by the Packers in Round 1, spent a few years as Brett Favre’s backup, and now has a Super Bowl ring…and a Super Bowl MVP.

The receiver on the other end of that Super Bowl touchdown? Jordy Nelson. Not a household name, but he never was. Like Rodgers, Nelson had no Division I offers coming out of Riley County HS in western Kansas. Nelson was a tremendous athlete–he won the 100, 200, 400, and long jump at the Kansas state track meet his senior year–but could only muster a walk-on opportunity at Kansas State. He took it.

Nelson was a free safety his freshman year before head coach Bill Snyder asked him to move to wide receiver. The move paid off. By the time Nelson was a senior, he was a Biletnikoff Award finalist and an All-American. He was a second-round draft pick of the Packers and wound up on the receiving end of that first-quarter touchdown in Super Bowl XLV.

And so the story goes…young talented athlete. Can’t get a look anywhere. But he doesn’t quit. He perseveres. And he makes it. Clay Matthews, Tony Romo, Michael Strahan, and Terrell Owens. None of them had a legitimate Division I football scholarship offer coming out of high school. But every single one of them ended up in the NFL.




NFL 2012 Regular Season will kick off on Wednesday night Sept 5


February 29th, 2012

Are you ready for some football? On a Wednesday?

We’ve just started the long, dark time of year called the “offseason.”

Some good news arrived Tuesday, delivered straight from the NFL Mountaintops: The offseason will be one day shorter than expected.

The New York Giants will host the season opener on Wednesday, September 5. The game was moved a day earlier than usual in deference to President Barack Obama’s Thursday speech at the Democratic National Convention.

So on Tuesday, the NFL decided to simply move the game to the previous night, Wednesday, September 5. It will be the first time since the fall of 1948 that a regular season NFL game would be played on a Wednesday. On that day, September 22, 1948, to be precise, the Detroit Lions lost to the Los Angeles Rams, en route to a 2-10 season; the Rams finished 6-5-1. (In case you’re wondering, the Philadelphia Eagles won the championship that year.)

This will be the second time in three years that a regular season NFL game will be played on an unorthodox day of the week. In late December 2010, a Sunday afternoon game involving the aforementioned Eagles was moved to Tuesday night due to extreme blizzard conditions in Philadelphia. The visiting Vikings – playing out the string a la the Asheville Tourists after a blizzard back home impounded the Metrodome – won the game behind the unlikely arm of Joe Webb.

The Giants’ first opponents of the 2012-13 season is still to be determined. In 2008, the Giants beat the Washington Redskins in the season opener. With politics once again coming into play in the Giants’ defense of their Lombardi trophy, don’t be surprised if the Giants once again square off against Washington on September 5; the start time will remain 8:30 PM ET. (The two teams have actually faced each other on the season opener for the last two years.)

And in case you’re wondering: no, the Giants don’t play the Chicago Bears this season, so that was not a factor in moving up the season opener to Wednesday to accommodate big-time Bears fan President Obama the following night. The Packers, Saints, and Steelers are strong candidates.

The Super Bowl champion New York Giants will host the season-opener at MetLife Stadium against a team to be announced at a later date. Starting time is scheduled for 8:30 p.m.




Super Bowl – A brief history


January 25th, 2012

The Super Bowl is the final contest of the NFL professional football season and determines the league’s annual champion. Currently the Super Bowl routinely finishes among the all-time top 50 programs in television ratings, and the 2011 game was no exception, setting a new record for the biggest American TV audience for a single broadcast, some 111 million viewers.
Now probably the most important single-day sporting event in the United States, the Super Bowl had more modest beginnings, as did the sport itself. Football in America had its start in a game November 6, 1869, when Rutgers and Princeton played a college soccer football game. The game used modified London Football Association rules. During the next seven years, rugby gained favor with the major eastern schools over soccer, and modern football began to develop from rugby. At the Massasoit convention, of 1876, the first rules for American football were written. It was here that Walter Camp, who would become known as the father of American football, first became involved with the game.

In 1902, baseball’s Philadelphia Athletics, managed by Connie Mack, and the Philadelphia Phillies formed professional football teams, joining the Pittsburgh Stars in the first attempt at a pro football league, named the National Football League. The Athletics won the first night football game ever played, 39-0 over Kanaweola AC at Elmira, New York, November 21.
All three teams claimed the pro championship for the year, but the league president, Dave Berry, named the Stars the champions. Pitcher Rube Waddell was with the Athletics, and pitcher Christy Mathewson a fullback for Pittsburgh. The first World Series of pro football, actually a five-team tournament, was played among a team made up of players from both the Athletics and the Phillies, but simply named New York; the New York Knickerbockers; the Syracuse AC; the Warlow AC; and the Orange (New Jersey) AC at New York’s original Madison Square Garden. New York and Syracuse played the first indoor football game before 3,000, December 28. Syracuse, with Glen (Pop) Warner at guard, won 6-0 and went on to win the tournament.

In 1903, the Franklin (PA) Athletic Club won the second and last World Series of pro football over the Oreos AC of Asbury Park, New Jersey; the Watertown Red and Blacks; and the Orange AC. Changes ensued over the next 6 decades — with names, teams, players, and conference alignments coming and going. And in 1967, Congress approved the AFL-NFL merger, passing legislation exempting the agreement itself from antitrust action, October 21.
That same year, the champions of the American Football League (which merged with the NFL in 1970) and the NFL met in what was called the AFL-NFL World Championship Game. The name was later shortened to Super Bowl, named after a child’s toy, the Super Ball. In this first game, the Green Bay Packers beat the Kansas City Chiefs, 35-10. The Los Angeles Coliseum, site of the game, fell far short of a sellout, although tickets were only $10 each.

The National Football League’s Super Bowl XLVI will take place on February 5, 2012 in Lucas Oil Stadium in Downtown Indianapolis, Indiana. It will be the NFL’s 46th annual Super Bowl.

Kick-off is scheduled for 6:30 p.m. Eastern, 5:30 p.m. Central, 4:30 p.m. Mountain and 3:30 p.m. Pacific time.

Lucas Oil Stadium
Lucas Oil Stadium opened in August 2008. The normal seating for the stadium is 63,000 but will be increased to more than 70,000 for Super Bowl XLVI. The stadium cost approximately $720 million to construct and features a retractable roof and a unique large window at one end of the field.

Now’s the time to get your 2012 Super Bowl tickets! Super Bowl XLVI takes place at the Lucas Oil Stadium, and it marks the first time that Indianapolis has played host. Super Bowl tickets are never around for long, so score yours now and watch NFL history in the making!

Super Bowl Tickets for the Giants Vs Patriots rematch on Feb 05, 2012 are on sale now.