Update on the NFL BearDown Style.

Goodell gave his State of the NFL address earlier today, a parody of the President’s State of the Union address. It’s a good thing it wasn’t called the State of the Union address since the state of affairs between the Union and the NFL aren’t at an all-time high. But we’ll get to that later.

NFL = INFL?: The NFL is going International, again. Mark your calendars for October 26 when the San Diego Chargers and the New Orleans Saints will face off in London for a regular season contest. I for one am a fan of professional sports leagues going international for talent as well as to bring new audiences into the games. But that’s not all The Buffalo Bills will be heading to Toronto in each of the next 5 years so people in Canada can share in the North-easternly tradition of not caring about the Buffalo Bills and not going to their games either. London, Europe, are fine with me, one game a year, it’s fun, but we already saw (NFL Europe) fold recently. It’s fun and entertaining for the Europeans once a year, like a traveling freak-show, but in Canada? They like football up there, they like it enough that they have their own league, the CFL maybe you’ve heard of it? I’m sure you’ve heard of the CFL golden boy Doug Flutie. The games will be played after the Grey Cup (Their Championship) has been played which means that a Buffalo home game in Toronto will be EVEN COLDER since it will have to be played in December. We don’t need to export football to countries that already enjoy football. The only thing the NFL should be concerned with as far as Canada is the possible acquisition of the CFL, other than that both leagues are doing fine. And if the NFL wants to take over the CFL, just send Isiah up there to run it like he did the CBA.

HGH: It’s not only in the MLB, it can be found everywhere (in case you hadn’t heard) but there are no viable tests for HGH. Goodell wants to combat that by spending $ 3.5 Million to research it. This is a great idea, and I mean that in all honesty. I think that’s a little low though, I mean MLB spent more than 6 times that and they just interviewed dealers, sure there’s no cure but at least we know who all used in MLB. Just follow Rodney Harrison around until you find his dealer and voila money well spent.

Seriously This Time: A Shock to all, Farve is debating retirement. This has come to a shock to…no one. Farve is on record with ESPN’s Len Pasquerelli saying "I haven't decided yet, we just played a little over a week ago. I'm going to take a few more weeks….we'll just discuss it more in a couple weeks." That sounds eerily familiar, if we look at a Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article from last December we hear the talking heads saying "At his home finale he took a little family portrait out there on the field with his family. He also got mic'd up by NFL Films for the first time in his career. Those indications say he is probably going to hang it up." Unlike many of his colleagues, Fox's Joe Buck sounded as though he might be tiring of the Retirement Game, even as he acknowledged its intoxicating charms. "We are doing it again," Buck said. "We are talking about Brett Favre retiring, not retiring. We all got sucked in in 2006." But wait what on Earth do you mean Mr. Buck, 2006? The Wisconsin Rapids Tribune’s Jesse Horne discussed this following the 2005 season, “here are the headlines I think you'll see during 2006. -- NO. 4 CALLS IT QUITS. Brett Favre's press conference on Wednesday left many scratching their heads. Is he going to retire or not? Honestly, Brett may not even know the answer to this question. With the Packers' dreadful season finally over, the talk of retirement now shifts into a faster gear. Look for the Packers to call a press conference sometime in the next few weeks and for Favre to make an announcement.” Of course there were Donald Driver’s statements during following the 2004 Season where he said "I think so. I think he was trying to wait until the draft, and I think coach Sherman wanted to know right before free agency because there're a couple of quarterback free agents that they want to look at if Brett decided not to come back.” When word tried to reach Farve as to whether or not he would be returning he made no statement. So the Packers went out and drafted Aaron Rodgers with a top pick. 4 years later, almost to the day, we’re having the exact same conversations and you all know where I stand. Let him stay it’s good for the Bears, all he does is hand the ball to the Bears D. But as proof of my theory which I have mentioned before, that he is overrated, I would love if he retired, and the last moment anyone had of him was a game ending, season ending, interception, and it wasn’t the first time he did so either. This is just another instance of me trying to make up for all of the people out there who love Brett Farve because every told us to.

Flacco=Falco? It’s a little too convenient that a Quarterback named Flacco could be entering the NFL at the same time of a strike. Oh, in case you haven’t heard because it has been overshadowed by the Super Bowl, and still prevalent Spygate conversations (that I will get to later) Gene Upshaw is threatening a walk-out, and I don’t think he’s bluffing, if the owner’s opt out of the current contract (that is up in 2010) the NFLPA is threatening a lockout or strike. This worked really well for baseball in 1994, basketball in 1998 and the writer’s guild right now, you should definitely strike. It won’t negatively affect the league for years as well as the American economy in general (the NFL being the highest grossing of all professional sports leagues).

Celeb’s Picks: ESPN released some celeb picks for Sunday’s Game. And here’s my problem. Not with the picks themselves but the fact that they called some of these people celebs. The list of google-search candidates (to find out exactly why their considered famous) includes names like 3 Bradys, Adam West, Beaver (From Leave it to Beaver), Mrs. Partridge, Mark Cuban (Millionaire), Marlee Matlin (movie star) The Professor and Mary Ann (seriously Dawn Wells and Russell Johnson, I was looking for a coach to call skipper and wish Cuban was married so I could drop the “millionaire and his wife”), Apollo Creed AND Ivan Drago, the Dude who writes Dilbert, Carrot Top, the “San Diego Chicken”, a handful of Olympians no one has ever heard of, Miss America AND Miss USA, and the kid who saw dead people (Spolier alert) in the 6th sense. Seriously I think that using the word celebrity is going a wee-bit too far. There are at least 5 people on there who became more famous for parodies of them/done by them than their actual work (i.e. Wayne Newton in Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Vegas Vacation among others). I also loved the fact that Venus Williams is listed as Serena's younger sister.

Spygate: At long last, a popular topic, Spygate. Goodell defended his decision to destroy the tapes because he said it wasn’t wide-spread, read as we only had evidence of one game and we’re sure they never did it before and haven’t done it sense. Also, that a leak gave information to the media, so destruction was necessary. So instead of worrying about the leak and people starting to think the past championships were tainted you just wanted to destroy the proof that you had that said this was the only time. Let me rephrase, the only way to get people to stop thinking that there was more to it, was to show us the video-taping. But you couldn’t show us the video-taping because then we would see the raw footage of Kurt Warner on the sidelines in New Orleans years ago when the Pats made their first trip, which in turn validates people questioning the past Super Bowl wins. Also, Goodell told us that tapes went back into last season. Just how far back did these tapes and taping sessions go.

Prediction: My prediction is that Sunday I will sit back and watch this game and enjoy it immensely more than last year (a lot of whiskey in between 2nd half kick off and waking up Monday morning confused). It will be much more relaxing and I really don’t care who wins. I’m, obviously, pulling for G-men for many reasons (NFC, Eli’s turnaround, Not the Patriots, the 19-0 18-1 book) but really if the Patriots win they get to take their place in the NFL pantheon of dynasty’s and Tedy Bruschi gets another ring. My predictions have been off and on recently so I have decided not to jinx it, besides the last few years have basically come down to whoever I’m rooting for loses, in every sport, no questions asked. God’s payback for the Jordan Year’s in Chicago.