NFL Playoffs?, Playoffs?!?!(that's not a catch, that's a catch)

[Tonitrus]

It was a little better when if was after the Super Bowl.  But being that it is so easy to get very injured in football, it will never be taken as seriously as it could be.

[Valmy]

Baseball is the only sport with a decent all star game, even after they tried to ruin it with the home field advantage thing. The NHL, NBA, and NFL all require a level of physical commitment that people just will not show in games that do not count. You can play baseball just fine without going 100% ready to kill somebody so the all star format works fine.

And hey if you are Pete Rose you might go 100% ready to kill somebody anyway.

[Admiral Yi]

The best all star game is the NBA.

[Valmy]

The best all star game is the NBA.

Is it? I only recall watching the 1992 one and my take away was: nobody plays defense. That and I am sure going to miss Magic Johnson.

[Baron von Schtinkenbutt]

It's painfully pointless.

It is indeed.  Even my football-obsessed wife couldn't stomach more than a few minutes of it.

[katmai]

Oy vey.

If Johnny Manziel doesn't receive help, he won't make it to his next birthday, his father told The Dallas Morning News on Friday.

Manziel's father, Paul, told the newspaper that the Cleveland Browns quarterback has refused to enter area rehab facilities twice in the past week. He said the family tried to get Manziel, 23, to enter a local addiction facility on Saturday, but Manziel refused to stay. Paul Manziel said he tried to have his son admitted to a psychiatric and chemical dependency hospital on Tuesday, but Manziel was allowed to leave even though his father told officers that he believed Manziel was suicidal.


Agent drops Manziel in wake of latest incident
Johnny Manziel's agent released a statement Friday saying he is cutting ties with the Browns quarterback after his latest incident.

"I truly believe if they can't get him help, he won't live to see his 24th birthday," Paul Manziel told the paper.

Manziel turns 24 in December.

A source close to Manziel, who spoke to the quarterback Friday, told ESPN's Jeremy Fowler that Manziel "is concerned" about all of the stories about him and said he is doing "all right." The source declined to comment on the family's push to get Manziel in rehab, or Manziel's father's comments on his son not making it to his 24th birthday.

The first attempt to get Manziel to enter rehab, his father told the newspaper, was Saturday afternoon after news surfaced of a police investigation into an alleged incident between Manziel and his ex-girlfriend the night before. According to the police report, Manziel and his ex-girlfriend were at a hotel in downtown Dallas and left together after he struck her. The ex-girlfriend told officers that she and Manziel shouted angrily at each other and that he struck her several more times on the drive to her apartment in Fort Worth, Texas.

ABC affiliate WFAA, citing unnamed sources, reported that Manziel told the ex-girlfriend to "shut up or I'll kill us both" after he forced her into the car. The woman alleged that Manziel was acting "as if he were on some kind of drugs" but maintained he was not intoxicated.

In its initial statement Saturday, Fort Worth police said the woman "advised our officers of concerns that she had regarding the well-being of her ex-boyfriend," prompting police to search for Manziel, including by helicopter. Officers said they later determined Manziel was safe and in no danger. Manziel wasn't charged by the Fort Worth or Dallas police departments, which said Thursday they consider their investigations closed.

Manziel, in an interview with TMZ Sports posted on its website Thursday, said of the allegations that he struck his ex-girlfriend: "It didn't happen." He also said, "I'm completely stable. I'm safe and secure."

Asked about Manziel on Friday, Browns owner Jimmy Haslam told reporters the team had reached out to Manziel but he had not responded.

"We've reached out several times since all this came out last Saturday, just like we would any player," Haslam said. "I think it's enough said on the issue. I think it's a personal issue now. It's not a football issue."

Manziel's agent, Erik Burkhardt, cut ties with Manziel earlier Friday, saying in a statement that "it has become painfully obvious" that Manziel's future "rests solely in his own hands."

"His family and I have gone to great lengths to outline the steps we feel he must take to get his life in order. Accountability is the foundation of any relationship, and without it, the function of my work is counterproductive," Burkhardt said.

The Browns released a statement earlier in the week saying they would address Manziel's status "when permitted by league rules." A source told ESPN's Pat McManamon earlier this week that the Browns plan to release Manziel in March.

NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was asked about Manziel during Friday's news conference, but used the question to talk in generalities about the league's efforts to prevent off-the-field issues among the players.

"Our personal conduct policy is to try to prevent these incidents from happening," Goodell said. "So we've invested in education. We've gone through a tremendous education with everybody in the NFL, that includes the commissioner -- everybody has gone through extensive education -- to understand the issues, what to look for, including bi-standard awareness, so that you can prevent these issues from happening, and that's what we all want to see.

"We have other services including counseling, other matters available to players, if they're struggling with any one issue. And this happens. We have 3,000 players a year. We have probably one-half maybe two-thirds, that turnover in any given year. So we have young people that may have issues that need to be addressed.

"We want a program and we will always look to see how we can do that to try to help them make those adjustments, deal with any issues they may have, for their long-term safety."

[Admiral Yi]

Does the GM who drafted Amy Winehouse in the first round still have a job?

[MadBurgerMaker]

He doesn't, but the owner is responsible for drafting Manziel.  He overruled everyone in the org (who wanted Bridgewater IIRC) because some homeless dude said he should draft Johnny Trainwreck. 

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24555689/jimmy-haslam-says-homeless-man-convinced-him-to-draft-manziel

[Valmy]

He doesn't, but the owner is responsible for drafting Manziel.  He overruled everyone in the org (who wanted Bridgewater IIRC) because some homeless dude said he should draft Johnny Trainwreck. 

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24555689/jimmy-haslam-says-homeless-man-convinced-him-to-draft-manziel

This is what happens when you take advice from A&M grads.

[Syt]

http://www.citylab.com/work/2016/02/super-bowl-50-san-francisco-poor-cost-taxpayer/460077/?utm_source=atlfb

The Host City Always Loses the Super Bowl

Historically the event has hurt local taxpayers and the poor, and Super Bowl 50 in San Francisco is shaping up to be no different.

In Sunday's Super Bowl at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, one team is going to win and the other will lose. But what's clear is that, as with Super Bowls past, the host city's poor and middle-income residents will certainly not come out on top.

San Francisco taxpayer dollars are paying for the party

Even though the stadium is in Santa Clara, it's San Francisco taxpayers who are footing the bill for Super Bowl-related festivities. The city is shelling out almost $5 million for hosting, according to the latest report by the city budget analyst Harvey Rose. The NFL—a multi-billion dollar organization—is doing nothing to ease the city's cost burden. Santa Clara, meanwhile, is having its hosting expenses covered as per a deal with the NFL Host Committee (although the cost of constructing the stadium was borne by taxpayers).

This new budget committee report was issued upon the request of John Avalos, who is on the city's board of supervisors. Avalos originally supported bringing the Super Bowl to the Bay Area but is now among those who are asking for a review of the deal between the city and the NFL. Here's Avalos's colleague, Supervisor Aaron Peskin demanding a reimbursement for what the city has spent, via the San Francisco Chronicle:

"It is not too late for the NFL, which is a $9 billion a year organization, to throw down a little bit of money to San Francisco," Peskin said. He also noted that The City is facing a $100 million budget deficit for the fiscal year beginning July 1.

As did taxpayers in other host cities

But while San Francisco, in particular, has had several missteps in how it approached the deal and preparation for Super Bowl 50, it's not the only city that's been saddled with the cost of the event. The average NFL stadium costs "about $250 million in public funding," MarketWatch reports. Hosting is extra: Super Bowl events in Glendale, for example, cost Phoenix taxpayers around $2 million last year. In fact, the NFL has a long, well-known history of siphoning off taxpayer money, as Gregg Easterbrook wrote in The Atlantic in 2013:

Taxpayers fund the stadiums, antitrust law doesn't apply to broadcast deals, the league enjoys nonprofit status, and Commissioner Roger Goodell makes $30 million a year. It's time to stop the public giveaways to America's richest sports league—and to the feudal lords who own its teams.

Those in favor of cities hosting a Super Bowl tout its economic benefits for locals. But a large amount of evidence suggests that these benefits are overstated and not worth the cost of hosting. Here's a video by Reason summarizing why it's not wise for cities to host the Super Bowl:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBgpbTcpDEo

The average worker may face inconveniences

This one is obvious. Roads and transit lines are jammed during any mega-event. To account for the 1 million-plus extra commuters taking Bay Area transit in the days before the Super Bowl, transit agencies, such as Caltrain, are swallowing the costs of expanded service, ABC7 reports. But still city transit officials predict hiccups in the lead-up to this week:

"We're going to see issues on 101, on 280, on the bridge, on BART coming from the East Bay," said Chuck Harvey. "So I think a lot of employers and employees are probably going to have to make some choices. And if they have an ability to be flexible, they might want to think about that."

That "flexibility" may not really be a choice for San Francisco's many working poor, who are shuffling from one minimum wage job to another to support their families.

The homeless are always swept aside

In downtown San Francisco, protesters have been camping out in tents in the last week, decrying the city's decision to spend money on the event rather than on fixing its poverty problem. In particular, they're protesting the mayor's push to sweep aside the city's homeless population before the big event. These sweeps, activists told Fortune magazine, were conducted to give "an image of the city that does not include poverty." As a result of displacement, some homeless people have lost their jobs.

John Reddeer Pearce, a 56-year-old man was among those asked to leave the area near the stadium; via Yahoo News:

"What kinds of feelings do we have when someone asks you to leave, when we're told ... that you're just some piece of garbage sitting around," he said. "Most of us are veterans. We're the reason why you're free."

To be fair, the government has provided up to 500 beds for the homeless in shelters, but that's not very much given that 6,700 individuals in the city had no roof over their head in 2015, Bryce Covert over at ThinkProgress points out. Such treatment of the homeless isn't unique in a Super Bowl city. Dallas, Detroit, Jacksonville, Glendale, New Orleans are all among the cities that have tried to keep the homeless away from the stadiums, Covert goes on to say:

The Super Bowl puts football and poverty on a collision course almost every year.

In a city as unequal as San Francisco, that collision is even more forceful. Here's how Tommi Avicolli Mecca, the director of counseling for the Housing Rights Committee, puts it, again via Yahoo News:

"The administration doesn't care about the poor and working class people and is only concerned about giving the rich somewhere to have a party," Avicolli Mecca said, noting that San Francisco rents have become unaffordable for many middle class people and that homelessness is rampant.

[Eddie Teach]

To account for the 1 million-plus extra commuters taking Bay Area transit in the days before the Super Bowl,

How is that, when the stadium only seats a hundred thousand or so? 

[dps]

To account for the 1 million-plus extra commuters taking Bay Area transit in the days before the Super Bowl,

How is that, when the stadium only seats a hundred thousand or so? 

Well, most of the visitors probably don't take the transit just once.

[Eddie Teach]

So the guy who rides to work every day is ten commuters? Odd way of phrasing it.

[PRC]

And you have pansy ass kickers.

Lui Passaglia is the all-time leading points getter in professional football. 

[Admiral Yi]

http://www.cbssports.com/nfl/eye-on-football/24555689/jimmy-haslam-says-homeless-man-convinced-him-to-draft-manziel

Do all those guys who called it an A pick still have a job?