SportsPants

The NFL owners look to be going ahead with their idea for an 18-game schedule as the future of the NFL. Let's take a look at who wins and who loses with this decision:

WIN- Owners: Mo money, mo money, mo money! That's what this all comes down to. Fans aren't falling for the pre-season garbage anymore and stadiums are only half filled, so the owners now make the games count and watch the green come flooding in.

FAIL- Players: Think you were sore after a 16-game schedule? Get ready to have your career further shortened and go ahead and say goodbye to your knees and various other joints right now.

WIN- Agents: Mo money, mo money, mo money! Don't think the additional gate for two extra games won't be involved in future contract negotiations.

FAIL- Veterans under contract: What is Darrelle Revis doing? He's trying to get this multi-year contract right now, which is being discussed under a 16-game schedule. Soon he'll realize that he could have made more. Pity the veteran that has his multi-year contract already in place. He'll have to play the extra games, but won't get paid for them. Well, don't actually pity him ...

WIN- Wild card teams: Two more games to right the ship and get momentum going as you go into the playoffs.

FAIL- Fans of early division winners: Remember the Colts last year? They had the division sewn up by Week 13 and the final games were this mish-mash of reserves throwing out a complete gong show while everyone asked if the team was losing its mojo with the sudden loss of intensity in games. Now add two extra meaningless games at the end of the Indy season. Yawn.

WIN- Coaches on the hot seat: Two extra games to try and prove you belong before the inevitable guillotine falls on your headset.

FAIL- NBA, NHL, Major League Baseball etc: The juggernaut NFL puts in two more regular-season games = two more weeks where Americans completely ignore your sport. Just deal with it. The NFL is a machine.

WIN- 1972 Miami Dolphins: Those annoying men in aqua have long beaten us down with their yearly champagne parties once the final undefeated team loses in the NFL. Yes, they went undefeated. The 2007 Patriots actually won more games, but since Belichick's boys couldn't take out the Giants in the Super Bowl, it wasn't a perfect season. Now you add two extra games. It will be nearly impossible for a team to go undefeated ever again. Once again , we'll hear the likes of Don Shula and Mercury Morris babble on about how their team was the best ever because of the perfect record despite the fact that the Dolphins played a ridiculously easy schedule during a 14-game season. Joy.

FAIL- Fantasy football players: Get ready for more injuries and more giant red "Questionable" tags attached to the players on your team. My head hurts just thinking about it.

WIN- NFL Fans: More football = happy me.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

The weekly PantsCast is up and it's time to have your ears listen to it.

This week's episode: A lot of power for a 25-year-old, snowball fights at the Super Bowl and a superhero with a burrito in his pants.

Click here for the episodes.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Whew! There are so many things going on in the world of sporting activities that I'm going to have to prioritize here and just post as often as I can.

Let's start with the first story:

If you haven't read the Sports Illustrated article about Ben Roethlisberger, you're in for a treat. The article sends Ben from just a player with idiot tendencies to a full-blown pile of garbage. Face it, the guy is a jerk and the Steelers are well within their rights to consider getting rid of him.

But who would they bring in to replace Big Ben? Roethlisberger is a failed human, but he's a good football player and his ability to shake off tacklers and make plays when none are there is the only reason why the Steelers score points. A smallish quarterback who goes down in the arms of blitzing defenders won't get it done.

So who can replace Big Ben? Well, how about Gentle Ben?

It's the same first name and both Ben's are over-sized for the quarterback position. Let's look at the comparison of two Ben's that might helm the quarterback position for the Steelers:

Big Ben: 6'5" 240 lbs.

Pros:

-Two time Super Bowl Champion.

-Ability to scramble and make plays when things break down on the offensive line.

-Ability to drink heavily and remain in playing shape.

-Hard to bring down on blitzes.

-Hard to bring down by the law.

-Spectacular player at Uno card game.



Cons:

-Reckless in his personal life.

-Has asked Steelers to let him play without a helmet.

-Tendency to nearly die when riding his motorcycle.

-Certifiable moron.

-Scrambling tendency opens him up to fumbling the ball.

-Gives half-hearted apologies

-Generally viewed as an arrogant, inconsiderate, bad human being who has somehow worn out his welcome in Pittsburgh despite winning two Super Bowls.

-Tendency to rape. Allegedly.

-Dresses like a douchebag.

-Is a douchebag.



Gentle Ben 6'11" 432 lbs.

Pros:

-Better person than Roethlisberger.

-Good with kids.

-Weighs more than most football players and will be difficult to bring down.

-Will accept payment in honey.

-Not likely to be accused of sexual assault.

-Doesn't ride motorcycles outside of a circus.

-Often wrestles for charity.

-Very good at gin rummy.



Cons:

-Not technically a person

-Difficult to find a uniform that fits him.

-Claws tend to puncture football.

-Difficult to understand cadence.

-Often raids team refrigerator.

-Has pulled a "Najeh Davenport" and pooped in a laundry hamper before

-Would rather play football in Chicago

-Will miss two games each year to salmon hunt in Alaska

-Probably isn't alive since the average black bear's life span is around 30 years and Gentle Ben aired in the late 60's



So there you go, a comparison of two possible quarterback situations in Pittsburgh. Big Ben will most likely retain his job, but only due to the fact that Gentle Ben is currently not alive.

Roethlisberger will hopefully attempt to rehabilitate his image, but the stain he's left on the carefully built Rooney family image is substantial and I wouldn't be surprised if fans would like to see him replaced by another species.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

I'm a big Donovan McNabb fan. I think he gets a raw deal in Philly. I'm also a Jason Campbell fan simply because I think he's been jerked around too much in Washington.

Now I get to see both set up to fail for the Redskins. Yippie.

McNabb goes from a team that finally got him some dangerous receivers to a team with Santana Moss, Chris Cooley, and a pile of unknowns, plus a shredded offensive line and a group of running backs that would have been good if this were 2004.

I still feel nauseous from this trade. If you've ever watched a player you enjoy traded to your absolutely least favorite team, then you know how I feel. I never wish success for the Redskins. I hate the organization from their assh*le moneybags owner all the way down to the offensive mascot. And now I have to root for Donovan to fail when all I wanted was for him to leave Philadelphia and win a title just so he could thumb his nose at all the boo-birds that never gave him his due.

And get ready, Eagles fans (or at least the ones booing McNabb). You are about to get what you dreamed of ... a McNabb-less Eagles team. And just so you can see how much he sucks, you get to see the Eagles play against McNabb twice a year.

I just read an Eagles fan board and many fans are stunned that Philadelphia would trade its franchise quarterback to a division rival. They should be stunned. The team has just given McNabb two chances a year to stick the ball right in their tail feathers.

Yet there were other fans that were overjoyed now that D-Nabb is gone. Apparently ranking first in most Eagles passing categories wasn't enough. Neither were the five NFC championship games and Super Bowl appearance. No title equals no love.

Well here is your chance, guys. No McNabb to hold the Eagles back. Kevin Kolb is the man from now on.

Of course, there will be no more McNabb to make plays either. No more signature McNabb scrambles and no more Thriller dances in the end zone.

You asked for it and you got it. Now let's see how long you guys are happy with it.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Hey, funky title! Get it? It's the Chicago Bears and it's a bull and bear market. Plus, there is a Chicago Bulls team as well! Brilliant! It works on so many angles and ... aww forget it.

The Chicago Bears are all over the NFL free agency this year. They signed Chester Taylor away from division rival Minnesota, they got stud blocking TE Brandon Manumaleuna (sounds like a Cajun dish) from the Chargers. And the jewel of their free-agent class is sackmaster Julius Peppers from Carolina.

Yep, the Bears dumped all sorts of money in free agency. Will it work?

Ask the Washington Redskins. They dump truckloads of money around this time every single year. I don't recall too many playoff appearances for them.

The problem with the approach the Skins have taken and the Bears are taking is that the team signs a bunch of ill-fitting parts. The names are big, but they don't have specific roles.

Peppers should be a good pass-rusher, Taylor a talented back, but what about all the other holes on the Bears? The team traded for big armed quarterback Jay Cutler and hired pass-happy Mike Martz as offensive coordinator. Yet the Bears didn't help the offensive line or top receivers. The best receiver the Bears have on the team is tight end Greg Olsen and Martz is well known for shunning the tight end in his passing game.

So to summarize, the Bears have a gunslinger quarterback and a passing coordinator, but the team signs a blocking tight end and a running back in free-agency. Meanwhile, stud receiver Anquan Boldin goes to Baltimore and pass blocking tackle Chad Clifton doesn't seem to be in the Bears plans.

I have no doubt the players whom the Bears signed are good, but aside from Peppers, none were big needs.

The Redskins can tell you that method doesn't often work.

Wow. Talk about going against standard thinking.

If you listed the positions of a football team from most important to least important, you start with quarterback and somewhere toward the bottom of the list would be the kicker. Sure, if the kicker was a stud, you'd rank him higher since he could win several games by himself, but that's a rare breed of kicker.

Most kickers are streaky specialists. As we saw this past season, when a kicker loses any of his confidence, he can melt down quicker than ice cream in August. It seems half of the teams in the NFL had kicking troubles this season. The Cowboys and Redskins both dumped kickers mid-season while the Bengals and Chargers lost playoff games thanks to shoddy kicking.

Kickers just seem interchangeable. A team uses one until he freaks out, then he goes to another team and tries to start fresh.

So why would the Pittsburgh Steelers and Seattle Seahawks place franchise tags on middle of the road kickers? I'm confounded, confused, and possibly even flummoxed. Like the Southpark Chewbacca defense, it does not make sense.

Jeff Reed isn't a bad kicker for Pittsburgh, but he didn't exactly set the league ablaze last year. He didn't make any kicks over 50 yards and his kickoffs were routinely short. Worth hanging onto, but not a top three kicker.

Olindo Mare is an even bigger reach for Seattle. He's 36 years old, has only been in Seattle a couple of season and every training camp, the Seahawks coaches bring in competition to overtake him. Mare had a good late season surge last year, but he struggled early. Plus, Seattle used a franchise tag on kicker Josh Brown back in 2006. Brown is now long gone.

Maybe the Seahawks and Steelers saw how badly kickers struggled this past season and don't want to risk losing their guys in free-agency. Maybe the teams are convinced that the kickers will be in the zone next season. Whatever the reason, both teams are paying top dollar to hold into their guys, so they should probably have a team psychologist on site just in case things go a little wacky on their kicker's brain.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Jay Novacek's wife has committed suicide by shooting herself. That's disturbing to me even for a suicide.

CLICK HERE TO FIND OUT WHY

Professional football lost a role model and a public relations goldmine on Friday as Kurt Warner retired following a crazy 12-year career.

Most of you know Warner’s NFL story: He got cut from the Packers early in his career and ended up stocking grocery shelves in Iowa. He then joined the Arena Football League and set the field on fire.

The Rams invited him to camp for a backup role in 1999 when starter Trent Green went down in the pre-season with a torn-up knee. Warner was promoted to starter and blew the league apart. He won the league MVP as well as a Super Bowl title and was featured on one of my favorite Sports Illustrated covers that has a picture of Warner in the middle of that 1999 season with the caption, “Who is this guy?” That’s what we were all saying.

His amazing Rams career lasted a few years and then, BOOM, it ended. He wallowed away with the Giants.

Once everyone had written him off as a moment in time, Warner proved to be ageless as he came to Arizona and led that awful franchise to the Super Bowl. He had left the valley and returned to the summit.

Speaking of summits, Warner holds a bevy NFL records including the top three most passing yards in a Super Bowl (and he was only in three Super Bowls), the highest career completion percentage in the playoffs, and the most career touchdowns in a post-season.

He’s a big time player, for sure.

The career of Warner is amazing enough, but it’s his personal life that astounds me. This is a guy that married a woman who was a former Marine with two children and was living on food stamps and had just lost her parents when a tornado destroyed their home.

Then Warner hit it big and became a millionaire. We’ve seen that story before. An unknown marries a sweetheart for stability. Then he hits it big and suddenly his world opens up and that’s followed by affairs and divorce. It happens so often we think of it as normal for celebrities.

Warner takes the road less traveled by being a devoted husband to the wife he married BEFORE he was famous and to her kids from another man whom Kurt officially adopted. He also has five children with his wife. It’s nothing new to see an athlete with a bunch of children, but Warner actually takes care of his.

Much like LaDanian Tomlinson, Warner devotes his free time to helping the needy whether it is single parents or disabled children. His efforts have won him awards such as the Walter Payton NFL Man of the Year, the Muhammad Ali Leadership Award, and the Most Caring Athlete Award in 2009.

Warner is not without controversy. His religious views turn some people off and he spoke out against stem cell research. Yet, he’s never backed down from whom he is and he speaks matter-of-factly about his faith. He doesn’t shame others; he simply doesn’t hide his beliefs.

It’s a sports world full of cynics, self-absorbed athletes, and the win at all costs mentality, Warner proved you could have success along with a soul. He’s truly one of the good guys.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

It's another episode of your NFL playoff PantsCast. Just put it on and go about your business. Good times had by all.

GO HERE TO LISTEN

We are getting to the end of the NFL season. I am sad. So are you.

But we're still talking football in our non-nonsensical way here at SportsPants.

During this episode we talk about:

-The blowouts that were supposed to be the most entertaining round of the NFL playoffs

-One particular position that absolutely sucks this year

-A first for the city of New Orleans

-A possible tearful goodbye to one of the game's all time greats.

-Plus a pissed off Chargers fan and random monkey sounds...

So take 45 minutes and listen to the playoff PantsCast by clicking RIGHT HERE. Now. You'll be a better NFL fan for it.

Read more of Brad Seal at the original "SportsPants" blog.

Anyone who watched Week 17 of NFL football probably wondered when he or she stepped into a wormhole that brought him or her back to the pre-season. Half of the teams didn’t bother to put out the starters and basically forfeited a regular season game.

This is, of course, nothing new in the NFL; it’s a long season and just one game off can help players who are beat to hell after a gazillion collisions.

Now the playoffs start and the intensity is ratcheted up tenfold. Meanwhile, top teams Indianapolis and New Orleans have multiple game losing streaks heading in. Both teams have a bye week, so rest wasn’t going to be a problem. Momentum, however, could now be a problem for both teams.

The Colts should be aware of this. A few years back the Colts rolled through the AFC during the regular season, then took the final games off after they captured home field advantage. As you may recall, the wild card Pittsburgh Steelers came into Indy and rolled right over the Colts. Peyton and company looked rusty and lost while the Steelers looked cohesive and ready.

If the Colts and Saints spend a half trying to up the intensity to a playoff level after screwing around for the past few weeks, they might be out of the game and the playoffs.

So I’m saying teams should stop resting their players before the playoffs, right?

That’d be an easy decision if I didn’t watch Wes Welker of the Patriots tear up his knee right in front of my eyes on Sunday. Welker is a killer slot receiver for the Pats and he’s playoff tested. Now he’s gone even though New England already had a playoff spot sewn up. Now they look very beatable with a questionable defense and only Randy Moss to scare anyone when Tom Brady drops back to pass.

The decision ultimately has to end up in the head coach’s hands since he should know his players better than anyone. If they’re beat up, maybe they need to rest, but beware making injury worries your decision maker; it just might come back to haunt you in the playoffs.