Now that the NFL has labor peace for the next decade, Commissioner Roger Goodell has job security through the 2018 season. Not only did Goodell get through one of the league’s most contentious and troubling periods — a 4 ½-month lockout of the players — but he oversaw a highly successful season once a 10-year collective bargaining agreement was reached. On Wednesday, he reaped some rewards himself with a contract extension through March 2019. “It is the only place I have ever wanted to work,” Goodell said after the league’s...

Some in the college football bowl business want to raise the standards. They believe 6-6 teams should not be in bowl games. They have many compelling arguments, and Brett McMurphy of cbssports.com wrote an interesting piece on it, which you can read here. Short version: requiring teams to have a winning record and/or seven wins would make bowl games more meaningful and almost surely would cut down on the number of bowl games. Several bowls would go out of business, because of a lack of teams available. In the past two...

Wide receiver Kyle Williams of the San Francisco 49ers made two costly mistakes in Sunday’s NFC Championship game that likely cost his team a spot in Super Bowl XLVI. But the real drama happened after the game, on Twitter. Outraged fans used the social network to post a cavalcade of hateful, vile messages — including death threats — to Williams’s account. Williams let a punt bounce off of his knee in the fourth quarter of the game, then fumbled another punt in overtime. The first blunder led to a New York Giants touchdown,...

If it’s true, as the saying goes, that “defense wins championships,” the NFL’s conference title games offered ample evidence that special teams can lose them. “You’re going to need special teams. A kick will win a game more often than a run or pass will win the game, and a special teams tackle can make a big difference,” former Minnesota Vikings and Arizona Cardinals coach Dennis Green said in a telephone interview Monday. “There’s nothing like it when it all works,” added Green, now an NFL Network analyst. “And there’s nothing worse when it doesn’t work.” The Baltimore Ravens and San...

Ten local college football players now facing charges for an attack. An attack on another college athlete. Charges against football players for Notre Dame College in South Euclid. An attack – ten on one. The attack reportedly happened at an off-campus house on Ellison, just steps away from the Notre Dame College football field. The ten have been hit with felony charges, including assault and kidnapping. Cuyahoga County prosecutors say the football players jumped on a Notre Dame baseball player leaving him with broken bones in his face. The beating...

The Commitment Project: studying recruits, college football edition During a visit to Clemson in August 2008, I asked then-coach Tommy Bowden why basketball coaches got so much more offended when recruits broke commitments than football coaches did. Bowden laughed, and he explained that most college football coaches understand that a verbal commitment is essentially meaningless until the player signs the National Letter of Intent that forbids other schools from recruiting him. “Especially in this part of the country,” Bowden said, “no means go.” Yet every time a high-profile player flips...

The New England Patriots ended the Baltimore Ravens’ season one agonizing step shy of the Super Bowl Sunday and continued to carve a place in history as one of the NFL’s most enduring dynasties with a 23-20 victory in the AFC championship game. New England quarterback Tom Brady failed to put on his typical display of passing exploits. But he and the Patriots made the big plays when it mattered to beat the Ravens at Gillette Stadium. Ravens kicker Billy Cundiff missed a 32-yard field goal attempt with 11 seconds to play that...

Joe Paterno, who racked up more wins than anyone else in major college football but was fired from Penn State amid a child sex abuse scandal has died. He was 85. His family released a statement Sunday morning to announce his death. “He died as he lived,” the statement said. “He fought hard until the end, stayed positive, thought only of others and constantly reminded everyone of how blessed his life had been. His ambitions were far reaching, but he never believed he had to leave this Happy Valley to achieve them....

UCLA #39 Dye all set to confirm he’s healthy Tony Dye is back on a football field, but it’s different this time. For one thing, he’s healthy. “I feel like I’ve never been injured in my life,” said Dye, the defensive back from Corona Santiago on Friday before a final walk-through for today’s NFL Players Association Collegiate Bowl at the Home Depot Center. The 3 p.m. game, a showcase for draft-eligible players, will be televised by the NBC Sports Network, the cable channel formerly known as Versus. Dye and Chris...

NFL notes: Wander on the dark aspect Bad boys, bad boys, what they gonna do… Nothing good, it turns out. It is another unsettling time on the legal and public perception front in the NFL. First comes news the league has decided not to investigate claims reported in the Kansas City Star that former Chiefs coach Todd Haley “suspected” rooms at the facility were bugged and that he “believed” his cell phone had been tampered with. The league says the Chiefs have told them the reports are false. Right. And...