The Official NFL Thread

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Originally Posted by rabidmoose171

They're still getting paid to play a game.

The fact that less of them get arrested than the normal population, if true, is still ****. They are supposed to be role-models and heroes.

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First of all, my entire point is that they're not getting paid to play a game, they're getting paid to work, and anyone with any experience in high level athletics knows the difference.

Also, being a role model and a hero sounds a little different to me than just "getting paid to play a game." Just playing a game is what I do when I fire up my computer.

Again, I'm not trying to say they have the roughest lives in the world. I'm just saying that it's not as easy as everyone thinks it is, and it's not "just getting paid to play a game."

just ask brett farve how bad it is,he had to take painkillers constantly.Its hard in the nfl but you make it somehow I guess.It is nowhere near easy in the nfl.

They also are paid well base on the fact that only a small percentage of the population is able to do their "job" at the level they do. There are not a ton of 200lb guys around that can run a 4.4 40 and have a 38" vertical, etc. And thats just the measurable abilities, not the other stuff that sets them apart.

Whats wrong with going to a strip club now?

when the incident that got you banned for a year happened in a strip club, you would think that not going to a strip club right before your appeal would be a good idea.

sure they work hard, most people who make big $ work hard...unless you are CEO of exxon, you are gonna be busting *** to stay where you are at...point is, they still play a GAME and get paid for it... of course you have to work out, if you didn't then you woul't be able to compete on the same level and you woul be OUT OF A JOB.

It's not just playing a game anymore, it's a job. Saying playing in the NFL is playing a game is like saying that doodling on your notes in class is the same as being a professional animator because all you're doing is getting paid to draw. I guess technically it's the same, but the connotation with saying "they get paid to play a game" is so far off it's unbelievable. The "game" they play is so much harder on them than probably anybody around here's job it's practically incomparable. They don't have sick days. Many players are out there with broken bones or severe sprains, and they just have to take painkillers or risk losing their job. Late in the season, most guys can't even walk normally the day after a game. You can lose your job if you lose too much weight or gain too much weight in the offseason, so even when you DON'T have games you can't afford to slack off. You can wake up one day and have to move across the country tomorrow because you've been traded. The only "game playing" part comes for about 3 hours once a week for only half the year, and if you screw up during that happy fun time you'll get yelled at unmercifully right afterwards, hear about it for weeks in practice and in the media, and possibly get benched.

Doesn't sound like "just a game" to me, but I guess we'll just have to agree to disagree.

it's a job, of course it is... but working out to stay in shape to keep one's job is no different than many other jobs.

as a licensed therapist you have to have continuing education in order to stay licensed, take classes your entire career to keep your job....many careers are like this, some you have to bust *** physically (sports) and some mentally... no one is saying what they do is easy, if it was you and me would supplant manning/harrison on the qb to wr TD list...yes they have to stay within strict parameters regarding weight and body fat % etc, but most of these guys are physically gifted metabolically that it isn't that difficult to accomplish...OL/DL forget about it.

there are guys that can go into a gym and just pack on muscle like it's nothing, no special diets, nothing... then there are guys that can work out all day every day for years and not make significant gains - the skinny nerdy types, NFL guys have a leg up genetically speaking.

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Originally Posted by vairox

it's a job, of course it is... but working out to stay in shape to keep one's job is no different than many other jobs.

as a licensed therapist you have to have continuing education in order to stay licensed, take classes your entire career to keep your job....many careers are like this, some you have to bust *** physically (sports) and some mentally... no one is saying what they do is easy, if it was you and me would supplant manning/harrison on the qb to wr TD list...yes they have to stay within strict parameters regarding weight and body fat % etc, but most of these guys are physically gifted metabolically that it isn't that difficult to accomplish...OL/DL forget about it.

there are guys that can go into a gym and just pack on muscle like it's nothing, no special diets, nothing... then there are guys that can work out all day every day for years and not make significant gains - the skinny nerdy types, NFL guys have a leg up genetically speaking.

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So you're saying that they're doing the same thing that many people do at their jobs, only at a very high level. How is that just getting paid to play a game, then? Because they're out running instead of pushing paper?

Would a construction job be just getting paid to play a game because I enjoyed playing with Legos growing up, or because I like to do work on my house in my free time?

Maybe that's it; people say it's just a game because they're jealous that football players, or all pro athletes, have a job that they enjoy rather than staying in a position they hate like most people seem to. You could say that about any profession, though. It is not an exaggeration to say that people at high levels of corporations, like CFOs, legitimately enjoy scanning over spreadsheets line by line, or to say that financial analysts get off on comparing the income statements and balance sheets of bunch of different companies. Going over financial records isn't something we traditionally associate with being fun, but truth be told this is something these people would be doing even if it wasn't their job.

Everything works both ways; pro athletes (and I don't just mean high level, here I'm talking about all levels down to the minor leagues and such) often look at their friends and wish they had a job where they could just sit at a desk all day and get paid for it and not have to work their bodies to death and be on the road a quarter of the year.

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Originally Posted by monroeski

So you're saying that they're doing the same thing that many people do at their jobs, only at a very high level. How is that just getting paid to play a game, then? Because they're out running instead of pushing paper?

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it was an an exaggeration, as I stated many posts ago.

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Maybe that's it; people say it's just a game because they're jealous that football players, or all pro athletes, have a job that they enjoy rather than staying in a position they hate like most people seem to.

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not jealous, remember it's SUPER DUPER EXTREMELY MEGA ULTRA NINJA SUPLEX ON YOUR HEAD SNAP YOUR NECK BACK EXCRUCIATINGLY HARD work, can't be jealous of that.

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Everything works both ways; pro athletes (and I don't just mean high level, here I'm talking about all levels down to the minor leagues and such) often look at their friends and wish they had a job where they could just sit at a desk all day and get paid for it and not have to work their bodies to death and be on the road a quarter of the year.

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but everyone is jealous.... :D

REgardless of anything else. Football is just a game. Sure it is there job to be good at football. I respect the hard work that goes into staying at the peak of your game and in top condition. But guess what, I do that too as a firefighter, I love my job, but its not a game like football.

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Originally Posted by rabidmoose171

REgardless of anything else. Football is just a game. Sure it is there job to be good at football. I respect the hard work that goes into staying at the peak of your game and in top condition. But guess what, I do that too as a firefighter, I love my job, but its not a game like football.

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But it's NOT a game when it's at that high of a level. NFL football in reality bears basically no resemblance whatsoever to what you and your friends go out and do on the weekend, or what people play in high school. College football is getting warm, but the NFL is still a completely different animal.

As I mentioned before, it's like the difference between playing with Legos and being an architect. Pro football is so completely dissimilar to what 99.999999% of the population think of football as a game that it's practically unrecognizable.

ITS A GAME.

It requires work to be good at, but its still a ****ing game dude.

You play football.

I see little difference between being Terrell Owens and being Garry Kasparov, TO has to bust *** physically to dominate in his profession and domionate his competition...Garry does it mentally.

in the end, it's a game... sure you may be the hardest working guy in sports, but at the end of the day you are either blocking someone, catching or throwing a ball and what you do during the week is all meant to get you better at doing what you do sunday (and monday, and sometimes thursday)

Having played college football and known several people in the NFL, though, I have a little more experience with this than most people, and trust me, the people that say it's just a game don't really conceptually grasp what happens on that high of a level, and it's not just the physical difficulty of the work that I refer to when I say it's not a game anymore. Any one of us could go play sandlot football for a few hours on the weekend and have exactly as much "game" in our lives as pro football players do.

We're pretty much just going in circles and not making any headway in convincing each other of anything, so it's probably time to drop this.

Let's all just point and laugh about how the NBA and NHL playoffs are in full swing, MLB is about at the point where you can really start to tell who's real and who isn't, but the NFL is still on the main page of ESPN, despite nothing really going on there until several months in the future. :D

thats cause the NFL is the most competetive sport of all pro sports (except maybe REAL pro wrestling) there is more strategy, harder hits and crazier things happen... any given sunday as they say, it's anyones game...crappy team can thump a contender...never know, MLB is way too slow, like golf almost, NHL is soccer on ice and who watches soccer? NBA can be exciting, but eh...

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NHL is soccer on ice and who watches soccer?

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I don't watch soccer on ice... but I watch hockey.

I am a HUGE fan of the NFL... my posts here will attest to that.

But in my mind, NHL is an equal.

You get a high intensity, hitting NHL game and I would pit it against ANY NFL classic.

The NHL has been, and still is the biggest unknown awesome sport that much of the country is blissfully unaware of. And my wife is living proof.

"Soccer on ice" hardly does it justice.

Both ice soccer and hockey bore me to death.

Well hey, to each their own. I think hockey is a tough sport, and you have to be tough to play it. I've met some of the guys from the Ducks at a bar once; they were friggin big! Soccer is an awesome sport when you watch the best of the best (ie world cup). I grew up on the NFL and not the others, so unfortunately I never got into them. As open minded as I am to other sports, they just do nothing for me. I'm sure the same could be said for those that grew up on hockey and soccer. Like I said, to each their own.

The Stanley Cup is easily the hardest trophy to win out of all of them. Even the nippleheads at espn know that.

hockey is hella hard, those dudes hit hella hard and it's a tough sport, it just doesn't excite me even mildly... same with soccer, though that rinaldhino or whoever (long haired dude) is friggen crazy, like tecmo bo of soccer players - it doesn't excite me, neither does MLB, golf or tennis...NBA does SOMETIMES if there is a good matchup, like lakers-heat or suns-lakers... other than that I'm really not all that interested.

The NFL is the most competitive league because it doesn't have guaranteed contracts. You can cut players at anytime and not owe them a cent for the rest of their contract. You aren't just competing with the other teams, you are competing with your own teammates for your roster spot. That is what makes football more like a real job than the other sports.

Just look at the names of the finals for all sports and you know which ones are coolest.

Superbowl
World Series
World Cup
Stanley Cup

and then...

NBA finals.

woo:rolleyes:

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Anthony Gonzalez, the Colts' first-round draft pick has been prohibited from participating in the minicamp -- by the NFL, no less -- because he was one of 35 rookies invited to Reebok's NFL Player Rookie Premier. It's a major happening for the league and its sponsors, and begins today in Los Angeles. Gonzalez initially declined the invitation, intent on participating in minicamp. When a few other players followed suit, the NFL's Management Council stepped in and sent memos to all 32 teams. The "invitation'' would be honored. Even if a player decided not to participate in the sponsor-related event, he could not attend his team's minicamp.

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so... you get invited to be window dressing for corporate sponsors, you decline "thanks, but no thanks - I would rather get in a much work as I can with my new team learning everything I can"

peers take the same stance and now the suits step in and say "thats cool, you don't have to come....but you aren't going to mini camp either"

wow... I'd be a bit upset if I was a coach.

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Originally Posted by vairox

so... you get invited to be window dressing for corporate sponsors, you decline "thanks, but no thanks - I would rather get in a much work as I can with my new team learning everything I can"

peers take the same stance and now the suits step in and say "thats cool, you don't have to come....but you aren't going to mini camp either"

wow... I'd be a bit upset if I was a coach.

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Seriously, that is a bunch of BS. I h8 corporate politics.