NWA: Barry Windham vs Ric Flair: World Heavyweight Championship (1986)

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Rik Schneider

NWA World Title Match_ Ric Flair (c) vs Barry Windham (Battle Of The Belts #2) (February 14th, 1986)Source:NVA– one of the best NWA/WCW matches ever.

Source:The Daily Post

“This channel is dedicated to the memory of Championship Wrestling From Florida.
If you are able to support my efforts please donate what you can.
Your support will help me to continue to preserve the memory of
the greatest wrestling territory ever.”

From 106 N. Albany

Barry Windham is one of the best all around pro wrestlers of all-time. With great size, strength, athletic ability and intelligence. 6’6 275 pounds, at least in his prime, 15-20 twenty pounds lighter than that when he was younger. But someone who could beat you up with all sorts of moves, but who could also wrestle. Could body slam you, suplex you, but could also hit you with great dropkicks and flying close lines. Just a nightmare to have to wrestle unless you were also a big strong wrestler who could wrestle. Because he had so many ways who could hurt you.

Classic matchup of a the pure wrestler in Ric Flair, vs. the young, big, strong, stud. Who was a great power and finesse wrestler, Windham could wrestle you either way. Take on a Sting, Lex Lugar, Nikita Koloff, the Road Warriors, Dusty Rhoades, but could also and beat someone like Ric Flair or Ricky Steamboat. And if you want to call pro wrestlers the total package, for me that would be Lex Lugar as he called himself, but Barry Windham was certainly that as well. But even more athletic than Lex Lugar.

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Newsmax: The Steve Salzberg Show: Bud Grant on His NFL Career

Posted on May 17, 2013 by Erik Schneider

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Source:The Daily Press

I don’t want to sound cold here, but if you look at the Vikings four Super Bowl appearances, they were the second best team in every game, so why they would be on a missing rings list from. NFL Films is surprising to me and in really at least two of those games they were clearly the second best team in the Super Bowl. Because only Super Bowl 8 against the Miami Dolphins and Super Bowl 9 against the Pittsburgh Steelers, before the Steelers became a great team on offense, the Vikings were clear underdogs in these games.

The Vikings remind me of the Buffalo Bills of the early 1990s. As teams that got beat badly in Super Bowls by teams that were clearly better than them. The Vikings were overmatched upfront on defense and offense by the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 4. And by the Oakland Raiders in Super Bowl 11, which meant the Chiefs and Raiders could run against them real well. And take away the Vikings run game and throw the ball when they wanted to do and force the Vikings to throw the ball when they had to.

The Vikings of the late 1960s and 1970s were very good teams on both sides of the ball. But that’s not enough when you play teams that are clearly better than you in the Super Bowl. They lost to two of the best teams of all-time in the 1969 Chiefs and the 1976 Raiders in the Super Bowl. Which is how both games turned into blowouts because the Vikings simply weren’t big and good enough up front to take on those big powerful offensive and defensive lines that the Chiefs and Raiders had.

The Vikings getting beat badly up front messed up their offense in these games where they had to throw practically every down. Against those big strong quick defensive lines. Against the 69 Chiefs, 73 Dolphins, 74 Steelers and 76 Raiders. The missing rings should be about teams that would’ve won the Super Bowl that year, but came up short and the 98 Vikings would be on that list. Perhaps the 86 Cleveland Browns, the 68 Baltimore Colts or the 1990 San Francisco 49ers. Not for teams that lost the Super Bowl to a better team.

The 69 Vikings are one of the most dominant teams of all-time as far as how they won games and simply dominated their opponents. A team that finished 14-2. But the 68 Colts who lost Super Bowl three were a better team both on offense and defense and a team that should be on this list. A team that won Super 5 against the Dallas Cowboys. What the Vikings were of this era were very good teams especially on defense that didn’t have enough to win the Super Bowl.

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Scott Scherer: Video: The Last Days of the Old Cleveland Browns

Posted on May 16, 2013 by Derik Schneider

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This post was originally posted at FRS Daily Journal on WordPress

This looks more like the story of the 1990s Browns before they relocated to Baltimore and became the Ravens and. The New Browns came into existence in 1999. To me this looks like the story of the Bill Belichick Browns which is a good story. Because it’s about a guy who was getting his first shot as a NFL head coach and something he deserved, but he inherited a bad football team in 1991.

His first season where the good days of the Browns of the 1980s were gone and they had become a team that you could expect to lose ten plus games every year. And Bill Belichick didn’t get off to a good start in Cleveland. And started with three straight losing seasons from 1991-93 where progress was slow, but where it finally paid off.

In 1994 the Browns becoming winners and a playoff team for the first time in five years. But financial problems in Cleveland with the Browns playing at a mammoth aging stadium in Cleveland Municipal Stadium and these issues were real and the Browns simply wouldn’t have been successful in Cleveland playing in that stadium.
Cleveland Browns Fans

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Jesse Shipp: Don Coryell- The Air Coryell Chargers

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Derik Schneider
Jesse Shipp_ Don Coryell- The Air Coryell Chargers

Source:Jesse Shipp– Air Coryell Don. (Pun intended)

Source:The Daily Journal 

“A short video about Don Coryell from the “History Of The San Diego Chargers” DVD. RIP 1924-2010.”

From Jesse Shipp

I wouldn’t put the 1981 San Diego Chargers on the NFL Films list of teams that didn’t win Super Bowls, that would’ve and what they call Missing Rings. For the simple fact that they didn’t have a Super Bowl team, they had a Super Bowl passing game.

But so did the San Francisco 49ers, Los Angeles Raiders, Washington Redskins all teams that had Super Bowl passing games. But all teams that won Super Bowls in the 1980s because they had Super Bowl teams. They all had great running games as well as great defenses so they didn’t have to score 30-35 points a game and get into shootouts to win.

Great teams are able to put up a lot of points, when their defense has a bad game, or when they are blowing their opponents away that much it was, because they were blowing teams away because their defense is also playing well.

The Chargers at least of 1981 and look at their playoff games of 1982, 1980 and 1979 and when they became playoff contenders in 1978, they were a passing team without a great running game, at least at playoff time that struggled on defense in the playoffs as well.

So I would put the Chargers in the level of the Miami Dolphins of the early and mid-1980s. Great quarterback and receivers, but not much else that stands out as being part of a great team.

I would put the 1981 Chargers on a list of teams that what would’ve been if they had a good defense as well. And then maybe we are talking about the 1981 Chargers like we are talking about the 1999 St. Louis Rams. A team with basically the exact same offense, but with a great running game as well and also one of the best defenses in the NFL in 1999.

What Air-Coryell was, is basically what I call the Spread Vertical Offense: where basically everyone on offense except for of course the QB and offensive line, are receivers and targets in the passing game where you throw the ball to everyone all over the field.

With a spread offense the defense has to cover the whole field, but where there’s at least one deep option on every pass play sending at least one corner back to go downfield. And hopefully a safety as well leaving the rest field open to other players for the QB to get the ball too.

The problem with the Air-Coryell version of the SVO is that it was a warm dry weather offense. That once the weather goes bad, the Chargers running game wasn’t good enough to pick up the slack for the passing game struggling. When the defenses know that you have to run the ball. The 1981 AFC Final against the Cincinnati Bengals otherwise known as The Freezer Bowl, perfect example.

The reason why the Chargers lost the 1981 AFC Final to the Cincinnati Bengals in what’s known as the Freezer Bowl, horrible football weather is because the Bengals were a big running team that got their big pass plays off of play-action with QB Ken Anderson. That were better defensively and a tougher team than the Chargers and well-suited to win in bad weather.

The Chargers were too single-dimensional, too reliant on the passing game to win. With not enough of a running game and defense to pick up the slack when the passing game was off.

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Uncommon Knowledge With Peter Robinson: The Sixties With Christopher Hitchens & William F. Buckley (1998)

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Rik Schneider

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Source:The FreeState

The 1960s is a generation that I would’ve liked to experienced as an adult, but I come from one generation up, so that’s not possible. But it was really a revolutionary decade both politically and culturally with all sorts of change in America. With the civil rights movement, the Great Society, the Vietnam War, the Culture Revolution and what I and others call the New-Left in America. Which is furthest left at least as far as numbers and members than America had ever seen at least in the 20th Century.

The 1960s was a decade of revolution and experimentation. Where people who grew up with parents that saw the world as black and white and right and wrong. With any other type of viewpoint being seen as crazy or, Un-American. You were on this side or that side and if neither side was good enough for you, you were an outsider. It was a decade where Boomers pushed it to the limits as much as possible. They finally felt free to live their own lives and not have to live under the umbrella of how their parents lives. And be able to live life the way they wanted to.

And one of the interesting things about the 1960s was it was completely different from the 1950s which was somewhat stagnant and where Americans were supposed to be a certain way and live their lives a certain way. Just like their parents and grandparents and that was completely overturned by the 1960s where people were now allowed to be free and live freely and not be looked down by society for the most part. And the Baby Boom generation made that happen.

It is kind of hard to sum up a decade that had John F. Kennedy as President in 1961 and then assassinated almost three-years later when most people thought it was impossible that an American President could be assassinated, or an American would even attempt to assassinate a President. That also had the civil rights movement, LBJ’s Great Society, the Vietnam War, the anti-war movement, the cultural revolution, the environmental movement, gay rights. And Americans finally coming out of their cultural coma and realizing or going “I’ll be damned! The government actually lies to their people”. And I could go on, but I don’t think I can do it.

1968 DNC

1968 DNC

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NFL Network: A Football Like Mike Ditka

Posted on May 15, 2013 by Erik Schneider

Source:The Daily Press

To understand Mike Ditka you have to understand his upbringing growing up in a tough Western Pennsylvania town. From a blue-collar Polish-American family with a very tough and demanding father who really loved him. Who ends up going to college at Pittsburgh University another real tough iron blue-collar city and then gets drafted by the Chicago Bears. Similar town as Pittsburgh culturally, but with about ten times as many people.

So Iron Mike for the most part has always been around where he came from and what he’s most comfortable with as a man. And then he ends up playing one of the toughest positions in the game tight end where you have to be tough and physical to be successful. The Mike Ditka that people got to see as a football player is the Mike Ditka that a lot more people saw as head coach of the Chicago Bears. This get in your face tough ass didn’t take crap from anyone who simply wanted the best from his players.

Mike Ditka was the ultimate tough love head coach father figure that coached the Chicago Bears for eleven seasons. From 1982-92 and if you look at his record he was very successful one of the most winningest head coaches in the NFL in the 1980s. You do your job and you give your best effort, Ditka is your best friend. But if you screw up and make mental mistakes or are lazy, Ditka is the last person you want to be around. Because he’ll tell you how bad you were, how dumb you were and how bad of a mistake you’ve made.

And if you don’t do better in the future, you better look for another job. Which was the message of Mike Ditka and you might not like his tactics, but that’s what Ditka was about. And I think something he learned from Tom Landry in Dallas. That if you want the best out of your players, you have to want it, you have to expect it and you better demand it. And your players must be aware of it as well. Mike Ditka was a blue-collar Polish-American head coach coaching in a blue-collar city with a large Polish-American community.

Iron Mike fit Chicago as well as any head coach has ever fit any major pro sports city. And why he called his football team the 85 Bears the Grabowski’s, because his team were so blue-collar and represented that city so well. And it worked very well in the 1980s until it burned out in the early 1990s when the Bears let him go.

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Liberty Pen: Walter E. Williams & Ron Walters Debate Affirmative Action (1988)

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Ederik Schneider

Walter E. Williams
Source:FreeState Now

The problem with affirmative action in a country that’s supposed to be a liberal democracy like America, that claims to be color-blind and that all people are created equally under law, is that affirmative action simply contradicts those beautiful liberal values that I share. Because under law, it denies people things based on race and color. While it’s benefiting other people things based on the same characteristics. So what we are doing is saying that we believe in things like color-blindness which is really race-blindness, but we do not believe in it enough to actually practice it.

And what we are doing instead is because certain groups of Americans have been denied their constitutional rights in America over the years simply because of their race and even at times have been denied those things by their own government, is saying, “what we are going to do now is let them benefit based on their race and discriminate against a certain group of people.” Not groups, but one group of people even by government because of their race. Affirmative action, is the ultimate trying to make up, payback attempt. “These groups of people have been denied their constitutional rights based on race. Now we’re going to pay them back by denying the group that is already doing very well in America.

What we should be doing instead, is enforcing the 1964 Civil Rights Act. That says no Americans will be denied access in America, simply because of their race. And enforce it to the point that we’re not locking people up for violating that law. But hitting them in the pocket books when they do violate that law. And giving that money to their victims, so organizations in America would be hurting their own economic bottom-lines when they practice racism in this country. As well as expanding education and economic opportunities in America in communities that have been left behind economically, as the rest of the country has done well.

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WCPO-TV: Video: Sam Wyche Remembers Super XXIII: Why the 1980s Cincinnati Bengals Came Up Short

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Rik Schneider

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This post was originally posted at FRS Daily Post on WordPress

There are a lot of things that I respect about Sam Wyche and a lot of things that I like about him. But there some faults and weakness’ in his career that I do not respect and have been looking for an opportunity to blog and write about Sam Wyche. And what I call the Wyche Bengals and not just the 1988 Bengals and basically his entire tenure in Cincinnati. Because there is a brilliant side of Sam Wyche, a guy with a brilliant both football and real world mind as far as some very intelligent when it came to football.

Sam Whyce a man who understood both offensive and defensive football about as well as any head coach from his era. And yet I consider Sam Wyche to be a rich or poor man’s Norv Turner. A higher football IQ than Norv, but someone who produced similar results as a head football coach. Someone who seems to have a very good football team at least on paper each year, yet struggles just to make the playoffs every year for the most part. The 1988 Cincinnati Bengals perfectly sums up the Sam Wyche tenure in Cincinnati.

Because here’s a franchise in the Bengals that arguably had the most talent in the AFC Central in the mid and late 1980s. And perhaps as late as 1990 and 91 when Sam was still the head coach in Cincinnati. And yet The Bengals do not even make the AFC Playoffs until year five of Sam’s tenure in Cincinnati in 1988. Let alone win a divisional title, yet he had the best team in the AFC Central in 1984 and 85 for sure. Perhaps not in 86, the 86 Cleveland Browns were very good and another example of a team that was a underachiever.

But the 86 Bengals that went 10-6 had a better team than the Denver Broncos that won the AFC that year. And would’ve at least been a wildcard team that year. And 1987 a strike season, but a team that went 4-11, but had great opportunities to win at least 4-5 more games and make the AFC Playoffs and they didn’t do that. The 1988 Bengals a team that went 12-4 and by most accounts had a great season. Yet they had opportunities to win Super Bowl 23 in the fourth-quarter and put this game away against the. San Francisco 49ers.

And the Bengals didn’t do that, like dropping an interception in the end zone and settling for field goals despite having the best offense in the NFL that year. The Bengals in Super Bowl 23 looked like the Bengals of 1987 a team that simply didn’t finish. And why they are part of a show that’s called The Missing Rings instead of on a show that’s about one of the best NFL teams of all-time and one of the best ever. A lot of NFL head coaches don’t succeed because they don’t have enough talent. Sam Wyche didn’t succeed, because he didn’t do enough with the talent that he had.
Boomer Bengals

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Sean Taylor: Video: A Football Life Tom Landry, The Man Who Built America’s Team

Posted on May 14, 2013 by Erik Schneider

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This post was originally posted at FRS Daily Press on WordPress

Tom Landry is an interesting subject for me as a Redskins fan because here’s the guy who built America’s Team that became the new arch-rival of the Redskins in the early 1970s replacing the New York Giants and cost the Redskins division-titles in the 1970s which the Redskins corrected in the 1980s. But Mike Ditka I believe has the best quote that at least I’ve heard about Tom Landry so far when he was talking about class.

And Iron Mike said and I’m paraphrasing here, but “that class is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. It might be a great throw from a quarterback or the sound of a ball off of a sluggers bat for a home run. Tom Landry was class”, that when you saw him or knew him you knew he was class and that’s a great way to describe Tom Landry. That greatness is hard to define, but you know it when you see it. You know a great play when you see it, you know a great player when you see them play and you know a great head coach when you play for him. Or watch his career and that’s what Tom Landry was.

Tom Landry’s philosophy of coaching was simply to get the best out of his players and teams that he could possibly could. To make them as good as could be, which is easier said then done and hopefully the goal of every head coach. But then how you do that and every head coach probably has their own philosophy to accomplish that. But with coach Landry it was about never being satisfied with any of his players until he got the best out of him that he could.

Which is why he never congratulated his players or tell them how great of a job that they were doing and never complemented them. Unless he was getting the best play and games out of his players that he could and when he did that is what we saw America’s Team in the NFL. The Dallas Cowboys of the 1970s a team that was almost impossible to beat. When they were all playing up to their capabilities and winning championships. And with Tom Landry pushing his players to the limit was on both offense and defense always pushing his players to get the best out of them.

You want to talk about football genius’, how many head coaches do you know that could be either the offensive or defensive coordinator on the team. That knew enough about both offensive and defensive football that he could not only call the offensive plays and defensive plays for his team, put both the offensive and defensive game plans together for his team, not just do all of these things, but do them very well. The only person that did all of these things and did them well is Tom Landry.

Tom Landry is one of the top 3-5 head coaches of all-time because of how knowledgable he was about both sides of the ball. But then was such a great teacher and knew how to communicate his knowledge to his players. And show them exactly what he wanted out of them and very few if anyone did that better than Tom Landry.The numbers in Tom Landry’s career. Twenty consecutive winning seasons from 1966-85 which I believe will never be broken. Eleven straight playoff appearances from 1975-85, that may be never be done again. Two Super Bowl championships in the 1970s, the Cowboys being the only NFC team to win a Super Bowl in the 1970s. Twelve division-titles, five conference championships.

All of these things happening after inheriting one of the worst expansion teams of all-time in the 1960 Cowboys. But it’s not the championships and the 270 odd victories that Tom Landry had but all the knowledge he brought to the game. And his great ability as a teacher to teach his knowledge which is why he’s Ss high on the list of greatest NFL head coaches of all-time.
Tom Landry

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The New York Times: Can Diversity Survive Without Affirmative Action?

Posted on May 13, 2013 by Derik Schneider

Diversity
Source:Free State MD

You only achieve a colorblind, or racial-blind, which is what this is really about, or ethnic-blind, or gender-blind society, if you actually practice those things. And simply say dammit, (or use your own word) we are simply not going to tolerate people being denied things in America based on their race, ethnicity, color, gender and I would add sexuality. That’s why we have civil rights laws, to punish racist actions in this country that literally prevent people from succeeding in America. Of course all Americans are entitled to racist beliefs, or racist ideology in this country.

The First Amendment protects bigotry, but we simply do not have a constitutional right to practice those beliefs. In the name of hate, or for whatever reasons without any consequences coming for that. To use as a hypothetical, Joe could hate Tom because of his race. Whatever Tom’s race is and let’s say Joe and Tom are of different races. But Joe does not have the right to physically assault Tom because of Tom’s race. Or deny Tom a job, or a home for the same reasons. Just like Tom doesn’t have the right to deny Joe the same things or assault Joe based on Joe’s race.

And the same thing goes with government, that government can’t reward people, or deny people no matter their race, ethnicity or gender. Based on race, ethnicity or gender even if it’s only one factor. If the Equal Protection Clause means a damn thing. So my point is the way you stop racist actions is by enforcing the law and punishing people for when they do it. And you hit them hard enough that it hurts so they pay a steep price for it and even if they are bigots. The price for their bigotry might be so high that they may consider not doing it. That they’ll look for legitimate ways that are actually real to deny people who are of a different race, ethnicity, or gender. And they wouldn’t recruit people of different backgrounds to work for them.

The way you eliminate racist beliefs is simply through education. You educate the ignorant, so even if kids who have racist parents let’s say, you have them go to school and allow them to grow up with people from different backgrounds. So they can learn how foolish their parents are about other people. As I’ve said before you do not fight bigotry by practicing it yourself and you treat people as individuals. Not as members of groups and not assuming that someone from a certain background is going to need some special advantage. Just because of whatever group, or groups that they are members of. That the way to achieve diversity in America is through better education where everyone in the country has access to a quality education. No matter their race, ethnicity, or gender and no matter their income level, or their parents income-level. So we have as many Americans as possible regardless of race, ethnicity, or gender living up to their human potential.

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