Adrian Russell » American Football

Cee Lo Green – ‘Fuck You’

Adrian — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 00:42:08 +0000

New video for Cee Lo’s latest tune. Dunno how they’re gonna make it look like ‘Forget You’ for TV, which is the plan apparently.

Dude looks like he could play for Baltimore Ravens.

H/T John Riordan

Guess who’s on holidays?

Adrian — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 11:58:48 +0000

While I’m away, check out the first few episodes of HBO’s Hard Knocks – the documentary series which this year joins the New York Jets’ training camp.

There’s such gems as Rex Ryan’s ready-a-classic motivational talk and Antonio Cromartie tries to remember how many kids he has.

Amazing stuff.

Superbowl lessons for the GAA

Adrian — Tue, 09 Feb 2010 15:14:38 +0000

The Saints capped a remarkable sporting journey, late on Sunday night, when underdog quarterback Drew Brees drove New Orleans to a stunning victory over the Indianapolis Colts. Among the crowd, we know, in the Sun Life Stadium in southern Miami were a couple of GAA stars; but what can the association learn from the NFL’s greatest show on earth?

1. The game on Sunday night is the last high-wire act in a week-long, multi-ring circus. For the days leading up to the tie former NFL stars make themselves available for workshops with kids; agents and administrators hold public debates and think-ins on the business of their sport while media have access to both teams for a three full days. Why not make the respective All-Ireland finals the culmination to a seven-day festival of the sport. It’s good business.

2. The famous half-time show was merely an exercise in Pete Townsend and Roger Daltry slowly dismantling their hard-earned rock’n'roll reputation with every creaky windmill manoeuvre and missed cue. If The Who offer themselves as half-time entertainment, let’s stick with the Artane Band

3. Peyton Manning is like a super quarter-back built in a lab by the US government using parts from slightly lesser QBs. In other words, just like Henry Shefflin. But not even Manning, with his obsessive-compulsive preparation, laser-like football mind and metronomic arm could lead the Colts to a win that was utterly expected. Fairytales happen, and the GAA world should not expect the Cats to go on winning forever. Right?

4. This year’s broadcast became the most watched event in American TV since the last episode of MASH with 116 million people tuning in. But as much as the on-field action and the half-time show, the commercials that punctuate the play receive as much attention. This year Hollywood starlet Megan Fox in a bath selling mobile phones as well as bitter rivals David Letterman and Jay Leno teaming up for a spot drew the most attention. Perhaps it’s time for the GAA and its sponsors to move away from its top stars hawking cattle feed and Wavin pipes.

5. The Saints won an unlikely victory a mere four years after Hurricane Katrina brought the jazz in New Orleans to a sudden stop. It’s clearly a silly parallel to attempt to draw but there are a collection counties who’ve endured a winter of discontent here – very often under an unwelcome veil of flood water. Like Brees and his inspirational Saints, they’ll be aiming to make hay when the sun shines once again.

First posted this morning to the Irish Examiner sportsblog.

A lament for Giants Stadium

Adrian — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:55:53 +0000

Old soldiers often visit now-green fields which long ago heard their last gunshot in order to retrace hard-made steps and remember battles fought.

If any gnarled and scarred Irish veterans of the memorable USA ’94 campaign ever make the pilgrimage stateside, the site of their most famous victory will be utterly unrecognisable.

Earlier today, the demolition of Giants Stadium got started when a massive metal claw bit chunks from the cement helix. Dust clouds poured into the Meadowlands air as concrete and metal spokes poked through the shredded facade.

The stadium is merely 34-years-old and was, apparently, perfectly fit for purpose. But in that most American way, it was decided to topple it and start again. Renewal.

Just like the renowned and beautiful Yankee Stadium which went the same way recently and the Mets’ Shea Stadium, Giants Stadium was discarded like an old fashioned overcoat, before a new ‘facility’ is built right across the street.

There are, I think, few pleasures in life more exciting than a great sports ground in the pregnant hour or two before a much-anticipated event. Like that Heineken Cup TV advert which depicts a grizzled old groundsman recounting sepia-tinted days in the stadium while memories of solid tackles and spectacular tries visibly haunt the turf, sitting in a stadium and imagining the history that was played out in the little bit of real estate is a wonderful little experience.

Anyone whoever played the backroom in Cork’s Sir Henry’s could claim a shared performance heritage with Nirvana and Sonic Youth (and they did) and so too anyone who sat in a stadium seat that was witness to sporting soap opera, plugged into its rich history.

I wasn’t at the game in 1994 on that searingly hot June Saturday. And now, alas, I won’t be able to sit high in the bleachers in New Jersey and replay in my mind’s eye what I witnessed on the televison on the green canvas in front of me.

Due to the mutli-chrome spectrum of sports that was hosted in Meadowlands, I could have made my X on any blade of grass and hit upon a splinter of history.

As well as field goals kicked, Springsteen anthems bellowed and goals scored, labour leader Jimmy Hoffa was said to be buried in the foundations at one end zone (the Hoffa Zone, predictably).

This has since been disproved but it’s a good story, and it’s a great place to be dumped – if you were, in fact, killed by mobsters.

Here in Ireland? We’ll always remember Giants Stadium for Ray Houghton’s looping goal over a stranded Pagliuca that sent the country into absolute raptures. Paul McGrath once recounted a time when Villa played Inter in the UEFA Cup I think and the Italian goalkeeper grabbed him by the arm in the tunnel and sang, unblinkingly, ‘Oooh Aaah Paul McGrath’ at a bemused Black Pearl of Inchicore; a ditty learned that day in New Jersey.

If the demolition machinery creaked to a halt now, you might just hear 50,000 red-neck Irish people oohing and aaahing still.

Cross posted to the Irish Examiner sportsblog.

The American way

Adrian — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 17:16:39 +0000

Many of my readers – perhaps even both of you – will spend this rainy Sunday night in front of the fire, watching the NFL action on Sky.

American Football has now more than a cult following, I would suggest, on this side of the water. The Cork Admirals compete in the Irish American Football League (IAFL). It is some operation, as I saw for myself here.

I received an email from the Admirals, who are again recruiting players for the upcoming season which begins in March. For anyone interested, the details are below and there are plenty of other teams around the country who are no doubt in the same need for players.

[We] are always looking for more to get involved as the sport and its clubs are a big set up from coaching staff to game day crews, club members and of course they the sport is demanding of high numbers for its squad set up. A lot of people think the Admirals have no openings which is quite the opposite and if you are interested in learning more or getting involved look up their website for contacts www.corkadmirals.net and there are plenty of links to other teams around the country

Contact: admiralsironman@hotmail.com Web: www.corkadmirals.info

Booked: the year’s best sports writing

Adrian — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 14:50:19 +0000

The Irish Examiner sportsdesk chose their favourite books of the year for a piece in last Saturday’s newpaper.

Here’s my two picks:

Boys Will Be Boys: The Bad Boys Won: The Glory Days and Party Nights of the Dallas Cowboy Dynasty
Jeff Pearlman
Harper Collins

When the Dallas Cowboys opened up the sparkling, box-fresh Texas Stadium with a defeat of the New York Giants in September, it was the denouement to the Jerry Jones story. Boys will be Boys explains how it began.

Jones, an oil magnate (predictably) from the Lone Star State purchased America’s Team in the early 90s – a franchise who at that point seemed to have gone to the well once too often. Rising from the smouldering ashes of a car crash 1989 season they went on to win their first Superbowl in four years and produce a swashbuckling, confident dynasty that defined the NFL in the 90s.

But for a team who took care of business on Sundays, they played hard every other day too.
The tale opens with future hall of famer Michael Irvin stabbing a teammate in the neck with a barber’s scissors, and from there spirals out of control.

Massive investment from Jones – along with the expertise of coach Jimmy Johnson – brought unprecedented victories on the pitch. But four Superbowls success in the 90s was paralleled by off-field excess. Drugs, orgies, fights, marital infidelities, and, finally, that stabbing which punctured, at last, the years of wild living in the infamous ‘White House’ – a neighbourhood home the squad rented collectively to facilitate their partying.

Though the tale is punctuated by trips to strip clubs and cocaine arrests, the Shakespearean power struggle at the heart of the Cowboys story is as fascinating. While their team crumbled, owner Jones and manager Jimmy Johnson’s relationship descends into mis-trust, turf-battles and paranoia.

Written by Sports Illustrated writer Jason Pearlman – who previously depicted the beer-soaked tales of the womanising, vandalising ’86 New York Mets who claimed an unlikely World Series win in The Bad Guys Won, he has stuck to a winning formula. With a rainbow of colourful characters, this book is as hard-hitting – and fun- as the team it depicts so well.

The Beckham Experiment
Grant Wahl
Crown Books

A typical football book – particularly one of the game’s superstars – might be cracked open by a reader with some reservations about its journalistic merit. Not this one.

When David Beckham’s LA Galaxy lost the MLS Cup final on penalties to Real Salt Lake City last week a gaggle of reporters hopped open the locker-room door, strode in and asked a half-dressed Beckham for his reaction. This is American sports media.

If Beckham is now used to the underpants-revealing admittance the newspaper men receive in the States, he wasn’t when his LA Story began.

Sports Illustrated’s Grant Wahl slipped behind the velvet rope to earn unprecedented access to Goldenball’s life and the weird marriage of Hollywood and sport that this deal was.

Beckham’s foray into the United States was engineered by entertainment conglomerate AEG, which owns the Galaxy, and the former English captain’s first season in the US was scarred by disappointment, manipulation and disaster – on the field at least.
Wahl sketches a dressing room full of European journeymen, Californian surf dudes on 25k a year and America’s favourite son Landon Donovan all under the eccentric management of hirsute red-head and US legend Alexi Lalas.

Donovans’s unwavering criticism in this book of the new signing – that Beckham took the skipper’s armband, wouldn’t pick up tabs in restaurants and wasn’t committed to the Galaxy – are said to have produced a new resolve at the Home Depot Arena and sparked this season’s charge for the playoffs.

Though now part of the story, The Beckham Experiment offers the fullest picture yet of the growth of US soccer, the business of sport and Beckham’s role as a Hollywood leading man.

Anyone have their own recommendations?

Earth to college football player?!

Adrian — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 17:52:54 +0000

See more funny videos and funny pictures at CollegeHumor.

Glasgow Diamonds’ team song

Adrian — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:06:29 +0000

No explanation needed. Via @Glinner

“So just call on me brother, when you need a hand”

Adrian — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:03:31 +0000

If any of you are college football fans who enjoy the soulful grooves of Bill Withers c 1972, then this is the video for you!

The USC Trojans adopted the famous Lean On Me as their team anthem this year. The side’s coach brought in the R&B legend to a squad meeting as a joke. And then they all jammed.

Another season blooms…

Adrian — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 00:29:44 +0000

I should have done this last week maybe, but with the dawn of the new football year there’s been plenty of great stuff to read:

‘Tipperary teen sensation’ Kevin Coleman has started a really impressive website called Back Page Football. This year I’ll not be embarrassed in my Fantasy Football leagues thanks, largely, to this article.

The spirit of David Peace is channelled for this inspired Premier League preview at Sport is a TV Show.

Darren Norris loves Arsenal so much, he wears Perry Groves pyjamas to bed. On the Examiner sportsdesk blog he reflects on the Gunners’ spanking of Everton this weekend.

While south London’s Andy Fifield went west to peer through the gates at Stamford Bridge before posting this blog by standing outside a fashionable Fulham Road cafe to steal the wi-fi. Probably.

ESPN ‘Sports Guy’ Bill Simmons has his view of the world game redefined by a trip south of the border for the Mexico-USA game last week. Check it out here.

And in other news, Eoin Butler meets Traveller bareknuckle boxing champion, turned Evangelical Christian preacher Dan Rooney.

Dog fighting enthusiast Michael Vick is out of the Big House and now playing for the Philadelphia Eagles. Plenty of Sports Illustrated coverage here.

Finally, how does Usain Bolt compare with other 100m legends, you ask? Have a look at this then.