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Behind The Scoreboard
By Claude Vinson NFL returns Each
year at this time the NFL’s pre-season gets a major building block,
commonly known as the Hall of Fame Game. The show starts early in the
week as former players who have been tabbed to travel to Canton, Ohio,
to pick up the gold jacket (the golden fleece pro football) and have a
flurry of pictures, both still and motion, taken with their bust which
will add luster beyond those already enshrined there. This
event always takes center stage before the pro exhibition season
begins, but one would be hard pressed to make the participants believe
this game is only an exhibition. Teams and coaches, and owners, know
that true football fans everywhere are going to be tuned in to use this
first “offering” as some sort of measuring stick of the league’s teams’
readiness for the upcoming season. This weekend,
as noteworthy as it is, has competition. This year it ranged from a
16-team rugby tournament in Memphis to Tiger Woods suffering another
flameout, this time at the Bridgestone. Woods stood a chance of losing
his number one status to Phil Mickelson (I honestly don’t know how this
one turned out, folks!). And rugby, a game which shares the “football”
mantra, is sporting a resurgence because it is going to be an Olympic
sport in the 2012 games. Rugby, generally big on the continents across
the big waters, was an Olympic sport in the 1920 and 1924 games. Would
you believe the United States won both of those championships? Anyway
back to the main thrust of this article. Preceding the Sunday game
which featured the Cincinnati Bengals against America’s team (the
Dallas Cowboys, as if you didn’t know), there was the cloaking of the
2010 class of inductees into the Hall. The impressive number of seven
was led by none other than Mississippi’s own Jerry Rice whose records,
because of their enormity, might never be broken. The other six were
all time rushing leader Emmitt Smith, John Randle, Rickey Jackson, Russ
Grimm, Floyd Little and Dick LeBeau. Jackson is the first New Orleans
Saint to enter the Hall after a wait which encompassed over three
decades. At 73, LeBeau is still active as an assistant coach with the
Pittsburgh Steelers. The interviews with these inductees conducted
during the game were priceless. Adding another
dimension to this game was the Bengals’ acquisition of T.O. (Terrell
Owens). Cincy signed T.O. to a one-year deal for $2 million with a
number of incentives (six, I think), each worth $335,000. This game
would be the first time the receiver would face his old team since they
parted company. The Bengals picked up the controversial player when no
other team had approached him. T.O. is not getting any younger and he
is not without skills. The Bengals didn’t do too bad last year, going 10-6 and not losing a game in their division. Is Owens to be their catalyst?
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