The Birds are a video game

So the Mike Vick era is officially underway and boy is it exciting. Sure there are going to be those negatives plays, which there are going to a ton, but the video game type plays are quickly going to make fans forgot them. The offense is now a video game. Speed, speed, and more speed. DJ and Maclin might be the fastest pair of the receivers in the league.

After what has happened over the past three weeks its a miracle that the Birds sit on top of the NFC East and next week Mc5 returns to the Linc, in which should be an emotional game.
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Professional Tailgating: Now that is a walk

North Carolina brought half a team to Rutgers and was able to walk out with a win. The OTWT tailgating crew had some issues that forced them to move to a different area.

A lot of North Carolina fans tailgating in the area of the RAC

 People get ready for the Scarlet Walk

The Scarlet Walk

The Knight and his horse get ready to enter the stadium

Now this RV shows where your team colors are

The Philly Daily News Best Work

So Mike Vick is the leader of the Eagles and the Philly Daily News tells everyone with this epic headline. Its classic on so many levels and as a newspaper guy all you can say is congrats on a great front page headline.
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Please make it stop

Over the last couple of years, sports and pop cultural have become more and more intertwined.
Today was no different, when I was watching the Porto game on ESPN3 at the half the PA at the stadium was playing "California Gurls" by Katy Perry. This is a soccer game not a dance club, but why should I be surprised any more.
A couple of months ago, I ranted about girls and their cell phones at baseball games, but if stadiums are going to do this then I guess its fair game to all. So I guess a sporting event is not a sporting event, even games in the Portuguese Super League.
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Coming to a NBA city near you

The NBA season is about six weeks way, but John Wall fever is starting to get a hold of everyone. The OTWT Maryland bureau send this photo earlier today from a Foot Locker. I know he has talent but this shirt is terrible and no one should ever wear it.
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Professional Tailgating: There goes a piece of my tailgating soul

Sometimes it's time to move on, but moving on can hurt. After weeks of waiting it finally happened, the tailgating car, a 2002 vw golf, was traded in as part of a deal for a new car for the family.

The car was getting up there in miles and in memories. It has seen its fair share of sporting events, most of them documented on this site. It went to Rutgers for the famous Louisville game and saw a bunch of years of season tickets. Its been to countless baseball games, Eagles games, and seen friendlies involving Barcelona, Real Madrid, Manchester United and two USMNT games.

Its helped me lug my golf clubs to a variety of courses around the state including Blue Heron Pines, Echo Lake, and the Architects Club. It also assisted with a trip to North Carolina to play a variety of different courses that had hosted USGA events.

I'm sure the new tailgating car, a honda accord, will produce the same type of memories but its always hard saying good bye to your first love and that is exactly what I had to do :(
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The Covers Story: NFL Opening Weekend

Everyone has a shot of making it to Dallas for the Super Bowl before Week 1. After one week that has changed, here is how newspapers around the country covered the fun of opening weekend.

It would have made a great epic movie

Wow, where do you start with the Eagles. They lost, 27-20 to the Packers, and that is the most important thing. But after one game there are still more questions then answered.

Is Kolb the right guy? Don't know because he left the game with an injury and was terrible before leaving.

Will they be able to run the ball? Don't know Weaver is done for the year.

What is Mike Vick's roll on this team? It might be a gimmick player or it could be starting quarterback.

Is the defense any good? Bradley got hurt again and while they look good, I don't know if part of that was from the Packers shutting down a little.

The one thing we did learn is that both Brandon Graham and Nate Allen held their own on defense and look like they are going to players on defense. Allen will go down in Eagles history of the Donovan McNabb player.

This game reminded me of the NFC Title game of a couple of years ago against the Cardinals, fall behind earlier and then fight to come back and just come up short. So I guess there is one good thing, we get to do it all over again next Sunday against the Lions.
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Monster Saturday = Monster Waist Line

The biggest day of the college football can mean one thing eating too much. Georgia/South Carolina, Ohio State/Miami, Florida State/Oklahoma and Alabama/Penn State are great games to watch and eat with.
With all of these games a lot of food is sure to follow. Doritos, cookies, pizza rolls, buffalo tenders and other assorted junk. All of them found the bottom of my tummy.
So the day is ending and boy is my stomach full. Thank god their is one day on the schedule like this, if there was another I would have to get a couple of pairs of bigger pants.
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Why does everyone care about a 7 million pound signing?

Raul Meireless to Liverpool, Rafel van der Vaart to Spurs, Asamoah Gyan to Sunderland, Kenwyne Jones to Stoke City, and Bebe to Manchester United. What do all of these transfer have in common, all of them were for around the same amount of money, approximately 7 million pounds. What is the difference between them: None of them have had the amount of ink written about them then Bebe's move to Manchester United.

I know it comes as kind of a reach for United to spend that type of money on an unproven player. This is what soccernet said about the player in his bio: "When Manchester United announced that they had signed the Portuguese striker for £7.4 million in August 2010, there was confusion aplenty around the football world. Relatively unknown even in his own homeland, Bebe was plucked from obscurity by Sir Alex Ferguson - who admitted that he had never even seen the striker play before agreeing to sign him."

Cover it live: Boise State vs. Va Tech

Professional Tailgating: Not the best of starts

So Rutgers kicked off the season on Thursday night against Norfolk State and it was not the best start, but its only the first game. Here are some of the sites.

Like the red paint in the endzone, looks almost like Ohio State  

After a year of complaining by everyone the cannon is finally visible

Rutgers takes the field for the first time this season

Its good to back at a college football game.

First game of the season, its good to be back. Go RU.
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Wow Front Page of New York Times

So a team announces that its best pitcher is going in for Tommy John surgery and it shows up on the front page of the New York Times, welcome to the world of Strasburg mania. When I saw this I saw shocked and still am. This is one of the biggest stories in the world, all I can say is Wow.

SEC Football = Paid Content

For the last couple of years people in the newspapers industry have debated how to get people pay for content on the web. Maybe the Southeastern Conference has the answer. The State, the state newspapers of South Carolina, announced Thursday that they would be charging people for access to their cover of University of South Carolina sports.

"In the coming days, we will begin charging a modest membership fee to access a new and improved GoGamecocks.com web site. Memberships will be available for $50 per year (less than 14 cents per day) or $10 per month,'' according to the story.  

The State is the not the first newspapers to move toward paid content with its sports coverage. Last year, the Tuscaloosa News made the Tide Sports Extra a paid site. The site covers University of Alabama sports including the defending BCS National Champions. The company charges almost $60 a year or $10 a month for access to their site.

With this moving being made could more sports departments around the country do the same thing, especially in the SEC territories, where football coverage is king. Maybe hard news will not make the right amount of the money on the net, but sports on the other hand might be the one to drive it. Sites like ESPN have even turned to paid content, their Insider section, to balance their Internet books and it seems to be a success. So maybe the newspapers in the SEC towns will do this first and the rest of the country will follow, its just a thought.

Cover Story: College Football Previews

In less then  a week, the first games of the college football season will be over. In honor of that here are the various college football previews magazines from all over from Sports Illustrated to The Sporting News to Phil Steele

OTWT Champions League Predictions

The draw for the 2010/2011 Champions League has been made and there are some tastey groups including Group B, which includes: Spurs, Inter Werder Bremen, and FC Twente and Group G, which features three former winners of the event. Here are OTWT predictions on who is going advance to the knock out stages.

Group H: ARSENAL, Shakhtar Donetsk, SC Braga, FK Partisan: Arsenal and SC Braga
Group A: Inter Milan, Werder Bremen, TOTTENHAM, FC Twente: Inter and Spurs
Group B: Lyon, Benfica, Schalke, Hapoel Tel Aviv: Lyon and Benfica
Group F: CHELSEA, Marseille, Spartak Moscow, MSK Zilina: Chelsea and Spartak Moscow
Group D: FC Barcelona, Panathinaikos, FC Copenhagen, Rubin Kazan: Barcelona and Rubin Kazan.
Group G: AC Milan, Real Madrid, Ajax, Auxerre: Real Madrid and Ajax.
Group C: MANCHESTER UNITED, Valencia, RANGERS, Bursaspor: Manchester United and Rangers
Group E: Bayern Munich, AS Roma, FC Basel, CFR Cluj: Bayern Munich and AS Roma

Strasburg is a real American

This is a terrible parody song of Hulk Hogan's "I am real America" for Nats pitcher Stephen Strasburg. This might be the worst song in the history of the world.

That Head has its own Solar System

Mench's head is as big as the Capital Buidling

So Strasburg did not make it through his start on Saturday night, but all was not lost, when I found out that we now have Kevin Mench on our roster. Mench's claim to fame is not his baseball skills, but rather the size of his head.

The consensus around Major League Baseball is that he has the largest head in the game,size 8, according to Wikipedia. In fact, his teammates on the Rangers went so far as to create a green Shrek helmet for him to wear, although Major League Baseball would not allow him to do so. Like Al Snow used to said, during his days in ECW: ""Head Head Head Head.''

Professional Tailgating: Strasmas in Philly

As a true Nats/Expo fan, Saturday's game against the Phillies was something that I had been waiting for and when my friends at Sox and Phils let me know that Strasburg was starting it became one of the biggest sporting events of the years. Little did I know that Strasburg would be only going four innings and leave having the rest of his season in jeopardy.

Fans lined up just to get a view of Strasburg warming up in the bullpen before his start.

Everyone had their camera and cell phones out for this warm up session.
Strasburg warms up


Strasburg was not the only top prospect to be playing, Dom Brown was also getting the start

The AB that end Strasburg game and maybe his season