Free Republic

He was a small business owner in Kent, WA and loved his family, work, clients, traveling, the Seahawks and life. We blame the Seahawks lousy play call for Mike's untimely demise. Mike was greatly loved and will be dearly missed.

For the first time since 2010, Alabama does not lead Rivals.com's team recruiting rankings. USC, which also led Rivals.com's rankings in '10, jumped the Crimson Tide for the top spot in '15. Alabama will instead have to settle for the second-ranked class in the country. The Trojans closed out their recruiting this year with a flourish, landing four five-star recruits between Tuesday and Wednesday to finish with 26 total commitments, 21 of whom were rated four- or five-star talents. The last time USC topped the recruiting rankings was its final class before NCAA-imposed sanctions limited the number of scholarships available....

Hitting on every draft prediction made right now would be nice, but the main purposes of this and most subsequent mocks are two-fold. They are meant to A) offer some insight into a team's needs, with the picks hopefully highlighting a current hole; and B) reveal a little bit about how the prospects are stacking up against one another.

Newly hired University of Michigan football coach Jim Harbaugh will make three times as much money if his football players hit their academic goals than if Harbaugh is named the Big Ten Coach of the Year. MLive did a story on Harbaugh’s contract that states the coach will earn $150,000 if the players hit certain academic bench marks. Harbaugh will get $50,000 if he’s picked as the league’s top coach. The academic bonus is 3 percent of Harbaugh’s $5 million annual salary. ForTheRecord says: Ann Arbor Public Schools teachers who are evaluated and given the highest rating of “highly effective”...

New England Patriots coach Bill Belichick wore a “Don’t Tread on Me” t-shirt to the Super Bowl on Sunday.

Both quarterbacks have won four super bowls with their teams. Who's the greatest quarterback of all time? Joe Montana or Tom Brady?

Wow! What a finish!

The Seahawks pulled off an amazing comeback against the Packers on Sunday, but don't credit that comeback to Divine Intervention. During his weekly radio show on WAUK-AM in Wisconsin, Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers said that his belief is that God doesn't care who wins or loses a football game. The subject came up during a segment where host Jason Wilde asks Rodgers a question that was submitted by a Packers fan.

Super Bowl....can't find a thread...so starting this

A new bill introduced Thursday in the California Assembly would provide cheerleaders of professional sports franchises with employee benefits and a minimum wage guarantee. Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D-San Diego) introduced AB 202 on Thursday in “a move that will better protect cheer athletes in the state from workplace abuses and bring equity to the multi-billion dollar professional sports landscape.”

Yes: Let’s hope the legendary coach hears the good news I hope there’s a wire service in the afterlife. I hope there’s some celestial Internet cafe where the departed (regardless of their ultimate destinations) can access news about those of us they’ve left behind. For instance, I’d love it if the monsters who murdered the journalists at Charlie Hebdo could take a moment from baking in eternal hellfire to see how their acts only strengthened our resolve to speak out against intolerance. Similarly, I hope Martin Luther King Jr. can recognize, from his lofty perch in heaven atop his beloved...

Maybe the smoking gun isn’t in a bathroom at Gillette Stadium. Maybe it’s in the laptop of a civil engineer in Washington, D.C. One of the strangest twists in the already strange saga of deflate-gate is the sudden star turn of a man who runs a gambling website when he’s not doing his day job. Warren Sharp is a 36-year-old dad who loves numbers and algorithms, and decided to apply some statistics to the Patriots when he heard about the football deflation investigation. What he found sent ripples through the sports world and got a few other statisticians pretty upset....

BOSTON (CBS) — You may have noticed that Tom Brady didn’t look himself at Tuesday’s Media Day. No, it wasn’t his bed head. And it wasn’t from a lack of sleep thanks to an early morning fire alarm at the team’s hotel. As he prepares for the biggest game of the season, the Patriots quarterback is battling a cold. And if you thought he looked rough on Tuesday, he looked a bit worse on Wednesday as he addressed the media at the team hotel in Chandler, Arizona. “It’s been lingering,” Brady told reporters as he held court for nearly 45...

Some day college football players will learn not everything needs to be shared to the public. Ohio State quarterback Cardale Jones found that out, as you may have heard by now, but things turned out OK for him. Maybe Penn State sophomore safety Bryant Harper will learn a lesson after being publicly scorned by his head coach on Twitter. On Monday, Harper took to Twitter to boast about a B he received on a recent anatomy exam. "B on my first anatomy exam and I didn't study I'll take it" Penn State head coach James Franklin, known to be fluent...

Can we be honest for a minute about the latest liberal crusade gripping the country like a deflated football?If you are sincerely concerned about fair play in sports and waiting patiently for the NFL to conclude its investigation of “Deflategate,” this column is not directed at you. Maybe you’re a New England Patriots fan or just a neutral observer. Maybe you don’t care about football at all. But for the rest of you, the mob salivating over the prospect of finding something to diminish the Patriots’ 2014 achievements, let’s face it.You hated Tom Brady before the national media lost its...

The name on the card that night in May seemed to draw as much anxiety as it did excitement. Johnny Manziel, Quarterback, Texas A&M. The former Heisman Trophy winner had been passed over 21 times, prompting a text from Manziel to then-Browns quarterbacks coach Dowell Loggains that he wanted to "wreck this league" in Cleveland. The words were actually more R-rated, but the implication was clear. Twitter erupted at the selection. A Cleveland radio host cheered and screamed openly on air. Manziel gave his "money" sign as he walked onstage to greet Roger Goodell. By season's end, cheering had turned...

Yesterday, I visited my mom and we watched a popular talk show. In the middle of the show, a breaking news update flashed on the screen. Suddenly the show was interrupted. My mind began to race. Did something happen to our President? Was there another terrorist attack? Did a school shooting occur? Soon my fears were erased. Patriots QB Tom Brady was in a press conference, denying claims he knew about deflated footballs in the AFC Championship Game. This was the breaking news that interrupted a scheduled program. I’ll admit I’m not a football fan. I also barely watch TV....

Patriots defenders constantly make the point that deflated balls were not a big deal last Sunday, because the Pats won so convincingly over Indy. Maybe. But what about the Ravens game a week earlier? That one WAS close - 35-31. Does anyone really think the Pats weren't pulling their under-inflation tricks then, that it just started last week? Other teams raised the issue back in November, so it's reasonable to assume it's been going on since at least then.

Bill Belichick said he did not know how the Patriots’ footballs became underinflated in Sunday’s game. By Matt PepinGlobe Staff January 22, 2015 Coach Bill Belichick said he did not know of any issue with the Patriots’ game balls in Sunday’s AFC Championship, and did not learn the league was investigating his team until Monday morning. He also said he did not know how the Patriots’ footballs became underinflated during the game. “I have no explanation for what happened,” he said. It was Belichick’s first appearance since news emerged that 11 of 12 footballs the Patriots used against the Colts...

Coach Bill Belichick said he did not know of any issue with the Patriots’ game balls in Sunday’s AFC Championship, and did not learn the league was investigating his team until Monday morning. He also said he did not know how the Patriots’ footballs became underinflated during the game.