Roger Goodell

The UDS Draft of NFL Draft Names

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Photo: Seahawks Draft Blog

Football is back, folks. Tonight, we get round one of the 2022 NFL Draft live from Las Vegas. Much like baseball season, the NFL Draft is always a sign of warmer weather and high hopes for fans league-wide.

With each announcement by human circus peanut Roger Goodell, a dream will be fulfilled for a young man who has worked his entire life to make it to the National Football League.

In terms of mock drafts, predictions, who picks who, I could give two shits. What I care about are the amazing names themselves. With that in mind, it’s time to draft our top 10 names likely to be selected this weekend:

10. Sterling Weatherford, S, Miami (OH): this guy sounds more like a British meteorologist than a football player.
9. Isaiah Likely, TE, Coastal Carolina: any name that can easily turn into a full sentence is a winner.
8. Brock Purdy, QB, Iowa State: have to hope this guy gets drafted to a team in the south, the ad deals basically write themselves.
7. Bailey Zappe, QB, Western Kentucky: maybe the second best QB name since Gunner Kiel.
6. Breece Hall, RB, Iowa State: always love a good prospect with some unknowns…was his name supposed to be Brice? Reece? No one knows!
5. Decobie Durant, CB, South Carolina State: this guy was so close to being named after two of the greatest basketball players ever.
4. Coby Bryant, CB, Cincinnati: not exactly but…close.
3. Smoke Monday, S, Auburn: all-time nickname, this is a no brainer.
2. Snoop Conner, RB, Ole Miss: honestly this is interchangeable with Smoke Monday.
1. Sauce Gardner, CB, Cincinnati: this was as sure fire of a number one pick as Andrew Luck.

Good luck to all of the draftee’s this weekend. May none of you get selected by the Jaguars.

Is the NFL Making Decisions Based On Content From Untimed Down Sports?

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It’s a question that needs to be asked.

This week, the NFL announced that inaugural poet laureate Amanda Gorman would be performing an original poem before the Super Bowl. According to HuffPost, Gorman will “perform a poem honoring the three people tapped by the league to serve as honorary captains for the Super Bowl this year…[t]he trio consists of nurse Suzie Dorner, educator Trimaine Davis and Marine Corps veteran James Martin.”

Photo: Times of San Diego

Now, no matter which way you lean, it’s hard to downplay how great Ms. Gorman’s poem, and the reading of said poem, was on Inauguration Day. Even if you didn’t like it, our poet laureate has the resumé to shut pretty much any of us down. According to her website, theamandagorman.com, Gorman is the youngest inaugural poet in U.S. history, graduated cum laude from Harvard, and has performed for the White House and Lin Manuel Miranda.

Great move by Commissioner Roger Goodell and the NFL here, incorporating poetry with the sports.

But wait a minute…hasn’t someone else been doing this for a while now? Bringing prose and pros together to spin a story involving athletics is one dynamic idea. Where did the NFL get this idea? That’s right…

FROM US.

Whether you’ve been rocking with UDS from day one or just started checking us out a week ago, you would have noticed our weekly recurring series, Sunday State of Mind. We take the week that was in sports and recap it with truly, truly awful rhyme schemes and wording that would make real poets like Amanda Gorman question the art form of poetry itself. You can read some examples of our exemplary work here, here, and here.

This has nothing to do with Amanda Gorman, who has more talent in per pinky finger than most other writers today. Totally innocent in all of this; who wouldn’t want to perform at the Super Bowl?

All I’m saying is…we’ve been on this sports poetry tip for a while. All of the sudden the NFL comes barging in and totally jocking our schtick by incorporating one of the country’s best poets into the biggest game of the year? I’m calling shenanigans. I see through it, Goodell, and I just want you to know that.

Oh No…

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Photo: Chicago Sun Times

Here we go.

The Titans beat the Vikings 31-30 on Sunday. The win took Tennessee to 3-0 on the year, and dropped the Vikings to 0-3. The result wasn’t exactly the story:

Nooooooooooooo!

This is the first outbreak we’ve seen since the NFL came back three weeks ago. According to the AP, three Titans players and five personnel tested positive for the coronavirus (as of now). Both teams will completely shut down for the foreseeable future. Of course the Titans with the positive tests, and correctly the Vikings due to being in close proximity to the Titans.

The most important thing here is that thus far everyone is safe. As long as that’s the case, the next thing you worry about is the schedule & season getting totally wrecked. The Steelers are scheduled to come to Nashville to play the Titans this coming Sunday. The Vikings are supposed to go on the road to play the Texans.

With the prototypical quarantine period being 14 days, this could absolutely muck up the NFL season moving forward. Unlike baseball, you can’t really squeeze any double headers in a day, let alone a week. Stretching this out a bit, you start to think how this would effect playoff seedings if teams end up not playing the same number of games, the spider web of contact tracing if the Titans and Vikings continue to play, etc.

This was a gamble that the NFL, and honestly all sports, took when deciding to come back when they did. I would hope Roger Godell and the big brains running the show out of the NFL’s headquarters in Manhattan have a safe and logical back up plan to make sure the season can safely move forward.