Worthy Christian Forums -> Sporting Fever!

Shalom everyone,

I went ahead and started a Worthy group at Yahoo for those wanting to choose your 64 team NCAA basketball bracket! It's free! And you could win a possible $1,000,000 from KFC whose sponsoring the event!

You can sign up by going to -- http://y.ahoo.it/DiLORtTT

God bless,

Your brother in the Lord with much agape love,

George

Shalom everyone,

If you love baseball, and you want to play in Yahoo Fantasy Baseball -- then go ahead and join us. Draft Day will be on Saturday, March 27 at 3:00pm EDT. You can pre-assign the players by rank if you cannot attend in person. Anyway -- it's free! It's for those who love baseball, but don't have the time to watch it! If you're interested -- it's FREE! And you can register your team at -- http://baseball.fantasysports.yahoo.com/league/worthy

There's only 12 teams available. If you're interested, sign up.

League Name -- Worthy
Password -- worthy

God bless,

George

Mark & JR are on the front row for the 500

Tonight the SHOOTOUT!!

Gentlemen start your engines!!

USA all the way.

http://www.nbcolympics.com/news-features/n...e&GT1=39003

Looks likes the Vols. will be Kentucky,s next victim.

http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/basketball/re...292&prov=ap

UH! OH!

I've got that creeping feeling up the back of my neck again.

I noticed the Temp. being a little cool in the evenings here and heard a little bit about there being a Redskins and Ravens Scrimmage this week on the radio. Then I started to sweat and utter things in a strange language. I began to ponder these things and then strange Prophetic Utterings began to eminate from my prayers. It sounded a lot like Football Picks and then I remembered the coveted Worthy Prophetic Crown. Ah' that Jewel Encrusted reward worn on the heavy brow of "The Head of the Worthy School of Prophets." it will be mine, yes it will be mine.

The thoughts of the Cowboys self destructing again this year were just too much for me. Then there's the possible return of Michael Vick while Pittsburgh wallows in a moral dilemma. Not too mention the return of Tom Brady "The Empresario" of the NFL and many a fashion models heart.

Who's in this year? It won't be long and you wouldn't want to miss a minute of the action. It will be an exciting year of Football.

I'll set it up if you'll play. "Let'ssssssssss get readdyyyy to rumbllllllle!"

Peace,
Dave

50 Years - A Look Back At The Dallas Cowboys' Birth, Jan. 28, 1960

Josh Ellis - DallasCowboys.com Staff Writer
January 28, 2010 11:42 AM

January may be the best month to visit Palm Beach. The rest of the country clenches its elbows to its chest and lets out that guttural brrrrrrr sound, as if it would do any good to beat the icy cold. But down in Palm Beach, it's sunny.

Daytime highs are in the upper 70s, and the nighttime temps are barely low enough to chill the morning's dew, usually in the lower 60s. There are beaches, of course, which can be enjoyed year-round. There is championship golf, and with it the sharp, familiar scent of freshly-cut grass.

Sea birds are circling.

Palm Beach in January is the perfect time and place to relax, just as nice now as it was 50 years ago, when two Dallasites paced the halls of their South Florida resort. Clint Murchison Jr., 37, his business partner Bedford Wynne, 36, and their associate Texas E. Schramm, 39, were having trouble unwinding during their extended stay at The Breakers, maybe Palm Beach's finest getaway destination.

Inside a meeting room at the same hotel sat 12 men with serious decisions to make, decisions that would alter the course of professional football, the game and business which united each of them, despite the regional divides that allowed the group to call itself a national league, a National Football League.

The dozen men meeting at The Breakers were the owners of the NFL's historic teams, and among them were some of the game's greatest contributors, arguing for days over a series of difficult questions. The first order of business was to elect a new commissioner, the overseer of the game and its most powerful individual, but someone who would be charged with the difficult task of replacing the legendary Bert Bell, who had died of a heart attack at a game between Philadelphia and Pittsburgh the previous October.

After 23 ballots, the owners were finally able to reach a consensus, tabbing young Pete Rozelle for the job on January 26. Rozelle had infiltrated the football establishment just three years before, when he became the general manager of the Los Angeles Rams upon his predecessor's decision to leave and go to work for CBS television.

The same day Rozelle was made commissioner, the NFL's newest competitor elected a league president for its inaugural season, picking Lamar Hunt of Dallas for the job. The 12 owners knew Hunt well.

Murchison and Wynne knew him, too. In fact, the very reason they had been invited to The Breakers in the first place was to help kill off Hunt's American Football League.

To tell the story of Murchison, Schramm and the founding of the Dallas Cowboys, one has to first tell the story of Hunt.

In 1958, Hunt, Murchison and Bud Adams of Houston, all wealthy oilmen, failed in their separate attempts to purchase struggling franchises and relocate the teams to Texas. Ultimately, their individual efforts to buy the Cardinals and Redskins fell through, leaving all three men attempting to convince the NFL to allow them to form new franchises.

Finally, Chicago Bears patriarch George Halas assured the men the NFL was a 12-team league and would remain that way for the foreseeable future. Unwilling to wait for his chance at an expansion NFL club, Hunt decided to start his own league, and recruited Adams to join him.

Hunt's plans to form the AFL were announced in June of '59, with his Dallas Texans and Adams' Oilers the league's marquee franchises, joined later by teams in Denver, Oakland, Boston, Los Angeles, New York City and Buffalo. The league signed a five-year deal to televise its games on ABC, and promised to forge a pricy competition between itself and the senior circuit to recruit the top collegiate talent.

That got the NFL's attention.

"Bert Bell said it was going to be a friendly situation between the NFL and AFL," remembered Sam Blair, a veteran reporter from The Dallas Morning News. "And Lamar thought the older league might not give him any help, but they weren't going to give him any trouble, either.

"And then suddenly in August George Halas says, 'Well, we've reconsidered,' and says there will be an expansion team in 1960, in Dallas."

Halas' years in the NFL made him the strongest voice among the league's ownership. The longtime Bears coach received assurances from Murchison that he could form an ownership group strong enough to carry an upstart franchise in Dallas through a number of difficult years, and ultimately come out stronger than Hunt's Texans.

At the time, professional football was America's second favorite sport, dominated in interest by baseball. High school and college football were king in Texas, and Dallas was the Rome of the Southwest Conference. The NFL had failed in Dallas previously, a one-season experiment in 1952, when the New York Yankees relocated to become the Dallas Texans, then left the next year for Baltimore and took the name Colts.

The viability of another Dallas NFL franchise was of the utmost importance to Halas. The key factor for Halas was the money, and Murchison had money and friends with more of it.

"He knew the investors they were going to turn to," Blair said of Halas. "And he knew they were going to try to run it like a big-league club from the get-go. That's what had been wrong with the '52 Dallas Texans. Those guys were ambitious, but one, they didn't know what they were doing; and two, they didn't have any money by the standards you needed to accept losses and keep the club going for a few years until you could get good."

Murchison's chief associate in the expansion effort was fellow Dallas socialite Wynne of the law firm Wynne and Wynne. While Murchison was responsible for the majority of the would-be franchise's financial backing, Wynne was very much the face of the prospective ownership group, remembered Gil Brandt, the team's original scouting director.

"I was impressed. It was easy to be impressed with Bedford because he was an outgoing guy," Brandt said. "He knew everybody, he was very socially connected, well thought of by (University of Texas coach) Darrell Royal, very well thought of in college football. I don't know if anybody really knew Clint, because Clint was really a private guy. You have to understand that in 1960, Dallas was a very small town. Forest Lane was out in the country. For lack of a better term, it was kind of a clique of people, and they were all in that same clique of people. And Clint sold those people a small amount of the team, just to have some more people involved in it with him."

Wynne's involvement was one of the strengths of Murchison's bid for the franchise.

"I don't think he had too much money in it, myself. It was nearly all Murchison's money," Blair said. "But Bedford was a well-known, high profile sports guy and he liked to be around the big-time events and had the contacts, so it worked out at the time."

With the financial backing and connections on their side, it had become a forgone conclusion Murchison's group would be awarded a franchise, but the death of Bell put the NFL's return to Dallas on hold.

The NFL's final season as a 12-team league played out in the fall with the group then conducting their draft-and all the while Hunt and his AFL "Foolish Club" of owners continued to plan. They had each put up $25,000 in franchise fees to become charter members, and had no intentions of letting the money go to waste. The league would play its games in the fall, in direct competition with the NFL.

After snoring through one season of professional football in its history, Dallas was about to be the site of a game every week, and the prize in a turf war between high-dollar rivals.

"They were going to go from zero to two football teams in 1960," Blair said. "It was all followed with some curiosity and bemusement by the public, much of which was still pretty wrapped up with high school and college football, particularly the Southwest Conference, which was a real national power.

"The colleges weren't exactly greeting the idea of pro football coming to town with open arms. There weren't really any parades up and down Main Street. The idea was just kind of 'Well, we'll see.'"

With the ownership group rounding into form and a virtual assurance from league movers and shakers that a team would be theirs the very next season, Murchison and Wynne went to work on the football side of things.

Their first move was to hire Schramm as team president and general manager in early November of 1959. Wynne was familiar with Schramm from the University of Texas, where both were members of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity. After leaving UT, Schramm worked for the Los Angeles Rams for 10 years, hiring Rozelle as a PR man for the team before leaving to work in television.

"Tex came in and took charge of basically an empty office," Blair said. "So he resigned from CBS Sports and started laying the groundwork for a franchise in Dallas with Murchison, even though they hadn't been voted in yet. The league meeting was still like two months away."

It was Schramm who brought in Brandt and legendary head coach Tom Landry, the three running a virtual monopoly on the football decisions over the next three decades.

In the early days, though, the funds and sway Murchison and Wynne provided were a big part of putting together the on-field product. Knowing his franchise wouldn't be able to participate in the draft since they technically didn't exist yet, Murchison was able to sign to personal services contracts a handful of players he and his partners coveted, including quarterback of the future Don Meredith and talented running back Don Perkins.

Wynne had to make room at his law firm to lure the original franchise player out of retirement, the club bringing in former Redskins passer Eddie LeBaron to father their offense and practice law in the offseason. While Wynne and Murchison did what they could to help, they mostly kept their hands off and left the football enterprise to Schramm and Landry.

"I met Clint and talked to him and he seemed like a real nice person," LeBaron said. "I got to know him later and got to like him very much, but at the time all my dealings were with either Tom or Tex. He was about halfway shy, I think."

Murchison might have been standoffish around strangers, but he was also brilliant, holding a master's from MIT, and came with considerable boldness, evidenced later by the practical jokes he would stage, as recalled in Jane Wolfe's book on the Murchison family. When the Cowboys traveled to play Chicago in their first season, Murchison rented a live bear for a photo shoot in which the animal was "shot" by a man dressed as a cowboy. Next, Murchison and his friends took the bear to their penthouse suite and fed it alcohol, then sent the beast away in an elevator unattended when it became drunk and unruly.

Other NFL owners didn't escape Murchison's wild and clever side. His favorite target was the Redskins' George Preston Marshall, the only member of the NFL club who had opposed the Cowboys' existence after the AFL got up and going. At the time, D.C. was the league's southernmost club, and enjoyed prominence as "The Team of Dixie." The Redskins' games were broadcast on the radio all over Texas and Marshall, of course, did not want his territory threatened by Murchison's bunch. Any move to expand the league required a unanimous vote of all the owners, and Marshall had threatened to freeze out Murchison. The Cowboys founder had a trick up his sleeve, however.

Murchison purchased the rights to Washington's fight song, "Hail to the Redskins," from its composer Barnee Breeskin.

"I guess Clint confronted him and asked if he wanted permission to play the song," Brandt said. "Marshall said he didn't need permission, and Clint says 'Yeah you do, I own it.' So then in January, at The Breakers in West Palm Beach, we got a franchise."

But not after a considerable amount of waiting and hand-wringing on the part of the organization's founding fathers.

Already the death of Bell in October had caused the Cowboys to miss out on the college draft the same fall, since a new commissioner had to be appointed before the teams could vote on any expansion. At first the owners couldn't come to an agreement at their Florida meeting.

"The battle over who would be commissioner went on for several days," Blair said. "And all the while Tex and Murchison were down there waiting, just sort of walking the halls. And finally the owners compromised on the young PR guy Tex had hired with the Rams named Pete Rozelle, and he took it. So finally they get Rozelle in as commissioner and they started haggling over whether the Cowboys should be in or out."

Proof of just how big a part Hunt's AFL played in the creation of the Cowboys, the NFL's owners actually voted to offer a franchise to Minneapolis-St. Paul before they did the Cowboys. Three Minnesota businessmen had pledged to join the AFL until they were lured away by an NFL license. With no direct competition from the rival league in the Twin Cities, the Vikings were given extra time to prepare for their inaugural season in 1961.

The NFL couldn't afford to let the Texans build a stronghold in Dallas, and so on January 28, 1960, the NFL created the Cowboys. Or actually ...

"At first they were called the Dallas Rangers," Blair said. "And right away they found out that name wouldn't work too well."

The Rangers moniker was already in use by Dallas-Fort Worth's minor league baseball team in the Triple-A American Association, an affiliate of the Kansas City Athletics. The Rangers played their games at Burnett Field, which the Cowboys used as a practice facility.

The fall of 1960 would feature the opening skirmishes of the Cowboys-Texans rivalry. Though the teams never faced each other on the field, they fought for relevance and financial superiority off it, with neither really winning.

Both clubs struggled to sell tickets the first few seasons at the Cotton Bowl. As the Cowboys sunk to a 0-11-1 finish in their inaugural year, they gradually drew fewer and fewer fans each week.

"I think when they said 10,000 people were there, I bet you they counted them twice," remembered linebacker Jerry Tubbs, who had come to the Cowboys from San Francisco in the expansion draft in March of 1960. "There weren't very many people there.

"The Cowboys were on one side of Central Expressway, and on the other side up a little bit were the Texans. And it was a good, competitive deal. You had smart people running things. Lamar, he was smart, and Clint Murchison and Tex Schramm. It was a very competitive situation, but neither team was doing as good as they could because the town was split a little bit."

While the Texans were more successful, winning the AFL's championship over Houston in 1962, they were still at a disadvantage because the NFL was more established and its teams tended to receive more attention. After the championship season, Hunt admitted defeat, and moved his team to Kansas City, rebranding them the Chiefs.

In the long run the creation of the Cowboys did achieve the NFL's goal of making the Dallas market unsustainable for Hunt, though later the Chiefs and the AFL grew to the point of being competitive with the elder league.

All the men who aimed to bring football to Dallas came out winners. But they each had to have plenty of patience along the way.

I was in Israel once where Reggie was at the same place....didn't meet him. (Eagles, ya know?)



But I wish I had

http://www.thejerusalemconnection.us/blog/...t-of-torah.html

Its a hard season to predict for those who watch the UK premiership. Any of the "Big four" could take up the title with the exception of Liverpool. The three, Arsenal, Man. United & Chelsea are all in pole position but injuries to key players is what will make the difference for most clubs. Am an Arsenal fan but my bet is on Chelsea to carry the day come May 2010, but then again, I would love Arsenal to win.

Anyone out there with a different view?

Be blessed,


John

This very young team is now 18-0 and ranked #2 in the nation. With no senior starters they are just going to get better.

How could I have neglected to put up the Test Cricket against England and South Africa.

It is a 4 Test Series, the first match was a draw...England clung on by the skin of their teeth and were unconvincing...BUT....

the second Test has just been won by England, who were outstanding and utterly demolished the South African Batsmen, due largesly to the spin of Swann, and the speed of Broard. Swann took 9 wickets, and was voted man of the match.

Here is the score enjoy....Englesmen goed zo!

[b]South Africa 343 & 133 (50.0 ov)

England 574/9d

England won by an innings and 98 runs
Basil D'Oliveira Trophy - 2nd Test
Test no. 1944 | 2009/10 season
Played at Kingsmead, Durban
26,27,28,29,30 December 2009 (5-day match)

Wow Tiger Woods must be just rolling in the millions.....

He played a golfing tournament in Aus (and won of course!) -

He won 1/4 of a million dollars but the controversy was he was also paid 10% of the prize money in appearance fee alone prior to winning...




Appearance fee?

In sport?

Pleease....it's over the top if you ask me....

I really HOPE Tiger is a good steward with his money and has it in his heart to help others who are less fortunate than he.

and it's not chocolate....

Kudos to Kim Clijster's - who defeated Justine Henin in the Finals of the Brisbane International Tennis Tournament (Aus) this morning and has donated her entire prize winnings to the Royal Brisbane Childrens hospital...the girl's got class.

http://curtisandkyle.com/2009/12/23/eagles-fans-at-it-again/

it's a video. maybe they said merry christmas instead of happy holidays. just a guess though.