Bottom of the Bird Cage 4/24
It’s the 114th day of the year.
On April 24, 1704 the first regular newspaper published in this country came out. It was the Boston News-Letter. On this day in 1913, the Woolworth Building opened in New York. At 57 stories it was the world’s tallest building at the time, built for $13.5 million, or less than Matt Cassel will make this season.
A couple of divas share April 24 as their birthday: Shirley MacLaine born in 1034 and Barbara Streisand in 1942. On this day in 1974, Bud Abbot of Abbott & Costello fame passed away.
And on April 24, 1907, Hershey Park opened in Hershey, Pennsylvania. If you’ve never been to Hershey then you don’t have evidence of why they call it “the sweetest place on earth.” Milton Hershey opened the amusement park complex some 102 years ago.
The park also has a big place in sports history. It includes the Hershey Park Arena, the site of Wilt Chamberlain’s 100-point game and Hershey Park Stadium, where for years they played the annual Big 33 All-Star game involving Pennsylvania school boy football players against opponents that have changed over the years from state to state and even the whole country. Some of the players who have played in Hershey were Tony Dorsett, Joe Montana, Joe Namath, Dan Marino, Curtis Martin, Jim Kelly, Marvin Harrison and Ben Roethlisberger. And the Dallas Texans – not Lamar’s team but the first one’s who played in 1952 – finished their season using Hershey Park as their home base. The owner in Dallas went bankrupt and the league took over the team.
If you are ever back east, take the time to visit Hershey. And yes, the street lights are in the form of Hershey’s Kisses. Really.
From the Atlanta Journal-Constitution: In the way the best quarterbacks see the whole field, Thomas Dimitroff, who’s the son of a quarterback, grasps the big picture. And when have we been able to say that of the man charged with hiring players for the long-suffering Falcons?
At 4:42 p.m. Thursday, someone named Ray posted this on an ajc.com blog: “It sure feels good to know you’ve got one of the best GMs in the game. [It] kind of feels like the Braves’ moves of the ’90s. You always figured JS [John Schuerholz] would make the best moves for the Braves. Now we’ve got that for the Falcons.”
This came barely an hour after the Falcons consummated a trade with Kansas City for the Pro Bowl tight end Tony Gonzalez. At 33, Gonzalez isn’t what he was, but he’s way better than anything the Falcons had. And, by parting only with a Round 2 pick in next year’s draft, Dimitroff has cleared the path to do what he intended all along.
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They are celebrating in the A-T-L over the deal and crowing about the work of GM Thomas Dimitroff. This will be an interesting year for the Falcons. Last year was remarkable turnaround. But once a team has turned it around, the hard part becomes staying there. The Falcons and Matt Ryan will not surprise anyone this year. Adding Gonzalez will help, but the Falcons need a better defense; that’s where Dimitroff can now turn his attention.
From USA TODAY: Pat White’s timing may turn out to be impeccable. Not that long ago, the former West Virginia quarterback’s chances of being an early pick in the NFL draft would have depended mostly on whether he could be a traditional passer as a pro. But White was much more than that in college, passing for more than 6,000 yards and rushing for 4,480 more. His speed and quickness are such that some NFL scouts can see him as a quarterback, running back, receiver and kick returner.
All of which makes White — and a few other particularly versatile players available for this weekend’s NFL draft — a particularly intriguing prospect at a time when league owners are considering whether to expand the regular season of America’s most popular pro sport from 16 games to as many as 18.
Talk of stretching the regular season in the NFL — a league in which attrition through injuries is a virtual certainty — has made multi-dimensional players such as White, Cincinnati tight end/defensive end Connor Barwin and Florida receiver/running back Percy Harvin key players to watch in the draft. Such prospects could become increasingly valuable as teams focus on finding “hybrids” — players who can play more than one position.
“If I’m a general manager and I’m looking toward the future when the league might expand to 18 games, you definitely would use a second-round pick on a player like Pat White,” says ESPN analyst and former NFL quarterback Trent Dilfer, who helped lead the Baltimore Ravens to a Super Bowl title in 2001.
My, how quickly the term “hybrid player” has popped up in the NFL. The Wildcat on offense and the 3-4 on defense has brought back into vogue players who may have been on the outside in years past. Good players are everywhere these days; it comes down to opportunity. These types of talents were not getting a chance just a few years ago. Now, the coaches are more creative and teams are searching for versatility.
From the New York Times:
At a lunch before the 1989 N.F.L. draft, Beano Cook, the college football sage who would never be mistaken for Dr. Phil, absorbed the details of Mel Kiper Jr.’s planned personal and professional merger and pronounced his verdict. “I’ll give this marriage a year and a half on the over-under, and the smart money is on the under,” Kiper recalled Cook saying. “You will never last — no way working together 24 hours a day — and get along.”
Could this union be saved? Apparently so. Twenty years later, Kim Kiper will be at Radio City Music Hall on Saturday, watching up close the fruits of a labor that is as much hers as it is her husband’s.
Mel Kiper Jr. is the face — and the hair — of a sprawling draft empire, replete with radio spots, television shows, books, newsletters and Web sites. While in high school and hoping to become a scout, he handed his first rudimentary scouting reports to Ernie Accorsi, then a Baltimore Colts executive, who encouraged him to stop giving away his research and start selling it to fans. So, while in college, Kiper started a business, spending hours on the phone with college coaches and N.F.L. general managers and in front of televisions to glean every last tidbit about a defensive lineman’s hip swivel and an offensive tackle’s motor. But Kim Kiper is the behind-the-scenes brains of the operation, transforming Mel Kiper Enterprises into the ultimate home business.
Love him, or hate him, when the average fan thinks of the NFL Draft, Mel Kiper’s name pops up on the radar screen. He wasn’t the first draftnik, but he got into the scheme early and did turn it into a successful business. Kiper’s not always right in his assessments of players. But then neither are the guys working for NFL teams. Where Kiper loses me is when he wants to criticize drafting policies and decisions by individual teams. He has no idea how each team evaluates or rates players. Plus, they have access to information he does not have. That’s when Kiper becomes just another hairdo on the telly. And oh my, what a hairdo!
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