Dear NFL

So after reading about the NFL rule changes I got a bit fired up and decided to blog about it.

I play football. It's a violent sport. I understand the need to protect your players. They are your investments. But there seems to be a bit hypocracy going on with the NFL. They say they want to protect the players and half the things they are doing say that while the other half don't.

If they really want to protect their players then why don't they instill better health and retirement plans? How many former players are broke due to health bills from hip and knee replacements?

And if they really wanted to protect the players then why don't they have guarenteed contracts? If any athlete deserves that it would be the football player who puts their body on the line every game and practice. Imagine signing a large contract, getting hurt, and not getting anything to fall back on?

And if they really wanted to protect their players...why don't they put a rookie salary cap in place? You shouldn't have unproven rookies getting paid ton's more than proven Pro-Bowlers. I'm sorry but you shouldn't. Put in a sliding scale type cap like the NBA. Guarentee that money but cap it. When that contract ends and the players have at least played a down then the teams can decide how much to pay them. This would reduce the "FLUFF" of paying 100 mill for a player's POTENTIAL and having them turn into a LaMarcus Russell. As long as you put in that guarentee that a player will get paid then I think it's completely fair to cap.

I understand wanting to try to enforce penalties and fines for bad hits. But the line needs to be more clear. As a defender it's hard to stop when you are going 110 percent and your momentum is carrying you. They have to find a way to DEFINE the difference between a HARD hit and a BAD hit. As a player most of the time you can tell if someone nailed you legally or is playing dirty.

That being said. DONT MESS WITH THE END PRODUCT ON THE FIELD. Moving the kick off from the 30 to 35 to the casual fan may not sound like much but think of how many kickoffs land between the goal line and the 5 yard line. They were deep but still reteurnable. Now with 5 more yards on the kicker's side you will certaintly put more in the endzone for touchbacks.

On the other side they used to allow greater takeoff for the kickoff team, 10-15 yards I think and the new limit is 5 yards. Having played football I can tell you unless you are a world class sprinter and even then, getting to your full speed at 5 yards is quite difficult.

What does this mean? It means that the kick off team will have less time to get down and cover. So 1 of 2 things will happen. Either the kick off team will just go for the touchback because the penality of putting it at the 20 is not really that much of a penalty...or you will see kick off teams trying to POOCH kickoffs and pin the return team deep like you sometimes see in punt situations. Pooching the kick higher for more air time will give the kick off team more time to get down and cover and if you mess up and kick too hard...oh well it's a touchback at the 20.

Do a lot of injuries happen on special teams? Yes. Is this really going to change that? No. Does it instead greatly handicap the kick return game? Yes. Will this probably lead to a reduced amount of points per game? Yes. Because you will have offenses working with longer fields.

What would I do to reduce injuries on kick offs? Put in stiffer penalties for blocks in the back and late hits on kick offs. Don't mess with the formations and where you start but make the penalities 20 yards and I think after an adjustment period you would see a difference. The game would change on it's own rather than you changing the game.

Now this CBA stuff is just ridiculus. I agreed with Obama. You guys make 9 Billion a year and can't figure it out? While the rest of the country is in a recession and I've personally been struggling all year?

I play football for the love of the game. We all have day jobs and play the same violent game you do. I'm not saying I would like to get hit by an NFL linebacker. But the violence IS relative. Me getting hit by some of these women is relative to an NFL running back getting hit by an NFL linebacker. IT STILL HURTS.

I've played with broken fingers, a fractured wrist, separated shoulder, not to mention little things that happen all season. I have basic health insurance and after losing my job it went to REAL basic health insurance.

If we were men I could wake up, train, play football, make millions. Because I'm a woman I can't. At least not yet. We are going towards that goal and I believe we will see something in the next couple years but it still won't be 100 mill.

So for me...It's hard to be that empahtic towards greedy owners and players. There IS a way to make the agreement fair to both sides but they DONT want to do it. It will greatly hurt the NFL if they don't get their shit together. Look at what happened to baseball after the '94 strike.

Progress

So a lot has transpired since the last post. We have decided to go in a new direction with a new coaching staff. I will spare you the details except that I think it's probably been good for everyone involved.

Our head coach was involved with the original Seattle Warbirds, our offensive coordinator played wide receiver at Washington State before a short stint with the Seattle Seahawks and some time in the Canadian Football League. Our line coach played O-line in high school and has high energy. I love the chemistry between the new staff and the direction we are now going.

We have picked up a pre-season game against the Seattle Majestics of the IWFL on April 2nd. This will be a great opportunity for the rookies to get their feet wet and for us to work out any remaining kinks before the season starts. It's also an opportunity for a good regional match up between Seattle and Portland. One has to only look over to history of the old Super Sonics vs. the Blazers, Sounders vs. Timbers, and Huskies versus Ducks to know there is a natural rivalry between the states and cities.

Our first game only being a couple weeks away I am starting to get very excited. There is nothing like running onto that field with all your gear on and your heart beating out of your chest.

For the past 3 seasons I have wrapped my left wrist a couple of times with tape and written my saying of the season on it with sharpie. My wrist is fine but I think of this like a battle cry and it's become a little bit of a superstition.

This started when a former teammate's spouse's daughter was losing a battle of cancer and we all wrote her name on us that season in her honor. This is the same time that my family's house burnt down and 3 months later my mother was in a dune buggy accident that left her with basically her entire back in 3rd degree burns. I therefore also wrote "MOM".

Last year my saying was "faster, stronger, smarter". This year I'm still working on it but it may end up being something like "PHX Rising" or "No Walls". I'm going to have to play with it the next couple of weeks. If you have any suggestions hit me up. When I have someone or something to play for it makes me play harder.

Football may be "just a game" but you can do so much more with it if you look beyond it.

Count Down: 17 days until take off.