Let’s give you a couple of releases from the people at CBS Sports/Showtime. I bring you quotes and notes from this week’s edition of Inside the NFL that premieres tonight and airs until Sunday.
NEWS, NOTES AND QUOTES FROM WEEK FIFTEEN OF INSIDE THE NFL ON SHOWTIME®NEW YORK (Dec. 15, 2010) – This week’s INSIDE THE NFL – Wednesday, Dec. 15 at 9 p.m. ET/PT – tackles the New York Jets dilemma, after a strong start and recent struggles can they recover as the season closes. Plus, Insider Michael Lombardi discusses an NFL team coming to Los Angeles and the Emmy® Award winning segment NFL Sounds of the Year returns with this year’s soundtrack to the season.Host James Brown anchors INSIDE THE NFL on SHOWTIME with All-Pro NFL greats Cris Collinsworth, Phil Simms and Warren Sapp serving as expert analysts.INSIDE THE NFL is produced by CBS Sports and NFL Films with new episodes airing on SHOWTIME every Wednesday during the NFL season through February 9, 2011. Pete Radovich serves as coordinating producer. The executive producers are Sean McManus, President, CBS News and Sports, and NFL Films President Steve Sabol.Following are excerpts from the show:On whether or not the Jets can turn it around:COLLINSWORTH: Absolutely. You can’t play defense the way they play defense and not be legitimate. I mean even against Miami they didn’t give up anything down there and Santonio Holmes drops the easy pass that would have won the game. So they’re going to be in the games, the problem is they’re just going to have to be patient. And it may be this week is the week…it’s going to be really hard because they’re not going to want to throw the ball, but playing the Pittsburgh Steelers it’s all going to be on Mark Sanchez.About the Jacksonville Jaguars:SIMMS: I don’t know if I ever thought I would say this but I’m telling you, the Jacksonville Jaguars, I think they are an exciting football team. And about the last six or seven weeks they’ve turned into that. They’re a big play team…One thing I know about them, they’re big. By NFL standards you turn the TV on, wow, that’s a big football team and they do hit the quarterback and I believe they could blitz Peyton Manning. They do some unique, unsound blitzes and I think that’s why they work.On whether or not a team could survive in Los Angeles:COLLINSWORTH: The three worst NFL stadiums are all in California; San Francisco, Oakland and San Diego. If they came in and built a high rig stadium, you know I mean, something worthy of L.A., they would come. Are they ever going to do that? Because it’s going to take 100% financing by somebody to do that.LOMBARDI: And that’s the key issue. 100% financing and it has got to be with the collective bargaining agreement. Look, the players realize L.A. is a great market for their endorsements and all those things that go with it. So it’s going to have to be a give-and-take within the collective bargaining because the league, if they finance it, it’s going to have to come from the revenues. And if we go to 18-games, more money in the pool, more money to build stadiums…USC, they were down and all of the sudden when they came back, National Championship, BCS. People were filling up the Coliseum. People said you couldn’t go to the Coliseum, it was in a bad neighborhood but all of a sudden USC came back and they filled it up. The Rose Bowl could potentially get filled up if UCLA’s football team would improve. So I think it’s about winning, it’s about established programs and it’s about, I hate to say this Cris, it’s about quarterbacks. And if you have a marquee quarterback they’ll come watch.SIMMS: I think it’s going to work big time. Put two teams in there. Build a state of the art stadium. You know fans love these new stadiums. Even if I wasn’t a football fan I would go down to watch the Dallas Cowboys. You been inside that? I mean that’s a spectacle. So I think that you do that out there and since a football team has been in L.A. the game has grown in popularity a lot. So I think L.A. fans, everybody gets on them, ‘Oh, they don’t get into it,’ or whatever, I think the National Football League is so big so many people out there are in it now, that it will work.
Another release coming up.
