Fight Football League

Jim Rome mentioned this today on his show and I HAD to check it out, its QUITE the spectacle, and you know what? I like it. Quite a bit actually. The organizers tell us that it's based on an ancient combat sport called Harpastum combined with a bit of this Calcio Fiorentino. TO me it seems more like a straight up combination of Australian Rules Football, MMA and Soccer. Oh and they've been playing it now for some time, only a few times a year though...until now.

Enter Fight Football League, and their debut match is on Youtube, a very interesting tilt featuring Rome versus Florence. The players are all Vinnie Jones look-a-likes who take their sport seriously. There's blood, quite a bit, and punching, a few take downs, but really no bad sportsmanship, which I found fascinating. In this match there were no penalties that I could see, no dismissals and no real warnings. The fighting is controlled, and it's always 1 on 1. You can't punch a guy from behind or when he's down. I don't think kicking was allowed either.

Basically there's 8 guys to a side (I think that's how many I counted) and they have to score a goal worth one point in a rather small square goal some 8-10 feet off the ground. They use a soccer ball and can run with the ball without dribbling. Passing is allowed, didn't see any offsides rules in effect. If a guy is tackled with the ball it's a turnover. They played four 12 minute periods with a short "extra time" for injuries I guess, the clock counts up like in Soccer. Substitutions seemed pretty liberal.

It's not all non-stop action, though it's pretty close. It's weird to see one guy running with the ball and right in front of him his teammate is squaring off with an opponent. If a fight goes on too long it gets broken up too. Actually they seemed to be broken up a lot.

Anyway, check it out, it's rather interesting stuff. The most scoring happens in the fourth quarter, so if you want to only watch one part that's it.

FINALLY A Sports Card Posting - Well Sort Of

I know, I don't write about sports cards much anymore. Mostly because I'm not really buying a whole lot. Between Upper Decks Baseball fiasco 2010, and my lack of interest in pretty much most of Topps releases, I'm just not spending a lot of money on cards. I still buy an occasional pack of Topps Series 2, and I've purchased a whopping 2 packs of Allen & Ginter and 1 of Heritage. Lack of funds really has me in a buying depression.

BUT that's OK, because I can still SELL SELL SELL right? Well, yeah, I could. I still need to send out trades from LAST NOVEMBER, so I'm erring on the side of caution with Baseball. I do have a decent amount of Hockey cards though, and I've just pulled them out of storage, which coincidentally is where I think the Baseball that I need to send out ended up.

So here's my first foray into selling Hockey Cards, three single player lots of arguably the most recognized three stars of the 20th Century, Mario Lemieux, Jaromir Jagr and the Great One, Wayne Gretzky.

I also have quite a few rookies and Young Guns from the early 2000's and I'll probably be putting those up later this week, most of them I'll start at $1.00 with $1.00 shipping or $2.00 with free shipping. I may also just put the 3200 count box and the overflow boxes outside tomorrow morning for our yard sale and see if someone wants a good deal.

Meanwhile, as always lately check out my Ebay Seller Page AND if you buy something from me, and let me know you read about my items on my blog, I'll REFUND 10% of your sale price back to you! Just a way of saying thanks for reading.

NBA Mini Vinyls

Now I don't know why this hasn't happened sooner, but a company called Mind Style is putting out mini vinyl figures of NBA Super-Stars. Series 1 will be blind boxed with rare and chase figures! Woot!

Yes, I know there have been other companies to try the Designed Vinyl approach to sports collectibles, but so far they've all missed the mark. Why? In my opinion because they were too pricey and too stylized for sports collectors. We sports collectors are a finicky breed. We're not going to buy an expensive roto-cast vinyl figure of Tiger Woods or Michael Jordan, but give us a blind-boxed chance at a chase figure, for under 10 bucks, and guess how many will jump at the chance.

I see this as a positive, even though I won't collect the set. If there's any former Bruins in the series I'll go for them, and maybe try a custom.

NBA Series 1 will contain: Kobe Bryant, Carmelo Anthony, Kevin Garnett, Derrick Rose, Dirk Nowitzki, Brandon Roy, Steve Nash, Manu Ginobili, Amar’e Stoudemire and Dwayne Wade.

I would imagine the chase/rare figures will be alternate jerseys or paint schemes.