New Alliance of American Football league won't have glaring officiating mistakes.
1. The NFL season is over, but you can still get a football fix this weekend thanks to the Alliance of American Football league, which debuts Saturday.
CBS will air regional coverage of two games Saturday night at 8:30 p.m. ET. The San Diego Fleet visit the San Antonio Commanders with Spero Dedes, Trent Green and Tiki Barber calling the game, while Andrew Catalon and Gary Danielson will handle broadcast duties for the Atlanta Legends-Orlando Apollos game. On Sunday, the Memphis Express faces the Birmingham Iron on CBS Sports Network at 4 p.m. ET. Ben Holden, Adam Archuletta and John Schriffen will call that matchup.
Will you tune into any of action? Let me know below.
Will you check out The Alliance of American Football this weekend?
— Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina) February 8, 2019
Before getting started the AAF has two things going for it. First, it looks like they will not have any horrendous calls like we saw in the NFC Championship game. The league will have a sky judge for every game. This person will be in the press box correct "obvious and egregious" officiating errors. The AAF says "the sky judge will use real-time technology to correct clear errors involving player safety anytime during a game and pass interference inside of five minutes left in the fourth quarter."
I'm not sure why they'd only use the sky judge inside of five minutes of the fourth quarter instead of the whole game, but at least this is a start and if successful, something the NFL may copy.
New year, new innovation. The Alliance will add a sky judge who can instantly correct officiating errors. #JoinTheAlliance
— The Alliance (@TheAAF) February 7, 2019
📰 | https://t.co/77ZTh1ig8K pic.twitter.com/x9otIXlmxS
The other thing the AAF has going for it: betting lines. If you plan on watching the games mentioned earlier, Orlando is -5 vs. Atlanta, San Antonio is -3 against San Diego and Birmingham is -3 against Memphis.
Notable players and coaches in the league: Orlando is coached by Steve Spurrier, Atlanta's QB is former Georgia star, Aaron Murray. Rick Neuheisel is the head coach in Arizona and his quarterback is Trevor Knight, who played at Oklahoma and Texas A&M. Christian Hackenberg is the QB in Memphis and Mike Martz is the head coach for the San Diego Fleet.
2. This is a [insert fire emoji] quote from LeBron and he's 100% right.
Yes, LeBron James noticed all the big deadline-day deals in the East. “Everybody in the East thinks they can get to the Finals because they ain’t gotta go through me," he told @joevardon and, well, he's not wrong.https://t.co/tZ6dKc5VRl
— The Athletic (@TheAthleticLA) February 8, 2019
3. Speaking of LeBron, wouldn't you love to know what these two guys said to each other last night? And how about Bill's jacket. Looks like he was paying homage to Craig Sager.
LeBron James shares a postgame moment with #Patriots head coach Bill Belichick 🤝 pic.twitter.com/D8L1enxRjJ
— Def Pen Sports (@DefPenSports) February 8, 2019
4. Everyone has thoughts on the big Jeff Bezos/National Enquirer story, including the Honey Badger.
They hacked Bezos Phone. We aren’t safe. This is worse than Peyton Manning being cut by Indy.
— Tyrann Mathieu (@Mathieu_Era) February 8, 2019
5. MLB is changing the "disabled list" to the "injured list" and some people are upset, so I just want to say that you have to be a special kind of crazy to let something like this bother you an any way, shape or form.
6. The man who broke the story about ESPN firing Baseball Tonight host Adnan Virk, New York Post sports media reporter Andrew Marchand, joined the latest SI Media Podcast to give all the details on the wild story. Marchand explains how ESPN found out about Virk reportedly leaking information to Awful Announcing and why they decided to fire him instead of suspend him.
You can listen to the podcast below or download it on iTunes.
7. THE ROCK VIDEO OF THE DAY: There's nothing better than a Rock Concert.
Catch up on past editions of Traina Thoughts here and check out the Sports Illustarted Media Podcast hosted by Jimmy Traina here. You can also follow Jimmy on Twitter here.
IN CLOSING: When will people learn that trade deadlines hardly ever live up to the hype?
