Steelers vs. Pirates

The Steelers are in the Superbowl, and the Pirates didn’t did much last season, so it is time to see the differences between these teams and see why Pittsburgh’s football team is far superior than its baseball counterpart.

Let’s start with the leadership. The Rooney’s have owned the Steelers since 1933 when Art Rooney bought the team for a small $2500 and have produced quality players steadily every year since they got the command of the team. On the other side of the street, the Pirates have had a total of 5 owners since 1933, 3 of them since 1996, since then, the team have struggled to get good results at the MLB and their best moments came in the seventies and eighties when the team was in the hands of John Galbreath, who ran the team for forty years.

Now with the coaching. The Steelers prefer to hire young coaches whom can bring energy to the team, and they have had success doing it that way as they have only had 3 head coaches since 1971 and have won 5 Super bowls since then, while the Pirates have had 8 managers since the same year and it seems like 96’ was a terrible year for the baseball franchise as they hadn’t enjoyed of any successes since then.

The Pirates doesn’t have any recognizable players that can serve as models to be followed by kids, they had Jason Bay, but now Bay is playing for the Red Sox after a trade, while the Steelers have Big Ben, one of the most recognizable names in the world of sports these days.

No wonder why Pittsburgh sports fans are more oriented to football than to baseball, if they had a better team, I’m sure the competition to fill stadiums will be bigger.

Jim Schwartz, new Lions head coach

After their most disastrous season in their span at the NFL, the Lions have acquired a new head coach. This time the opportunity came for Titans’ former Defensive Coordinator Jim Shwartz, who had been with Tennessee for eight years.

Shwartz is entering the Lions with a four-year deal on his hands, and Detroit is trusting that the 42 year old head coach is going to raise up their defensive level as they finished last in the league this season in points allowed and in yardage also.

Jim Shwartz led the Titans to achieve position #1 in most defensive categories this 2008 NFL season, now he’s faced with a tough scenario heading the Lions, and one of the main concerns for Shwartz right now must be the coming NFL draft and taking the right decision when picking their first round player.

The Lions have struggled with bad draft pickings during the last decade, with only Herman Moore, Calvin Johnson and mainly Barry Sanders as the exceptions, the rest of the players chosen have resulted in waste of talent cases.

Schwartz got his start in the NFL thanks to Bill Belichick, who hired him to do research for him when he was head coach of the Browns back in the middle of the 90’s, after such period, he went into the staff of different college and NFL teams assuming coaching or administrative positions. Such teams include the Ravens, the Titans in NFL and NC Central, Minnesota and Maryland in college.

The newest Detroit head coach clearly knows what he’s facing, "Obviously, a lot of holes," was his answered when asked about the Lions’ roster, and of course it is almost impossible for him to turn Detroit into a team like the Falcons or the Jets, but he can certainly bring improvement and help the Lions to reach a better position than this year’s.

What is the best sports magazine?

Any true sports fan likes to be on top of any information regarding his favorite sports, teams and players, and everyone has their own way to keep track on this information, their sports info weapon of choice, if I may call it that.

Some people are not satisfied with the regular sports news digest and need more and detailed information about the sports they are interested in, these sports enthusiasts collect information from several sources such as Sports Illustrated or ESPN magazine. Actually that we mention Sports Illustrated, this magazine along with Sporting News are basically “bibles” for NFL enthusiasts and USA Today Sports Weekly has done an amazing job filling in details on weekly basis during NFL season.

All of these magazines also seem to be a favorite source for Major League Baseball and NBA as well, even though in both sports the main source is still their on sports news digest, available on their websites.

Now, we all agree that the best information source is the World Wide Web anyways, a there are plenty of great sports blogs available, written by real sports fans and great columnists. Some online magazines also include very interesting sports news on their on, my case, since I like to be informed about every random sports rumor out there I choose websites that update their information constantly such as Fark.com which offers great sports news feeds (and many other subjects) sent by the users themselves, all day long everyday. I also receive a daily digest of sports news everyday from Google news and some other feeds from Sports gurus’ blogs; last but not least, I pay my Sports Channel package subscription religiously.

My point with all of this gibberish is basically that, no matter where you get your sports information from, everyone likes to receive their feeds in a certain way and we have enough sports professionals feeding their knowledge to us everyday, don’t trust everyone but keep your mind open for new choices.