It has been confirmed the Pats have traded Mike Vrabel to the Kansas City Chiefs, reportedly for a draft pick. In the world of pro sports where players come and go, any trade should not be surprising. But losing someone like Vrabel will cause fans to take a time out and remember him.
Christopher Gasper wrote a great article on Vrabel in the Boston Globe, and I won’t recount all he said and I urge you to read it. Vrabel fit the Belichick model of a no-nonsense player who would play their butt off and in multiple field positions. As much as he was playing on D and stop hundreds of plays, he will be most remembered for his touchdowns, on both sides of the ball, especially in the Pats’ victorious Super Bowls.
When I heard of the trade, a funny story came to mind. A good friend and Pats fan told me one night at dinner with his family when one of their kids started naming items in plain sight, then rhyming them with something. When he got to “table” he paused, then proceeded to rhyme it with “Vrabel,” much to the delight of my friend!
Good luck Mike Vrabel, and you will surely be cheered on your next trip to Foxboro.
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We heard from the folks from the Matt Light Football Camp. He will be holding his football camp this summer from June 28 to July 1, 2009 at Wheaton College in Norton, MA. The camp is for children ages 7 to 18. Along with Matt, there will be around 3 other New England Patriots players that attend the camp to give instruction and speak to the kids. There will also be an entire staff of high school and college coaches to make for a 10 to 1 player to coach ratio.
For more information, visit the camp Web site or click on the banner ad in this post.
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In the September 21, 2008 edition of the Boston Sunday Globe Magazine there is an article on Ace Tickets, a Boston-area sports and entertainment ticket broker. Towards the end of the story is a quote by me! I was contacted by the writer of the story, Dan McGinn, and asked questions about myself and my thoughts on ticket brokers. You can read the full article here.
In my very own paragraph, GoPats.com gets a link and my work and hobby are identified. I talked with McGinn for probably 15-20 minutes. The reference to paying a premium for Sox tickets was when my friend AJ visited from Australia and I wanted to take him to a game. The game I was shut out of was Super Bowl XXXVIII - I went to Houston, but the price of over US$2,000.00 per ticket was way out of our range. The ellipsis between the 2 lines in the end was my explanation to the author about how I, as an entrepreneur, understand the ticket broker business, but at the same time can’t swallow the high ticket prices.
This “love and hate” relationship comes out throughout the article. Where brokers buy up tickets that may go unsold, teams don’t reap the premiums themselves for the tickets. Many years ago I asked a question to the former president of the Boston Garden, Larry Moulter, about his thoughts on ticket scalpers on Garden property selling tickets. Needless to say, he did not directly answer my question. Though the business has come a long way with the likes of StubHub and Ace themselves being a Red Sox sponsor, there isn’t even a consensus among Boston team owners.
McGinn’s article is a good piece on the state of the tickets today, and it will be interesting to reread it a year or more in the future to see how it has evolved.
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From the people who are bringing you the Olympics comes blog widgets for all major sports.
Rotoworld is the fantasy sports news arm of NBC Sports and offers what looks like the standard fare for fantasy sports information. I say what looks like as I am not into fantasy sports, but I digress.
One service they offer are free Flash widgets for your blog, Web site, Facebook, et. al. The one accompanying this post is for the Pats, and they offer them for all NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL teams.
(Note: The following item is republished from my business and technology blog, The Hot Iron)
There’s nothing like opening your email and hearing excellent news. Harpoon Beer, a local microbrew from Boston, is now being sold in Chicago. As a “Friend of Harpoon” from my days of living in the Boston area, I was informed of this the other day. Rather than attaching a photo or video of my reaction to this news, I decided to post this photo of a pint of Harpoon IPA I took on a recent visit to the Bukowski Tavern in Boston’s Back Bay, one of my favorite stops when I return to the Hub.
To launch the arrival in the Windy City, Harpoon is having an event on Monday, August 11 at Sheffield’s Beer and Wine Garden in Chicago. Read more information on the event and pre-register. I’ll be there, and I know it will be a wicked pissa!
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As Training Camp gears up and the season begins to unfold, I get the latest scoop and information of what is coming out of Foxboro from The Patriot Act, an excellent blog that is part of the Most Valuable Network, or MVN.
Today the NFL released its 2008 schedule, and GoPats.com has been updated with the 2008 Pats schedule as it stands right now. The defending AFC champs have an early bye in week 4 and go almost a month after it from another home game, with back-to-back games in San Francisco and San Diego.
There’s nothing like opening your email and hearing excellent news. 
