NCAA Week 1: Six Best Games

The long wait is finally over. Football is back, but it's the college ranks kicking off first. Here are The Pick Six's favourite upcoming games from the first week of the season.

#6 Georgia Tech at Virginia Tech [16] (Mon Sept 3)

Are you ready for some Monday night football. Pretty sure you are. And this ACC conference game should be an interesting one with the improved Yellow Jackets visiting the always dangerous Hokies. Hard to see anything but a home win but any time you get a crucial conference game in the very first week of the season, you're required to pay attention.

Player to watch Logan Thomas, QB, Virginia Tech

The Six Most Prolific NFL Quarterbacks Of The 1980s

The criteria was quite simple. To qualify for the list, a player needed to have started a minimum of 60 games between 1980 and 1989. I then sorted by average yards per game. As it turned out, no player in the top eight started fewer than 80 games. The top three players (and especially the top two) were very clear cut: the most prolific QB of the 1980s passed for 60 yards per game more than the fourth most prolific. There are a couple of surprises along the way…

#6 Warren Moon, 217.9 yards per game

Very little separated places 4 and 8 on the list, and Moon was able to just sneak in. He started his career with the Oilers, and considering the high-octane passing attack the team developed around Moon it's perhaps surprising he had 'only' 217.9 yards a game.

Bonus fact: The only undrafted player on the list after starring for the Washington Huskies, although he quickly went on to be a star in the CFL.

Year	GS	QBrec	Cmp	Att	Cmp%	Yds	TD	Int	Y/G
1984	16	3-13-0	259	450	57.6	3338	12	14	208.6
1985	14	4-10-0	200	377	53.1	2709	15	19	193.5
1986	15	5-10-0	256	488	52.5	3489	13	26	232.6
1987	12	7-5-0	184	368	50.0	2806	21	18	233.8
1988*	11	7-4-0	160	294	54.4	2327	17	8	211.5
1989*	16	9-7-0	280	464	60.3	3631	23	14	226.9

Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 7/26/2012.

The Six Best Defunct Championship Teams From The USA

You don't need to be in the NFL to win a pro football championship. Teams from across the US have lifted trophies in various leagues, but the chances are they don't exist any more. Be it a failing league, or an unprofitable franchise, external factors have caused even high achieving teams to circle the toilet.
And no, the XFL's LA Xtreme are not in the list. And yes, the XFL was that bad.

#6 Sacramento Surge

Awful logo, awful name, decent team. In 1992 at least. The team played in the original incarnation of the WLAF, playing in a different stadium (both tiny) each year, and stumbled to a 3-7 record in the opening season. As the London Monarchs went from good to bad in year two, the Surge went the other way, posting an 8-2 record ahead of a play-off win against Barcelona and beating Orlando in Montreal to claim World Bowl II (oh, it was all so cosmopolitan).

The fact that the team's star player in 1992 was journeyman QB Dave Archer (best known for a three-year stint at the Atlanta Falcons), may say everything that needs to be said about the quality of the WLAF.  The most famous member of the team turned out to be former Georgia Bulldogs DT Bill Goldberg – he went on to be a wrestler of some repute.

When the league folded, the Surge kinda became the Sacramento Gold Miners in the CFL, when the team's owner was awarded a franchise in the CFL's ill-advised American '90s expansion, becoming the first Yank team to ever play in the Canadian set-up. Archer stayed in Sac-town but during the Gold Miners' two-year stay in the CFL, the team was simply not very good. Quelle surprise, as they say in some bits of Canada.

The Six Greatest Second Overall NFL Draft Picks

Some of the best players in NFL history were overlooked by teams holding the first pick. All but one of the players went on to Hall of Fame careers and were selected second in the era of the common draft following the NFL-AFL merger.

#6 Cornelius Bennett, drafted by Colts in 1987

Cornelius Bennett was an All-American at Alabama (he's now in the College Hall of Fame) and the Colts knew he would be an asset. Sadly for them, they were unable to agree terms with him and eventually decided to trade him to the Bills in a three-team deal that saw Eric Dickerson (more about him soon) leave the Rams for the Colts. Bennett was one of the most dominant defensive players of the 1990s and played in five Super Bowls in that decade. Losing all five. Oops.

Who was picked first?
Vinny Testaverde of Miami was selected by the Tampa Bay Buccanneers.

The Six Greatest QBs To Shockingly Switch Teams

Despite there being a lot of major deal during free agency so far, nothing has compared with the Peyton Manning saga. It's going to be an adjustment seeing him wearing another NFL uniform.

#6 Joe Namath joins the LA Rams

It's weird to think of Broadway Joe playing for anyone other than the Jets (or perhaps the Alabama Crimson Tide), but it's easy to imagine him enjoying the high life in Los Angeles. However there wasn't much fun to be had on the field as a Ram – he spent his final year in the game backing up Pat Haden.

Year	Tm	G	GS	QBrec	Cmp	Att	Cmp%	Yds	TD	Int
1977	RAM	4	4	2-2-0	50	107	46.7	606	3	5
Career		140	130	62-63-4	1886	3762	50.1	27663	173	220

Provided by Pro-Football-Reference.com: View Original Table
Generated 3/20/2012.

The Six Greatest NFL Covers from ESPN The Magazine

ESPN The Magazine has been around since 1998 and is my favourite sports magazine. And part of that is down to the art direction it has. Here are its six greatest NFL covers.

#6 Welcome to Boston, Loozah!

Not exclusively NFL, but this cover highlighting Boston's recent sporting superiority got a lot of attention and got plenty of people's backs up. Remember when the Patriots would actually win Super Bowls?

The Six Greatest First Overall NFL Draft Picks

Teams with the first pick in the NFL draft are under a great deal of pressure. Partly because the teams are so bad and partly because they've got everyone to choose from. No excuses. Five of these six players became Hall of Famers (the sixth is still active) and four helped their team go from whipping boys to Super Bowl contenders on a consistent basis.

#6 OJ Simpson, drafted by the Bills in 1969

The only player on the list to have never won a championship, OJ was still a spectacular star for the Bills and it's hard to imagine that any single player in the 1969 draft could've turned Buffalo into a winner. His greatest season was in 1973, when he became the first running back to break the 2,000-yard mark. He finished that year with a staggering average of 143 yards per game and 6 yards per carry. He closed out his career with two forgettable seasons in San Francisco.