I’m hoping the Patriots will have the balls to go ahead and sign this dude.

The 2010 NFL football season is shaping up to be an interesting one to say the least with two of the league’s biggest and longest tenured running backs parting ways with their respective teams.

The releases of LaDainian Tomlinson and Brian Westbrook have set off a firestorm of rumors and speculation about where the two backs might end up next season. Both still have a little something left in the tank, so it’s just a matter of finding the right team for their skill sets.

As far as LaDainian Tomlinson is concerned, he limits his prospective employment to teams capable of winning the Super Bowl. He has reduced his options to a very small field. And then he’s going to have to take a very modest contract, given his performance level in 2009 (730 rushing yards, 3.3 per carry, 20 catches) for a very good team.

There is a reasonably good chance no Super Bowl contender will offer Tomlinson, 30, that chance. But history says that Bill Belichick and the New England Patriots might, or Mike Shanahan in Washington could. This is not to say the Redskins are a Super Bowl contender.

It appears that unless Tomlinson is willing to join a team like the Cincinnati Bengals or the Tampa Bay Buccaneers, his best chance to reach the Super Bowl still might be through San Diego. And he just cashed out there.

One good fit for Tomlinson are the New Orleans Saints…

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Shaq’s out so Dwight should be the choice, for now.

After both Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal got into some sort of a squabble this 2010 NBA basketball season about who is the real Superman in this league, we figured to compare both guys since both we’re drafted by the Orlando Magic to the NBA as the no.1 overall draft pick.

From the time when Dwight Howard was drafted first overall by the Orlando Magic, the comparisons to Shaquille O’Neal began as O’Neal was also selected 1st overall by the Magic. Howard has long been considered the next great ‘big man’ to enter the NBA, and many feel that given the changes in style of play in the league over the last few years, he may be one of the last of his kind.

Howard uses more of a combination of speed and strength to dominate the offensive paint, compared to Shaquille O’Neal who had better post moves that gave him the illusion of being quick. Shaq has brute force, plus some good footwork. One can assume that’s one of the secrets that let O’Neal to stay in the league this long. Even with declining athleticism, he still has the weight and strength behind him, and still has the footwork

The comparisons between Dwight Howard and Shaquille O’Neal are moving beyond their playing style too.

Both Howard and Shaq led the league in rebounds. Howard leads the league in dunks for the Orlando Magic this year while O’Neal did the same thing during the 94-95 season. Both players are entertainers and comedians off the court but have shown they mean business on the court. Howard and Shaq also both love to dance, for crying out loud.

Shaq has always been referred to as ”Superman,” but after Howard donned the cape in a slam dunk contest two years ago, that ”Superman” moniker started to tag Howard.

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If they do, then you can bet your ass the Knicks will be the team to beat next season.

After getting the services of multi - time All - Star Tracy McGrady this 2010 NBA basketball season from a three team trade with the Houston Rockets and the Sacramento Kings, the New York Knicks were able to clear enough salary-cap space for the Knicks to possibly sign two maximum-salary free agents this summer.

That’s right, the New York Knicks could recruit LeBron James by giving him the option of choosing which other free agent he wants from the likes of Chris Bosh, Dwyane Wade, Joe Johnson, Amare Stoudemire and Dirk Nowitzki.

However, getting LeBron James out of Cleveland won’t be easy since the Cavs, who own the league’s best record, bolstered their lineup with the addition of former Wizards forward Antawn Jamison. If Cleveland advances to its second NBA Finals stint in four years with LeBron, the odds of him leaving his home state figure to be diminished.

Sorry Knicks fans.

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Well, that’s what Jarno Trulli is saying anyway.

Michael Schumacher is set to return to Formula One after signing with Mercedes GP for the 2010 F1 season. Yes, in case you didn’t know yet, he’s coming back and he won’t be driving for Ferrari no more. Instead, he’ll compete for Ferrari’s rivals from Mercedes after a three-year sabbatical.

Can Michael Schumacher recapture the greatness he once had after three years being away from the sport? If you’ve been following F1 for quite some time, then you should know by now that betting against a guy like Michael Schumacher is a bad idea. As far as him winning another title at 41 years old is concerned, Jarno Trulli believes Schumi can do that too.

”Why not? Being 41 is not a problem; age is just a number. He’s still in very good shape, and physically and mentally I don’t think he’s going to have any problems,” Jarno Trulli said in an interview with Crash.net Radio.

”I think the only trouble he will find is returning to racing after three years, it’s not that easy to get back into the same rhythm in Formula 1. I think it will take him some races before he can really begin to attack again, but that is the only issue I can see him facing.”

Like Schumi, Jarno Trulli will also be driving for another team. You see, Toyota is no longer competing in Formula One, forcing Trulli to move to a new player this season, Lotus.

”We have to be realistic,” Trulli said. ”It’s going to be a tough season, and to begin…”

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Lou Krieger is one of the most prolific and well-regarded poker authors around, having written or co-written 11 different books on poker and gambling as well as numerous columns for various publications over the last two decades. Krieger is also the editor of Poker Player Newspaper and hosts a weekly podcast called “Keep Flopping Aces.”

Given his authorship of so many poker titles and his familiarity with the publishing industry, I thought Krieger would be an interesting person to talk to about the current status of poker books and how that status may have changed over the years. We ended up discussing a number of topics when I appeared on his podcast recently, but I’d like to share with you some excerpts from the part of our discussion that specifically dealt with poker books and publishing.

I began my questions of Krieger with one about an ad for an online poker site I recently saw that had something to say about poker books.

Short-Stacked Shamus: In the latest issue of Bluff Magazine one finds an ad for Full Tilt Poker. On the left-hand side of the ad there is a stack of books with the following written over them: “Books can tell you about the strategies, the common scenarios, the mathematics, odds and proven methods, and all the ways you are supposed to play the game.” Then over on the right one sees a photo of Chris “Jesus” Ferguson, next to whom is written “But books don’t play poker.”

As someone who has written a lot of poker strategy books and has thought a lot about the purposes they serve, how do you respond to the ideas present in an ad like that?

Lou Krieger: First of all, I think it’s a good ad, because it’s compelling.

SSS: Yes, it is.

LK: Secondly, I think where it sort of leads you astray is that yes, you know, [the ad is right to say that] books can tell you things but they don’t play poker… they certainly don’t play poker at the level of Chris Ferguson. Anybody who thinks that his book will make somebody a poker player of the ability of Chris Ferguson is absolutely mad. It will not.

For me, I consciously said to myself when I sat down to write my books, “Who am I writing for? What’s the audience?” I have always written pretty much for the beginning and moderate poker player because that audience is infinitely larger than a book I could write that will be helpful to somebody at Ferguson’s level.

SSS: I guess in terms of achieving the widest possible audience, too, you might write a very useful and interesting book to the more experienced player, but you’re destined to sell fewer copies of a book like that.

LK: Yes, absolutely. And that’s the truth of almost any how-to book that you can imagine. All of the books on how to improve your golf or how to play tennis, they’re not aimed at the pros. They are aimed at the players of limited ability like the vast majority of us are who are going to go out and buy those books.

SSS: You’ve written 11 books. The first one was Hold’em Excellence, yes?

LK: Right. That was written in 1995, I believe. Way before the poker boom started… it was a totally different universe.

I wrote Hold’em Excellence and More Hold’em Excellence, which was the follow up to it. Then I had a proposal to do Poker for Dummies. I really wanted to do a “For Dummies” book because I thought that, you know, there’s a book that’s a brand, and if I do a “For Dummies” poker book it really legitimizes me in terms of being a good poker writer and in the marketplace, because it’s a big huge publisher and not a small self-published book.

[So I did] Poker for Dummies [with Richard D. Harroch], then the poker boom hit. It sounds like the dark ages, but it was less than a decade ago. Chris Moneymaker won the World Series of Poker, and every publisher and his brother wanted a poker book written.

Since I already had books out and I’d written a “For Dummies” book I was a known quantity so they called me. I wound up writing about five or six books in four years. It was just nonstop writing, and I knew that I might as well do it now because this poker boom is going to be like hula hoops… it ain’t lasting forever. So as long as they’re sending me advances and asking me to write a book for them, I might as well say yes. And so I kept writing books. I think one year I had four books come out, which is just insane.

SSS: Tell me about your motives for writing poker books.

LK: I think the motivation for writing is twofold. Number one is I like to write. So I enjoy writing. And [number two,] the process of writing, of having to put words on paper, forces you to clarify your thoughts. You can’t be ambivalent. You can’t believe it’s one way on Tuesday and another way on Wednesday. You have to take a position about something. You have to offer advice that’s clear, concise, works, and holds up, so you have to think it through.

As a result, the act of writing, like the act of teaching… the person that often gets the most out of it is the writer or teacher himself. I’ve learned more from writing books than I could have gotten any other way I can think of.

SSS: So how has the poker publishing world changed from before the poker boom to after?

LK: [With those pre-boom titles] there was some [degree] of the market crying for [them]. Unfortunately that’s not the case anymore. The market for poker books is pretty swamped. And during that same time [i.e., the mid-90s to today] the publishing industry at large has been undergoing incredible changes, shrinking and collapsing, etc. So you have that happening.

SSS: How about the very recent past — the last year or two. It seems as if in the industry there is less buzz now about books. I’m really just speaking of the last year, maybe two years…. There is so much more to compete with books today. If you’re a poker player and you want information, you can go online, you can go to the forums, you can go to training sites or forums… there are a lot more exciting ways to get that information than from books.

LK: There’s also that phenomenon of how publishers are a lot more risk averse than they used to be. It used to be that 10-15 years ago they would take chances on a book if they liked it, if it was literate, if it had something going for it, whereas now they are looking for pretty much sure things…. More and more publishers are looking for “me too” kinds of books, whatever the subject matter is. And the general thinking in the publishing industry is that poker, at least for right now, has pretty much played out as an interesting topic for a book….

[You could say] the publishing industry is hunkering down. They are getting very conservative about what they release, and they’re unwilling to take risks. They are only playing aces and kings. Whereas in the past they would take a flyer on a nine-eight suited.

SSS: Yeah, that’s right.

LK: You know what’s a very interesting phenomenon… when we talk about poker books being played out, we’re really talking about hold’em books being overdone. Nobody’s writing about the other forms of poker. In fact, Mark Tenner, who came in second in last year’s WSOP Omaha/8 event, he and I wrote a book called Winning Omaha/8 Poker in 2003. And we are in the process now of doing a second edition, adding a substantial amount of new material.

But in the seven years since this book has come out there’s not been another book written about Omaha. There have been a gazillion books written about hold’em, and Omaha at one time was called the game of the future. Yes, there’s been one or two PLO books written…

SSS: Yes, Jeff Hwang has written a couple of PLO books that I like a lot. [Note: Hwang's first Omaha book, Pot-Limit Omaha Poker, does contain a section devoted to Omaha/8.] There probably is an Omaha/8 book [written since 2003] somewhere, but you guys are pretty much alone on the shelf there.

LK: Yeah, and so we’re going to come out with a second edition. The publisher says he’s getting interest from some people who want a new one, so we’ll see what happens. But when we talk about the poker book business we’re really talking about the no-limit Texas hold’em book business.

Much thanks to Lou Krieger for taking the time. If you are interested in hearing the full interview — as well as Krieger asking me questions about my background and poker writing — you can download and listen to the archived episode of “Keep Flopping Aces” over on the Rounders Radio site. Also, for more information about Krieger, his blog, and his books (including ways to order), visit his website at LouKrieger.com.

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