2008: The Year That Killed The Preseason -- Hopefully

  In the football history books, 2008 will be forever remembered as the year that killed the preseason—hopefully. The reasoning behind the preseason, in football and in most other sports, has always been a bit lacking. The most practical reason in the NFL is that in-game experience is the only real way to evaluate rookies. Training camps can only tell you so much because how a player performs against a practice squad is going to be a lot different from how they perform against a first-team defense. And, more or less, rookie evaluation is the main reason why owners have resisted calls from Roger Goodell to shorten the preseason and expand the regular season to 18 games. After what has been happening to teams and their key players in the last three weeks, it is difficult to say whether the owner's status-quo stand will wither. On Monday, the New York Giants received word that Osi Umeniyora, the teams' next Michael Strahan, would have to have season-ending knee surgery because of an ... (link)