Tonight marks the official beginning of the NFL pre-season — technically it began last Sunday night, but that was a one off — and that means your Tampa Bay Bucs will be hosting the world-champion Baltimore Ravens at 7:30 p.m. at Raymond James Stadium.Are you sort of excited? Look, for NFL fans, and football fans in general, it's a big deal that their gridiron heroes are just five weeks away from playing for real, but that excitement generally wears off after watching the first 15 minutes of this first pre-season game, as men you have never heard of (and in several cases, will never hear of again after a few weeks) start getting snaps. Then again, unless you've got a ticket to tonight's game, you won't be watching it anyway, because once again the Bucs failed to sell out even 85 percent of their tickets, thus no live broadcast. Not a big deal tonight, but definitely a problem if it happens again come September (no team has had more blackouts in recent years than the Tampa franchise).
Talking about the NFL brings me to Slate.com, the online magazine, which announced today that they will no longer refer to Washington's NFL squad as the Redskins. As the story reports, they're not the first media organization to do so. Why? Well for several decades now there's been an orchestrated campaign by American Indian groups, that consider it racist, to change the name.
And can you seriously disagree? Maybe you can, which puts you in the camp with Skins owner Daniel Snyder and NFL commissioner Roger Goodell, who cling to "tradition" as an argument not to change it. In any event, I cheer Slate's decision.
Moving on ... tonight the Tampa City Council will weigh in on whether or not to approve a major apartment tower development in downtown.
CL's Terence Smith attended Tuesday night's discussion regarding transportation in Tampa. You know, the one where none of the important decision makers bothered to show up.
It's seriously hot and humid every day in Tampa Bay, and has been for a couple of months now. But according to a new survey, the region is only the 10th warmest area in the country in the summer.
And please check out site later today, as we'll have our post on last night's City Council candidates forum in St. Pete.