The Front Row: Football is back

The buzz is building: Every NFL team has now played at least one preseason game.

The wildly popular series of Madden video games issued its 2008 version yesterday.

I just received my first wave of e-mails from all of my college buddies to get our fantasy football league going again.

That’s right, football season is back.

Even though this first batch of preseason games features less meaningful action than a typical spring practice, fans still sit glued to their televisions—if they didn’t pay full price to sit in the stadium.

It’s far too early to make any meaningful predictions about the upcoming season, but let’s give it a shot, anyway.

The Patriots will be good—maybe even unstoppable. Drafting Larry Johnson in your fantasy league is like playing Russian Roulette—exciting, but potentially disastrous. LaDanian Tomlinson will be the league MVP, but Norv Turner will submarine any chance the San Diego Chargers had at the Super Bowl.

And finally, the Arizona Cardinals will trick everyone into thinking they could compete for a playoff spot, but a series of gut-wrenching losses will result in another top-10 draft pick.

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Editor’s note: Throughout football season, the Green Valley News will be running news updates and feature stories on various NFL teams for the Sunday edition, such as the Dallas Cowboys, Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears, Green Bay Packers, Minnesota Vikings and many others, in addition to steady Arizona Cardinals coverage. College football fans will get to read about their favorite Big Ten and Big 12 teams, along with the Notre Dame Fighting Irish to complement our steady University of Arizona and Pac-10 coverage.

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Better late than never: Around the turn of the century, Roy Jones Jr. and Felix Trinidad were two of the world’s best pound-for-pound boxers.

Jones overwhelmed opponents with his blazing hand-speed, while Trinidad’s brute strength and toughness was too much for most welterweights, junior middleweights or even middleweights.

Outside of Jones’ controversial disqualification against Montell Griffin in 1997, neither fighter had come close to suffering a loss.

Circumstances prevented the two from meeting in 2001 for what would’ve been one of the sport’s most entertaining bouts.

Now, the two are going to finally step into the ring together on Jan. 26.

Unlike the proposed bout in 2001, this Jones-Trinidad bout no longer features two of the world’s premier puglists. This event is strictly for nostalgia purposes.

Since the 2001 fight fell through, Trinidad suffered a knockout loss to Bernard Hopkins and a virtual shutout decision to Winky Wright, sending the Puerto Rican legend into retirement.

Jones, on the other hand, lost twice to Antonio Tarver and suffered a knockout at the hands of Glen Johnson.

The two will meet at 170 pounds—a solid 10 pounds heavier than Trinidad has ever fought and five pounds less than Jones’ last bout.

Clearly, the odds favor the bigger Jones, especially given the fact that Trinidad hasn’t won a bout in three years.