Tony Stark will return...

...for Avengers 2 & 3 and he will be played by Robert Downey Jr., who has signed a new agreement with Marvel to appear in both films. No word on compensation, but it's likely in the "more money than you can imagine" range.

Because you demanded it.

Well, no one actually demanded it. Or even responded for that matter. But, being the Commish, I went ahead with a 2013 Cass City Monkie Fantasy Football Trophy anyway. So here it is, before paint:

Yes, that's legendary Lions QB Joey Harrington. If that doesn't make you inspired to compete I really don't know what will.

Thoughts on Man of Steel

Some thoughts on Man of Steel:

-Don't know if it was just my theater or not, but the movie was loud. I like to feel the explosions, but not feel like I've been through one myself.

-"Shaky cam" usually doesn't bother me too much in movies, but it was very annoying in the first quarter or so of this one. It did seem better later though.

-Love the soundtrack.

-Henry Cavill is the most ripped Superman ever.

-The movie goes all-out on the action. Easily the best job I've seen done in communicating just how powerful Superman is supposed to be.

-This movie will definitely draw a lot of comparisons to Batman Begins. That's probably fair, the tone and overall approach are similar.

-I found the movie surprisingly emotional. Not sure exactly what it was, but it definitely hit me at times.

-It hits some themes/ideas that should be familiar to comic fans, but not necessarily the public at large. I'll be curious to see how people react.

-I liked it quite a bit. As far as DC films, I'd probably place it ahead of Batman Begins but definitely behind the sequels.

Man of Steel

Fantasy Football '13

Yahoo! Sports Fantasy Football is live. You should all have invites, if you cannot find yours the league ID is 5900 and the password should be the same as always.

Fate of Your Planet

Batman: Arkham Origins

Hail

There was a bit of a thunderstorm here earlier:

Trophy Talk

As the 2013 fantasy football season is drawing closer I found myself thinking about trophies. Which brings to mind some questions: Is the Monkie still around? Has it been passed to our current champion? Has it been lost?

The Monkie aside, I was thinking of making a non-traveling trophy for this year in honor of the tenth season of the CC Monkie fantasy football league. I'd plan on providing this myself, so it wouldn't be anything too involved. I was inspired by this trophy (posted by Poe Ghostal):

 That's an old school Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles action figure (Leonardo to be exact) mounted to a base and painted gold. I think that would be within reach of my artistic abilities. But what sort of figure to use? A few ideas:

-That same TMNT figure. One could probably be acquired on eBay pretty easily.
-A monkey figure. I don't know of a cheap one off the top of my head, but I'm sure something exists.
-A Funko Pop figure. Some of these are bobble heads. They have a large range of figures, but nothing football specific.
-A McFarlane Sportspicks figure. One could probably be picked up cheap as long as you don't care which player it is. This is probably the best bet if you want it to look like a football trophy.
-Just about any figure would work if a certain character appealed to you.
-I suppose it wouldn't be hard to use some sort of plastic/rubber football in place of a figure.

Any thoughts? And would gold be the color to go with, or would silver be better to mimic the Lombardi Trophy?

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. Trailer

Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.

ABC has picked up Joss Whedon's Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. for next season.

As you can see from the photo, the show stars Clark Gregg as a somehow-not-dead Agent Phil Coulson. I think it's safe to mark this down as my most-anticipated show... well, ever.

Thoughts on Iron Man 3

A few thoughts on Iron Man 3:

-I liked it quite a bit. I doubt anything this summer will be better. I would say it's at least as good as the first Iron Man, possibly better than anything but Avengers. I'll probably need to see it again to cement my opinion on the ranking.

-No Thor trailer at my theater. Actually, I don't think there was a Man of Steel trailer either. How can you not run those before this movie?

-It is, however, probably not the movie you're expecting. This is much more about Stark than Iron Man and is totally the Robert Downey Jr. show.

-There's a major twist that has upset some comic fans. I think normal audience members will love it. Actually, I think this is one superhero movie that non-comic fans might like much better than comic fans.

-A kid does play a role which I thought would be groan-inducing, but they played it differently than you might expect and works very well. It's also pretty funny.

-Guy Pearce should be more well-known than he is. He's a terrific actor.

-Still not impressed by most of the suit designs in the movie.

-No AC/DC songs in the movie.

-Probably the best soundtrack of the major Marvel movies so far. Not near as good as a Hanz Zimmer soundtrack, but decent.

-The Rhodey-Stark buddy moments in the film are pretty great. We did need more Iron Patriot though, despite him not being as cool as War Machine.

-The post-credit sequence is more along the lines of the one in Avengers (shawarma joint), it doesn't tease another film. I thought it was worth staying for though.

-The film wraps up Robert Downey Jr.'s contract with Marvel. They need to do whatever it takes to bring him back for at least Avengers 2 and hopefully another film beyond. It's nearly impossible to imagine another actor successfully pulling off Tony Stark.

Prediction

After reading Travis Haney's opinion of the Buckeyes, I have a prediction of my own: Ohio State will absolutely not win the national championship.

Escape from NY

The NY Jets cut Tim Tebow today, ending the drama surrounding one of the oddest personnel decisions in recent NFL history. Why did the Jets sign him in the first place? Because he was popular? To push Mark Sanchez, who still isn't good? It sure wasn't to give him playing time. Whether Tebow has any future as an NFL quarterback or not the Jets come out of this looking like idiots.

New Divisions

The Big Ten announced new divisions today. As suspected, they ditched the Legends and Leaders designations and went with a geographical alignment:

East: Indiana, Maryland, Michigan, Michigan State, Ohio State, Penn State, Rutgers

West: Illinois, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, Northwestern, Purdue, Wisconsin

Thoughts? 

One way to avoid the Madden curse

So who is on the cover of Madden 2014, marking the series's 25th anniversary?

Barry Sanders.

They will kill football.

While listening to Rush today (The radio commentator, not the Canadian rock band. Have I ever said how much I hate Tom Sawyer? Hate it.) I heard about this article in the Chicago Tribune. The writer claims that football will die soon because of the controversy surrounding concussions. Now people, mostly Progressives (or the Left), have been trying to kill football for over one hundred years. Teddy Roosevelt even had to intervene at one point early in the game's history (see: The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football) to keep football alive. Now football is facing major criticism again and, make no mistake, the game's foes will kill it if they can. Keep an eye on this because you're going to be seeing a lot more of the same kind of talk.

Thor: The Dark World

Manning to Welker

Peyton Manning was throwing passes to Wes Welker today. I suppose that means I have my fantasy picks pretty well figured out then.

Hanson Retires

Jason Hanson announced his retirement from the NFL today after 21 years in the league. Some stats from the Detroit News article:

Hanson, who will be 43 in June, retires as third-leading scorer in NFL history (2,150) and third in field goals made (495). He made more field goals of 40 or more yards than any player in NFL history.

He also owns the distinction of playing more regular season games with one franchise (327) than any other player and owns every kicking record in the franchise's history.

It's hard to imagine the Lions without Hanson. How will they score?