Let’s take a look at all the positives to come out this deal, not including the obvious one that, of course, football is back, baby!

There’s a rookie salary cap: I wrote last year that Sam Bradford would be the last of the big money rookies and I was right. No more massive bonus that can crush a team if their high draft choice busts. No more teams trading away high picks because they feel that they can’t afford to pay a certain player in that slot. This is one of the smartest and easiest moves the NFL could have made.

We get confirmation that Al Davis is still crazy: The owners voted 31-0 in approval of the new deal with Oakland abstaining from the vote citing financial reasons. Really, Al? Every other team – rich or poor – thinks this deal is a great one and you don’t? Maybe it’s time to retire and/or give up the Weekend at Bernie’s routine.

We get one week of absolutely crazy activity: Free agency, trades, cuts and training camps will all begin with the span of days, starting today. There will never be such a frenzied period of movement and team adjustment in any pro sport, ever. Just keep a sports website open and continually hit refresh during the day, something should always be going down.

Retired and injured players get more benefits: We’ve found out recently how much a football career can weigh on a player both physically and mentally. Concussions are leg injuries are serious things that can have lasting repercussions on a person’s well being. Now the men who have played this game for our entertainment get more help after their careers and a better health plan. Kudos everyone for making this happen.

The new CBA runs for ten years: That means a whole decade of labour peace with no chance of either side opting out and causing another lockout or strike. Even though this lockout didn’t really hurt fans the way the NHL’s did in 2004 or how the NBA’s current one will, it was terribly annoying to say the least. It was like a mosquito bite that just kept on itching, but you knew would go away eventually with no real harm done.

Fantasy football and football betting are back: These two things were billion dollar industries themselves and were put in jeopardy with the lockout. Now, we can start analyzing team’s records against the spread and start scouting out sleepers for our office pools.

Now, off to talk to the boss about my coming fantasy football spread

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Look around and see how many injuries there already are. Subjecting these guys to two more weeks nearly constitutes cruel and unusually punishment.

It’s a well known fact that if you’re any good or have even a somewhat key role on a team, you’re not going to be playing more than one complete game total in the pre-season. A drive here, a quarter there, maybe a whole half. It’s really nothing more than a glorified scrimmage for guys trying to make the team. So, cutting down pre-season games won’t necessarily cut down on the injuries that would no doubt be more common with an 18-game slate.

Could you imagine the fantasy ramifications as well? Leagues, more and more, would be won with waiver wire guys like Jerome Harrison and you would be lucky to have three or more guys you drafted starting for your squad at season’s end.

All sorts of records would be shattered too. It’s bad enough that a lot of passing marks are falling in this aerial attack era; now imagine two more games worth of yards and TDs. We could see three or more QBs hit 5,000 yards in 2012.

I don’t even want to think about how many yards Chris Johnson could run for, or how many receptions Wes Welker could make. Or how many interceptions Jay Cutler could throw.

Really, the only people that an 18-game schedule truly benefits is the owners, who get one more regular season home gate and two more games worth of TV money each. If this goes through, let’s get pray the poor players will be rightfully compensated.

Look at the perennially great Colts. So far they’re 0-2 this pre-season. In the past four pre-seasons, they’ve gone a total of 4-13. In the regular season, they’ve gone 51-13 in that span. And that total includes the games they routinely take off in the last two weeks.

Want a better example of why the pre-season should never be used to judge real performances? Remember in 2008 when the Detroit Lions made infamous history by going 0-16? Well, in the 2008 pre-season, they were 4-0 and allowed only 32 points. In the regular season, they allowed a league-high 517.

It’s very easy to forget that coaches and coordinators are never going to use fresh substitution packages, new playbooks, trick plays and dynamic ideas in the pre-season. Defences will always throw out vanilla schemes and simple blitz packages. Why waste your hard work on the other side’s scout team?

So, when you see Matt Leinart stink or Brett Favre get battered around, don’t look too much into as a sign of things to come. And remember that those supposed studs that put up huge numbers are doing so against the scout team and are likely to end up on their squad’s scout team as well.

Firstly, how are the Phillies just discussing this? They could land the best player in baseball by trading away a home run hitter who has set records for the amount of times he strikes out? If I was running this team, I wouldn’t even blink and say yes.

Pujols is a far superior hitter to Howard in every way except one; Howard is a lefty. The Cardinals cornerstone is a better hitter for average, has better plate discipline, is faster and superior on defence. The one category where you could split the check mark and call it a draw is power, but Pujols hit two more home runs than Howard last season. So which first baseman would you rather have?

The only real knock against Pujols is the salary he’s going to be demanding after his current deal expires. It’s expected that he’ll ask for as much as A-Rod got when he re-signed his ridiculous deal with the Yankees in the area of $275 million over 10 years. But it’s not like Howard isn’t going to demand at least $20 million per season when his contract expires after the 2011 season.

It has become very apparent since this rumour “broke” that is nothing more than heresay, but that’s what happens with our 24-hour news cycle these days: Things need to be reported to the public, even if their merely an inkling of a rumour.

Hell, this could have come from two guys in the Phils’ front office discussing a fantasy trade – and a lopsided one at that – but at the very least, it got us all excited about the prospect of a mega-trade, if anything else.

Joe Nathan of the Twins, who had 47 saves and a 2.10 ERA last season, has a torn ulnar collateral ligament. I won’t pretend to know exactly what that means, but will say that if you have a torn ligament in your elbow, that usually means Tommy John surgery and a year out of your playing career lost.

So, let’s chalk up the Twins into that unsettled closer debate. With Jon Rauch or Matt Guerrier likely to land the job, I’m not sure you’d want to reach for a Minnesota’s man this year, like previous times.

Rauch has some experience closing, but that was with the Nationals and D-Backs, two not exactly stellar situations to have been in. Plus, coming over to the American League always takes some adjustment.

Guerrier had 33 holds and a 2.36 ERA last season for Minnesota, but time and time again have proven setup men failed to grab the reins and close out games.

At least with a few weeks left in spring training, the Twins – and every other team for that matter – have plenty of time to hash out these issues before opening day.