Go! ‘Necks! Go!

Last week NLL commissioner Jim Jennings was interviewed on CAMFM by Toronto Rock announcer Barks. During the interview, Barks asked some good questions about where the league was going and what we could look forward to in the future.

Chicago lacrosse

The first good bit of info came in regards to the Chicago expansion team. While the owners have been given a franchise so far neither the players nor a name has been chosen. Over the last several weeks there was a list of 10 possible team names that were posted on the teams website. The management was asking everyone to vote for what names they liked.

After some time the list was shortened and fans were asked to vote again. According to Jennings, today should be the day that the Chicago owners will unveil the team name. Of course, being the kind of people we lacrosse fans are, there has been some investigating happening behind the scenes. Due to some deft searching around it seems that both ChicagoShamrocks.com and ChicagoShamrox.com have both been registered. Earlier this week both domains actually pointed to the ChicagoNLL.com website — at least until the mistake was noticed and for now both are empty.

New York expansion announcement

Sure, it’s been quite a while since Jim Jennings mentioned the New York expansion team during his half-time interview at the All Star Game. At that time Jennings said it would be a couple of weeks before an official announcement was made. I don’t know about you but I think it’s definitely been a couple of weeks since then. Well, I guess we’ll have to wait a couple more because during his interview Jennings once again said he expects a New York expansion team announcement in a “couple weeks”. Thanks Jim, we appreciate the heads up.

League expansion

While on the topic of expansion, Barks and Jennings talked about other markets that could do well with a National Lacrosse League franchise. Interestingly enough, Jennings mentioned Winnipeg of all places. The double J seems to think the big city in Manitoba would be a good place for a new team. I’m a little skeptical but I’m also a little biased.

Fan opinion seems to be more along the lines of adding teams to places like Boston, LA and other larger centers. It would be great to see some new management/ownership in Vancouver so we can get the Ravens back into it.

NLL video game

This has been rumored and talked about quite a bit amongst fans in some circles lately, a sports video game based on the NLL. As it turns out, this is going to become a reality thanks to EA. Not many details are available at this time but it’s sure to be at least a thousand times better than the last attempt at a lacrosse video game — try looking up Blast Lacrosse on Google.

Both Jennings and Barks thought it would be a good idea if Barks would provide the announcers voice for the game. I tend to agree with that and I’m betting so will a large number of people. More information on the game, its requirements and its future should be available this summer and it seems EA is looking for a Christmas 2006 launch of the as yet untitled game.