The new trend over the last few years is coming online to watch sports through forum collaboration with the likes of P2P4U, MyP2P, Wiziwig and other football forums.  The forums have a large collection of sports lovers who want to be able to watch their favorite teams play but they are limited by the offerings on their local cable television stations.  These people come online in swarms to watch live football and the way they are accomplishing this is through football forums.  In these forums you have streamers, helpers, and viewers.  Streamers are people who stream the live sports online.  They usually do so in order to help people access their favorite team’s games, though recently a large population of people have begun to do this in hopes of making money by locking their content and requiring you to fill out an offer.  The helpers can be split into two parts.  The first type of helper is one who finds live sports streams online and shares the link to the streams with the other members of the football forum.  They have the mantra of “I find a stream this team, next time someone will find a stream for me”.  The second type of helper is someone who is willing to help anyone who wants to stream, watch live streams, or help find links by offering guidance on how they can do so.  This is a big brother to little brother type of helper.  And finally, the majority is the viewers.  These are the people who come online because they want to watch live football because it is not on their local television.  P2P4U and other sites are popular destinations for these viewers.  They usually come into the football forums with questions o’plenty about where to watch live football, how to get the streams to work, and a multitude of other items.  Most of the viewers are takers, they just want to get help from someone and fill their own sport’s needs.  A rare few though will turnaround and become a helper or a streamer in the future.

While the football forums grow in popularity, exposure, and membership it will be interesting to see how many stay alive.  A large number of live streaming sports sites have been shut down by the government due to posting links to live streams which is said to be illegal.  While there has not been a court case yet that we can find at P2P4U, it should be interesting once the first case does come to court to see what the ruling will be as they will have a very large impact on the football streaming forums and sports sites.  As of right now, there have been websites taken offline before an actual trial is had which seems to be counterintuitive to the way the legal system works.  Anyhow, football forums are here and for now they are here to stay so enjoy watching the live sports online.

The NFL handed down penalties in the New Orleans Saints Bountygate scandal today.  The penalties for the head coach, defensive coordinator and general manager were handed down about a month ago and now the NFL has decided that 4 players on the Saints will face suspension, ranging from the entire 2012 NFL football season for Jonathan Vilma to 3 games for Scott Fujita.  The suspensions are without pay so the players will need to factor that into their budgets this year.

While it has not been released yet how the suspension lengths were determined our best guesstimate here at P2P4U is that the NFL reviewed some of the games and possible injuries as a result of hits from these Saints defenders.  Since Vilma received a year long suspension you could guess that one of his hits on a player may have been viewed as a direct correlation to the bounties offered.

The Saints has a prolific offense but their has been where they need to step up.  The suspension of Vilma will definitely hurt the Saints in 2012 as he was their starting linebacker and definitely a player that was considered one of their top guys on the defensive side of the ball.  Whether the Saints decide to move someone up from their second team onto the starting team or if they will go and sign someone or trade for someone is yet to be seen.

While the action of wanting to lay out big hits and knock players out of games is common in the NFL and not a surprise to anyone, putting a bounty on this is what caused the NFL great concern.  NFL contracts are not guaranteed (the non-guaranteed portions that is) so causing someone a serious injury could result in them losing substantial income and their livelihood.

It will be interested to see how the Saints respond to start the season after the trying offseason for them.  They open the season at home and while they will surely put up points on the board the question is how much Bountygate has hurt them on the defensive side of the ball.

In other New Orleans news there was news out that the Saints GM had the ability to listen in on opposing teams.   Whether or not the GM actually did do this, or solely had the ability to do so if he wanted to is unknown and the NFL is most likely trying to gather all the facts and interview people before making any decisions concerning this.

A lesson to be learned for all other NFL teams, all it takes is one person to slip and mention something and your house of cards can come crashing down.  Teams should take a harder look at their actions and behaviors because even if you consider people in your inner circle of trust today, tomorrow they may be outside the circle and find some loose lips.