Cool. Tell Leon my family and I will be in 227, as always, and rooting like hell for him! I'll be at TC also.
Yea it is his site...someone else had mentioned he got facebook poked by Leon so I thought I'd send Leon a message and he sent me one back thanking me for my comments and all and he also took the time to plug that website haha
Wow, I'm shocked to see that leon has a travel site. Would calling that number actually allow you to talk to leon? And I'm glad to hear he is up for competition with Jones. Jones/Washington duo will be unstoppable, but it wouldn't surprise me at all if leon is our starter next season.
The first time, he DID have his direct number on it.. I told him that it may not have been a good idea, so he changed it and put another number. The second site is his, however, the first site is not. I asked him about the first site and he did not even know that it existed. Someone is just using his name as a domain. I guess they're just hoping that he pays them for the rights to it.
I think you are underestimating exactly how good Jones is if you think he will lose the majority of the carries. Jones has put up over 3800 yards in the past 3 seasons and is a young 28 years old (never got more than 200 carries until '04). Jones is in incredible shape, and rarely fumbles. Judging from some interviews he seems like a team guy and had a reputation as a team leader in Chicago. Thomas Jones will carry the load for NY Jets this season barring injury. I know you have a man-crush on Leon Washington, but use your head for a minute. Jones is a legit #1 back in this league. I love Washington and what he brings to the table too, and also am excited to see him and Jones team up but I don't see Leon ever being a full-time starter in this league.
I suspected this. They're called "cyber-squatters"... people who register Domain Names and sit on them, hoping the person or entity that should rightfully have it will come along and offer them a lot of money. It only takes $39.95 to register a Domain Name (or less) and as little as $9.95/month to hold it. In rare instances (say www.3rd-And-Draw.com, for example), if our 3rd wanted it, he could probably buy it for as little as $100-$300 because it may not be in high demand. But with Leon's emerging reputation now, this bastard could be looking for thousands (and even more) for www.LeonWashington.com. In the meantime, he's using it as a "pointer" to go to his commercial site. If Leon really wants his name badly enough, perhaps the best idea would be to approach an attorney who specializes in this. An attorney could send the registered owner of the .COM a letter asking them to consider selling the name to Leon, the appropriate owner, for a reasonable price. If not and they don't want to, Leon's attorney could threaten hard ball and could probably have a reasonable chance at suing them for ownership based on proprietary issues because it's actually his name. In other words, I'm skating on thin ice if I go and register Burger-King.com. In a courtroom, I'd have a lot of trouble explaining why I need this Domain Name. Now, if another guy who is actually named Leon Washington registered the site, good luck trying to pry that away from him, because he'll be able to show that it's actually his name. Now you're back to negotiating big bucks with the guy or walking away. the other thing people are doing nowadays is altering it somewhat, like www.Leon-Washington.com.
Chris Baker also has a travel site, as noted above. Now, I find this interesting. Did one of the two get the other interested? Were they both approached by the same third party, or third parties in the same field? Just curious to know.
This is the same guy who left Chicago because he was sharing time with Cedric Benson (does that sound like a team first player?). His team got to the Super Bowl with the duo RB formula and he's still bitchin!
Now that I look at the site it's almost identical to Chris Baker's, so I'm leading towards the two of them dealing with the same third party. Would be interesting to know the level of involvement each has with his 'own' site - do they simply get a cut of proceeds from holidays booked through their page, with the same company being behind each? Does it go to charity? What?
This could be either the same situation I describe above or Chris Baker is the actual registered owner of his own Domain Name and "renting" the use of it to Sports Authority or whatever as a pointer. You type in the Domain thinking your going to get to an interesting Jets player's site and you wind up on a web page selling jerseys and baseball hats, etc. More than likely, the "third party" you're referring to above is a squatter. Some of them register literally hundreds of Domain Names and sell them off one at a time. It pays because they occasionally hit the right one that they're able to sell for $10,000 to some corporation that "has to have it."
I suspect that's something of a misrepresentation. Jones beat out Benson as starter two years running and was shipped out of town because the FO wouldn't risk having Benson labelled a bust on account of not cracking the starting lineup three years after being drafted #4 (or whatever he was drafted, #3?) All I've ever seen from Jones was performance - in camp, on the field, in the Superbowl.
Leon said that he's partnered up with Travelocity. I'm going to book a few of my trips with him in the future, just to give it a try. In fact, I'll book my reservation for the NFL Draft through him.
Okay, this is what I suspected. Leon and Chris and others let someone use their Domain as a pointer and they get paid for every hit or some small % of what gets purchased as a result of a visit to the site thru the Name.
