In Thursday's preseason opener against the Buffalo Bills, the Chicago Bears decided to ignore a newly-passed NFL rule change that moved kickoffs from the 30 yard line to the 35 yard line.

Special teams coordinator Dave Toub had been given permission from the officiating staff prior to the game, since apparently, the rule is vague enough that it does not completely clarify that the ball has to be kicked off from the new location. However, after kicking from the 30 twice in the game, the league told the Bears, "No, you can't do that anymore."

The Bears had supposedly elected to kick from the old distance so as to give their special teams unit some live practice at covering kicks.

I think this rule change passed by a margin of 26-6 in the off-season. The argument in support of the change is that by moving the kickoffs up five yards, there will be more touchbacks, fewer returns, and therefore fewer injuries. A majority of injuries in NFL games happen on kick return plays - although the exact percentage escapes me at the moment. Although the real reason for this rule change might just be that the other teams in the league are terrified of players like Devin Hester, Josh Cribbs, and DeSean Jackson.

I managed to watch the Chicago Bears' first preseason game when it was re-aired on NFL Network on Sunday afternoon. The game did not look very promising.

Chicago had to skip its planned pre-season opening against the St. Louis Rams in the Hall of Fame game because it was canceled due to the labor dispute that plagued the spring and summer, so the game against the Buffalo Bills was the first chance to see the 2011 Bears team in action.

And it did not look good.

Last year's offensive line was a disaster for the first half of the season. The team gave up a league-leading 56 sacks, including about 10 in one game against the Giants on a Monday night. The line did significantly improve following the week-eight bye, but Cutler was still sacked more often that I'd like to have seen, and the line still had trouble opening holes for the running backs in many situations.

Opened up a brand new tub of vanilla ice cream today as a post-lunch snack, and found this very friendly-looking anomaly on the underside of the lid!

Ice cream always makes me smile. And today, it smiled back at me for a change.

I've been trying my best to keep up with the movement going on in the NFL since the lockout ended in the end of July. It's been a hectic week so far. The reduction in team salary caps and the addition of a salary floor have caused a lot of teams to have to clean house.

Considering how awesome the Julius Peppers acquisition was last year and how much extra cap room the Bears have in their coffers, I've been waiting to hear some awesome news about trades or free agent pickups by the Bears. But so far the news has been all disappointments.

Excited by the end of the NFL lockout, I just couldn't wait to get back to video game football. I purchased NCAA Football 12 last week, but haven't had much time to play it yet. But before I begin a Dynasty, I wanted to make sure that the rosters for my alma mater UNLV was as correct as I could make it.

I started with the rosters provided by Operation Sports user GamingTailgate. The guys at Operation Sports and Pasta Padre do a fantastic job with their rosters every year, and my hat's off to those guys for the tremendous work they do making sure that NCAA Football fans have accurate rosters for the new games as soon as possible. However, I noticed that they had made some glaring (but understandable) errors with the rosters for the UNLV Running Rebels.

UNLV isn't exactly a top-tier team. In fact, UNLV is a bottom-tier team. They only had two wins last year. So I'm sure that neither EA Sports nor Operation Sports cares too much about making sure the rosters are as up-to-date as possible for such a team. But I care, so I opened up the UNLV spring 2011 prospectus for reference.