Tag: superb owl

Salt, thy name is the Philadelphia Eagles

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I know a lot of people hate the New England Patriots.  I hear it, the arrogance, the constant winning, allegations of Spygate, Deflategate.  Bill Belichick is a genius, Tom Brady is a god, etc., etc.  They get accused of cheating, but then while under the microscope, they go ahead and win some more.  They’ve been penalized and have had key players suspended, but then they come out and win some more.  I get why lots of sports fans (fake, fairweather or otherwise) love to hate the Patriots.

But there was absolutely zero chance that I was going to cheer for the Philadelphia Eagles.  Now I’ve never really had any problem with the Patriots, and I respect the sustained success of the organization, in spite of all the allegations, so it was a no-brainer that I’d prefer the Patriots over the Eagles, but we’re in a delicate timeframe right now where Eagles fans are insufferably but justifiably overjoyed right now, and anyone who was supporting the Patriots are either hiding, pretending like they didn’t care, or doing whatever it takes to not have to eat the crow of a demoralizing defeat.

However, I can admit the defeat.  I’m not really a Pats fan, but I am definitely an anti-Eagles fan, and despite the fact that Super Bowl LEE was actually a really good game, it makes me feel queasy to accept the reality that the Philadelphia Eagles are Super Bowl champions.

The Eagles deserve congratulations, but they won’t get any from me.  Fuck the Eagles.  They won a really exciting game, and they made pretty much no mistakes.  I loved Doug Pederson’s play calling, and he went for it in manners that made my inner Madden giddy, and his ballsy shot calling is undoubtedly led the Eagles to the victory.  The fact that the game had one punt and over 1,100 yards of offense was a testament to how high-octane it was. 

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Jags-Vikings Super Bowl, let’s do it!

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Not going to lie, I don’t even pay attention to the NFL anymore.  Not because I have some sort of moral stance against all the guys kneeling or anything, and especially not because I don’t like football, quite the contrary, I just happen to like college ranks more than the NFL.  I really don’t have much of a reason for it, except maybe that I’d rather spend my Sundays doing other things than watching NFL games these days, like catching up on the hundreds of television shows or movies I have ear-marked as wanting to watch, or playing video games, or going out and doing things.

Whatever though, in spite of how ambivalent I may have become towards the NFL, there are days like this one where the NFL captures the imagination of everyone who didn’t see it live but watched the replays of the pivotal moment on a litany of outlets and are proclaiming it the greatest play in the history of the game like fucking idiots.  But the Minnesota Vikings pulled off a last-second touchdown play that allowed them to come from behind and beat the New Orleans Saints and advance to the NFC championship, one step away from the Super Bowl.

I understand why people are acting like it was a miracle, because frankly, professional sports are excruciatingly difficult, and to convert a play like that with five seconds left really does take a tremendous amount of luck.  But the reality is that the corner whiffed on the Vikings wideout* worse than the Huffington Post predicting the 2016 election, resulting in a really easy catch and run to the end zone to cause bedlam in Minneapolis.

*not even going to pretend like I know these guys’ names, much less exert the effort to find out

It wasn’t like a miracle, one-handed fingertip catch over three defenders in the end zone, it wasn’t even a hail mary distance.  It really was as simple as a defender blowing his coverage, and the wide receiver getting an easy catch out of it, and scoring on the play.  The fact that it happened with five seconds to go in the fourth quarter with the Vikings behind a score was incidental.

But it was still cool, because shit like this doesn’t happen on a regular basis, much less during the playoffs.  Usually incompetence doesn’t make the playoffs, but as freaks of physical nature football players are these days, they’re often times dumb as bricks inside the noggin.

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Greetings from Chokelanta, Georgia

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Where choking isn’t just commonplace, it’s a way of life.

I had a sinking feeling in my stomach when the Falcons failed to even secure a field goal, after a game-defining Julio Jones catch followed immediately by some negative plays, taking them out of field goal range and resulting in a punt.

The sinking feeling sunk even more when Julian Edleman made the catch of the game, where he managed to secure the ball amidst a deflection off of a hand and a leg while surrounded by and getting pelted by three Atlanta players while simultaneously managing to keep the ball from hitting the ground.

The feeling completely sunk when the Patriots scored the game-tying touchdown and subsequent two-point conversion.

And I threw the in the towel as soon as the coin flip landed heads and the Patriots would start the first overtime in Superb Owl history with possession of the ball.

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Respect is earned or the beatings continue

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I told myself that I wouldn’t write anything about Superb Owl Lee until it was over, because I am the controller of the entire universe and the words I choose to put onto a brog post will guarantee control the entire outcome of the game.  But I’m in a little bit of a rut lately, and there are few things that help get me out of a rut than writing about sports.  Not to mention that every now and then, I’ll come across something that I guess the correct response would be that it triggers something of an emotional synapse where I feel that words typed out is the appropriate reaction.

But every now and then whenever the Atlanta Falcons, or any Atlanta-based sports team, but mostly the Falcons, find a modicum of success, they inevitably become motivation for some bigwig sports writer to take a cheap shot at not just the team, but inevitably the city itself, along with all of its denizens.  That Atlanta teams are all pretenders, have yet to win anything (except them ’95 Braves!), and then that the fans are all fair-weathered bandwagon riders that only cheer for winners when they’re not going bonkers over college football.  That Atlanta is the worse sports town in America.  That Atlanta is pretty much the new Cleveland when it comes to sports championship droughts.

None of these allegations are incorrect, but they’re revisited and flung around so many times that they’re completely unoriginal and stated so many times that the only appropriate response is usually “you’re right, what’s your point” with an annoyed eye roll.

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Some eggheads justifying what I’ve already been saying

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Duh: some economics professors proclaim that Super Bowls and other stadium bullshit is actually in fact, bullshit

Do I even have to make another post about this again?  About how stadiums are bullshit, Atlanta is an unfortunate bombing ground of greed and criminals building all these stupid stadiums, and the 2019 Super Bowl is the grand daddy of greed, corruption and more fucking greed?

Nah, because coming from me, it just sounds like mindless ranting.  So it’s a good thing that some economic professors and experts have decided to chime in to basically state the obvious to those with brains: new stadiums and the events they host spout metric fucktons of rhetoric and inflated numbers of all the money that they can potentially bring, but when the days are over, only the corporations and the investors truly win out, while everyone else suffers.

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Let’s hope the Ravens aren’t good in 2019

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Because the Super Bowl will be back in Atlanta then, and the last time it was here, Ray Lewis murdered two guys.  And if Ray Rice remains under the wing of big brother, then we may as well start a dead pool of all the people who will probably “mysteriously” die during that weekend.

Seriously though, I know there are a lot of people who are excited for this news; they are called NFL fanatics, and corporate stiffs.  The NFL fanatics will be out of their minds with excitement at the biggest game of the year coming to their home, with aspirations of getting nosebleed tickets and all the potential for the scenes, celebrity and athlete sightings, and whatever else Atlanta plans on trotting out for the weeks leading up to, and ultimately the weekend of the big game.

The corporate stiffs are naturally over the moon with this development, because like most things involving the NFL, these rich people will inexplicably manage to get richer from this whole debacle, at the expense of the rest of the plebes that have the unfortunate misfortune of simply existing in their vicinity.

And then there are people like me, who not only couldn’t care less about the most overrated event in the world coming into my backyard, but is instead resentful about it, because I’m a grownup now, that pays taxes and has a general interest in things that might affect me, and I see through the bullshit and rhetoric spouted by sporting-related events and matters. 

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I’m rooting for Cam

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The Denver Broncos versus the Carolina Panthers.

Who’d have guessed such a pairing for Super Bowl L?  Certainly not I, but then again, I haven’t really been paying that much attention to the NFL all season.

I’m more surprised by the fact that the Patriots didn’t mangle Peyton Manning again, and make it into the Super Bowl; I’d have bet money on them beating the Broncos by like 20 points, but it’s a good thing that I don’t bet on sports anymore, because I was still in Vegas when I could have.

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