Tag: football

Who changes their name first: the Redskins or Patriots?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Serious question.  Based on how often the phrase “patriots” has been thrown around unironically, I can’t help but wonder if people who work for the New England Patriots football franchise wince or cringe every time they hear it.  Obviously, there’s zero (I hope) correlation between a professional football team’s identity, and a legion of white supremacist fascists, but the word is the same and when enough people hear it enough with a negative connotation, the association tends to stick, even when used in completely unrelated context.

In a very short amount of time, the phrase patriots has mutated into this very ugly and unappealing definition, and I really do wonder if this keeps up, there will be enough of an uproar and backlash to the New England Patriots to where they will actually begin considering changing their entire franchise’s name.

Obviously, when it comes to the original question, it stands to believe that the Redskins are the lock to win this “race,” seeing as how the Redskins name has been put on the shelf already, but I’m not going to give them any sort of victory until they actually pick a new name and stop parading around as the interim “Football Team” they’ve used throughout 2020.

But lest we all forget, this much progress has taken almost literally my entire lifetime, so if there was any franchise that could get overtaken by lightning in a bottle, it’s definitely the Washington Washingtons. 

We live in a very fast-moving world now where there’s little patience and even less regard for repercussions and backlash, and if the association of the word patriots continues to spiral and become more solely linked to racism, white supremacy and people who would dare attempt to disrupt and overthrow governments, the sooner the New England Patriots might want to consider renaming themselves.

Think I’m going to have to rule this race, a jump ball.

NFLOL, circa 2021

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Every few years, something stupid occurs in the NFL that inspires me to write about it, and use the phrase NFLOL as if it were the most clever thing in the world and I was the first person in history to come up with the play-on-acronym.  Otherwise I think the NFL is a pretty deplorable league full of hypocrites, racists and terrible businessmen, and I think professional football itself is pretty horrible, but the sports fan in me is always intrigued when there’s some sort of embarrassing occurrence.

Case in point, the Washington Redskins Football Team wins the NFC East, and advances into the playoffs as the #4 seed.  The thing is, Football Team finished the regular season with an abysmal 7-9 record, and wins the division by virtue of every team was collectively historically putrid.  While Football Team’s season solders on into the playoffs, the 10-6 Miami Dolphins are going to be sitting home next week because of the archaic way playoff seeds are determined.  Even the Arizona Cardinals and Oakland Las Vegas Raiders both are out of the picture despite having slightly better 8-8 records.

The best part about Football Team’s “success” is that by virtue of winning their division, regardless of their record, they are entitled to host a game against one of the “2nd place” wild card teams, and in the case of Football Team, their wild card opponent is the Tampa Bay Buccaneers.  It should be noted that the Buccaneers finished the regular season with an 11-5 record, which by any measures is a very good record, but the Saints just so happen to have one more win and one fewer loss to take the NFC South.

So we have the “underdog” 11-5 Buccaneers going to Washington to play against the “home field advantage” 7-9 Football Team, in what will be an undoubtedly disgusting game in one way shape or form.

And frankly, I’m kind of torn on who I’d rather see win.  Obviously, my allegiances first and foremost go towards the team formerly known as the Redskins I grew up having as the closest thing to a hometown team in my life, and fewer things would be more ironically enjoyable than a team with a maligned identity and an interim name, running the table and winning the Superb Owl, so that the annals of history could recognize “Football Team” as champions.

But in the other hand, there’s really no way that Football Team should have any chance in hell because they more or less sucked and exist where they are solely because their division mates just so happened to suck even more, while the Buccaneers are actually a good team, led by football Jesus Christ himself, Tom-period-Brady-period.

As I’ve stated many times in the past, I have no beef with Tom Brady in spite of popular opinion loving to shit on him every chance possible.  In fact, I respect his winning history, and the fan in me would enjoy watching him succeed for the Buccaneers, just to spite all the naysayers and doubters who put his career on a cross and left it for dead when he left New EnglandGenerally, I fucking hate the Buccaneers, but considering I kind of hate the NFL in general these days, I wouldn’t mind seeing them succeed, just because they’re being helmed by the guy the world loves to hate, and I’d love to see Brady be able to give the metaphorical middle fingers to everyone, even if it meant the Bucs succeeding.

Regardless though, I don’t really fucking care.  It’s just hilarious to me that we’re in this scenario of a shit team getting a home game because of the playoff seeding rules, and an 11-5 team having to run the table entirely on the road if they want to have any chance at glory.  This actually happened a while back, when the 8-8 Cardinals got to host the 12-4 Falcons because they won their division, and not only did they upend the oft-choking Flacons, they went all the way to the Superb Owl and just narrowly lost to the fucking Steelers.

I doubt that Football Team will fare so well, but wouldn’t it be great if they did?

Playoff Team*

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

*Went undefeated, with a perfect 6-0 record; while most other schools in the nation played 10-11

When the day is over Ohio State makes the playoffs, because those in charge understand that it’s best for business that Ohio State plays in a nationally televised playoff game; I write such as singular, because little chance that Ohio State is going to upend Clemson, and much like last year, they’re going to fall short and make all the armchair pundits at home revile the fact that another team gets undressed by Clemson and that someone else should have made the playoffs in their place.

But still, it’s complete bullshit that college football allows Ohio State to maintain a high rank and make the college football playoff when they played 2/3 the games that most other programs did.  Sure, some of it was out of their control, because 74 million Americans are retards that couldn’t avoid getting coronavirus even if they were inside of a medical bubble, but it doesn’t change the fact that Ohio State basically gets entry into the playoffs on reputation alone.

Because it wasn’t really their strength of schedule that warrants playoff contention; four of their six paltry games were against unranked opponents, and the other two, Indiana and Northwestern, are schools that would never be ranked in any ordinary season where every program is dealing with players out on account of pandemic whether it was voluntary or stupidity.  The fact that the Big10 championship featured Northwestern at all goes to show just how weak of a conference they were playing in, and Ohio State only managed to win by 12 points when they probably should’ve won by 42.

Regardless, coronavirus or no coronavirus, it’s impossible to have a college football season without some controversy on rankings and standings, and this is no exception.  College football was in a perfect position to have some fun, and considering how many schools rose to the occasion of a chaotic field, it could have been really fun to have seen a non-power five conference school get into the playoffs, and because power five schools all play to the same metas, could definitely give some fits to some contenders.

Given the fact that Ohio State will probably lose 37-17 to Clemson, there’s no way it wouldn’t have been remotely interesting to have seen like, Clemson vs. Cincinnati or Clemson vs. Coastal Carolina (11-0); it’s not like they would have done any worse than what Ohio State is probably going to do.

Whatever though; in a season that shouldn’t have happened at all in the first place, it looks like we’re headed for Alabama vs. Clemson #5(?) for the National Championship, and considering this is now Trevor Lawrence’s swan song, he’ll probably go out a winner, because in spite of the 2-2 record in the playoffs between the two programs, Lawrence ate the shit out of Alabama’s lunch in their last meeting, and there’s little reason to believe that another encounter will result in anything different.

Advent Beer #7: Jubiläumsbier 333 by Schloßbrauerei Rheder

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Full disclosure: I copied and pasted all that shit in the headline from Untappd.  Like hell was I going to bother to try and typeset all of those special characters.

While I was drinking this beer, one of my friends and I were texting about the state of the Washington Redskins Football Team and Pittsburgh Steelers game.  The Steelers were 11-0 undefeated going into this game while Football Team was a woeful 4-7 but still were still basically in playoff contention because they happened to be in the worst division in the history of the NFL apparently.

Naturally, this had every recipe of a classic trap game; the undefeated juggernaut, versus the team with literally no name who was slogging through the season, and the Steelers were undoubtedly thinking about next week’s game against the Buffalo Bills.

Of course, Football Team would upset the Steelers, and despite the fact that I really don’t give two shits about the NFL much less most other sports this year during a pandemic while I’m raising a baby, I can still take satisfaction at a historically overhyped franchise like the Steelers meeting their demise against a woeful franchise like Football Team, and this is where I hope Football Team wins the division with a 6-10 record, gets a home game against like the Wild Card Seahawks who have maybe 10 wins and then embarrasses them, as well as everyone else en route to a Super Bowl where a team called “Football Team” is Super Bowl champions.

Anyway, all the while my friend and I were bullshitting, I was enjoying today’s bier, which I have no earthly idea on how to pronounce nor do I really even feel like trying.  One of the things I’ve enjoyed doing every day is ritualizing the pour into the pint glass, and taking stock of what color comes out of each can.  333 is a nice red color, that didn’t have a tremendous amount of aroma to it, and I found it to be quite delightful to drink.

There’s a kind of a smoky flavor at the end, and overall it kind of reminds me of a Killian’s Irish Red, but that is a beer that I like, so that is meant to be a positive comparison.  As has been the case over the last few beers, it was kind of medium bodied, and I’m not sure if I’d have the desire to drink more than 2-3 of these if I were ever in a night of drinking, but it’s still a decent beer.

If I’m ranking these, this falls into #4 out of 7, which is dead middle of the pack.  If I’m a betting man, I have to wonder what my chances are that I’ll actually be able to accurately maintain a ranking order of my picks, unless I start tabulating them onto the tail ends of every single one of these posts?  I feel like I’m already starting to lose track, and am forced to go refer back to my older posts to refresh myself already.

Sounds like a Clemson grad

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The importance of an education: unknown man wagers $8,600 on #1 ranked Clemson vs. negative-ranked Syracuse . . . on Clemson to win.  And at -100,000 odds, the payout on Clemson’s inevitable victory would be an $8.60 payout

Either this person is a Clemson homer/grad, and/or they really don’t understand how sports betting works.  And/or they are just dumb.  Most likely all of the above.

Honestly, before I clown too much on this guy, I’ve kind of been there before.  Betting on sports isn’t as cut and dry as it is amongst casual friends, where everything is a pretty straight up bet.  But to do it on a book, it’s vastly more complicated, and usually involves match-ups that aren’t so overwhelmingingly favored in one direction as it was between Clemson and Syracuse.

In 2005, I felt really good about the Washington Redskins’ chances against the Seattle Seachickens in the playoffs, as the Redskins were riding momentum, and the Seahawks were going to be without Shaun Alexander when he was still good.  I actually called up a sports book that I’d been hearing advertised on television, and whereas I thought it would be as simple to just say I wanted to put $50 on the Redskins, I quickly learned that it’s vastly more complicated.  Such as money lines, spreads and partial games, but ultimately I went with the straight money bet, since that’s all I wanted, and I stood to make like $75 if the Redskins were to pull off the upset.

Naturally, I lost, because , because the Redskins are the Redskins and I’ve literally never won a sports bet in my life, but I learned a little something about sports betting that evening.  Mostly, that it doesn’t really have any meaning unless the matchup is remotely competitive, which is something that pretty much any college football game featuring Clemson is not, to the point where lots of books won’t even offer straight money bets on Clemson, because they win every game by like 40 points, and they don’t want to pay $8.60 to the 400 oafs who take the sure-lock bet, because that’s still $3,400 they lose, even if it would have netted them $3.4 million if the upset were to occur.

I get it though, kinda.  This loser with $8,600 to blow wanted to boast about how much they gamble, and conveniently leave out the fine details, like how they’re betting on the best college football team of the last decade, against a school that’s more known for basketball than football.  They brag to their friends and over social media about how much money they’re risking, and when they inevitably win, they’ll brag about winning, but fail to mention the odds or how minuscule risk there actually was.  If it’s not stupidity, then it’s all a really excessive effort dog and pony show for the internets; which still makes it stupid.

The only true justice is if and when one day, Clemson actually gets upset by an actual scrub.  And in all fairness, one of the last times that actually happened was against Syracuse a few years ago, but that was also before Trevor Lawrence.  But hopefully, one of these days, this particular guy, or anyone like him, when it occurs, the internet is ready to identify, ridicule and meme-ify them to the rest of the world.

I don’t care if it’s a work

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I mean, there’s a 100% chance that this is a work, because things in the WWE universe don’t happen if they aren’t; but anyway, I just wanted to say that I took tremendous enjoyment out of Adam Cole blasting into Pat McAfee during his shitty radio show, because I fucking can’t stand Pat McAfee, and it’s a pleasure to hear a strong talker like Adam Cole tear into him.

Since I’ve devolved into a way more filthy casual wrestling fan over the years, my only real exposure to the WWE product really is down to NXT re-broadcasts once they’re made available on the Network, and PPV events.  Without cable, I can’t watch RAW, I can’t watch NXT live, and frankly I can never find the time or want to watch Smackdown despite the fact that I can watch FOX on Friday nights.  NXT UK is currently shuttered due to coronavirus, and I don’t even think the WWE personnel even watches Main Event or 205 Live.

So occasionally, I’ll have the wherewithal to tune into a WWE PPV, and over the last few years that I’ve been able to intercept a pre-show, my thoughts have often been, who the fuck is this guy??

This ginger, jew-fro’d geek with a receding hairline and a voice that makes me think of the scientist guy from The Simpsons, so having said that, I am naturally referring to Sam Roberts.  I had no idea who he was, and why he got to be on the pre-show panel with guys like Booker T and Renee Young, but all I knew was that I thought he was annoying, and I was not a fan.

But then came along this other guy, some douchebag-looking Chad, who exuded a frat-bro personality tantamount to his appearance, and my brow crinkled even more at the notion that the WWE kept opening their doors to these douchey marks to be on their pre-shows.  Well that turned out to be Pat McAfee, and he immediately gave me X-Pac Heat vibes, and I was really tempted to tune out entirely thanks to him, but I wanted to watch the PPV, so I grit my teeth and soldered through.

Continue reading “I don’t care if it’s a work” →

Does anyone else feel the Washington Redskins are deflecting from bigger issues?

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The skinny: amidst pressure from large corporate sponsors who have likely been pressured themselves by myriads of influences, the Washington Redskins have acquiesced to “thoroughly reviewing” the name of the franchise AKA changing the name may actually be happening after multiple decades

Pretty much my entire life after realizing that I was someone who enjoyed sports, the Washington Redskins have been under fire for their name.  In all fairness, “Redskins” is probably the most offensive of names out in professional sports that borrow from Native American culture, because it’s basically the equivalent of if there were a team named after Africans called “Blackskins.”

But for all intents and purposes, the Redskins were the closest thing in my life I’d ever have to a home team, and when I was really started to develop interests in sports, the Washington Redskins were a powerhouse and were on the cusp of winning the 1992 Super Bowl.  Fewer things make it easy to become a fan than immediate success, and seeing the Redskins topple the Buffalo Bills for a championship made it really easy to become a Redskins fan.

Continue reading “Does anyone else feel the Washington Redskins are deflecting from bigger issues?” →