Playoff Team*

*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

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

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

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?

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?”

Los Angeles Rams’ logo – football or news station?

If there was anything that would help get me writing about things other than being a new dad and how I’m often operating on a sleep deficit and spending the expected amount of time changing diapers, it’s a good old fashioned dunking on a rebranded logo.  And the Los Angeles Rams Formerly of St. Louis did just that, futilely trying to get people to pay attention to them and not think of them as another dead franchise that inexplicably cannot survive in a sports-crazed market like LA.

Honestly, in spite of the harsh tone and the likely critical things I’m going to say about it, the overall logo isn’t that turrible.  It says “LA” and then there’s a horn of a ram in it, the point is made, and the objective is completed: LA Rams.

The problem is, I can’t not see a glorified news station logo when I look at it.  The very first thought that came to mind when I saw it was that it looked like it had to be an NBC affiliate’s news logo for Los Angeles.  Like it was born to be a news station logo, not the primary identity of a futbol americano franchise in the NFL, one of the most influential and wealthy sporting entities on the planet.

I mean seriously, the image above is a quick shop job I did to illustrate my point.  If this whole post wasn’t talking about the logo, would anyone stop and think twice about the logo tucked in the bottom corner of any news broadcast?  It fits so seamlessly and could easily be used in any broadcast throughout all of Los Angeles.

Sometimes it’s hard to believe that LA just can’t get a break when it comes to professional football.  They’re such a massive market, yet the NFL just inexplicably can’t seem to get their shit together out there.  Even the Knicks were once good in New York, but LA just can’t seem to get people to take the NFL seriously there.  I mean look at the memes that the LA Chragers became when they unveiled their low-effort logo that lasted all of like two days before it was ridiculed to literal death.

I can’t say I bothered to see if the Rams’ new logo was nearly as ridiculed as the Chragers’ one was, but to this snooty graphic designer, all I’ll ever see is a fictitious news station’s logo, waiting to be permanently positioned in the bottom corner of a television screen during a broadcast.

How to reflect on a decade

This year ending isn’t just an ordinary ending of a year, because it’s also the end of a decade.  Naturally, a sentimental person like me tends to want to reflect on an entire decade, because much like individual years, a decade is a nice round chunk of time that one might think it would be easy to reflect upon, but in the greater spectrum, it’s ten full years we’d be trying to look back onto.  Now I like to think I have a good memory, but even without the aid of my trusty brog, it’s difficult to really look back at an entire decade.

Regardless, that’s not going to stop all the self-important jobbers of the internet who will try their darnedest to speak with authority and copy and paste all the same milestones the major news outlets will when it comes to trying to summarize and reflect upon the entire decade.  The funny thing is that most of the internet savvy generations probably aren’t that much older or younger than I am, which means that in the grand spectrums of our respective lives, we’ve only really lived through 3-4 decades, whereas I’d probably estimate that 1.5-2 of them are pretty invalid, because we’re simply not articulate and/or educated enough to have the capacity to reflect on entire decades.

So combined with the advent and growth of the internet, and the notion that everyone has a voice, I’d wager this is probably, at the very most, the second real decade of the modern high-speed internet that people really care to really reminisce about; and I’m being generous by calling it the second, because DSLs and cable internet didn’t really flourish until nearly the mid-2000’s; I couldn’t imagine people trying to use streaming, auto-refreshing social media on a 56K modem, so frankly I see this more as the first real decade that everyone and their literal mothers on the internet are going to be writing about.

Anyway, I’m going to attempt to try to recollect from mostly just my own memories, and stick to things that are more relevant to my own little world, and not the big gigantic depressing one we live in.  If I had any readers, they can google any decade in review, and probably find more worldly and probably more high-profile shit than the things I have to say about the things going on in my own little life, like the start and finish of Game of Thrones, Pokemon Go, the sad state of American politics, all the endless mass shootings, and Bill Cosby being outed as a rapist.

And the reason that I disclaim the whole “if I had any readers” because one of the most devastating things that occurred for me is the fact that despite my WordPress going online in 2010, at nearly the very start of the decade, midway through the decade my brog went down indefinitely, when my brother relocated from one part of the country to another.  A lot of hardware changes meant no more place to host my brog, and despite having the supposed backups, I simply haven’t taken the time or allocated the funds necessary to get my site up and running again.

If I were the type to do New Years resolutions anymore, I think I’d resolve to get my site back up and running again in 2020.  TBD on if that will actually occur, and frankly with the things I have on my plate going into the next decade, I don’t want to commit and then fail to deliver.

In spite of the brog blackout, that hasn’t stopped me from writing.  Even to the day my site went down, I have been writing on a fairly regular basis, taking no more than two weeks off before the internal guilt gets my fingers flying across the keys again, and I’ve got at this point, hundreds of folders of dated and timestamped Word docs, all awaiting their day in which they can be posted retroactively to a brog.

Continue reading “How to reflect on a decade”