Tag: football

The effects of losing

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Can you blame him: Buffalo Bills CB Vontae Davis retires from professional football – during halftime of a game in which he started

This is pretty much the greatest year of NFL in recent years.  Two weeks in and we’ve got two tie games, and guys retiring in the midst of the season, but in the middle of a game.  Much to the bewilderment of fans and teammates alike, Bills CB Vontae Davis just up and decides that he’s had enough, and calls it a career, during halftime of an actual, meaningful game.

I mean, it’s almost the plot of Bernie Mac’s Mr. 3,000 where Bernie Mac’s character collects his 3,000th hit and then abruptly stops everything and declares his retirement in the middle of a baseball game, except that this is real.

Sure, there are lots of jokes and commentary that could be made about the whole situation, and it’s really not that hard to find gobs of it floating all over the internet.  But I was thinking about the situation, and figured to try and look at it in a different perspective that might be able to shed a little bit of light to how this happened.

Frankly, Vontae Davis is simply a guy that’s tired of losing, and probably didn’t see a scenario where it was going to get any better, and before suffering through another indignity of another loss-filled season, he just decided to call it early and save himself the trouble as well as the physical toll of playing futbol americano.

After all, he was on the Buffalo Bills, which is pretty much the living embodiment of a white flag.  And they were playing against the San Diego Los Angeles Chargers which is another team that’s basically reverted back to pathetic status, and being surrounded by all this failure probably weighed heavily on his conscience, and it was the perfect storm of conditions that his frail psyche was unable to endure, and surrender was the only option.

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Positive way to start the season

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

There’s not really much more to say about this game than this perfect image brought to us by ESPN. 

Usually when commentators always talk about how great of a defensive coordinator Bud Foster is, are games in which Tech ends up giving up like 28 points and losing. But in this game, it was like the entire Hokie defense had the power pill from Pit Fighter the way they absolutely manhandled the FSU line and repeatedly dropped them for losses.  Seriously, FSU probably should have had around 17-21 points based on how many times they had been in scoring position but then either fumbled or simply weren’t smart enough to bother challenging the one sure touchdown they had.

Whatever though, I’m very pleased with the result of this game.  As is often the norm, Tech tends to beat the teams they need to, but then lose to anyone ranked higher than they are.  Sure, it was a #20 vs. #19, but Tech was the lower rank, and I’d have bet money that they would’ve lost. 

In spite of the win, the offense was still very suspect; full of some boneheaded penalties or bad snapping, and if FSU should’ve had 17-21 points, Tech really should have had closer to 40.  Killed drives, penalties and a 4th and goal failure all resulted in points left on the board that won’t cut it against teams like Notre Dame and Miami later this season.

Regardless, it’s great to have the college football season back.  Although my hopes for Tech weren’t particularly high prior to the season, a big win against FSU and Miami already shitting the bed renews some reckless hope that maybe this’ll be a fun year overall.

Watch, with me admitting to that, Tech will lose five games and be right on track for another year of like, the Independence or Military toilet bowl games.  But at least we got this shit started on a good note.

Another Dragon*Con in the books, another year of future uncertainty

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

By now, I’m pretty sure I’ve written the same post a few times over, over the last few years, as another Dragon*Con is now in the rearview mirror, and I’m left pondering on whether or not I want to go the next year, if the con is still something for a person like me, and wondering just what the heck is different between myself from absolutely everyone else who also goes, but still thinks it’s the greatest event in the world.

This isn’t to say that I thought Dragon*Con 2018 was terrible or bad by any stretch of the imagination; quite the contrary, I did enjoy myself several times throughout the weekend, I treasure the time spent with the friends that I saw, have remorse for the idea of not seeing other friends swept away in different waves amongst the alleged 75,000-82,000 attendees throughout the weekend, and I took some pictures here and there.

As we know, Dragon*Con is by no means an economical event, and if the whole experience weren’t over $700 a year, it’s kind of a no-brainer that there’s still merit to going year-in, year-out.  One of the things I often pondered if simply getting older and having life priorities shifting around has something to do with my perpetually declining enjoyment of the convention, but seeing as how there are plenty of people who are older than me, with children and/or much later stages in their lives who still think it’s the best event in the world, this is a theory that holds no weight and alternatively points at the notion that my brain the one with the hang-ups, not my age.

But as I stand now, a day removed from the convention, and having had some time to decompress and try and gather my thoughts, I’m once again left in the position on wondering if I want to bother going again next year, and teetering on that seesaw of leaning towards no.  Granted, that’s pretty much been the case every year for the last like 2-3 Dragon*Cons I’d been to, including the one before the one I took off to go cruising in Europe alternatively, but the fact of the matter is that I keep having these thoughts, because I keep seeing this pattern of wanting to go to this event that costs a lot of money and I’m not having nearly as much enjoyment out of it as I hoped I would versus the fear of missing out and letting that be one of my primary impulses to going regardless.

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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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Suck it, nerds

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

This couldn’t have been scripted any better: Jeopardy! contestants struggle to answer rudimentary trivia about football, ironic hilarity and passive-aggressive bullying from Alex Trebek ensues

Seriously, this couldn’t possibly have occurred better even if it were scripted by Seth Rogen or Sarah Silverman.  The desperate avoidance of the category, from all three contestants until it was absolutely the last thing left on the board, and then the defeated resignation from all three that their scores were condemned to be final where they were, seeing as how none of them thought they had a cake’s chance at a buffet of getting any of them right.

And then to make matters worse, not only was the studio audience beginning to laugh track at their pathetic lack of knowledge of the country’s most rabidly popular professional spectator sport, they began to start getting lip from the biggest dweeb of them all, Alex Trebek.  Who completely abused the fact that he had the answers right in front of him and could easily pretend like these were basic, easy questions, regardless of if he knew the answers to them or not.

Seriously, it never fails to astound me that Jeopardy! contestants can rapidly nail the correct questions to shit like “Philippe Cozette and Graham Fagg had a handshake in this location” or “Alfred Dreyfus was among the thousands who marched through the streets of Paris during this 1902 funeral procession,” but they don’t know what a fair catch is?

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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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Different Georgia team, same choke job

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

The morning after, I’m a little surprised at how agitated I am by Georgia’s heartbreaking loss to Alabama in the National Championship.  It’s like there’s a part of me that should be satisfied because I was right, and accurately predicted Alabama would win in a low-scoring affair, and the pursuit of being right is the reason why predictions are made in sports.  But then there’s the part of me that still went on record stating that in spite of my prediction, I hoped that Georgia would win, because it sure would be nice to see a sports team in Georgia actually hoist up a championship.

Unfortunately, rooting for sports teams in Georgia is like rooting for the Buffalo Bills in the 90s; no matter how good they might be, they’ll never manage to get over the hump and never be anything better than second best (but also being capable of being absolutely anything well below).

Much like the Atlanta Braves have done countless times in the last 20 years, they failed.  Just like Atlanta United’s soccer team made the playoffs in their inaugural year and filled the city with hope and faith for some accolades, they too choked, losing to a lesser-heralded team, at home no less.  And just like the Atlanta Falcons choked away a 28-3 lead, the Georgia Bulldogs somehow found a way to lose their own championship game.

And it’s that Super Bowl that this game felt eerily identical to, in the way it played out, with Georgia jumping out ahead and holding the lead for the vast majority of the game.  Alabama, much like the Patriots, were pretty inept in the first half, but it’s the second in which legends are born and heroes are made.  Alabama came roaring back in the second half, and before we knew it, the game was tied closing out regulation.  The next thing we know, the team representing Georgia is standing under a deluge of confetti, heads down, as the other team begins celebrating their championship win.

I have no beef with Alabama, and everything about them is pretty awe-inspiring at this point, from the never-ending excellence of Nick Saban, to the story that college football fans are going to hear a LOT of now on, the birth and rise of Tua Tagovailoa, the true freshman with the cannon arm who came off the bench to lead the Crimson Tide back to the glory land.  The freshly-benched Jalen Hurts displayed a level of maturity, class and sportsmanship that couldn’t possibly be expected from a guy who went 25-2 and just got benched in the National Championship but still did, showing how much of a classy man he is.

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