Tag: football

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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Predictions for National Championship Day

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

Today is National Championship Day in honor of the College Football National Championship being played tonight.  It has a little bit more meaning this year than it has in previous years, because not only is it being played right here in Atlanta, the two teams vying for the National Championship are Georgia and Alabama, basically two teams that are within a three-hour drive from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium and can declare it their home field, based on proximity or frequency of how many games they’ve played there.

It’s supposed to rain today, and was scheduled to have already started and turned the city into an icy catastrophe but surprising nobody such has yet to occur.  It was actually a rather clear and pleasant morning drive into work today in fact.  But if it ever does rain and the extra low temperatures we’ve been getting over the last week take hold of it, it could lead to some inconveniences to people like me who, work jobs and drives to and from them.

Also, the president has also decided to grace the city with his presence for this momentous occasion, because there’s no secret he can’t resist a scene, regardless of the fact that he’s demonstrated zero interest in any sports other than his own frequent personal golfing habits, and the fact that Atlanta is a city that in all likelihood hates him passionately after he called it “crime-infested” at one point.  It’s still a major, major event with a multiplied hype behind it, and why not go for the trifecta of bombing the city with even more insanity and hoopla than showing up?

Needless to say, in a rare instance of foresight, the vast majority of Atlanta has actually decided to shut down, or at least acknowledge and/or make accommodations for the fact that today is a particularly volatile National Championship Day.  The government has mostly shut down, most companies in the heart of the city have declared half or telecommuniting days, and once Atlanta Public Schools and Fulton County decided to close in light of expected weather and traffic problems, most of the metropolitan counties have followed suit.

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Triumph to heartbreak; New Year’s Day 2018

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

After midnight struck bringing in 2018, I knew that my night wasn’t long from ending.  It doesn’t happen often, but I’ve actually been under the weather, and I knew that I didn’t really want to be out too late, since no matter how many pills I take, how much fluids I drink and how often I go tinkle, the penultimate cure-fast for any ailment is still sleep.

With mythical gf still out of town, I made it a point that I would not leave my house at all on New Year’s Day, and that I would sleep in, rest and do absolutely jack shit but watch football and relax.  I stocked up the fridge earlier in the day, and I even made a point to go spin a Pokéstop to satiate the OCD to get my daily Pokémon Go spin of the day on my way home, since it was past midnight and the daily bonuses had reset.  I took drowse-inducing cold medicine and went to bed with full intention to rest, recover, relax and be lazy.

As far as the day went, it wasn’t bad.  Dare I say, it was pretty good.  I probably slept close to ten total hours, and I woke up without any of the sinus/swallowing pain that is among the most obnoxious of cold symptoms.  I sat down with my morning cup(s) of coffee, and proceeded with my usual morning routine of Fire Emblem Heroes, knocking out the daily quests and cashing in on all of the little bonuses of the new month and new year, accumulating the precious orbs necessary in order to make pulls for additional characters.

So with 138 orbs grinded out and with a promotional event set to expire, I decided to cash in some orbs to try and get some of the character I wanted (Gunnthrá and New Year’s Azura).  And in a rare demonstration of actually succeeding in a gatcha game, I actually succeeded in getting both, along with two other five-star units I didn’t have (Eirika, Genny) without having to unload everything completely, leaving me with like 80 orbs for a rainy day.  Needless to say, I was quite satisfied at my luck, in only the way that a video game on a mobile device can make.

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The year in writing post, circa 2017

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

As is often times the case when it comes to life, 2017 had its ups and 2017 had its downs. As much as people bemoaned just how tragic and shitty 2016 was, I honestly cannot say that I personally felt that 2017 was tremendously better.  As I said, the year had its up and there were some most certainly good things that occurred during the last calendar year, but 2017 had no shortage of bad things that happened to people in general, people close to me, and people directly in my own life.

There may not have been as many notable celebrity deaths that have sent the internet abuzz with fake sympathy, bogus empathy and all the hollow fuck thoughts and prayers on the planet that were often the root of the angst towards 2016, but there was still no doubt that a lot of crappy things occurred regardless.  At least with death, it’s definitive and final, and the repercussions are only as impactful to mostly immediate families and occasional organizational legacies.  But take for example shit like the white supremacist uprising that plagued Charlottesville earlier in the year; this is very real, scary shit that’s easily hidden behind the façades of normal society, and can rise and hide on a moment’s notice.

Psychos who open fire on open-air concerts doesn’t change the frightfully abundant amounts of assault weaponry in the United States, and people still can’t stop arguing over conduct during the National Anthem and whether we have rights, or the rights to practice rights and other redundant arguments that just feed into the flames of people being miserable.

Frankly, given the direction that the world is headed, I couldn’t imagine death sounds like a terrible thing to more nihilistic types, dreading what the world is turning into as time passes.  I don’t imagine I’m the only one who thinks that society is most certainly not going in the right direction and that things probably are not going to be any better in five years, in line with that old Jimmy Carter speech.

But that’s a shitty thing for me to say, because death is most certainly no laughing matter, and the world has seen its share of it this year, as it does every single year.  Whether it’s numerous lives decimated by natural disasters like the hurricanes that ravaged Texas and Puerto Rico to the massacres by the hands of terrorists, domestic and foreign alike.  Or the casualties of the unfortunate hands that life deals out to unlucky people who are taken from the world by cancer or other indiscriminate ailments.

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