A Chicago Bears Choose Your Own Adventure

It’s impressive sometimes how quickly you can go from “what are you doing?” to “what, you are doing it!” The Chicago Bears stepped into free agency with the third most available cap space in the NFL, and up until 9:30 PM on Thursday, the results were….underwhelming? Just okay? Good for depth? For the most part, the signings up this point have been moves a team that believes it is close to a championship make. Depth moves in the middle to bottom of the roster. Building strong special teams. Overpaying for a running back they didn’t need.

Generally, those are moves that teams make when they know they are close to a championship level and are safeguarding themselves up and down the roster against injury. Then the Bears traded for future Wide Receiver Keenan Allen. The Los Angeles Chargers came to Allen asking him to take a pay cut. He is due to make 18 million with a cap hit of 23 million in 2024, the final season of his contract. Allen said no. The Chargers proceeded to jettison him to the Bears for nothing more than a 4th round pick.

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Can Your Team Win the Super Bowl: A Guide for Non-Fans

Can Your Team Win the Super Bowl: A Guide for Non-Fans

Congratulations, well adjusted adult. You have just spent the past four months spending your Sundays doing repairs around the house, going to brunch with friends, foraging for various vegetables you could purchase at the grocery store instead, or whatever hobby you developed that doesn’t involve you screaming at a TV. As a non-football fan, you have been able to funnel your anger and love and frustration into things that could be construed as a hobby, like splunking.

The calendar has flipped to the second weekend of January now, and that means the NFL playoffs. Mere weeks away from the Super Bowl. Legally, you are obligated to care then. So why not jump on the football bandwagon now. It’s kind of like The Golden Bachelor, only a somehow less depressing look at mortality.

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NFL Power Rankings: End of Season Edition

NFL Power Rankings: End of Season Edition

With the season coming to the end and the playoffs coming up this weekend, it’s time to take a look at where every team stands. More than half of the league is now looking towards Free Agency and the NFL Draft. Some teams don’t have those things to look forward to because they are poorly run and/or have the worst ownership in sports.

I’m listing where I had each team ranked before the season started so I can see how smart (editor: stupid) I was when looking at the teams a few months ago.

1: Baltimore Ravens

Preseason Rank: 6

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Who Is The Best Bears Wide Receiver Of Our Lifetime

Who Is The Best Bears Wide Receiver Of Our Lifetime

The Bears are terrible. Odds are, if you are reading this, the Bears have been bad for most of your lifetime. With only brief respites of competency, any true Bears fan can point to a personal Mt. Rushmore of their least favorite member of this franchise. Alonzo Spellman. Todd Sauerbraun. Adam Shaheen. Shea McClellin. And that isn’t even to mention the absolute school bus fire that is the Bears quarterbacks. Moses Moreno, Steve Stenstrom, and David Fales come to mind, along with dozens of others.

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Megan Rapinoe: American hero

Megan Rapinoe: American hero

A few days ago, I wrote about the hypocrisy of conservatives. I stand by every word I meant, but I also forgot one of the biggest contradictions. A conservative will claim to love America. In fact, that is what they will claim is the difference between the two parties: one side (theirs) loves America so much because it’s so star-spangled awesome, and one side (not theirs) doesn’t and is aggressively seeking it’s destruction.

And a member of the GOP will feel that way until they find something about America they don’t like. Then all bets are off as they root for failure. There’s no better example of this than what happened in women’s soccer this weekend.

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Heartbreak Cancelled due to Victory

In 1976, I was a teenager and got my heart broken. Was it a girl? No. It was the Denver Nuggets. 1976 was the final year for the ABA. The NBA was going to take a few teams, the ABA was folding, the NBA was taking 4 teams from it and we all knew it before the season was even over. And yet here we were in the final ABA finals, Denver Nuggets vs. The New York Nets. David Thompson vs. Julius ‘Dr. J’ Erving.

But my love affair with the team and with basketball started way before 1976. I remember as a child going to the Denver Coliseum to watch the Rockets. Coach Stan Albeck had Byron Beck, Ralph Simpson, Julian Hammond and Larry Brown among others. They were fun to watch but didn’t go anywhere in the playoffs.

The Rockets had no choice but to change to a different name. The NBA had informed the ABA that if they were to absorb a few teams one of them would be the one on Denver. But the NBA said ‘ahem… Denver, we already have a Rockets team in Houston. Pick another name… and you won’t be shooting with that red, white and blue striped ball anymore either when you get here.” As such, the Nuggets were born in 1974, two years before the “merger” which wasn’t so much a merger than it was a takeover. The NBA absorbed the Nuggets, Nets, Indiana Pacers and San Antonio Spurs.

But that was the way it was for the Rockets, then the Nuggets… until 1976. No respect, but they didn’t earn it either. And here I was in 1976, a 14-year-old glued to the radio listening to Game 6 of the ABA final (it was not on TV until a delayed telecast much later). The Nuggets had them, they had Dr. J on the ropes. They were down 3 games to 2 and it was back at Nassau Coliseum for Game 6 and they were up. Starting the 4th quarter the Thompson-led Nuggets had the Nets by 14 points, so I went to sleep. Woke up to find out they lost 112 to 106. Series ended and just crushed me as the Nets won 4 games to 2.

They never got back to the finals. Oh, they made the Western Conference Finals.

One of the worst logos in the history of sports, crazy-ass Yosemite Sam in the ABA days.
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Should you give your opinions on transgender athletes: A quick guide

If you spend any time on social media, you will see someone weighing in with their “hot take” (sigh) on some issue. Lately, the issue that seems to have really gotten people going nuts has to do with transgender athletes, especially (or at least from my perspective) in the field of women’s sports.

Maybe you have some take you would like to share on social media. But should you? If you have any questions about this, don’t worry. I have made a quick guide to help you figure out if you should let the world know how you feel or maybe if you should consider stepping aside and keeping your feelings to yourself.

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The Avalanche Never Broke Free

I’ll have to admit it…

I was wr…

I was wro… I was… wron…

I was wrong. OK. I said it. I thought the Colorado Avalanche were going to repeat as Stanley Cup champions. If you are among the dozen or so people paying attention to the NHL playoffs you will know they cannot as they went out in a game 7 in the first round.

A game 7 for the Colorado Avalanche is mostly poison. They haven’t won a game 7 since the end of May 2002. So, it was not much of a shock really. Not to me anyway. To many at the bar I was at watching said game 7? They were stunned. My comment was “watch the fucking game!” They’ve had a ‘0 for whatever for over 20 years Game 7’ graphic up on the screen about a dozen times!” Then I had to leave. Luckily, I was stone cold sober and those threatening to do me bodily harm were stumbling drunk brave.

So they lost. Granted I did not know their fearless leader and captain Gabe Landeskog (That’s Landy in hockey parlance, NOT Gabby) was going to be out 95% of the season as well as the entire playoffs. However, they have more than one good player. Yet, here they are – playing golf when they are not watching their victors, the Kraken, as they proceed to the second round to face the Dallas South Stars (they really are not the South Stars, but since they came to Dallas via Minnesota where they were the North Stars, it just seems appropriate).

Let me tell you about the Kraken. The Kraken, if you do not know, is a fierce octopus-like creature capable of devouring ships whole. You’ll see in the actual photo below the enormous size of it. Granted, it is far easier to defeat on ice as out of the water and onto frozen water is not their preferred place of battle, but yet the Kraken won.

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NFL Post-Draft Power Rankings

NFL Post-Draft Power Rankings

Welcome back, my friends! It’s almost as if football season never ended. In reality, it doesn’t end. Football is a 12 month content machine. It never stops. Maybe you are able to detach from it and live normal lives. That’s not me, though. I spend my days staring at FanDuel, talking myself into burning money on MVP bets in March, and am already scouring the internet hoping to find defensive rookie of the year odds. Yes i’m a psychopath. It’s in my nature.

With the draft wrapping up, the good free agents signed, and Aaron Rodgers finally cast off to get eaten alive by the New York media, lets jump in and do a Power Ranking!

1: Philadelphia Eagles
Super Bowl Odds: +850

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