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!
Oh, he was so sought after. One of the best shortstops available after the 2022 season, Carlos Correa had a lot of teams willing to pay an unfathomable price to secure his services. They came, they pitched, they waited as he and his agent, the very talented and very much loathed Scott Boras, pored over every offer until they made their decision.
Attention President of Baseball Operations of the San Francisco Giants Farhan Zaidi, we will graciously accept your team’s offer and come play for your fabulous team. Giants fans (I am one) were elated (not all of us).
We got Carlos Correa! The Dodgers killer! We’re off to the World Series again!
As Giants fans we generally aim higher. Frankly I don’t give a fuck whether any single player does well against the loathsome Dodgers, but some do. And he did well, very well. In the 2017 playoffs when Correa was an Astro (when they won their first World Series CHEATING against the Dodgers), his slash line was .289/.326/.561. For the season he was .315/.391/.550. Pretty lofty numbers.
Now if the name Carlos Correa doesn’t ring a bell, perhaps a bang-bang of your trash can might.
By securing defeat in their final regular season game, along with some absolute god tier coaching by now former Houston Texans coach Lovie Smith, the Chicago Bears hold all of the proverbial chips in the NFL off-season, as they now have the first pick in the NFL draft to go along with 100+ million dollars in free agent money.
It seems like just yesterday that I lost interest in writing a weekly power ranking of NFL teams that you could find on literally any sports website (albeit less funny and witty). Then I blinked and suddenly the season is 75% done. If you are a Bears fan like me, the season was over the moment they chose to draft Kyler Gordon and Velus Jones over, you know, players with talent. If you are a Packers fan, your season didn’t end until Aaron Rodgers started acting like he had been shot every time someone touched him. If you are a fan of the Eagles, then your season is very much still alive.
Now that we are past Thanksgiving and headlong into the Mariah Carey soundtracked Christmas hellscape, it’s time to take a look at every team based on my patented Adam Gase Scale. For those that don’t remember, Gase is one of the worst coaches in NFL history, and managed to get hired by the Jets to be head coach even after he had been discovered to be a fraud. The more Adam Gases on the Adam Gase scale, the worse a team is.
If you are able, take both of your hands and stretch your fingers wide. Make your hands as big as possible, feeling skin and tendons stretch. Then bring them together slowly, clasping the two opposing sets together. See the way each fingertip advances well beyond its mate. Now try to let your longest finger touch the opposing wrist. Barring you have extremely long fingers, you will find it a difficult task no matter how much you force it one way or another. This is, in the simplest of ways, how soccer works.
Sunday brings the start of the 22nd World Cup. You know, that soccer tournament played every four years by national teams. Anyway, it’s in Qatar, which most people couldn’t identify on a map, much less knew it existed before recent years. It will end on December 18th with the Final, what will end up the most watched sporting event of the calendar year, or maybe all-time. The United States is back in the tournament for the first time since 2014, and yet the buzz around the World Cup feels about as low as I can remember.
The grind, she makes it a difficult trek to repeat at Stanley Cup champions… or does she? Can the Colorado Avalanche do it? Can it be done at all?
That’s Gabriel Landeskog, “Landy” as it were (all hockey players have a nickname with a ‘y’ on the end). He’s already hurt. It’s a knee and he’s out for 12 weeks.
Is it really that difficult? Perhaps the days of free agency and cap restrictions, maybe? Or is it just a matter of knowing how to control that cap. The Blackhawks did fine in the 2010’s – they won 3 and hadn’t won since 1961 before that – but inevitably collapsed under the weight. They also have never repeated. Ever.
I am going to ignore the cap. Yeah, I said it – ignore it. Not going to go back into the days of the Original 6 and marvel at their successes. That’d be stupid. For the most part it’s not that great. Here are the Original 6 and their overall Stanley Cup records.
Boston Bruins – 20 appearances, 6 victories (ouch) last appearance 2019
Chicago Blackhawks – 13 appearances, 6 victories (oof) last victory 2015
Detroit Red Wings – 24 appearances (wow!), 11 victories (meh) last appearance 2009
Montreal Canadians – 35 appearances (oh Canada!), 24 victories (amazing) last victory in 1993
New York Rangers – 11 appearances (sad), 4 victories the last one in 1994
Toronto Maple Leafs – 21 appearances, 13 victories… but the last time they appeared was when they won in 1967. It’s a sad state of affairs wearing the blue and white.
With all that history, I am going to back to what the NHL called the “Modern Era” even if said era is more than 50 years ago. Hey, that’s hockey. Stick with the past like a Bears fan. Sometimes that’s all you got.
It seems like just yesterday that I was speechless. I, like many others, were caught completely off guard two years ago by the report from noted MLB stooge, USA Today lackey, and Jerry Reinsdorf henchman Bob Nightengale, that the White Sox were looking at bringing back noted septuagenarian Tony La Russa to coach the Chicago White Sox. The very same La Russa who had more recently made headlines by getting DUI’s and having dumb opinions about protesting, than had actually coached a major league baseball game. Yet, there his name was, in some form of karmic nonsense, being attached to Chicago because the owner was trying to make right the issues of four decades prior.
Week one of the NFL season is usually a high variant week because our impressions of teams are based on nothing more than assumptions, predictions, and results from a year ago. Even given that, week one of the NFL season this year was absolutely bonkers. From 2:30 PM-4:00 PM CST on Sunday is why Redzone exists. If you were watching, you saw the Browns win a game at the buzzer against the Panthers on a 55 yard field goal by a kicker in his first career game. Then you saw the Bengals and Steelers kickers lose their absolute minds and run a game down to the wire that should have ended no fewer than five times. Then the Saints went down field at the end of regulation to kick what should have been a game winning field goal, only to have Atlanta get into range in 15 seconds before the Saints blocked a game winning field goal attempt. Then you got to watch an absolute embarrassment between the Texans and the Colts. Then you got to watch Patrick Mahomes starting to absolutely and surgically ruin the Cardinals.
On Sunday night, All Elite Wrestling, the upstart promotion run by Tony Khan, the son of Jacksonville Jaguars owner Shad Khan, had their biggest event of the year at Now Arena in Hoffman Estates, IL. Odds are, though, if you have heard anything about the proceedings of the evening, you aren’t aware of the wrestling so much as the post show fire bombing of the company by newly crowned champion CM Punk.
For those that know the Lockport, IL born wrestler, he is a soothsayer and a truth teller. He is a great wrestler and gatekeeper of the sport, but also acerbic and short tempered with those he feels has crossed him or wronged him in any way. He is as notable for his promos as he is for much of what he has done in the ring. On Sunday night, he decided to light an M-80 and throw it into the AEW toilet to see how hard he could blow it all up.
Fancy Boys Club 