Tag: ESPN

There Are Too Many Dang Sports On

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I really never thought I would be the one to say this take. I have long held that October is the best sports month of the year, because all four major sports leagues are playing. When sports were canceled at the beginning of quarantine, I was counting down the days until they returned and provided some mild sense of normalcy. But now that we’re at this point, I must say—with a very heavy heart—that there are too many damn sports on.

I want to keep up with everything. I really do. But it’s just too much. To spend all day Saturday watching college football, all day Sunday watching NFL, and Monday and Thursday nights watching more NFL; to have NBA conference finals showing every night, Stanley Cup finals showing every other night, baseball games airing every god forsaken day, and push notifications coming in from ESPN announcing the result of some UFC fight about which I could not give a solitary shit—it is all just too much.

Take some of them away. Not permanently, but just for a bit. Pause the NFL season until the NBA and NHL are done (thereby making some time for 15% of the league to recover from their torn ACLs). Let the MLB players rest. Nobody needed to watch the Dodgers bend the Rockies over three more times when their postseason fates were both already sealed. Delay college football for a month, except for the games where Oklahoma and LSU lose in their season openers, which I want to watch now.

Either that or just delay my grad school program so I can watch all of these games all day long and finally know the true meaning of inner peace.

The Monday Night Football Double-Header is Decadent and Depraved

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To try and establish even a loose hierarchy of the NFL’s idiotic, inexcusable policies is a fool’s errand. But for all the talk about concussion protocol, the catch rule, COVID-19 policies, and some half-baked platitudes about racial justice while using a very powerful platform to do precisely nothing, there is one outrageously stupid NFL policy that doesn’t get nearly enough flak: the second Monday Night game on Week 1 of each season.

The NFL’s gradual encroachment of the American weekend has, generally, been both understandable and fairly successful. There was once a time when football was for Sundays, and Sundays only. Now the football weekend starts on Thursday night, ends on Monday night, takes over Saturdays after the college season ends, and sometimes begins at 9:30am Eastern on Sundays so that, from the moment we wake up to the moment we lay our head to rest, we do not have to spend a second not staring at Roger Goodell’s bare ass.

That’s all well and good. Most sports fans would probably agree that only having to suffer two days a week without any football, college or professional, is a good thing. But who—I mean, seriously, name one goddamn person—really wants to watch seven hours of football on a Monday night?

Most of us have jobs. They know that, right? I—nor my compatriots of the coastal elite—cannot afford to stay up until two o’clock in the morning watching a limp-dicked interdivision butt show. We are perfectly content to watch the first game and go to bed. 

And for those of who are fans of a team in the second slot? The NFL is forcing us to stay up three hours past bedtime to watch a game we’re going to hate anyway. 

The worst part is that the NFL clearly knows this. There’s a reason why the MNF doubleheader hasn’t been extended past week one. If there were a market for it, there’s no doubt they would have already expanded it to the whole season. So it’s really just an exertion of power and control. It is a yearly reminder, to set the tone for the next five months, that we are completely beholden to every sadistic whim and fancy of the world’s worst-run non-profit organization.

Anyway, you bet your ass I stayed up until 2am last night watching the Trevor Siemian Revenge Match between Denver and Tennessee. But man, I really wish I didn’t have to. 

Marvel Superheroes, If ESPN Was Introducing Them

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Spider-man

  • From Queens, NY
  • Does whatever a spider can
  • Raised by single aunt in a 625 sq ft apt
  • Sticky hands
  • Parents dead!!

Captain America

  • Benches 625 raw (550 power clean)
  • 102 years old, making him the oldest Avenger in this year’s draft
  • Blue collar, red-and-blue-shield type player
  • Player comparison: a white one

Black Panther

  • From island nation of “Africa”
  • Cat-like reflexes
  • Grew up poor, we assume
  • High school coach describes him as: “natural talent, a freak athletically, incredible specimen”

Thor

  • God of thunder
  • Dead mom!!!
  • Averaged 11.6 YPC in 2019
  • Coach’s son
  • Three-time consensus all-MVC
  • New England will make him play wide receiver
  • [Brent Musberger voice] Have you seen his girlfriend?

Thanos

  • Five-tooled, six-infinity-stoned player
  • Has all the measurables
  • Working to support his adopted daughters
  • Generational talent who plays well in space
  • Can take out half the opposing team

Hulk

  • Recorded 27 sacks in 1.5 games for Harvard
  • Abusive father 😦
  • Described as “gym rat” by gamma ray lab tech
  • He MAJORED! In SCIENCE!

Iron Man

  • Locker room guy
  • High IQ 
  • Cerebral
  • Overcame debilitating and, frankly, embarrassing addiction issues

Ant-Man

  • Tremendous upside
  • Saw a man do a drug once!
  • Lived in a van 
  • Tweener
  • Sneaky athletic

The 10 Best Quotes of The Last Dance, So Far

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10. “There’s no I in team, but  there’s an I in win.” – Michael Jordan, when it was suggested that he could have had the ball slightly less often. 

9. “Straight up bitches.” – Horace Grant, describing the dauphin dynasty Detroit Pistons leaving the court without shaking hands after being disemboweled by the Bulls 4–0 in the 1991 ECF. 

8. “Are those the pills you take to keep you short or are those diet pills?” – MJ, a tall king, mocking body positivity icon Jerry Krause. 

7. “They had Craig Ehlo on me, which, in all honesty, was a mistake.” – MJ, 31 years after making a shot over Craig Ehlo. 

6. “Mom and dad, he’s an alcoholic.” – MJ, as Scott Burrell pleads with him to stop bringing up his infidelity and alcohol consumption on camera. 

5. “Michael was like the Pied Piper walking down the Champs-Élysées.” – The late David Stern, slandering MJ with allegations of paedocide. 

4. “Well, I think it’s been pretty easy.” – MJ, as a rookie, when asked about playing in the world’s foremost professional basketball league.

3. “Scottie, ya know, he’s got feelings.” – MJ, talking about the complex mental machinations of the greatest number two of all time. 

2. “I’m not gonna fuck my summer up.” – Scottie Pippen, unveiling those complex mental machinations to be primarily a desire to have a sick, surgery-free hot girl summer. 

1. “That was God disguised as Michael Jordan.” – Former Indiana State University letterman Larry Bird, falsely implying there is a distinction between God and Michael Jordan.