Last (Hopefully) Points On Aaron Rodgers

This week, America’s favorite football/public health expert, Green Bay (For The Moment) QB Aaron Rodgers, gave his post-mortem on the season. The only real point of which that anyone will remember was how all of the pro-vax people were rooting against his team, because he’s not vaccinated. (Something something, free thinker sheep I tune out people of bad faith when they talk because that’s what you should do when people of bad faith talk.)

Now folks, I am strongly of the opinion that athletes should be watched, in games, and not heard. But since that’s not how the world works, we get to reply to such nonsense.

1) Um, what does it matter? I don’t think the karmic wishes of the majority of the country (because the majority of the country are not, in fact, Packers or Rodgers fans) had much to do with you spitting the bit against the Niners. Especially since you were at home. Were you only good before because, like Tinker Bell, we all clapped?

 2)     If true, wouldn’t this have been (yet another) reason to get vaccinated? We’re still waiting to see what exactly all of you brave non-conformers / active members of Team Virus are winning for all of this pain and sacrifice. Besides, you know, attention.

 3)     I know you like to keep changing the subject away from how you’ve lost yet another home playoff game, let alone after a bye week, but… isn’t the whole reason why you became Public Health Enemy #1 isn’t just that you are idiotically unvaccinated, but that you also lied your ass off about it? Plenty of Chokey QBs (Hello, Carson Wentz! Take a fat load off from a socially responsible distance) have been unvaccinated and hurt their teams. You seemed to have been the only one to lie (and lie, and lie) about it.

 4)     Isn’t Packer Fan ready to move on from this? You had the whole ugly end of the Brett Favre era to live with, what with the Viking sojourn and the Jets dick pix. It’s not like Rodgers, as he enters the Bloated Ego Supernova stage of his career, is going to get better, more humble, less exasperating in anything that isn’t Game, or develop the ability to actually come through when it matters. (And no, you probably aren’t, because there’s nothing about Jordan Love right now that screams can’t wait to get to see more of him, but still. Trust me. As someone who no longer has to root for Carson Wentz, there are advantages to getting a Covid Queen QB out of town.)

 5)     State Farm, why do you want your brand associated with this? Insurance is enough of a commodity / similar product that I sure as hell do not want any part of a premium to go into the pocket of this asshat – or that this sentiment is completely unique to me.

 Or the, um, vast majority of football fans that aren’t Packer or Rodgers fans. As the man himself said, very few of them these days!

Please Do Not Watch The Winter Olympics

This next week, the Winter Olympics will start in China, and I’m here to tell you that, following the decades-long tradition of this blog…

We are not going to watch any of it, nor write about it either.

Why?

Well, I don’t care about the sports. You don’t either, unless you follow them outside of the Olympics.

And you don’t.

I don’t care about the athletes. If you know one of them and are rooting for them, great. But you don’t, and the only real reason you are watching them is because they have flags for laundry.

The country you are from is, well, where your parents banged. Not exactly a reason to care about someone more than someone else. It’s all just laundry. Feel free to care for your country when it comes to politics or trade or policy or whatever, but when it comes to which athletes are wearing which flags while they play a sport that I could not care about? Hard pass.

So I *never* care about the Olympics… and then we add on to the fact that they are being held in a place where\

1) an active genocide may be happening (Uyghurs)

2)  the free press is getting silenced (Hong Kong)

3)  the environment is getting degraded (coal plants)

4) land is being made to infringe on the ocean rights of neighboring countries, regardless of the environmental impact (South China Sea)

5) the environment is getting degraded even more for this event (fake snow in a region that, um, does not get snow)

6) the freedom to point out any of this does not exist (great firewall)

7) Team Virus will win (because Team Virus has won at every Olympics)

Now, I get that everyone in the United States lives in a glass house, stone-wise. There’s nothing being done to the Uyghurs that this country did not do (possibly with multipliers) to the indigenous and African Americans. The free press is taking it on the chin around the globe. If a country had the ability to make more land, they would.

But none of that gets tied to having to watch people play sports on various forms of frozen water, just because you have a flag on your chest.

Stop the Olympics! We’ll all be glad you did.

Peak Football Means Non-Peak Football Soon

Full Marks

This NFL playoff season has been unreal. Every game in the last two weekends has been insanely close, there is a crop of great young quarterbacks, the ratings are up from last year, and no one is talking about concussions anymore. There are, of course, still concussions, but when the world goes on stop-start hold for two years due to a once in a century (we hope) pandemic, some non-working heads are going to get ignored.

And on some level, I can’t help but wonder if we will look back on this as the high-water mark.

College football, which is the feeder system to the NFL, has become something that’s mostly an afterthought in much of the country. Parents of well-to-do children routinely turn down football for their kids, steering them to sports with a far lower chance of permanent injury. Soccer and basketball get the kids with skills, and MMA gets the kids with bloodlust. High schools, already hard-hit by the pandemic, match that same regional pattern.

For the most part, this does not matter so long as there is good quarterbacking. But despite decades of more and more throwing at every level, good quarterbacking is still pretty hard to find. Most guys who tear it up at lower levels do so from system work, or rely on legs that don’t last very long in this league. If you aren't watching good quarterbacking, you need the games to be close if your team isn't in it, and after an absurd stretch of close games, we have to regress to the mean at some point.

Finally, there’s the game itself. Officiating is a constant source of annoyance. The rules change on a yearly basis, always in the direction of less of what older viewers recognize as the game. People under 25 are the least likely age group in the U.S. to be fans. The people who televise the game (especially ESPN) continue to dilute it to make it more palatable to a less interested audience.

I don’t doubt that football will continue to be the biggest thing on television and a massive commerce point. It’s the only live event we all still do appointment television for, and the people who have always watched it will always watch it. 

Bad NFL games get watched. 

Good ones get watched more.

And it's really hard to see games get any better, or even stay as good, as the last six...

Let's Get Wasted

Screamin' A Wasting Decibels?

Here in the greater Philadelphia area, we are witnessing one of the greatest stretches by a single basketball player in the history of the team, and likely the league. Joel Hans Embiid has been playing every game and has 17 straight games with over 25 points, second only to Saint Allen Iverson for doing a thing like that for a whole bunch of games in a row. Philly is 13-4 in that stretch, rising in the Eastern Conference and Atlantic Division rankings, and it’s all, you see…

A tragic, tragic waste.

You see, we’re all omniscient here, and we all know that the Sixers don’t have enough to win a championship, and we’re just wasting Peak Embiid. (Full disclosure: I’d also bet that is probably true.) Unless and until they trade the softest NBA player to ever get a maximum contract for reinforcements (no need to say his name, the world is better when he is ignored), it’s all so, so tragic.

To which, um, the following question…

How long is Joel Embiid’s peak, anyway?

Seeing how all of these Tragic Folks are omniscient. (Could you have given me a heads up on the Bengals winning in Kansas City? Papa needs some winning bets from the omniscient.)

I’ve seen Joel fall down a few hundred times in my life, almost all of them more than a little bit alarming. We’ve seen the man get a very serious case of Covid just this year. We’ve seen him sit out two entire years at the start of his career, and many of us were probably thinking Sam Bowie vibes at some point during that not very pleasant Process.

Also, um, how long do you have left in your life, anyway?

We had a big old blizzard this weekend, which meant I had to shovel a lot. My chest has been hurting ever since. It’s nothing serious, but I never had anything like that happen after snow shoveling before, and once you get on the wrong side of (not saying), your social media and news feed is just going to start filling up with more and more people who are your age, and now are not.

Or, shorter: nothing is permanent. Everything is on loan.

No one’s life is more important than yours to you.

So yes, it would be wonderful if Joel gets great teammates and wins a championship at the time when he might be the best player in the world. It would also be wonderful, as a Sixers fan, if Tyrese Maxey is a very big part of a championship team early in his career. It would also be fine to see that Doc Rivers can do more than have good regular seasons and add a second championship. He certainly seems to have the ego for it. It would be lovely to see Tobias Harris shake off the doubters and his own Covid case to spend the rest of this year playing like the last week, where he has been a fine third banana and decisive with the ball. It would be adorable to see this slow and dough team get as fit as their leader and learn to like crushing opponents as much as they seem to like each other. 

(Left unsaid: how utterly delightful it would be to see the Sixers win with no contribution from the Soft Boy, and *then* trade him. Without a parting ring. Especially since the team seems to be doing just *fine* on the chemistry front without him.)

There’s never a bad time for the fans of a team to win a championship. Joel Embiid’s legacy as a basketball player should not be defined by things, like the rest of his roster, that he can not control or influence. Basketball players are not general managers (well, LeBron James might be), and if you already know how Embiid’s career is going to end…

Well, why are you watching the games, anyway? Me, I watch sports because I *don’t * know what will happen and I’m emotionally invested in the outcome. You? You seem to just be here to say I told you so, for the incredible prognostication power of saying that a team won’t win a championship. (Fun fact: most teams don’t win championships. And yet, many of them are still worth watching, and fun for their fans to watch.)

Personally, I’m going to try to live in the moment when I watch Joel, because he provides an absurdly large number of good ones.

You omniscient people might want to as well.

Because you’re wasting a hell of a career by not really appreciating what’s in front of you.

Blood Taboos

Um, Ew

Confession time: when I can’t find something more compelling to watch, I watch pro wrestling. When it’s good, if a particular performer is involved (Bryan Danielson and CM Punk, mostly because the former is a genius physically, and the latter is a genius verbally), it’s fun. It’s more fun knowing that you are not putting money in the pocket of people who were Trump donators and officials (that’d be the WWE). Now that AEW is in ascendance, I watch that promotion.

Which led to the recent experience of cringe-watching a tag team match between four women, where the stipulation was “street fight”. That means it is a car crash match where the performers will beat on each other with weapons, and probably bleed, because there is only so much one can do to not make matches like this, well, a car crash.

I’m not a fan of this sort of thing. Blood is a taboo for a reason, and we are still in a pandemic, for heaven’s sake. (Yes, not a blood-based one, but still.)

But when guys do this, it does not provoke the same reaction. Guys, I mostly just shrug and go, well, garbage wrestlers are going to garbage wrestle. If it’s not a garbage match and there is still blood, it’s queasy but mostly something I can ignore.

But these four women, all of them in the prime of their lives, all of them athletically and esthetically appealing?

I just don’t want to see it. It takes me out of the sense of where is this going (um, to the place where the tables break and someone is picking thumb tacks out of their butt), and into the place of why does anyone want to see this, let alone me. It goes from wow, these performers can really “go” to wow, these are desperate human beings that are doing a degrading thing for money. And equating the reaction of those at ringside as caring anything about them as individual performers, and everything to the reaction of hey lookie that somebody almost really got hurt for serious.

Whether that’s patriarchal, patronizing, infantilizing, chivalrous or chauvinistic is entirely in the eyes of the beholder.

Mostly, I just think I’m old and squeamish.

And unapologetic about either condition.

Top 10 Takeaways from NFL Conference Championship Weekend

Note: Not A Recent Picture

10) For everyone who says kicking field goals gets you beat, the Bengals would like you to learn math

9) You have to think that Lions and Browns fans are a wee bit bitter about the postseason exploits of Matthew Stafford and Odell Beckham Jr.

8) Kudos to Tom Brady and Aaron Rodgers for staying on brand and trying to still make things about them after their teams lost

7) No matter whether the Rams or Bengals win the Super Bowl, they should send Deebo Samuel a ring on general principles

6) As much as Niner Fan might like to pin this on soon to be departed Jimmy Garoppolo, they’d have probably won the game if Jaquiski Tartt didn’t have the hands of a mason

5) If Chiefs Fan is really bitter or surprised about Andy Reid losing a home championship game, they haven’t been paying attention

4) The last six playoff games have been awesome, which means the Super Bowl really should be a complete dog of a game

3) Some poor field reporter is going to have to go to St. Louis in the first two weeks of February and ask a bunch of ex (?) Ram fans how they are doing

2) Seriously, the Bengals are going to the Super Bowl, as in the Cincinnati Bengals, as in, no, seriously, the Cincinnati Bengals, I’m going to need a minute or hour or week with this

1) If you had the Rams and Bengals in the Super Bowl for your picks, no, sorry, you are lying and I don’t believe you

Burn Rothman Orthopedics to The Ground Before They Get Us All Killed

We Hear You, Rothman

 As a part-time (well, sometimes part time, sometimes full) rideshare driver, I listen to sports on the radio. And as a marketing and advertising pro, I know that radio advertising is hard. You have to write a script, hire voiceover actors, get the levels right, cut it to time and do a bunch of direct marketing tricks. It’s an art. A lesser one, but an art.

Which means that when you get it done, you don’t change it very much. You also are not hitting an amazing demographic, so there isn’t money for refreshes, and the ads get replayed. A lot. Finally, as an analog medium, you aren’t getting success metrics that allow for easy testing and more creative.

So, set up done? It’s time to talk about Rothman Orthopedics.

This is a local medical practice that caters to aging people (aren’t we all) with chronic health issues that they’d like to fix. The tag line is “Don’t be the old you. Be the Old You.”  

Capitalization assumed, as it’s confusing enough without it.

Which they execute with a conversation between time travelers, seemingly, who relate to the younger person what their diminished life is like now. OK, questionable use of time travel (tell me the Super Bowl winner please, Old Me, so I can get some bets down? Or maybe chuck me a note with winning lottery numbers, or the name of the crypto-coin I can cheat people with?) … but so be it. Health it is.

Here’s the problem – the Old You? Sounds *thrilled* to not be doing stuff. “We are getting pretty darned good at sitting,” he says, as if he’s found the answer to the world’s problems, when Younger You asks just what, in fact, they do now instead of the things they used to like.

Side note: how is the Rothman Institute supposed to cure the Older You’s fear of jellyfish so they can go swimming again? I thought you people fixed bodies, not minds or oceans.

Now, I know what you are thinking – it’s just a dumb radio spot that you’ve heard so many times that it has crowded out Kars 4 Kids in your head. No, and yes, I just put that in your head, in what is basically the War Crime Edition of Rickrolling, but let’s move on.

I’m here to tell you it is an *excellent* spot. Rothman Orthopedics isn’t interested in reaching people with small issues that could become worse – they are interested in reaching people with big problems that they can no longer ignore.

After all, your wonky shoulder can be ignored. Your total lack of mobility? Not so much. The ad is making you want to just sit! Sitting sounds so wonderful!

And it’s sick and evil and wrong and needs to be stopped.

Either through lawsuits, Congressional action, or my personal favorite, torches and pitchforks.

The latter is simpler, makes for better TV, and is excellent cardio.

Be the New You! The one that gets this radio ad off the air. With fire.

Thanks!

Top Ten Preferrable Activities to Watching Jalen Reagor Play Football

10) Getting my teeth cleaned. Here’s something you didn’t know or ask about me; I have a small mouth and some crooked teeth. Combine this with flossing that my hygienist is never satisfied with (side note: um, isn’t it your job to clean my teeth? If they are perfectly clean when you start to clean them, is this just not you wanting to get paid for not working?), and you get 30-45 minutes of me just trying to think my way out of being present to the discomfort and failing.

This is very much like watching Jalen Reagor play football, but without the side effect of clean teeth.

Also, the teeth cleaning is faster.

9) Driving rideshare. In that you might make a dollar or two from this activity, provide value to the people you are transporting, and unlike watching Jalen Reagor play football, you can decide when it will stop. (Bonus: your opinion of the passenger matters, unlike your opinion of Jalen Reagor.)

8) Cleaning the bathroom. There’s something strangely meditative to a Mr. Clean Magic Eraser. Work in circles and try to hypnotize yourself into a world in which you aren’t forced to root for Jalen Reagor. At the end of the activity, you’ll feel better about your bathroom, even when you sully it with, well, the equivalent of Jalen Reagor.

7) Picking up after your dog. When it’s cold outside, which is mostly descriptive of football season, dog droppings are solidified and lose their odor, so it’s not so unpleasant. If you get it while it’s fresh, it’s also a little warm, which can be an oddly nice feeling. In both cases, this is preferrable to Jalen Reagor, while still reminding you of Jalen Reagor.

6) Doing the dishes by hand. We are going through some tough times financially here at Five Tool Tool HQ, which means we have not gotten the dishwasher fixed or replaced. For months now, this has meant doing the dishes with soap and hot water. Again, there is a meditative quality to this, and unlike the Jalen Reagor Era, your eyes give you progress updates on when this will end.

5) Vacuuming. There’s a little bit of fun from watching the pets scatter in ways that could remind you of Jalen Reagor trying to get open. When you are done vacuuming, your carpet looks better then when you started, and you can find the pets’ behavior cute. Neither of these is true when watching Jalen Reagor play football

4) Voting in person. Yes, you may wait in line, and you will have to psychically hold your nose while you likely vote for the lesser of two evils. But when you are done, you get a sticker and can take pride that you did your part for democracy, or whatever facsimile you may be living in. The sticker is worth more than watching Jalen Reagor play football.

3) Paying your taxes. As an independent contractor, I must set aside funds every month and make my own checks out to the Treasury (side note: IRS? There is this thing called the Internet. Perhaps I could pay you through it?), in addition to the yearly work with my accountant.

Scratching that check is a big deal, but when it’s done, I get to know that my taxes have helped to pay for some useful things.

Jalen Reagor, at least while he attempts to play football, is not a useful thing.

2) Doing the laundry. In that when you are done, hey, clean laundry!

Also, doing the laundry has more suspense. Will the dryer stop now, or later? Compare this to watching Jalen Reagor try to play football, which is will he fail now, or later? (Spoiler Alert! The answer is always both.)

1) Plotting on how you would kill and dispose of the body of Howie Roseman, the Eagles’ general manager who drafted Jalen Reagor. Instead of Justin Jefferson, the now All-World WR that everyone and their aunt knew to take instead of Reagor, and who will, it seems, be in the NFL for the next ten years without ever making people want to do any of the other activities on this list. 

Or commit murder.

Off to do the dishes!

Why The Sixers Should Keep, And Never Play, Ben Simmons

Retrofitting

 Last night, Joel Embiid put up 50 points (!) in 27 minutes (!!) while basically looking like a 7-foot guy who could do everything on a basketball court that anyone, of any size, might ever want to do. He’s clearly in the best stretch of his life as a basketball player, and if you are a hoop fan, you just should watch every minute of this, because if Joel has taught us anything in his time in the NBA, it’s that health is fleeting.

Here’s the thing about our basketball Patronus: he’s gotten better every year. In college, he didn’t have range; while rehabbing for the first two years of his life as a pro, he developed that. He’s late to the game in life, and his footwork is now exquisite. His passing out of double teams used to be his downfall, and now it’s a strength. His conditioning used to be suspect, and now he’s just trucking people in the fourth quarter like he used to only do in the first half.

Embiid is, in every useful way, the antithesis of his once and likely never again teammate, Ben Simmons. (A guy who has decided he does not want to play basketball with this man as his teammate. No, seriously.)

Simmons, you may have heard, is battling Personal Mental Issues that can only be magically cured once the Sixers give him what he wants, which is a trade. The Sixers, realizing that the regular season is for marks at worst and practice at best, have taken their own sweet time about this and developed other assets (hello, Tyrese Maxey, speaking of players with an interest in getting better).

I have no idea what is going on in the head of Simmons. I only know what my eyes and data tells me, and here’s the ugly problem on that – there is nothing in Simmons’ game that says he wants to get better at his profession. Not shooting from the field, not shooting from the line, not being a good teammate. (And no, passing out of transition because it is the only thing you have confidence in doing is not being a good teammate. You also have to show up for work and practice and pretend that winning matters to you.)

I mean, why would he? He’s got a max contract, he’s got reality TV dating interests, and championships are clearly for marks and try hards like Embiid and Maxey. In a world where fame is no longer the unfortunate by-product of being good at what you do, but instead is the result of being good at being famous, he’s shown his true self. In full.

So on the one hand, the Sixers should move this problem for whatever they can get. On the other hand, I would be old-school *fine* with them just putting his career in cold storage until he gets old and not very famous at all.

It’s not fair to Embiid, or Maxey, or people who pay good money to see an honest game.

But it’s not as if Simmons won’t grift his next team as well. 

And everyone else who ever watches him play basketball.

So why should those fans get victimized?

And who knows, it might even stop the next Simmons from deciding to grift.

What I Think I Think After Last Week's NFL Games

 > No one needs the 7th seed

Six games of football, #2 seeds not getting byes, and the winner of the MNF game getting shafted on rest just means that the top seed are at even more advantage. If you want close playoff games, having more overmatched .500 level teams in them is not the way to go -- and since a playoff game is the only one that is ever on, you really get to wallow in Bad Game.

> The Raiders and Chargers should have thrown their Week 18 game

Vegas would have been rested for Cincy, which might have made the difference in a very close game. The Chargers could not have been worse to watch than the Steelers, who trotted out a noodle-armed middle-aged (alleged) rapist and tried to make it seem like a Lifetime Achievement Award when he could no longer play.

> Noob QBs will be killed

Especially now that we're back to pre-pandemic crowds and real noise in stadiums.

> The officiating is still trash

Too many instances to count. May your loved ones hold you with much more care and intent, when you are dying and possibly infectious, than what Jason Kelce was called for during one of the few should have been good moments for the Eagles.

> When the game goes bad, it goes really bad

Between what happened to New England and Pittsburgh, I barely feel bad for being an Eagles fan. For people who remember the Super Bowl in the '80s and '90s, it's a throwback, and like most throwbacks... should be thrown back.

> Dallas is too dumb to have good players

I just feel bad for people like CeeDee Lamb and Micah Parsons, who work for an organization that can't keep the big TV out of play, can't build the stadium to not stare directly into the sun, and keep the special teams unit on the field after a successful fake punt in the hopes that the other team will panic and call a timeout. Resulting in a delay of game on, well, them. Rake-stepping stupid.

Oh, and we're not even talking about calling a QB draw in the middle of the field with no timeouts at the end of the game. That made me laugh harder than anything likely ever will.

> I will root for the AFC Team in the Super Bowl

Aaron Rodgers is on Team Virus, Tom Brady is Satan's Favorite Player, Jimmy G is a game manager who nearly gave away the game, and Matthew Stafford probably has way too much Lion Stank on him to win a second playoff game.

Meanwhile in the AFC, you get Fun Video Game guys like Patrick Mahomes and Josh Allen, or feel-good comeback stories like Ryan Tannehill and Joe Burrows. Not to mention less obnoxious fan bases, because they aren't in big media markets.

> The NFC Team will win the Super Bowl

See previous entry...

Unfortunate Reality: The Jalen Hurts Situation

Eagles QB Jalen Hurts has an awful lot to like about him. He’s fast, tough, and says the right things to the media. There might not be a more dangerous runner at the position right now, depending on his health and the health of Lamar Jackson. He was drafted in the second round, which means that you don’t have to pay him very much until his contract runs out, so you can put more assets to other parts of the team that need help. He’s also only 22 years old, so health and good coaching and fortune permitting, he’s going to get better.

Wait, there’s more. He’s right on the side of history for Covid vaccinations, and not a distraction. He’s at the stage of his career where he’s not getting sidetracked with commercial endorsements. His teammates clearly love him and defend him whenever opponents take liberties. When plays break down, he can get first downs with his legs, and he was an integral part of the best rushing attack in the NFL. He does not lack for confidence, and he does not play scared.

Now, the bad news. He is, well, not very good at playing quarterback.

He leaves big plays on the field from a lack of field vision. He waits until a receiver is open, which means that with the current Eagles, he waits until someone tackles him. He’s not very tall, and mobile QBs have a hideous track record of staying healthy. At 22 this year, he did not stay healthy. This will not get better with age. His arm strength is not otherworldly, so he does not have a margin for error. He’s short enough so that passes get batted down. His ball security (hey now) and judgment is questionable.

When you go through the history of quarterbacks who have won and consistently contended for a championship in the modern era, you do not see anyone who reminds you of Hurts. Mostly, you see guys like Hurts, if they are on championship teams, as useful backups who can steal you a game or two when the starter goes down.

Tangent: My feed this week is all aglow with the recent public bleating of Joss Whedon, the ostracized former showrunner of groundbreaking television series who, it turns out, is a grabby and gross creep. Whedon was outed for his behavior in the #MeToo movement and has been trying to work out a Second Act ever since. Since Whedon’s former persona was that of an ally, he doesn’t get to just play the Cancel card and cash out on conservative welfare, but that’s not why my brain goes to Whedon when I’m thinking about Hurts.

You see, Whedon’s accusers, and I’m mostly thinking about a couple of actors who are not exactly setting the world on fire with their work post-Whedon, have one great problem in this conflict.

Which is that their work is not as good or as valuable, so their point of Do Not Patronize This Guy… kind of rings a little hollow.

I have no doubt that, for instance, Louis CK and Aziz Ansari (not equivalent) are Bad (or at the very least, Highly Problematic) People. That does not make, for instance, Tig Notaro and Rebecca Corry as funny as them, or funnier. (Side note: I’m actually a fan of Notaro and Corry as well. They just, well, haven’t made me laugh as much or as hard as the former.)

So, Hurts.

Great guy. Useful asset. Probably harmless to let him keep the gig for another year while the team tries to fix all of the other problem spots. I’m happy to root for him. I want him to do well and win. If my daughter dated him, I’d be thrilled. If the Eagles had Hurts-level players at WR2, DE and LB, maybe they win a few more games this year, or even the division later.

But win it all and be a real contender?

Nope.

Reality is unfortunate.

Aaron Rodgers, a vaccination-denying hypocrite and liar, is a much better QB than Hurts.

Many other unfortunate human beings are also better quarterbacks than Hurts.

This is not pro wrestling. You do not get to rest secure in the knowledge that Bad People Will Get Theirs.

And your quarterback has to be (a lot) better at things that Hurts will likely never get better at to overcome that.

(Another sad reality: Blogger failed me today and won't let me upload an image to illustrate this.)

The Eagles Need To Use Boston Scott

HE IS MAGIC YOU CAN NOT SEE

Philadelphia is an 8.5 point underdog to Tampa (note: not Bay, because unless the Bucs are aquatic, that's not a place they can be from, especially since the city isn't named that) and, for, well, reasons. Tampa is the defending Super Bowl champions, they have the greatest negotiator in the history of demonic contracts ever in QB Tom Brady, they are at home, and so on, and so on.

But that's not what this post is about.

Now, you might think that by reading this headline I'm calling for the Eagles to rely on their top-ranked running game, #1 in the NFL. Especially since many of us have T-shirts older than QB Jalen Hurts, and the game is forecast to be played in a monsoon. 

Nope, not that either.

OK, maybe it's just an indictment of RB1 Miles Sanders, who has had ball security (sounds awful, and I'm just glad that it hasn't come for me, even in middle age) issues, and is just coming back from a broken bone in his left hand. Presumptive RB2 Jordan Howard hasn't looked like his mid-season form after a "stinger" injury, and Scott's recent work has shown he may have the hottest hand of the room. (Yes, yes, there's some fans of rookie RB Kenneth Gainwell, who has a truly great name for a running back. I am talking about, of course, KENNETH. Just rolls off the tongue.)

Sorry, not that. We're going to flip over all the cards and reveal why Boston Scott needs not just the majority, but all of the possible touches in this Sunday's game.

It's because Scott, like John Cena but much more magical, CAN NOT BE SEEN.

Don't believe me?

Well then, you must have not been watching NFL football for the past three decades and more. I have, and have been told by any number of analysts that when a running back is small -- and not super-small, just four to six inches of height and 30 to 50 pounds of weight less than most of the other players -- he simply BLINKS OUT OF EXISTENCE like a magical creature. Scott may occupy 90 to 95% of their mass, but that 5% is critical, especially when he's near much larger teammates who will never carry the football or need to be tackled.

It's not that Scott is fast, or elusive, or the Eagles are very good at run blocking. 

It's that he is Magically Smaller. 

Somehow, only on positive runs. 

On negative plays, Scott can be seen and tackled.

So, give him all of the touches, and trust in The Magic, people.

Three decades of saying a stupid thing can't be wrong!

(Update: The Eagles lost, but Scott scored a touchdown. VINDICATION.)

Saved for all eternity, Episode 1 of our new Cinematic Universe ("A Dark Prophecy")

A few points about production that kept coming up during the media tour...

> We did get some pushback from the fans about the product placement for Pepsi and Yahoo, but that's just a reality for productions like this these days.

> For the record, the Prince estate has been wonderful to work with.

> The studio really went to bat for us to keep the Krampus character. I'm glad that the Chinese authorities finally came around to the idea that he's just global now.

> Working on location during the pandemic was also a real challenge, but the crew really came through.

> I have nothing against the use of CGI, and we might use it later. But when you can use practical effects, I really think you should. It just gives the actors more to work with.

Episode 2 drops in 14 days. If you would like to camp outside of my home in costume at any point during the build up, we can't stop you. But the police can.

Make This Happen, Wrestling

How is it that there isn't a wildly successful pro wrestling heel gimmick for a female performer who claims the name Karen?

Just complain to the ref constantly, screech for the manager when things don't go your way, drop micro-aggressive quasi racial taunts, and cash the checks as untold thousands of people pay to see you get the s*** fake-kicked out of you. 

For bonus points, dress suggestively while constantly berating people for looking at your assets.

I will also accept this in tag team format, with unsuccessful face turns as the performer points out that they are just being independent, confident, self-assertive, etc.

I Went Viral For Reading A Map

 This image appeared on the Awful Announcing twitter feed.

As part of a discussion over how the growth in college football is being held back by one region dominating the championship games.

This was my reply.

Dave Mountain

@dmtshooter

·

Jan 12

Replying to

@awfulannouncing

Hmm, the portion of the country that was really invested in unpaid labor is really invested in...

Here are the statistics from that tweet... over 13K impressions, around 200 engagements.

It's almost as if I've struck a nerve!

Who Asked For This? The Five Tool Tool Reboot

 

I know what you are thinking, Theoretical Reader. 

Oh dear God, why?

I mean, had you been in any way intelligent, you'd have stopped watching sports the second that the Eagles finally won a Super Bowl, instead of just stopping the blog.

Achievement Unlocked. Find a new game.

Spoiler alert! I kept watching sports. 

So here's the full list of reasons that have tipped me over to writing new content for the blog:

1)  I also still write about them. Just on social media and randomly, which is to say, on something that doesn't give me the dopamine rush of having past precedent to call up. (Side note: some of those social media entries have blown up, so if I ever had "it" before, I have "it" now.)

2) People ask. Well, OK, not many and not often, but enough. YOU'RE WELCOME.

3) We still have T-shirts! I found them the other day. You can buy one. (Please do. Especially if you wear a Medium. Lots of Medium.)

4) If the Eagles or Sixers make a deep playoff run, I'm going to want to remember all of the details that only show up if I blog it.

5) We might make a dime from it. Unlikely, but hey. I'll take dimes.

So what will be different?

1) Much less routine posting. I'm not going to pick NFL games or predict seasons or do game diaries. The Internets are full of such things, and even though those features were liked, the juice is not worth the squeeze.

2) More things that are Not Sports -- but still focusing on Game, if you catch my drift.

If the world wasn't thigh-deep in a pandemic, stand up comedy clubs might exist, and I might screw up my coverage and use the stuff that makes people laugh IRL, well, on stage. So let's do the next best thing and repurpose that content here, where it might draw a snort or chuckle or two.

3) More things that are Whatever. 

Hey, you chose to patronize the reboot. That gives me carte blanche to experiment, right?

4) The URL.

It turns out that the old direct one has been taken over by some Asiatic site that horned in on all of my sweet old dead crawler traffic. So you'll have to type the blogspot in now, or bookmark a new page. Times are hard, we'll get through it. Somehow.

5) No ads! 

Avoiding the URL also means I get to avoid paying the terrible people at Register anything, and dear Lord in heaven, that's a win.

We also just up and removed all of the ads, at least for now. for a wide number of reasons. You People are just going to have to tip enough to counter all of that lost revenue. (Hint: That won't take much.)

So, spread the news, alert the media, uncover that old tattoo that you've felt bad about having for four years and know that Life Can Indeed Improve. 

Also, buy a T-shirt. A medium T-shirt.

Five Tool Tool Is Back.