A new year deserves a new post, eventually. And so much has changed. Klay’s back in a Warriors uniform. The NFL regular season ended. The SEC Championship do-over is tonight. And the US has solved COVID, rebuilt the economy, and ended the creeping slide into fascism. OK so not everything has changed. At least the anti-vaxxers are drinking their own urine now.
"Kraut will get you through times of no money better than money will get you through times of no kraut."258 thoughts on “Out with the old, in with the nucleus”
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This game between two actually great teams is kinda dull.
Happy ending though
Sleep Well, Pie Guys,
So perfect you wonder if he made all the rest up just to slip that one in.
I love the Szymborski neural network. “Lowrie blames Spanish television for his insomnia.”
Can we retire “drink the [flavor] aid” now and just say “he’s drinking urine”
I’ve never expelled anyone before, but that pig had some powerful friends.
Take that you crusty old dean!
I’ve also always liked that he used to play bass for the Pretenders.
If you ever feel stressed out from studying or whatever, he’s always up for some hackey sack.
I empathize with everything parents have been going through for two years now. I’ve been going through it too. But my god this is so incredibly whiny.
And this kicker…is this a Fox News audition? (Or has Politico just become Fox News Print Edition??)
If one contrary experience is enough to make you reject your entire previous world view, it may not have been so sincere to begin with.
Politico has been tacking hard toward the libertarian right since the election.
This is a person who is looking for a way to rationalize becoming a conservative despite her upbringing as a “red-diaper baby.” That path is certainly well traveled, of course, and that backstory (and living in Oakland!) leads reliably to a guaranteed income in the conservative ecosystem she is clearly applying to enter.
Anyway, another for the “the word progressive is meaningless” file.
The Caitlin Flanagan career path.
And I still haven’t heard a good explanation for how in-person learning is supposed to work when half the teachers are out sick.
It’s OK because all the students are out sick too.
Only half-joking – 20% after 2 days for us.
From Sen. Moron (R-Kan.) to Sen. Moran (R-Kan.)
Dan Shaughnessy voted for Jeff Kent, and no one else, for the HOF.
Of course, it is just as crazy that some people are voting for David Ortiz, but not Bonds/Clemens/ARod.
Go Bears?
Do you know Jimmy Laufer? he says and I quote
“Yes. I definitely remember this, but I have forgotten about it because it is not done on the west coast or texas. Thank you for reminding me”
No, is he from Buffalo?
yes. he also said would love to see yous guys
Literal LOL. Go Bills.
For everyone else, Ed is referring to a post I made on the book of faces:
I now have about 8 responses from WNY all saying Yes, and about 8 from elsewhere all saying, No WTF are you on about.
Count me as one more No, making nine, still not enough to have batted around.
Never even heard of such a thing before now.
Count me as a no but I’ll ask my daughter’s bf who is from Ohio. And of course younger than you so if he’s a no it could still be a generational thing.
One of my HS classmates who now has kids in the Buffalo area said it is still done there. Which is what I expected (I mean, nothing there ever changes) but also what makes it so interesting to me. That even after decades of radio/TV/internet making popular culture more homogeneous nation-wide (or even world-wide) these regional differences remain. Not just the obvious ones like accents or regional cuisine (every bar doesn’t serve beef on weck?), but little things like this, passed down in families or from kid to kid.
Have you taken the NYT Interactive Dialect map quiz?
I have brought this up to more people in casual conversation than perhaps is socially wise because I find it so fascinating.
Yes
Dang, and I had just finished reading my annual review of all ten year old post archives too. Again, my social ineptitude strikes again.
I did take the quiz again after however long to see if my results changed, but still pretty close with Santa Rosa, Fresno, Modesto for me. I do try to make sure I say “the devil is beating his wife” when it’s raining in the sun now.
Forget it, jake. These people are witches.
It either saved my IP or my answers stayed pretty consistent. I went from Fresno/SLC/Modesto to Fresno/SLC/Seattle.
My #1 Match is Honolulu. I guess that’s the default for “unknown island IP”
WTF are yous on about?
Happy 0th birthday yesterday to eleanorA (:
Congrats!
Huzzah! Let there be Green & Gold onesies in her future.
Recommendation a softball buddy gave me way back when: as soon as you’re allowed, take a picture of her being held in your baseball mitt. Makes an awesome photo and a lifelong memory.
That’s a good idea!
Congrats
Congratulations!
Hooray!
Huzzah!
The same intersection!
“An armed society is a polite society.”
Darren Bush has gone from Hitting Coach to Run Prevention Coach. There’s a joke in there…
Looks like they got the white people for the white jobs this time
Jokes aside, Tommy Everidge? I seem to remember his name coming up in the last couple of years, but I think it’s cool when guys like him who had a week of “could he be better than we thought” gets a major league job
I think he was managing or coaching in the minors.
The handle on his lightly-used Twitter account appears to be “Tank the Macho Man”.
Bring it on Raiders fans!
Also, I care about the Bengals **so much** that I’m timing my weekly grocery shopping for during the game to minimize crowds.
I have no mental picture the typical Bengals fan, except they inexplicably add spaghetti.
Grocery stores here (SF and Daley City) were EMPTY. I think it was covid related though
Can’t remember last time the Raiders D got off the field in fewer than 10 plays. Also there’s like five starters I have never heard of.
I didn’t understand why it took NBC 10 minutes to come back to the improper whistle on the Burrow TD pass, especially when Mike Tirico questioned that during his live PxP call.
Both the TV and referee crews suck.
As (finally) explained by the NBC ex-ref officiating commentator, the rules were misapplied on the play. In baseball, that’s the sort of thing where the manager could announce that he’s playing the remainder of the game under protest, and if the protest were upheld the game would have to be replayed from that point with the score not counting.
I agree that for a playoff telecast I expect the analyst to add more than Drew Brees is contributing.
IIRC, MLB did away with protests a few years ago.
(pulls up the MLB rule book PDF in mid-January). andeux is correct, and that rule change is horseshit.
An administrative misapplication of the rules should be subject to review and replay of the game.
Boo, that sucks. Though probably no protest had been sustained since the pine tar game.
It happened twice after that, both involving rain delays. Most recent and apparently final: 8/19/2014, Giants @ Cubs (ESPN story) (B-R boxscore)
I guess NBC only ever has one game each week. Tirico gets a little work subbing on the main NBC game when Al Michaels doesn’t want to travel. I guess they just pulled Brees out of the studio and gave him a book of cliches.
Quality gaslighting by the league after the game explaining that the refs determined that the whistle came after the catch.
Jim Harbaugh press conference on Monday.
If the officiating on that improper whistle had been handled correctly *and* you assume the Raiders then hold the Bengals to a field goal and the rest of the game is the same, then the Raiders have an easy game-tying field goal at the end and the game goes to OT.
That’s a lot of ifs.
Pretty sure the Raiders would have lost regardless. They played bad enough to lose by three touchdowns.
Interesting that Harbaugh appears to be returning to Ann Arbor, after the Raiders and then an apparent HC job with the Vikings fell through. He got them to the playoff in what seemed like a final hurrah. Backward steps next season and Michigan alums are going to realize quickly how far that carton of milk is past its expiration date.
Now bring on the arctic misery. Maybe Belichick’s genius will freeze off.
Looks like the Viagra was the right solution.
Well, that was satisfying.
I wanted to text you during the game but even with like a 30 pt lead I kept thinking too soon, too soon. Nice win.
I saw a couple people comment that the Bills were smart to miss an extra point and avoid 28-3, referring to Super Bowl LI and also Buffalo’s halftime deficit in The Comeback.
I felt good about this one from the start, but wasn’t comfortable going into full gloat mode until they extended the lead back to 30 early in the fourth quarter.
FK yeah!
Punts hitting the scoreboard should be subject to Ed’s Law.
(Spoiler: apparently, no, the clock resets)
so, i take it they don’t go over groudrules before the first pitch?
Nick Maga out with a head injury.
Man, ugly fourth quarter. A couple terrible throws from Garoppolol to make it close, and Dallas giving it right back with penalties.
This should have been a 49ers blowout, as poorly as the Cowboys played for most of the game. Santa Clara is coming through with the suck when it really counts though.
Defensive holding on the Cowboys to ice it is the perfect ending.
Or not quite ice it. Still left room for some more penalties and mistakes.
LOL Cowboys
Quite a comedy of errors there at the end.
So far the two close games have only been close due to sucking.
Yep, two blowouts and two close bumblefests.
Yous guys are the only football I see, isn’t the superbowl in 2 weeks? how come there were so many games this weekend?
Two more weeks of playoffs, then a week off, then the SB.
I’ll tell you who won when it’s over.
nm and family must be in some après ski place up here with Niners fans screaming and spraying Omicron all over the place.
Heh, no. Was busy losing my mind in the rental.
That said, I was 99% sure we were going to lose until that scramble.
I am not sure I can take much more Roethlisvomit.
And it’s Collinsworth. I’m keeping the volume on low.
If Pittsburgh wins Buffalo gets Cincy at home, rather than having to play @KC, so I guess I have to root for that extremely unlikely possibility.
Well, they had a lead for 5 minutes.
Likely SF @GB and Buffalo (probably @KC) on Saturday, (whoever) @TB and (probably Cincy) @Tennessee on Sunday. (NFC has to be that way, not sure about AFC.)
Yup. Would have liked to give Bosa an extra day to recover, though.
Good riddance, Ben.
Wow. Would not have guessed Marin was quite that negligible. I guess the SF transplants really have taken over.
That’s weekday night stats only though. I’d imagine the weekends draw more from outlying areas.
Oh. Yeah. That makes total sense.
Marin has a tiny population relative to the other counties.
Christ, what a limited investor with no day-to-day operating functions whose views certainly don’t reflect those of our organization.
Full stop.
Kyler Murray is thinking about how relaxing a bus ride from Stockton to Fresno would be at the moment.
I note that you posted this just before his candidate for dumbest play of the playoffs.
Yeah that was..something right there.
Yes please, x2
As expected the Howard Terminal EIR sailed through the Planning Commission yesterday, now on to the City Council, likely next month. Lots of public turnout from the No HT / Yes Coliseum deadenders, citing their dubious recent poll and phony Port concerns. Looks to me like it will get near-unanimous approval at the Council level also. Which will mean that the A’s would actually start writing substantial checks as soon as this fall. Most people are taking that part for granted; I still have questions about how it pencils.
I will believe it when the 1st concessions are sold from a permanent stand. Until then I will keep my expectations as low as possible.
Permanent concession stands? Bah. Look how well the food trucks have worked.
Start thinking of ways to cut corners. We have this at California Memorial Stadium. The stadium renovation portion of the project came to $321 million. That did not buy us permanent restrooms on the east side of the stadium. We still bring in huge rows of Porta Potties every game day. At least we did get permanent lights over there (used to bring in the temporary ones on cranes for night games).
The thought of Fisher going into a meeting where he’s signing papers to commit 10 figures to a project…yikes. Better have his cardiologist and a full EMT team on standby right outside the conference room.
“wait a minute, you guys are accepting the deal? That isn’t what I was led to believe.”
When Fisher and Kaval were doing their hardball take-it-or-leave-it posturing a few months ago, it certainly crossed my mind that they might have been hoping for the leave it option.
That’s the point at which the (much smaller) Sacramento MLS stadium project died, I believe. Full approval and then the money pulled out.
All of my ridiculous ideas are just ahead of their time too.
If he is talking about the cowboys not getting full freight paid on their new stadium I can see them barnstorming, but not any baseball team
Hmmm, this might be much more fun than watching the stripped-down A’s trudge to 100+ losses.
Waiting for the ump to relay calls from a computer should be entertaining for a few days at least. A few broadcasters will surely melt down over it.
AAA West, a name with all the charm of an insurance office. RIP PCL.
Fixed. The A’s once again have affiliates in the Pacific Coast League, Texas League, Midwest League and California League.
This pleases me, though it doesn’t atone for MLB’s gutting the minors a few years back. Also the new PCL logo is cool.
How is Ted Simmons a notable Cal League alum and not Will Clark?
The story of Meat Loaf and Phil Rizzuto. The baseball description sure sounds like a Billy Martin-managed team, and although “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” (Phil’s part starts about 3:35; the game clips don’t match his PxP call though) was released in 1977, the player could just as easily be Rickey.
My formative baseball years were spent listening to Yankees radio broadcasts with Rizzuto and White.
I picked all 6 NFL games right last weekend (2 predictable blowouts, 2 somewhat less predictable blowouts, and 2 close games that I happened to guess right).
This week I have the two road teams in the AFC, and the two home teams in the NFC, but with little confidence in any of them.
If I were betting all four home teams feel like the best choices, but I’m not betting, so rooting for the road teams feels most comfortable.
So Niner fans, thanks to Vaxless Shrugged you have me on your side for the first time in recent memory.
It’s like he gets dumber every time he opens his mouth.
How dare you speak so ill of the future junior Senator from Wisconsin and running mate to Marjorie Taylor Greene in 2032.
Maybe he’ll just skip that “future junior Senator from Wisconsin” thing and go straight to “running mate” in 2024.
Historically, Vice Presidents haven’t had many duties.
How many Jets are secret service officers?
What happens when RFK Jr dies of some disease he thinks the cure for is a government conspiracy to poison his blood
Tangent: the Missus and I recently started Curb Your Enthusiasm for the first time. Through season 5. Was shocked to learn that Cheryl Hines, who plays Mrs Larry David, is in real life Mrs RFK Jr. And Larry introduced them.
I’m thinking the tickets are RFKJr-Rodgers and Trump-Tuberville. Biden’s prospects would be helped by dumping Kamala. Bill Belichick is available but I think he’s probably Republican (though he did turn down lame duck Trump’s offer of the Presidential Medal of Freedom in the aftermath of January 6). Tom Brady is definitely a Trump supporter. Steve Kerr seems the sensible choice here.
Travis Kelce conveniently turns 35 a month before the election.
Oh God, CNN now reporting two sources that say Rodgers is a Sandy Hook truther also. That’s as despicable as it gets.
And he said that 11 years ago. He’s been like this for a long time and we just didn’t know.
Part of it has been known for a number of years: that was roughly the time his estrangement from his parents and siblings started too. I don’t know, maybe he succumbed to the preachings of the Bhagwan of Oshkosh.
Most jocks who become top-level pitchmen are smarter about preserving their image. Peyton, Jordan, Madden, George Foreman, etc. Rodgers may not care but he’s costing himself future millions.
I’m concerned that you may have burned too much underdog/road team mojo on the Bengals.
Road parlay would pay big! Also the last time the Bengals made the AFC Championship it was against the Bills, in 1988, after which they lost to the 49ers in the Super Bowl.
I hope you keep being right about the AFC and wrong about the NFC
Whatever else happened, it was a helluva weekend for football.
This manager in ugly hoodie with the sleeves scissored off thing has to stop.
Make them wear business suits again, I say.
I wasn’t sure our favorite bumper music guy was working tonight (there was some Eddie Money early) but then there was a little bit of Tweezer. He’s there.
Thought I heard some Rush music in an earlier outro bit. Took it as a nod to Ayn Rodgers.
I am in a Hilton in woodland for a tournament for the kid. Since all the other kids will be talking about football I had milo turn on the game
We put it up on tv and I saw one play. A guy caught the ball. Then he was being tackled and dropped the ball for a fumble. Then there was a few minutes of standing around followed by the referee saying it was incomplete.
People watch this? This is nonsense
Make sure you visit Dustin Pedroia Field while you’re there.
I have stayed in Woodland a number of times before early flights out of Sacramento. I wish I could give you a restaurant recommendation, but not really. I have looked at the choices on Yelp and have concluded that it’s pretty much always better to have an early meal in Sacramento before driving on to Woodland.
2 games today and 2 games tomorrow at the muni fields will be enough, thanks.
It is an odd place. But I at better than my h tournament we had in rancho Cordova
I listened to the first half on the radio. Had been a long time since I’ve paid attention to a football game. There are so many long ad breaks. So many.
I listened to the first half on the radio. Had been a long time since I’ve paid attention to a football game. There are so many long ad breaks. So many.
I do enjoy Papa, even though I don’t understand half of what he is saying.
Niners lucky to come out of that half down only 1 score.
And putting Deebo in to return kicks against GB’s awful special teams was a smart move.
What the fuck is a forward fumble. These rules are dumb
Dude keep up.
I’m on my phone, holy roller? Wasn’t that on the ground?
Must not feed the troll.
Though to be fair neither of today’s games is a great advertisement for football as a compelling spectator sport.
Yeah actually attending football games may be the most overrated thing in all of American sports. The breaks are interminable, the action is far away, there’s no replay or explanations. Works much better with a mute button.
I don’t know about that.
There are some downsides for sure – you don’t have the benefit of closeups and replays that you would get on TV, and the long commercial breaks that GM mentioned are even more noticeable.
But I went to a home Bills game this year for the first time in 25+ years, and it was a total blast. The tailgate scene there is amazing. And inside the stadium, the energy from a football crowd is also hard to beat, partly because it is just so much bigger than the crowd for other American sports.
That’s fair, tailgating rocks and the energy of a home football crowd is intoxicating. Once every 25 years sounds about right to me now.
And, crowd noise matters more than most sports.
Assuming for now a Packers win, and I don’t see how the 49ers are going to get to >10 points, this is quite a triumph of the NFL’s small markets (Nielsen DMA rankings for 2021-2022).
Cincinnati (#36) vs. either Kansas City (#34) or Buffalo (#53)
Green Bay-Appleton (#69)San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose (#6) vs. either Tampa-St. Pete (Sarasota) (#13) or Los Angeles (#2)And yet all these games will probably rank in the top 20 of most-watched shows for 2022.
Can we get 4 OTs in the snow?
If Jimmy G was my team’s QB I’d be a raving maniac.
For a first and a third he can be!
The nfl is lawyer ball
So you do like it?
I think the football huddle is one of the coolest things in sports
Is that astroturf in Los angels?
I have too many moments like this recently:
Wow, John Runyan is still playing? … Oh.
Watching now because my friend is at this game and the weather is so miserable.
I’ll guess this is a California 49ers fan who traveled there.
If so, here’s a question to ask: Name a West Coast city that resembles Green Bay.
Having been there (in the summer) a few years ago, my answer is: Stockton.
andeux nailed it with the early comment about the Packers special teams.
Stunning result.
Less stressful than last week, but mostly because I felt hopeless the whole time.
Lol. I was watching a replay
Man this is kind of embarrassing.
That is ridiculous, LA stadiums have always been full of visiting fans. Not enough Angelenos care strongly to build a season ticket base. This has been true all year for both the Rams and Chargers in this new place, and was true for every LA team in every previous stadium ever.
Also is it even legal? Seems like an unfair restraint of trade to non-local fans.
The untended consequence might be a great scalping windfall for residents of LA – the market for face-value tickets is limited, and the market for resale without geographic restrictions is inflated.
Yep
Man you never see NFL players flagged for yelling at refs. It pleases me that it happened to Tom Brady.
“But I always get that call!”
Bills-Chiefs first half lived up to the hype. Mahomes and Allen both have ridiculous skill sets.
Buffalo is a bit lucky to come out with a tie. They’ve played well, and need to play even better.
Great game, so far each time it looks like KC is too much, Buffalo has had an answer.
Both the game plan and the decision making has been a bit on the conservative side, but here they are with the ball, down by 5, 5 minutes left. Can’t ask for much more than that.
This is ridiculous!
This is the best football game of all time. Holy shit.
Or the worst, depending on how you look at it.
0:13. Have to close that out. Sorry man.
Yeah, played way too soft on D there. Probably get away with it against anyone else.
Patrick Mahomes is the Bills’ Justin Verlander.
Unable to sleep well last night, I was thinking the 2014 WC game was a pretty good comp, as an emotional roller coaster. And it being KC. So good news for the Niners, if that analogy holds.
I finally saw the full replay last night. I still can’t believe the Bills didn’t go for the squib kick there with 13 seconds left; kicking for a touchback was setting them up way too easily.
The Buffalo News had a story today about how Allen hadn’t lost a coin toss all year.
FKing jinx.
I was not happy with the result. But even if I had been thrilled by it-the NFL OT rules are worse than Manfred ball. It was like saying “if the visiting team scores 2 in the top of the 10th the game is over”. Give each team 1 possession and just go from there. Make it that way just for the playoffs even. I mean if you dont want some rando Det-Jax game going long I understand…
Only Ortiz made the cut.
What a joke.
Well, I am more of an anti domestic violence guy
His PEDs are ok, because he’s gregarious with the press.
Congrats to Mr. No PEDs Ever David Ortiz on election to the Hall of Red Sox.
Red but not bloody.
World Cup qualifying time again! Six games left, three of them in the next seven days.
USA hosts El Salvador today in Columbus, goes to Hamilton, Ontario to face Canada on Sunday, and then plays Honduras on Wednesday in St. Paul. These are going to be some cold-ass games, all outdoors. Apparently the USA was planning to schedule the home games for San Jose and Portland if Canada (as was expected) hosted us in Vancouver. But Canada decided to play in Hamilton to slightly ease their travel (they play in Honduras tonight, come back to play us, and then go to El Salvador on Wednesday). So the USA decided to stick around the upper midwest and make the Central American teams suffer. Hopefully the temps stay north of dangerous and the under-field heating makes things relatively playable.
USA could mathematically clinch qualification with three wins, but they’d need some help elsewhere. More realistically, they can clinch no worse than fourth place, which is a ticket to an intercontinental playoff match over the summer in Qatar. The draw for that playoff yielded the good news that CONCACAF’s fourth place only has to get through the top team from Oceania (probably New Zealand) as opposed to the fifth place team from South America (which will be someone terrifying like Colombia or Uruguay or Chile) or Asia (looking like Japan or Australia).
Good grief, who decided that? This isn’t the thing where the A’s are playing a night game in Boston and then a night game in Oakland the next night. With two off days, get on a plane and fly another couple hours to Orlando or someplace.
We do plenty as it is to make people from El Salvador and Honduras miserable. If it’s just a ploy to gain an advantage I hope it backfires.
(deleted and reposted to correct reply fail)
It’s pretty crazy. Home teams have discretion on locations and start times in qualifiers. I don’t think the primary intent here was making life hell for El Salvador and Honduras, but it’s certainly part of it.
It’s also meant to help with the problem USMNT shares with, say, the LA Rams, where visiting fans become the majority in places like LA and Santa Clara.
OTOH, as I read somewhere, US has a significant talent edge over El Salvador and Honduras, but a cold weather site negates a lot of speed and finesse advantage and tends toward lower scores, thus giving the underdogs better odds of pulling an upset. Plus if Pulisic pulls a hammy I quit.
Yeah they definitely try to schedule qualifiers as far as possible from the bulk of opponents’ diasporas. There were some mistakes in that regard in the past, like scheduling Honduras in DC and being extremely outnumbered.
I don’t think the cold negates our talent advantage too much as long as the field is in good shape. We’ll see
whether it’s possible to keep a grass field in good shape in St Paul in early February.
An hour until kickoff on what sounds like a narrow, frozen slab of artificial turf at Tim Hortons Field. They’ve basically got us playing on a green hockey rink. They also barred entry to one of our best attackers, Tim Weah, whose vax status meets French standards (he plays for Lille) but not Canadian ones.
The Canadian fans are on top of the standings and feeling…feisty.
In 1814 was it also set up by a horrible goalkick and flat-footed defense?
I don’t think the players had any say in this, did they?
Gulp
Great first half. With a goal from an MLSer no less. Against an overmatched, already eliminated team like Honduras the USA looks pretty darn good.
I turned it on for a few minutes out of curiosity. I was most impressed with the crowd; it didn’t look like there were many empty seats. Those Minnesotans are hardy folk. Mark Canha, who was all wrapped up for 55-degree evenings at the Coliseum, likely was not there. I heard some drumming which made me wonder if Englishmajor was in the stands.
I actually thought about going home for this game – it coincided with the Saint Paul Winter Carnival and various other events for people who like to show off their tolerance for cold, such as arty ice houses – but we’re waiting for a bit more of a lull in the variants.. There’s a huge soccer community in the Twin Cities so they have no need to import ringers – in addition to MN United there’s a very lively Minneapolis City club with very charming merch featuring crows and cats.
On the plus side this could make ballpark beer purchases easier.
Cool!
Seven-oh, which is likely the reason he said he’s cutting back on the schedule this year.
Holy FKing smokes, I recorded the men’s final at the AO last night and just finished watching it (got lucky that my recording ended at 41/2 hours but got into the Tennis channel replay at 2-2 in the 5th). Absolutely incredible match, one of the most epic I’ve ever seen. Just about 51/2 hours and at the end they were still playing amazing tennis. So many twists and turns. Just awesome. Now for some football.
It really was. I watched first two sets, then played three sets of my own, and when I cam back home, they *still* went on for another hour
Well, that was unexpected.
Indeed, I was sure this game would be a KC rout. Will be nice to have an AFC team in the Super Bowl I can fully embrace.
I’m not all that shocked, Burrow has been amazing the past several weeks. He’s the real deal. I might pick him over all the other young good QBs in the AFC.
Wow, I’m not seeing that at all.
He is good, for sure, but I would still put him a bit behind Mahomes, Allen (obviously I am biased), and Herbert.
And even in these playoffs, as a team they won scoring 26, 19, and 27; he has 4 TDs vs 2 interceptions in 3 games. That’s nothing close to what Mahomes or Allen did.
Overall, they have a good offensive core (Burrow, Chase, Mixon, and Higgins), and a defense that seems to keep them in games by limiting big plays (unlike, uh, some other teams).
And they’ve been, depending on your point of view, either very clutch or very lucky in this postseason. All three games their opponents were one play away from a go-ahead score inside of 30 seconds and couldn’t convert. (Not that taking the lead inside 30 seconds is any guarantee of a victory.)
I wouldn’t take Burrow ahead of Mahomes or Allen today either, but he definitely has a certain winning quality about him, only two years into his career. I thought KC would win easily because they seemed better at almost every position, especially O-line, so I was surprised by the outcome. But Joe Cool has big things ahead I suspect.
AFC could be quite the battle for a long time with those four, plus maybe Jackson or (less likely) Jones or Tua.
According to NFL rankings he comes in 4th, after Herbert (also in just his 2nd season) and ahead of Mahomes (yr 5) and Allen (yr 4). I really like Herbert, but Burrow just seems like he has that calm demeanor that allows him to win the close ones. They’re all super talented and fun to watch, so it will be interesting to see how it plays out over the next decade.
Two weeks of nonstop Bengalmania for colin, barring the resort reservations in Barbados.
Lots of people yelling “Who Dey” in Kroger this evening
Some dubious coach decisions today, Andy Reid eschewing the sure FG before halftime, and McVay wishcasting a challenge to lose his last timeout just now.
Running a play wasn’t crazy; terrible decision by Mahomes to risk a pass that wasn’t into the end zone. Also worth noting that they were out of time outs at that point partly because they had called a time out before successfully challenging the spot earlier in the half. That whole game had the vibe of some of Reid’s NFC Championship games in Philly.
McVay also seems fond of pointless screen passes on third down.
I have come to begrudgingly like Andy Reid, and it seemed like he’d left his bad clock management in Philly, but yeah, today was bad. I don’t agree though with running a play with 0:05 left, I’ll guess a 40% chance of getting nothing versus 95% chance of a FG.
At least he would have gone for it on 4th and 2. Dammit.
Von Miller is a lot easier to like in a Rams uniform.
Rams versus Bengals in the fifth Super Bowl matchup of two animal mascot teams. Broncos over Falcons, Colts over Bears, Seahawks over Broncos, and Broncos over Panthers). So the seemingly stronger animal usually loses. Bet the Rams.
Rams early 3.5 point favorites, which sounds about right.
Geaux Bengals!
As many have noted it’s the first Super Bowl between teams dressed as cosplay versions of their mascots.
I’m looking for more info, but big news if true. It means you could buy NBC Sports California streaming a la carte without subscribing to any other service.
It’s mentioned, sort of in passing, in a press release announcing a new chairman of the division.
I’ve noticed they are starting to build more sports programming into the Peacock service. I wouldn’t be surprised to see this product end up there.
That does make sense. Ever since the channels expanded beyond the local OTA stations, cable and satellite services (and now streaming) have been trying to make the consumer buy a lot of crap they never watch in order to get the channels they do watch. I see that Peacock offers Free, Premium ($4.99/mo.) and Plus ($9.99). They could add Mega which would be Plus with NBCS-CA and NBCS-BA and price it at $29.99.
With the services I get free or at low cost right now, through assorted promos or shared accounts with family, I’d gladly drop cable if I could somehow get every A’s game live. Comcast surely knows this and ought to be sore afraid of what Peacock Mega would do to their customer base. Which makes me suspect they’ll work hard to torpedo such a plan.
Comcast’s “Xfinity” cable and broadband service, the NBC Universal channels and the Peacock streaming service are all part of the same company. Subscribers to Xfinity cable television have been plummeting (an article I’m looking at says from 21.4 million in 2019 to 18.5 million two years later). That’s because of cord-cutting, and a lot of that is driven by the refusal of non-sports fans to pay for expensive sports channels they never watch.
Comcast is still in good shape because what they’re losing in cable TV revenue they are gaining in broadband and wireless. They are having to rearrange their revenue stream and that’s what’s behind splitting off the RSNs into a separate over-the-top product. It has been widely speculated that Disney will create a direct-to-consumer product for its ESPN programming as well (they already do this for their second-tier programming with “ESPN Plus”).
I can see that by the end of this decade, somebody like me who literally watches nothing on TV but sports will have four streaming subscriptions. If rights stayed in the same places they are now:
NBC Universal for the A’s, SNF and Golf Channel.
CBS for the NFL and some golf.
Disney for college football and MNF.
Fox for postseason baseball, college football and the NFL.
Now as to what the total cost of those subscriptions would be, hmmm. I don’t watch golf during baseball season, so NBC is the only one of those I would need year-round; the others would be more or less from September-January by the month.
People (including us) have been talking about cord-cutting for a long time, but it definitely seems like just in the last couple of years a couple of developments have us near a tipping point:
– Fiber availability has increased enough that most people have more than enough bandwidth for multiple video streams plus any other data they need to use. It no longer makes sense for most people to pay for a separate service and specialized hardware just for tv, when everything is just data anyway. And for that matter, at some point it won’t make sense for comcast/NBC to maintain such a specialized infrastructure either*, in the same way ATT & Verizon would be much happier if all their copper phone lines would just disappear at this point. And, given that, there is also not much reason for companies in the infrastructure business to also be in the content business (which is why net neutrality still matters.)
– Must of the non-sports content that made cable worthwhile, the “prestige TV” shows that just a few years ago would have been on basic cable channels like AMC/FX/TBS, are now being developed directly for Netflix/Amazon/Hulu, or sometimes hybrid deals like “FX on Hulu” where it is on cable one day and streaming the next. And the premium cable channels like HBO and Showtime have their own services, so no longer care if you pay for them as an add-on to cable or as a stream.
I mentioned a few months ago that for sports there are still a couple of issues besides the rights that still leave me with a slight preference for cable vs. streaming:
– Wifi is not always as reliable as any kind of wired tech. Of course, once those cheaper MLB/NFL streaming options actually exist, I could pay someone to run ethernet to the living room, which would pay for itself pretty quickly compared to $150/month cable bills.
– Latency on streaming sports sucks. Analog TV and radio were pretty close to live, digital cable is a few seconds behind. Streaming can be like a full minute being. It’s especially annoying if you watch with a box score open. Maybe it doesn’t bother other people as much as it does me. Presumably it’s a design decision of streaming to trade off latency for smoothness in the case of network hiccups.
Despite those issues, I agree with you that the end of cable tv as we know it is looking inevitable.
One remaining question is will that brave new world still involve the NFL being split across 4 separate services, or will we just see a dedicated NFL subscription. I think they, somewhat quietly, finally ditched the full DirecTV exclusivity for Sunday Ticket, but as a standalone product it is pretty expensive, something like $300 for the season. Maybe they would keep that to get all the games, with a cheaper tier for the local slate of games that you get now.
* Side note: there was an article going around a few years ago about how cable internet works. The cable network and all its switching equipment was built to handle analog video. So when they started offering internet as well, they just encoded all the data into analog video frames and decoded them back into arbitrary data at the other end. And that’s still how it works. Now almost all of that data is digital video (either as digital cable tv or as internet streams) so you have video first digitized to become data, then that data is encoded in an analog video frame, and then it all gets undone on the other end. In one sense, it’s totally crazy, certainly not how anyone would design anything from the ground up; but apart from adding a little overhead, it works fine, and isn’t worth the expense of re-doing all their infrastructure.
Sad Marin Faces.
I’m always amazed at the costs you guys have for your data/cable subscriptions. The other day, I read something on NYT where the author walked the readers through her optimizing that shaved $150 off her monthly bill, going from $400 to just under $250.
I’ve had fiber in Stuttgart for more than ten years and the price for data (gradually increasing in nominal bandwidth speed to, I think, 400Mb/s now) and phone with flat rate for Europe was always around €40/mo. The providers also offer TV deal, but I never took that.
Then, on top of that I normally have MLB.tv (~ $140/yr), Netflix (€13/mo now) and Prime (€70/yr). I added NBA.tv this year (€130/yr). I also periodically book a month or two of DAZN (€15/mo; NFL, college basketball and football) or Eurosport (€5/mo; tennis grand slams). Typically, I’ll buy a month of STARZ (€10/mo; bunch of new series) every year and binge watch a series or two.
Bottom line, I come up to about €80-90 a month and have all the A’s games, all the Warriors games (rest of NBA and MLB, too), lots of NFL, NCAAF & NCAAM, tennis and just enough movies and series to not miss anything.
1. Last week the Bears hired Ryan Poles to replace Ryan Pace as GM, and Matt Eberflus to replace Matt Nagy as head coach, reportedly because “at 99 years old, Virginia McCaskey simply didn’t want to learn any new names.”
2. A few days ago Bill Belichik texted Brian Flores congratulations because he heard he was getting the NY Giants head coaching job. It turns out, Brian Daboll was the one getting the job, and Belichik had misunderstood; both Brians were former assistants at NE. Flores had not interviewed yet, and is now suing the Giants and the league, alleging in part that his interview was a sham to satisfy the “Rooney rule” that teams had to consider at least one minority candidate. Flores may have gotten a raw deal in Miami (he also alleges that the Dolphins owner offered him a bonus to lose more games in his first year), but a lot of what he’s claiming seems hard to prove, and the lawsuit seems like a potential career killer for someone who most people thought was going to end up with a new HC job anyway.
Committing a text message faux pas like that makes Belichik almost…relatable?
I doubt it is true, but I am enjoying the theory floating around that actually Belichik sent the text on purpose to screw over the division rival Dolphins and the Giants, who beat him in two Super Bowls.
Getting more interesting
In the never-ending quest to provide my in-laws with gift ideas, before xmas I suggested an “extreme beer festival in a box” whose exact contents were still TBD. The lineup turns out to be a mix of extremely large and extremely silly beers:
Southern Grist Brewing Co.
Banana Colada Melted Snow Cone
Smoothie Sour Ale | 4% | 16oz can
Smoothie-style Sour Ale brewed with lactose, banana, pineapple, and cream of coconut.
Modist Brewing Co.
First Call Frappe: Turtle Cheesecake Coffee Lager
Pastry Lager | 6.5% | 16oz can
Coffee Lager brewed with pilsner malt, malted oats and milk sugar, then conditioned on Wesley Andrews Coffee, cocoa nibs, pecans, caramel and cheesecake.
Singlecut Beersmiths
Continental Riot House
Fruited IPA | 6.7% | 16oz can
Fruited IPA with passionfruit and starfruit terpenes.
Bolero Snort Brewery
The PB+J Incident
Pastry Sour | 6.8% | 16oz can
Peanut butter + jelly donut sour ale conditioned on locally baked donuts, Concord grape puree, and finished with peanut butter and vanilla.
Mortalis Brewing Co.
Frosé Hydra Deuce
Fruited Sour | 7% | 16oz can
This fruited sour is our fourth collaboration with Kings Brewing. It blends blackberry, apricot, sweet cherry, vanilla, cinnamon, and graham cracker together to form just one of this monster’s many heads. Keep your eyes peeled for even more flavor combinations.
Japas Cervejaria
This is Not a Caipirinha
Imperial Sour | 8% | 16oz can
Imperial Sour with Yuzu, Sudachi and Buddha’s Hand.
Funky Buddha Brewery
Tequila Sunrise
Imperial Cream Ale | 11.5% | 12oz bottle
Imperial Cream Ale aged in tequila barrels with orange and pomegranate added.
Aardwolf Brewing Co.
Bananas Foster
American Imperial Stout | 11% | 16oz can
Imperial Stout with lactose, bananas, cinnamon, vanilla, and natural flavors.
Great Notion Brewing
Calf & Half
American Imperial Stout | 12.5% | 16oz can
Blend of barrel-aged and non-barrel-aged Imperial Stout with blueberry and coconut.
Beer Tape
Heavy, Heavy, Heavy
Imperial Stout | 14% | 16oz can
Beer Tape (BeerThugLife + Hip Hop Craft) collaboration with Brewjeria Co. and BeerAdvocate. Imperial Stout aged in bourbon whiskey barrels, blended with an Imperial Stout with coconut, vanilla beans, and coffee.
Kane Brewing Co.
Double Double Cask
Barley Wine | 15.7% | 16oz can
A blend of two different Double Barrel-Aged Barleywines. The first Barleywine was aged in a Woodford Reserve Malt Whiskey barrel for over 20 months, then finished in a combination of Weller and Blanton Bourbon casks for close to a year. The second Barleywine was first aged in an Armagnac puncheon for close to two year, then finished in a blend of Heaven Hill Rye and Sazerac Rye casks. Each beer was cold-conditioned in stainless, and then blended together to create this Double Barrel-Aged Barleywine
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery
Utopias Barrel-Aged World Wide Stout
American Imperial Stout | 17.3% | 12oz bottle
The experience of drinking Utopias is often described as ritualistic. Rare and often rumored about in the darkest corners of the beer community, this variety of World Wide Stout is dark, rich, roasty, and complex.
I’ll take that Funky Buddha Tequila Sunrise. The rest of ’em, good luck, though I bet those last two Imperial Stouts are good if you can handle the alcohol. Just reading the description of The PB+J Incident turns my stomach.
Beer for people who don’t like beer doesn’t seem like a winning approach. Also some of these blends sound a lot like “we tossed together some extra stuff laying around and gave it a hipster name.”
“Pastry (style)” beers are a ridiculous trend that started as a joke with a brewery that had all its staff bring in their leftover cake/cookies/candy after the winter holiday to throw into a big stout, but have spread like omicron. I’ve made beer-nerd jokes about a couple of these becoming styles (pastry sour, pastry lager), and now here they are.
The ones I’m really looking forward to tasting are the Imperial Sour and the last three, though how solid my judgement will be by the time we get to them is open to debate.
Belching Beaver’s “Peanut Butter Milk Stout” is…OK. I’ve had it on tap and it’s widely available in cans in stores. It’s not something I particularly seek out though; I prefer a more traditional stout. Adding all this other sweet stuff, I can’t see ever being interested in that.
I got a can of that. Once.
I’m actually liking some of the uses of vanilla (there was someone who did a “Cerveza Crema” years ago that tasted very much like cream soda, but no one else has quite hit that since).