unclevlad

I can think of other things to say to Fox News, but anything remotely expressing my opinion would stay within forum rules. EDIT: DOH!!! I thought I had a negative in there before that. WOULDN'T stay withn forum rules..... <sigh>

It's good for it to have no shame; it's not so good when it has memory.

Can someone please go check in with Cancer and make sure he didn't hurt himself when passed out just now?

I doubt it. I think his competitive drive has simply never been throttled, and his impulse control is poor. Mind, those are explanatory points, rather than excusive. Those are issues you'd hope to outgrow.

And it ends on a solo walkoff in the 15th. Tampa Bay gets swept, but good gosh...2-1 and 1-0. TOUGH way to lose. But hey, 24 innings. 9 hits total. 1 run becomes unsurprising.

I think it's the combination of the departures *gutting* the depth chart, and the injuries. Outside of a VERY few top programs, no one really has even a full 2-deep roster these days...and all the departures took OU out of that completely. So they're looking at a complete, almost from-scratch rebuild. Just in time to be thrown into the SEC fire, no less. Social media points out that OU skipped the usual post-game press conference. Losing team goes first. OU didn't show for a half hour, so Texas just went ahead. My guess is that a camera feed from the postgame locker room would have had to be labeled NSFW. And there's Colin Cowchip showing his usual class: https://thespun.com/more/top-stories/fans-are-crushing-colin-cowherd-for-what-hes-telling-oklahoma-players The other surprise was Tennessee whooping LSU in Baton Rouge. 20-0 before LSU scores, then another 17 straight, and at that point it's obviously over, up 30 with 2 minutes left in the 3rd.

Is that a comment about Nathaniel Hackett?

My, my, my. Great consternation, weeping, and gnashing of teeth threatens to sweep through New York. Couldn't get 1 of 3 in Atlanta, so lost the division. Tonight, Scherzer, one of their 2 expected studs, gets *shelled*. 4 HRs and 7 runs' worth. Sounds like a full infantry company salvo to me. Game's not over but with only 4 innings left, 6 runs is a mountain to climb. And in a 3 game series, they're now big underdogs in the series.

Several other articles about how the game was called. Can anyone remember a game so universally, TOTALLY, ripped apart? Other than Broncos-Niners? And from a league perspective, the concern has to be the fact that this is the second BOMB!!! on a prime-time, standalone, national broadcast. This is doing serious damage to the league, as part and parcel of the storyline of VERY BAD play that's swept through so much of the league this year. Oh, and checking...guess what week 6's MNF is? Broncos at Chargers. ESPN has to be cringing. TBS is probably chortling. ALDS game 5's are both that Monday, so it's highly likely to have at least 1. The Broncos will have lots of people looking for ANYTHING else. SNF has the advantage of flexing teams. Dec. 11th, it's KC at Denver. Currently. NOT gonna stay that way if things don't change markedly. But a complete refusal to play Wilson in the preseason could be a factor. New team, new coach, new offensive scheme. No click. Some of that has to be laid on Hackett's doorstep too. Hackett's job security has to be...tenuous. Losing is one thing, but being a laughingstock of such magnitude can't be tolerated. If they lay another egg against the Chargers, I would honestly not be surprised if Hackett's fired before week 7.

Wilson and the Broncos have now given us two of the most putrid, unwatchable, games Two common denominators: Wilson was incompetent in both, and inexplicable coaching moves were a massive factor. At this point, the Wilson trade is playing out as the worst in NFL history. Worse than Herschel Walker. Worse than Ricky Williams. All of them gutted the future...but here, the Broncos have gutted the present. AND they're stuck with an impossible contract. And this wasn't week 1. I've said for a couple years: the first 3-4 weeks of the season have little predictive quality; they're the true preseason now, as teams really get their acts together. But this was week 5, even if it's TNF. And when an offense is THIS BAD consistently, I believe that is predictive. Fine, things should improve, but when you're starting from disastrously bad, and you're already 1/3 of the way into the season, there's little real hope. Another angle: KJ Hamler lost his mind when Wilson failed to see him on the final play. Multiple times during the game, Wilson's play was a huge problem. So, is Wilson losing the locker room? And the entire city? And worse, the Broncos are stuck.

Sometimes ya gotta do what ya gotta do.

ESPN: noon, 4, and 8. ABC: 2 They clearly want minimal overlap, so yeah. Noon's pretty typical local start time for, say, the Wednesday East Coast games, as that's so often a travel day. Lots of Baltimore, Boston, or NYY games slotted in there. What's kind of curious is Saturday...but now they gotta work around ESPN's #1 product, college football. So it's noon ESPN2 (killing, IIRC, a Big 12 game), 4 ESPN (not sure what gets bumped), 7:30 ESPN2 and 8 ESPN. One of those is Pac 12, I believe. They're not touching the game of the week on ABC at night. Scheduling problem for MLB is, of course, any games on Sunday won't get any ratings, even tho they're elimination games.

The question of the moment: will the Bronco defense start giving up? Second question: does Russ really have anything left? Tony Gonzalez comment...the Bronco offense is pathetic...and he's blaming Russ for a lot of it. Richard Sherman is *losing* it in the post-game, due to the horrific execution. Flashbacks of the SB. It's entertaining. But hey, it's the state of Colorado. Clearly, there's a state-wide Football Skill Drain, Constant.

OK, I'll go with that. Broncos go for it on 4th and 1 with a chip shot FG to tie...but with only 2:40 left, it's highly likely that'd lead to a tie at best. So I don't have a problem going for it. And they even leave it in their gazillion-dollar QB's hands. And he can't do it. Broncos fail in the red zone AGAIN, and lose.

My toys are a little different...

Programming note: first game starts noon ET tomorrow. They're fitting in 3 afternoon games, with 1 prime time.

Can't say I've followed this much, but I thought marijuana was suggested for relatively lower-level, but chronic, pain; opioids are for more intense pain. Of course, IIRC opioids have been widely misprescribed, so...perhaps it'll help.

Got together with some old work buds...we were hoping to have the game on in the backgroud. The place didn't have Prime. No loss. Old Man's giving the game way too much credit. I missed the entire first half but all indications are, this is *barely* better than Broncos-Niners. EDIT: and here we go again. Hackett's gonna get RIPPED cuz he gets pushy and gets picked...leading enough time for a BAD Colts offense to get a tying FG. I'll give Ryan a pass on that 3rd down, at least to some degree. The refs blow the whistle when the Colts are at the line, and about the snap the ball with 3 seconds left on the play clock. They order a player off the field, I presume related to possible concussion. Turns out, the rule is to reset the play clock to 10 seconds...not 25. No, I didn't know the rule either, as I've never seen the player pulled that late in the play clock. Colts go back into a huddle, and yeah, delay is inevitable. They might well have gone to the end zone anyway given the time, and they hit the chippy FG, so it didn't hurt. Hackett's calls, OTOH...short FG is in hand to take the lead to 6 when the Colts have done *nothing* all game. Defending the end zone is much simpler. But no, we won't run out the clock. We'll have another red zone turnover. And on a *terrible* throw. This game deserves to end in a tie, or alternately something like a pick-6.

Whenever I see a line like "but there's so much no one's ever explored!!" my only response is, then you aren't gonna do Tolkien. You're just going to slap the name onto a series to draw the people in, but it's gonna be based on the writers' and producers' notions, with little real connection. The story said one of the pitches was to do Aragorn's wandering days. Really? From the books, it was...very low-key. He was learning to command, learning the pains of the world, developing the empathy. But that was, IIRC, 50 or 60 YEARS long. And Gandalf might be compared to, say, a Belgarath, where he worked very quietly, mostly behind the scenes for centuries at a stretch. Tolkien doesn't have lots of good dramatic story. The First Age is all tragedy. The Second Age is, IIRC, largely dull. The Third...yeah, fine, they're there, but again in fits and starts. Lots of it is slow decline, a la Arnor. So in the absence of something dramatic...the writers come up with their own, from nothing. <sigh> That's where the fans' complaints come from because, well, you HAVE to bring in the recognized names even if they don't belong.... Yeah, I think Netflix' idea would've bombed. Still haven't seen RoP...been a bad few weeks. Plan to.....

That's gonna get seriously more dangerous pretty soon. As in REAL soon. By the end of October, the day length is only 8 hours. The red dot is where Gambell is. Still a couple degrees below the Arctic Circle...63.8 degrees north. But still. Even that alone, and figure, the sun's never very high or bright, so on the water, if there's any haze, visibility would be really bad. That's not even counting any difference in weather as full winter hits. OTOH, the most northerly peninsula of Russia has its southeasternmost tip only about 50 miles away, so the trip could be done in a few hours. But God help you if you run out of gas or the motor breaks down. And that's even assuming the weather lets you even consider it. Hope they get a warm welcome, they bloody well deserve it.

It is appalling that the NWSL scandal seems to me to be on par with the Catholic Church's scandal...institutional coverups, failure to report, and widespread. It is horrifying to me to say...it's not that surprising. https://www.espn.com/soccer/united-states-nwsl/story/4761896/yates-nwsl-abuse-fallout-playerssponsors-speak-execs-fired The section about the response of sponsors...significant ones have withdrawn from the 3 organizations at the center of this storm, others have said "fix things meaningfully or we are out." We'll have to see how things work out in the long term...first, what measures are put in place to try to ensure it never happens again (it's not possible to say more than "try to"...think the Tua fiasco); then, what the teams' responses are (I think the owners will likely have to sell), and then, if things aren't moving that well, what do the sponsors do? Both the current ones and new ones. I actually think that separation from those 3 teams is easier than a larger franchise.

What makes things so hard to gauge is...that was only 6 games out of a playoff spot. Now....granted, that's probably not the measure you want to use. I think you need to measure against the Braves or Mets...forget trying to measure against the Dodgers right now. But if you can get to the point of the Braves or Mets, at least you should have a decent shot. The Astros are +160 to reach the WS; the Yankees are +210. The Dodgers are +140, the Braves +225, and the Mets +400...they have to play the Dodgers if they win the first round, so that for me would be a hard sell. After that, Toronto's +600...and after that, the odds get longer fast. Seattle, Cleveland, and Tampa Bay are all +1000/+1100; Cards are +900, Padres are +1200, and Phillies are +1600.

Google is your friend. And I'm a professional leisurist, so I have time to fact-check. And honestly, I think I confused the two of em when they were both playing.

Nope. Bortles was Jacksonville. Kap was the Niners. But that's OK, cuz Kap's replacement was the equally forgettable Blaine Gabbert. Bortles did actually replace Gabbert in Jax. Gabbert's had a nice time riding the bench ever since, save for taking over for Kap for a bit, or starting a few games when the #1's been injured.

Actually, I know in the past that Boulder was a tough sell to recruits. It had a nasty rep for liberal snobbishness. It's 90% white...and only about 1% black. It's EXPENSIVE!!!! Cost of living index is 167, altho the worst part of that is housing, because Boulder's *sharply* limited new housing development for decades now. I also wonder about facilities issues. The campus is tightly constrained, and it's atop a hill. Not easy to get new facilities; the base of that hill is Boulder Creek and its walking/riding trail. Facilities are a huge selling point.