It’s not just anthem protests, the false greenie narrative & King’s game . . .
The Nobel people called and said they were PROBABLY going to award me the peace prize, but when they said I’d have to go to Stockholm I told them to forget it.
wrote this in CNN a few weeks ago, after Week 7 of the NFL season:
“Through week seven, the NFL is down 5% overall from the same point last year. That’s a troubling drop for the biggest ratings powerhouse on TV, but it seems less dire when you consider that the four major networks are down an average 8% in prime time.”
But that 8% drop in primetime ratings – should the president blame that on anthem protests, too, as he continues to beat that drum along with the bullhorn media from the right, as agenda-driven on this subject as he is?
Should we blame the drop in prime time ratings on
too? Are anthem protests a contributing factor in the discussion of why interest in the NFL seems to be in decline this season? Sure. But way down the list.
To paraphrase a famous old line from about the economy, It’s the product, stupid.
It’s too many mediocre teams, and too many injuries to star players, and standings in the AFC that show you exactly one team other than first-place teams with an over.500 record.
Always, of course, there is the dark cloud of brain injuries and CTE hanging over this sport, a dark cloud that is never going away. And while we’re on the subject of false narratives, how about the one that you hear at this time of year around baseball, equating amphetamine use out of baseball’s past with steroids, as if both of them are exactly the same.
Well, yeah, just not on this planet.
Here’s what this subject the other day:
“Steroids are performance enhancers. Amphetamines are performance enablers…(Amphetamines) do not, and did not, transform them, as steroids did. Simple proof: in the era when it is generally agreed that greenies were as common in clubhouses as bubble said on gum, there was no odd distortion of norms of performance.
“That doesn’t mean they should not have been banned. One effect has been that older players on the back end of lucrative long term deals, can’t play 150 games anymore, or be as generally effective as the season and seasons roll on. So, along with the ban on PEDS, and emphasis on analytics, it has changed contract calculations. All reasonable. But not at all reasonable to remotely equate amphetamines to steroids.” It’s not. Costas is right. You want to defend the right of steroid users to get into the Hall of Fame, have at it. But if you want and
in Cooperstown, you’ve got to bring a lot more to your side of the debate than greenies.
It will be interesting to see if the Knicks, as fun and exciting as they’ve been so far, especially at home, can become a playoff team playing no defense.
A lot has changed from last season to this.
Just not that. Remember when the Patriots looked like they had the worst defense around?
Well, the HC of the NEP clearly got insulted about that.
And look at where his defense is now.
It’s harder to find a way to root with vs. than it is to find a way to root with and
Nah, Kaepernick wouldn’t have helped the Packers at all.
Harry Bosch continues to be one of the great, enduring characters in the history of crime fiction.
And Connelly proves that again in the new Bosch, “Two Kinds of Truth.” I’m kind of rooting for
to get the gig. If the massacre in Egypt is somehow an indicator that we need a wall and a travel ban, I keep wondering what kind of wall and travel ban would have prevented the shooting massacre in Las Vegas. All of a sudden, and a little bit underneath the radar, the Cavaliers had won seven in a row through Friday night, and elevated their record to 12-7.
If Belichick was insulted about the way his defense was playing in New England, was clearly insulted about the way his team was playing in Cleveland.
So there was that comeback against the Knicks.
And the 23 points he scored in the fourth quarter against the Nets the other night.
And the triple-double against the Hornets on Friday night as the Cavs came back and won by a point.
There look to be better, deeper teams, in both conferences.
The Celtics have done what they’ve done, spectacularly, since
got hurt. But the Cavs still have something nobody else has: No. 23. Finally today, Happy Birthday to the youngest of our four children, our daughter She’s a college freshman now. So we have happily watched a champion rider clear her latest jump, flying, and with room to spare.
I used to say, boy oh boy, what a girl.
But she’s grown up way too much for that.