I’m at a bar! Went to get my car towed at the duplex (in a hilarious joke, my car declined to start on Saturday night after we’d piled it to the brim with things to take over to the new apartment, and no, it’s not the battery, we tried jumping it—it appears to be the starter motor) and decided to walk to a bar halfway between the duplex and the apartment to watch the second half of the Burnley game (I’ve picked enough lunches up from here doing Stuber Eats that I know they show English soccer on Tuesday afternoons in February, like any good bar should). Anyway, bar blogging. Two Coca-Colas and a chicken club sandwich deep. Splurged for the sweet potato fries. I walked!
Let’s talk about steroids.
Open Season for Baseball Doping
Something the world evidently just realized yesterday (myself included, not shaming the world here) is that because there’s a lockout, baseball players aren’t being tested for banned substances. If there’s no CBA, nothing can be banned under the CBA, or so is the basic situation. Don’t get me on a technicality here. I’m about to make a great point.
The last time baseball had a labor stoppage, steroids saved the day. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa came out of there like John the Anabolic Baptist preparing the way for Barry Bonds to dunk some balls in the holy water of the San Francisco Bay. It was a blast. So fun, in fact, that the Hall of Fame won’t let them in today. Not until they build a special wing called the Hall of Lit, where all baseball’s bad boys get wax figures in disco apparel instead of those boring busts (gonna get way less boring busts, if you catch my drift) and if Joe West ever shows up he gets a mandatory swirly.
So…you think this is a coincidence? Or do you think Rob Manfred, taking office in 2013, said, Hey guys, I’ve got an idea, and set in breaking the game down to where it could only come back stronger, on a steroid-binge-driven tidal wave of glory. Intentional or not, it’s coming, and you know Yadier Molina’s juiced beyond belief right now. Hope he took out a good insurance policy on his tendons.
I do mean it. I think we should give Manfred a chance on this. If he pulls it off, it could save baseball again. No one is beyond redemption (I don’t think I actually mean this but it does apply to Manfred, the greatest villain I think about on a regular basis).
Hopefully, Joe Kelly’s taking advantage of the opportunity. Hopefully he comes out throwing 108 come May and everybody chalks it up to the longer offseason (and vibes, we’re all about vibes today, please see Bevo’s Fake Nuts for reference). I would say that hopefully the Cubs are taking advantage of this as well, but the Cubs have just about nobody on their roster. Jason Heyward, I guess. Hopefully Jason Heyward’s on every PED known to man, and a few we haven’t even discovered yet that he’s buying from a opossum wearing a doctor hat out in Skokie.
F1 Still Doesn’t Have an Austin Contract
Unless Google hasn’t heard, or it’s been signed but they’re keeping it a secret, Formula 1 and Circuit of the Americas still have no contract. Just keeping that out there. Hope it changes. For a variety of reasons (yes, one is that I want to troll these losers, and another is that I am one of them).
The Clasch
Successful weekend in Los Angeles for NASCAR. Cars vibes, Ice Cube was there, Pitbull (who owns a team, if you’ve forgotten) did a prerace concert, there was a healthy amount of wrecking but not too much, the short track was dope. Take away Joey Logano winning and it would’ve been the perfect weekend. The new car didn’t seem so different you actively noticed it all weekend, so if it provides better racing, it’ll be a slam dunk. All good stuff, excited for Daytona next week (and congratulations to Logano on the child, hope she got more of Logano’s wife’s genes). Only complaint is that I didn’t realize it was a two-day event until the first day of it. That’s probably mostly on me. I can own that for you, NASCAR.
The Sens Sens’d New Jersey
Really, God Sens’d New Jersey, but the Senators drove in the nail last night in the NHL’s first game back from the all-star break (my working theory on why this was scheduled is that they thought the Sens and Devils would have the fewest all-stars, and technically, that was true). 4-1 win, plenty of fun was had, the journeymen and veterans did the scoring, Matt Murray played well, Drake Batherson’s been drinking milk (need someone to tell me the Brady Tkachuk milk story because I’m seeing references I don’t understand), all good things. Life is good in Ottawa. Well, not Ottawa, actually. I understand life is pretty terrible in Ottawa at the moment. It’s great out in Kanata, though. The fellas host the Hurricanes tonight. 6:00 PM Texas Time. ESPN+. Joe said he’s buying a subscription. It’s for him, but I’m gonna use it. His passwords always have to do with his favorite tiebreaker systems in college basketball.
Burnley!!!!
After a lackluster showing on Saturday, when the lads handed Watford their first clean sheet of the season, Burnley rallied back today, overcoming an awful start to salvage a point at home against Manchester United. Two disallowed goals and a not-disallowed goal in the first half had the scene grim, but after the half, our guys came out firing, using two neat little breakaways to put some pressure on the blue team (I always find it funny when teams wear a color I’m not expecting), with the second one cracking through. Wout Weghorst to Jay Rodriguez, who did some dazzling and put it in the net. From there, revitalized after being held intact to that point by some Nick Pope heroics, the defense kept its ground.
On the negative side, Saturday still happened, and Newcastle beat Everton today, making the bottom of the table look as follows:
12. Southampton: 25 points, 22 games played
13. Crystal Palace: 24 points, 22 games played
14. Brentford: 23 points, 23 games played
15. Leeds: 22 points, 21 games played
16. Everton: 19 points, 21 games played
17. Newcastle: 18 points, 22 games played
18. Norwich: 16 points, 22 games played
19. Watford: 15 points, 22 games played
20. Burnley: 14 points, 20 games played
That’s a bigger gap than we’d like with Newcastle, especially with the Magpies fairly bolstered by the January signing window. Burnley’s up to 18th in points per game, but 18th is still a relegation spot, and it would be necessary to track down one of those five above Newcastle if Newcastle can’t be caught.
Norwich plays Palace tomorrow, Southampton goes to Tottenham, Brentford goes to Man City, Leeds goes to Villa. On the optimistic side again, Burnley’s ahead of all the teams we listed here except Southampton and Palace on goal differential, so pulling even would, at the moment, be enough. Tough stretch coming up, too. I don’t know if any games will be added back to the midst of this, but at the moment it goes Liverpool (H), Brighton (A), Tottenham (H), Palace (A), Chelsea (H), Brentford (A), Southampton (H) from today until the end of March. Would estimate Burnley to only be favored in one of those. The last one.
Mason Ramsey: Has a Job
We celebrated his return to Instagram recently, and based on the feedback we’ve received from readers…you guys want more of this? Whatever you want, I guess. What we’ve learned in the last few days is that our yodeling prince works at Subway and drives a truck. Is it his truck? Just the family vehicle he gets to drive? Unclear. We don’t ask questions. That would make this weird.
Anyway, the transition forward from child stardom continues to be wholesome for this young man, and we love that. For him and for the world.
Brock Chalk
Brock Cunningham’s seven scoreless minutes keyed a massive Texas win last night over the Kansas Jayhawks, continuing a winning streak begun by…well, you can guess (it’s Shaka Smart, Shaka Smart is the answer, Shaka Smart started the winning streak). Bevo’s Fake Nuts today congratulates the Longhorns and talks about how if we brought back the midrange jumper, we’d stop losing wars. So get this thing in front of Secretary Austin, please. Maybe hit him with this link first so he has to click into Bevo’s Fake Nuts on his own. That way, we get double clicks.
Virginia’s NIT Chances: Alive Again
Finally, we celebrate the news that got NIT photographers switching to higher-definition lenses. College basketball’s handsomest man (this isn’t a grudge against Jay Wright for the fouls on Marquette, we’re just being objective, we already said that was water under the bridge, why won’t everyone please accept that we hold no Jay Wright grudge) may be NIT-bound, with Tony Bennett’s Virginia Cavaliers taking down a decent Duke team in Durham, in the process lifting themselves from the trash heap to, to hear some bandwagon-jumpers tell it, the bubble. The bubble’s an ambitious place to put them, but the NIT might not be. We’ll see come Friday, when we tentatively plan to next update our NIT Bracketology (I told you I hate being wrong, oh wait I actually say that in this next blurb I got my order switched stay tuned).
Game of the NITe
There are a lot of options for tonight’s Game of the NITe, so let’s take the first one we see. Ehh, not that one. Nope, not that either. Not that one, that one doesn’t count anymore. Ooh there’s a good one. There’s a really good one.
At 8:00 PM Texas Time (that’s 7:00 PM Mountain Time, for our Las Cruces readers), Michigan tips off in State College against the Penn State Nittany Lions.
Now. Penn State’s probably not going to make the NIT. I say probably, and stress it so greatly, because I’m always terrified of being wrong. Also, though, they’re expected to just not have a good-enough résumé to make it. Isn’t even the sub-.500 thing holding them back this year. I mean, that’s happening too, but that’s not the root of the problem.
Michigan, on the other hand, is in terrific NIT shape. Projected to finish a game or two above .500, which is the perfect spot to be if you’re in the Big Ten and therefore playing a Big Ten schedule and you’re also as prominent a program as Michigan is and your coach isn’t a coward like some prominent coaches (looks at Durham) so you play some big nonconference games. Stay right there, Michigan. Stay aimed right there.
The staying there, though, isn’t easy. It requires figuring out whether to win or lose tonight in the late-night affair in the mountains, and then doing whichever it is you’re supposed to do. Godspeed, Wolverines. I have no idea what helps you tonight.
***
Viewing schedule (all times CST):
- 5:00 PM: UNC @ Clemson. ACC Network. NIT bubbles, opposite ones, though. One of the most beautiful kinds of games.
- 6:00 PM: Sens. ESPN+. Backup plan if I can’t figure out Joe’s password is Oklahoma State @ TCU on ESPNU. Oklahoma State’s ineligible but maybe there’ll be a war before then and the NCAA will forget. Look out, Grenada. Secretary Austin knows about the midrange jumper thing.
- 8:00 PM: Game of the NITe.
- 10:00 PM: UCLA @ Stanford. ESPN2. Stanford’s probably worth getting to know if you’re an NIT fan. Not sure the same can be said of Santa Clara, but if you’re into them (or Saint Mary’s, like some kind of pervert) they’re on at the same time on ESPNU.
