Football

Ever since the Supreme Court's 2018 ruling that allowed sports gambling to explode across the nation, the United States has seen a steady increase in the ready availability of gambling opportunities and apps that are now some of the main advertisers and sponsors for sports coverage of all stripes — from ESPN, Fox, NBC and CBS to the likes of Barstool and podcasts a plenty. Some traditionalists and conservatives are put off by this — gambling, they've long argued, is bad for communities and imposes a tax on working-class Americans. That's certainly true when it comes to the presence of casinos and the regressive taxation of lotteries. But sports gambling, unlike other forms of gambling, has significant social benefits that should not be ignored.

“The Big Game” was this weekend. A hundred million or so people of all races, genders, ages, creeds and sexual orientations from Nome, Alaska, to Key West, Florida, to Bangor, Maine, to Monterey, California, and everywhere in between were drawn together, like moths to a plasma screen TV, to tune in to “the most watched TV event in America.” What is it about the Super Bowl? Why does it cause so many of us, even those who don’t really understand the game, to suspend our Sunday scaries and partake in this most sacred ritual of pounding domestic beers, Buffalo chicken wings, and seven-layer dip, partying like there’s no company-wide conference call bright and early Monday morning?

Tom Brady was never the most approachable quarterback in the NFL. That would be Peyton Manning, who just last weekend brought down the house on Saturday Night Live. Aaron Rodgers is probably more athletic; Patrick Mahomes and Matthew Stafford have those cannon-fire arms. Lamar Jackson knows when to run the ball, while any number of QBs might be said to be faster. Yet it's Brady who is indisputably the greatest of all time. Somehow the geeky kid from that rookie weigh-in photo all the way back in 2000, the one who looked like he spent too much time brooding in a computer lab, blossomed into a force of nature the likes of which the professional sports world has never known.

With the emergence of the Omicron variant, a new Covid panic has swept through the country, driven by twin forces: the New York and DC-based national media, and professional sports leagues. The National Hockey League suspended games through December 26 and all cross-border games until December 23. The National Football League scrambled to reschedule games based on over 150 players entering Covid protocols. Games were suspended, regardless of player vaccination status. The NHL touts an almost 99 percent vaccination rate. When the National Basketball Association suspended games and vaccinated Brooklyn Nets players went into the Covid protocol, they invited star player and anti-vaccination spokes-star Kyrie Irving back to the team.

The National Football League is the latest American sports league to cave to Chinese interests while pushing woke policies at home. The league announced Wednesday that it was expanding internationally by allowing eighteen of its thirty-two teams to market abroad. However, a map detailing the marketing agreement labeled Taiwan as part of China. Taiwan considers itself an independent country, but China has been aiming to take control and considers Taiwan one of its many provinces. In 2018, China demanded that international companies list Taiwan as a Chinese province or risk losing the ability to do business in China. The NFL has clearly accepted this attempted power grab in exchange for being able to market its games and merchandise in China.

What’s an octogenarian to do when careless youth pay him no heed? Anthony Fauci never assented to COVID research energized by senior adolescents with hormones raging and frontal lobes still developing — yes, college kids, and no small number of them having topped up blood-alcohol levels by game time. Yet the college football season is well under way and producing “real-world data” to help determine whether it’s finally time to obsess less about virions and more about, say, Big 10 rankings. “I think it’s really unfortunate,” Dr Fauci has remarked, taking his cue from a CNBC host who noted crowded stadiums and fed him this prompt: “I thought COVID is about to have a feast. What do you think?

Imagine having a bad week by Jacksonville Jaguars standards. Such is the fate that has befallen Urban Meyer, the head coach of that star-crossed NFL franchise. Meyer was recently caught on video grind-dancing at an Ohio bar with a woman who was very much not his wife. This prompted sighs of relief from us '90s kids who were worried the term 'grind-dancing' had gone out of vogue forever. It's difficult to understate just what a mess Meyer's Jaguars are. The team is one of only four NFL franchises to have never made it to a Super Bowl. They've struggled for years with mediocre quarterbacks (who among us hasn't been walking down a sidewalk only to accidentally intercept a ball from Blake Bortles?). Meyer, along with rookie hotshot QB Trevor Lawrence, were supposed to turn all that around.

Las Vegas Raiders head coach Jon Gruden resigned Monday after insensitive emails he'd sent a decade ago were leaked to the media, gifting us the latest example of woke mob hypocrisy. Gruden's emails were admittedly, um, not great. He said NFL commissioner Roger Goodell was a 'faggot’, called gay NFL players 'queers’ and said that NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith had 'lips the size of Michelin tires’. Gruden claims that last comment was not about race, but rather the fact that he has always referred to liars as having 'rubber lips’. Curious. There were other Gruden emails leaked to the media that weren't so bad, but they still signaled to the left that he is not on their team and thus not worthy of defense.

’Tis a ritual of late summer, fitting somewhere between tossing the last of our CSA-farm kohlrabi into the compost bin and the first pit forming in my stomach when I contemplate the beginning of a new school year — even though my shade hasn’t darkened a classroom door for many a decade. I refer to my purchase and mirthful reading of the Athlon Sports college football preview magazine, which retails for a cool $11.99. First thing I do is check the forecast for the trio of teams I have pulled for since I first laced up (and tripped over) cleats: Brigham Young (though I am not Mormon), Army (though I am a pacifist) and Notre Dame (though I am a piss-poor Catholic). Next I pour myself a tumbler of rotgut and settle in with the names, these glorious names.