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Monthly Archives: September 2015

TV Party 2015: Week 5

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September 30, 2015
College Football
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Welcome to TV Party, a weekly segment where we preview ten of the week’s most exciting match-ups in college football so you know when to grab some beer and ignore the outside world. 

This week: ROAD TRIP! We’re takin’ our Holler Smarts all the way from Appalachia to Norman, Oklahoma for a Big 12 shootout between the Mountaineers and the Sooners. Afterwards, we’re gonna weave our way through some golf courses to Athens, GA for a beautiful afternoon Between the Hedges where you’ll hear the delightful, shared song of the Alabama and Georgia fan bases, “Run the Dang Ball.” Then, we’ll turn the car around and head back towards Waco, Texas in order to watch a masked man attempt to escape from ravenous bears that have been fed nothing but Clive Owen’s liquid cocaine. We will then storm back towards South Carolina for Notre Dame-Clemson where Irish fans attempt to explain sacrilege to a dude wearing orange and purple candy striped overalls. 

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Cleaning Up the Mess 2015: Week 4

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September 28, 2015
College Football
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(Via Getty Images)

Cleaning Up the Mess is here to make sense of what just happened at your weekend-long television party. Who put Goldfish in the blender? And why is the thermostat on 42?

This week: Bret Bielema really does not care for that cheese dip that you made even though he unknowingly spilled it all over the front of his shirt. Cal shows up to the party with both brilliant Nobel prize thesis and a case of wine. Utah decided it would be funny to bring a cake just to smash it in Oregon’s face before walking off and saying, “O’Doyle Rules!” Also, Butch Jones’ maxillofacial surgery requires that you cut up his food before he eats so he doesn’t choke on it.

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The Hypothetical SuperContest 2015 – Week 3

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September 25, 2015
NFL, Sports
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SuperContest_Promo

We’re trending upward.

After the dismal performance of my picks Week 1, there was nowhere to go but up last Sunday, and up we went. After the early games my picks were three-and-oh thanks to the Bucs, Steelers, and Patriots taking care of business. For a moment I was hopeful for a perfect week that would plant my picks at 5-5 overall and allow for a fresh start to this year’s Hypothetical SuperContest. But that was not meant to be. My Philadelphia Eagles couldn’t beat a Dez-less Cowboys team that was helmed by Brandon Weedon after Romo went down with a busted collarbone and on Monday Night Football the Colts seemed absolutely mystified by the New York Football Jets. Read More

TV Party 2015: Week 4

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September 23, 2015
College Football, Sports
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Welcome to TV Party, a weekly segment where we preview ten of the week’s most exciting match-ups in college football so you know when to grab some beer and ignore the outside world

This week: If last week was a corporate branded tailgate, this week is sinister in that the corporations have now rescinded their feast. So long, plentiful beer and wings! Hello, Notre Dame-UMASS! Get on up here, Southern vs. Georgia! Also, here’s South Carolina vs. UCF which is basically a chicken wing with the tiniest shred of meat hanging to it.

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Cleaning Up the Mess 2015: Week 3

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September 21, 2015
College Football
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(Via Marvin Gentry – USAToday Sports)

Cleaning Up the Mess is here to make sense of what just happened at your weekend-long television party. Who put Goldfish in the blender? And why is the thermostat on 42?

This week: Bret Bielema wonders why you chose that wallpaper before finding out that his car has been towed for parking on the wrong side of the street. Clemson traveled to Louisville without charging its phone and had to find its way back to the house without GPS while being completely intoxicated (somehow, they miraculously managed to show up unharmed). Nick Saban came over with his friend Lane Kiffin and you are really starting to wonder amid all the yelling why they are friends in the first place. 

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The Hypothetical SuperContest 2015 – Week 2

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September 18, 2015
NFL, Sports
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boomer

Well, that was embarrassing.

After touting my skills as a gambling picker to the collective consciousness of the Internet, Sunday proved me a fool to anyone who was paying attention. By all accounts, last Sunday was the worst gambling day of my life. Beyond my 0-5 performance in the Hypothetical SuperContest, I went 3-12 against the spread in my weekly picks league, worse than any week I’ve had in the past two years. Thankfully, as a fairly reformed actual gambler, my monetary losses were kept to a minimum, save for three fairly small bets I had my sister place for me in Vegas during the preseason, (sorry about the losses Russell, I’ll get you back when I can).

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TV Party 2015: Week 3

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September 16, 2015
College Football
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Welcome to TV Party, a weekly segment where we preview ten of the week’s most exciting match-ups in college football so you know when to grab some beer and ignore the outside world.

This week: If last week was table scraps, this is a tailgate of ungodly proportions. We’re talking corporate-branded idea of what every single football tailgate is like. There’s many a chip-and-dip with wings, wings, and MORE WINGS. Four giant Vizio televisions in one room because this is how you should be living, AMERICA. An Alabama fan is there because, of course! Also, BEER! Lots and lots of BEER! We’re talking so much beer that Madison, Wisconsin can get alcohol poisoning. All of this grotesque bulk brought to you by ESPN, Zaxby’s, Coca-Cola, The Home Depot, Budweiser (though college students should be studying because it’s about PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY), and a local commercial about catheters.

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Against The Shadows: Djokovic/Federer and the 2015 U.S. Open Men’s Final

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September 14, 2015
Sports, Tennis
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Novak Djokovic celebrates a point against Roger Federer during their Men's Singles Final

Courtesy sportinglife.com

Without looking (actually, without being able to find it exactly), I know that David Foster Wallace once said or wrote something to the effect of, “Some people seem to think that being a tennis prodigy is easy. It’s not.” I’ll get lambasted for the deployment of an indirect quote like that, and somebody is bound to find it, but I welcome the opportunity to be corrected on something as banal as a David Foster Wallace quote on tennis. I really do.

Anyway, perhaps the only role more difficult to fill than that of tennis prodigy is that of aging tennis legend and, by extension, its subset, “aging greatest men’s tennis player ever.” The shadow of retirement looms large in professional sports, where most athletes are finished by their mid-30s at the latest. More often than not, the kids come up from behind even more furiously than that, pushing pillars of sport to the edge with increasing efficiency. No athlete’s autumnal period, however, has been longer, nor sunset faded more slowly, than that of Roger Federer.

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Cleaning Up the Mess 2015: Week 2

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September 14, 2015
College Football
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(Via Mike Carter – USAToday Sports)

Cleaning Up the Mess is here to make sense of what just happened at your weekend-long television party. Who put Goldfish in the blender? And why is the thermostat on 42?

This week: Bret Bielema talks a whole lot of mess about your floor plan then learns that his house is on fire. Notre Dame struggled to take the lid off the pickle jar and dropped it in the floor again (it’s okay, grandpa. You just sit on the couch and watch more TV, ok?). Oklahoma beats a 14-year old at Battleship and proceeds to flip over the game board with it’s middle finger.

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The Hypothetical SuperContest 2015 – Week 1

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September 12, 2015
NFL, Sports
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almichaels

We made it.

Another season of professional football has arrived and with it, another year of the The Hypothetical SuperContest. Oh man, it feels good to be back. Last night, the Patriots and Steelers rang in the gambling new year, with Pittsburgh completing an unbelievable backdoor push that did not go unnoticed by the great Al Michaels.

If you’re new here, there’s a good chance that you didn’t understand any parts of that previous sentence other than “Patriots,” “Steelers” and “the great Al Michaels.” No worries mate, you will soon. In the mean time… Read More