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Two national championships removed from an SEC hegemony, and here we are again. The world is putting its money on the machine with laser-like precision that has been the toast of other automatons who you call co-workers. That machine is the Alabama Crimson Tide, as controlled by its monomaniacal creator, Nick Saban.
In 1953, North and South Korea signed an armistice.
In 1961, South Korea had an income per capita of just $80 per year.
In 1988, the Seoul Olympic Games prompted South Korea to import its first bottled water.
In 2006, Foreign Minister Ban-Ki Moon was appointed Secretary General of the United Nations.
In 2010, South Korea ranked 15th-highest on the Human Development Index.
And then, in 2013, South Korea had its first McRib season.
Saturday Night Live/NBCUniversal
For some of us, 2015 was a year of fulfillment, consistency and hope. For the rest, it served unpredictable dishes with sides of indifferent mediocrity, crushing despair and lukewarm-bordering-on-cold broccoli. That’s not to say that lukewarm-bordering-on-cold broccoli is necessarily bad, but it definitely could’ve been better.
No matter the feeling of leaving 2015 in the cracked rear view, a new calendar is upon us. With it comes so many more opportunities for change, inspiring moments in sports, reasons to believe, heartbreaking losses and chances to leave your friends hanging by staying in on a weekend night because you don’t want to deal with it. We at TwH get that. In that spirit, we gathered around our digital campfire and threw darts into our brains trying to pinpoint some of what we think may come to fruition in the coming year. Don’t quote us on this.
Twentieth Century Fox
While searching for the pickle in the tree and refusing to acknowledge any Clintons that aren’t George, Sanders that aren’t Barry and Trumps that aren’t playing cards, spare a thought to a film still struggling to validate its identity. In a recent poll, the greatest Christmas movie ever was deemed to not be a Christmas movie at all. The tragedy here is clear: it’s time to recognize the holiday overtones of the robbery at Nakatomi Plaza because Die Hard is a Christmas movieº.
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On Wednesday night, the city of New Orleans will host the final game in the illustrious career of the greatest American soccer player ever. If, despite the header image, you are still confused as to the antecedent of that phrase, here is another: the all-time highest goal scorer in international play for both men and women. No? This was the only soccer player listed on the TIME 100 list for 2015, and that was prior to the World Cup victory.
For over a decade, Abby Wambach has been the talisman of American soccer excellence, not unlike Serena Williams in tennis. While the men have had their moments of individual brilliance – Landon Donovan against Algeria in 2010, Tim Howard becoming the Secretary of Defense against Belgium in 2014 – Wambach has sustained her knack for goal-scoring and competitiveness, finally seeing through her destiny in 2015 with a World Cup victory in Vancouver, the ultimate revenge against Japan, the country which had stifled a seemingly relentless American machine in 2011. Though the USWNT will continue without her, it would be unfair and callous to casually dismiss the contributions of Abby Wambach to her sport in this country.
Yu Tsai for Sports Illustrated via AP
On Monday, Sports Illustrated announced that Serena Williams was the recipient of its annual Sportsperson of the Year Award, a marvelous gesture for a certainly deserving and wholly underappreciated athlete. That gig comes with a stirring S.L. Price cover profile and recognition for a year well done. Unfortunately, what should be an innocuous distinction seems also to be accompanied by the anger of fans whose preferred choice in the matter, a non-human, finished second.
In the wake of Serena’s selection as Sportsperson of the Year, horse Twitter revealed itself.
It is unseasonably hot right now. Yesterday, it was 70 degrees outside. In New York City. I took my dog for a walk in a t-shirt and shorts and had a bit of a sweat going by the end of it.
It is December 13th.
“Grantland East” – Rembert Browne
“Happy Thanksgiving!”
Decked out in a red flannel shirt, the kind that suggests a casual work environment, Juliet Litman enthusiastically welcomed her congregation, a throng of young dudes, mostly white, with a few willing and able women scattered about. These parishioners had come to Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village, site of the Madden lectures a little over a month prior, to pay final respects to the most important sports blog ever, the recently-deceased standard for longform pop journalism and the sort of offbeat topics you concoct in your dorm lounge late one night after several too many adult beverages. This was the Grantland wake.
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In case you haven’t heard – or are willfully ignoring it, like the group of people who attempt to avoid discovering the victor of the Super Bowl every year – one of the great mysteries of pop music has finally come undone, albeit partially. In an interview with PEOPLE magazine, singer-songwriter and proto-Taylor Swift Carly Simon has revealed that the second verse, at the very least, of her seminal hit “You’re So Vain” is, as many suspected, about Warren Beatty. With a great sigh of relief, I’m certain, James Taylor can rock himself to sleep, and Mick Jagger has finally achieved some level of satisfaction, depending on the geography of his egotism in 2015.
What Simon also did in revealing Beatty as her muse, however, was take some of the intimacy out of listening to music. To be frank, I’d really rather she wouldn’t have done that. It isn’t so much that she’s ruined “You’re So Vain” – the classic rock stations in Charlotte, North Carolina, that seem to think Simon only ever released one song already achieved that in my youth – but she did manage to remind us that, as much as we want to feel closer to the musicians we love, they are eternally out of reach, mingling with people more famous than we in parties on yachts, dressed in white clothing after Labor Day like the bourgeois bottles on the top shelf that they are.
To be clear, I’m only half-serious, but that half is deadly serious.
Madden NFL‘s worst nightmare and greatest hope: Jon Bois.
Moving back to what LinkedIn refers to as “the greater New York City area” (read: Hoboken, New Jersey) affords one many luxuries not readily available in other parts of the country. Chief among them are actual bagels, the eternal winter and nightly concerts including bands you’ve never heard of in Brooklyn. One of the underrated aspects of the city, however, is the availability of free events featuring fairly prominent public figures at which you might learn a thing or two about a thing or two. When I learned that three of today’s most important Internet sports writers were gathering at Le Poisson Rouge in Greenwich Village to discuss the acclaimed Madden NFL video game series, naturally I had to attend.
Tuesdays With Horry 