Last week I got to watch the Eagles and Raiders play football at my favorite bar with my favorite people while drinking my favorite drinks. From a life perspective, last Sunday could not have gone better. Read More
Hey. You know what today is? The 15th anniversary of The Strokes entering our lives and making it the world a better place? Yes, true. But also, less importantly, it’s the 25th anniversary of my entrance from the void into reality.
It’s my motherfucking birfday.
Patrick Smith/SI.com
High expectations can be dangerous; overreactions, even more so. Change is unavoidable, so no one should be too shocked that the Carolina Panthers and Arizona Cardinals are both 1-3. It could be an unlucky streak, or it could be a changing of the guard. It is simply too early to say. Of course, some things never seem to change. To the frustration of many, the New England Patriots keep winning against all odds because Bill Belichick is a true football savant who consistently switches up his strategy to outwit the opposition. These narratives are not going anywhere, as fans will definitely still be debating the fates of these preseason favorites deep into December and January.
In the meantime, it’s better to focus on the developing subplots. These are not the stories that receive the most attention early on because everyone is too busy losing their minds over their fantasy season not working out as planned. These are the fun developments that show a player making the leap from good to great or the weird trends that threaten to turn the league upside down before they inevitably become just another footnote.
Another week, another day of me being late on picks. It’s a tale as old as time. But this week I like to think I come with good reason: Last night was the first night of Meadows fest in NYC and the premiere of the new season of SNL. And tonight (indulge me for a moment) I get to see Chance the Rapper and Kanye West. Read More
Oh hey there! Whoa, been a while. Sorry about that. For anyone who took the Under in “How many weeks until Tyler is inconsistent with his gambling column,” congratulations, strong bet. Collect your winnings at the nearest window.
USA Today
The English poet Francis Quarles, noted paraphrase royalty, once wrote, “The way to bliss lies not on beds of down, And he that has no cross deserves no crown.” As was more or less his M.O., and the standard run of play in seventeenth century literature, he was drawing largely from The Bible, though you could be forgiven if in a vacuum you thought he may have been discussing the rise of Stan Wawrinka, 2016 U.S. Open men’s champion.
Four sets: that’s all Stan Wawrinka needed to upend Novak Djokovic in the men’s final of the U.S. Open, which he captured in a magnificent 6-7 (1-7), 6-4, 7-5, 6-3 win that elicited some of the best shot-making either player has ever flashed. Once an underperforming prodigy, Wawrinka is now, against most well-meaning odds, a three-time major champion as well as, for the moment, the king of New York.
Football is back. Can you believe it? Last night, sitting in my favorite bar with two of my favorite people, I got to yell “WIDE LEFT” drunkenly at a muted television screen just before Graham Gano made contact with the football and turned my words into reality and an 0-1 start to the season for the Carolina Panthers.
I felt alive.
And now that football is back, so is the Hypothetical SuperContest. It’s our fourth year here! We’ve had our ups, our downs and probably a few to many references to Jon Gruden. For those that have been here from the jump (Hi Rory! Hi Dad!): thanks so much for supporting my degenerate dreams. For those new to this space, welcome to my gambling nightmare.
Well, it’s not necessarily a nightmare. Not every week at least.
Courtesy of yours truly
Putting a torch to a flame: that’s one way of dealing with the vexation of presumed certainty turning to capricious doubt. Nothing is certain, and doubt can be a useful progenitor for inspiration. Even Jesus looked around in anger.
Down a break in the fourth set to Ilya Marchenko, Stan Wawrinka looked inward, his steely resolve having forsaken him, and, as has happened on many occasions before, dispelled the rage within him via the destruction of a racquet, an inanimate Judas for lack of anything else.
Getty Images/Quinn Rooney
If, at the beginning of 2014, I would have asked you to guess what Swiss male tennis player was going to win two majors over the following two years, you almost certainly would have guessed Roger Federer[1]. Steady Fed did not win a major the previous year, but a nagging back injury limited him, and in periods of health you could still see his heady mastery of the game on full display. A recovery was inevitable, and anyway, it wasn’t looking like the next generation of tennis talent was prepared to challenge the Big Four. It mostly still isn’t.
Almost three complete seasons later, however, another native of the neutral country has emerged as a worthy adversary to the quartet that has dominated the men’s game for the last decade. The son of farmers, Stan Wawrinka is a two-time Grand Slam champion and, at 31, may be playing the best tennis of his life.
Congratulations, college football fan – you made it!
After six months of trudging along through the hissing of untamable lawns, Frank Ocean’s endlessly dull carpentry show and, worst of all, baseball, you’ve made it. You’re here and you can leave one of the worst international capers not named The Thomas Crown Affair remake (don’t @ me) in the rear view.
College football is back, and we’re here to sell you all of the fantastic fruits and veggies that the farm of opening weekend has to offer as we head into autumn’s bountiful harvest of football. We’ll just warn you that farm-to-table doesn’t always mean that it’s the freshest. But hey, one dash of candy red paint will turn that moldy thing into the ripest beefsteak tomato.
Tuesdays With Horry 