I was wrong about a lot of things last week.
I was wrong in thinking that Jimmy Clausen would start for the Bears. To be fair, it wasn’t announced that Jay Cutler was ready to go until like ten minutes before kickoff, causing the Raiders to lose their status as road favorites after the line moved five points. I was pretty wrong in this case. Read More
On Saturday night, for the first time since 1977, when Joe Montana led the soon-to-be national champion Fighting Irish to a 21-17 victory, Notre Dame visited Clemson in Death Valley. Because of Hurricane Joaquin, South Carolina Governor (and Clemson alum) Nikki Haley warned fans to avoid attending the game unless absolutely necessary. With playoff hopes in the balance for both teams, a muddy slugfest was all but inevitable. For all intents and purposes, this was to be the biggest college football game of the season thus far.
They weren’t going to let a little bit of rain stop them from enjoying themselves. Neither was I.
Oh man let’s keep this train rolling.
We kept it up with another 3-2 week against the spread and were two minutes away from the Colts covering to make it a 4-1 day. But there’s still work to be done. My awful showing Week 1 left us in a hole that we’re still digging out of, but we’re just one more positive week away from a winning record and a modicum of respect from the greater Internet gambling public.
Most importantly, my picks have caught up with Chance the Gambler. Read More
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
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This week: If last week was a corporate branded tailgate, this week is sinister in that the corporations have now rescinded their feast.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.
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).
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.
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
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: Everything is very dire. There are probably, like, four games worth watching. All of the rest could be potential something or other. Between the hours of 12-6, you should just do something nice with your day and not watch the Battle for the Cy-Hawk Trophy. Also, you might want to save your energy for this nice, young man.
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It’s almost the middle of September, which means it’s almost October, which means it’s almost time for basketball season. With the NFL stumbling over itself at every turn – which, come to think of it, is how most of its current players will spend their autumn years, in their mid-40s – and baseball casually winding toward the postseason (we see you, Mets), basketball still stakes a claim in some part of the sports conversation, even if you aren’t watching EuroBasket games in the middle of your afternoon (On Wednesday, Italy mounted a comeback to force overtime and beat Germany, 89-82). Tuesday’s announcement that NBA division winners are no longer guaranteed playoff spots kick-started much of the hibernating excitement which will roll us into the upcoming season.
With basketball season breathing down our necks, it’s time to start considering how some of the pieces of Adam Silver’s puzzle will fit, how they will interact with one another and how they can realize their potential. One of the most interesting teams for this basketball season has long been a laughingstock, even with a generational talent who may very well be the best pure center in the NBA. Now, that team has two potential game-changing centers, as well as a hodgepodge of players who either grew out of previous roles or never quite fit into them in the first place. The Sacramento Kings aren’t good, yet, but they could be, and they’re seemingly better; they aren’t stable, yet, but they were for a brief time last year; and they aren’t a favorite, which may end up making them one of the most dangerous teams in the league.
Tuesdays With Horry 