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The Hypothetical SuperContest – Week 6

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October 12, 2013
NFL, Sports
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Sigh-Facepalm

Sigh.

We had a rough one last week folks. A brutal 1-4, my worst week yet as a hypothetical gambler. Shout out to the Saints for saving me from my one true fear coming into this process, the dreaded 0-5 week.

I could make excuses here. I could be mad at Detroit for leading us to believe Calvin Johnson would play against the Packers even though he hadn’t practiced all week, only to scratch him right before kickoff. I could blame the Broncos defense for not being able to hold the Cowboys under 42 points. I could be frustrated with RUSSELL WIL… no, I could never do that. Read More

KANYE ON JIMMY KIMMEL: BREAKING DOWN THE EPIC INTERVIEW

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October 12, 2013
Hip-Hop, Music, Pop Culture, Television
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kanye on kimmel

It’s easy to see Kanye West as a caricature of himself. He’s arrogant, abrasive, married to not only a Kardashian but the Kardashian… basically, he makes it pretty simple. But people who only see Kanye on this level are missing out. It’s hard to take someone who’s always calling himself a genius seriously, but if you listen… Kanye actually is a genius. He’s musically brilliant and maybe a bit of a ridiculous person, but he’s also fucking smart too. Case in point: his interview on Jimmy Kimmel. If you missed out on the epic twitter battle, here’s the rundown: Kimmel spoofed an interview Kanye did in the UK, using a couple of kids and a couple of milkshakes to recreate it. For whatever reason, Kanye really did not take kindly to this, and went on a hilarious and insane twitter rant insulting Kimmel. A few weeks later, Kimmel had Kanye on the show so they could prove they’d kissed and made up. What resulted was basically a giant therapy session and it was fucking brilliant:

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NBA 2013-’14 Season Preview: Atlantic Division

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October 10, 2013
Basketball, Sports
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LBJ

I love the game of basketball for its subtle artistry and the supreme level of skill necessary to exceed at it, not unlike being a musician, a physician or an astronaut. In no other basketball league in the world is the competition greater, obviously, than in the National Basketball Association. These people are the absolute best of the best, and the webs they weave nightly, from Kyrie Irving’s magisterial through-the-legs assists to Ray Allen’s legendarily perfect follow-through on a jump shot, can drive a fan up the wall with wonder, reducing him or her to an adolescent curiosity in which questions become essentially rhetorical. With the NBA preseason right around the corner, the time has come for everyone with a voice to chime in with predictions and perspectives. We at TwH are no different.

We (I) will break down each division, listing the teams in the order in which I believe they will finish the regular season. There will be plenty of room for dispute, as there always is, and from the start I must concede that this is an imperfect art. There are far too many variables involved in an 82-game season to know everything, but we will do the best we can with what we know now. Sometimes it may only take a gut feeling to push one team over another. Prepare for anything. And so we begin, in the Atlantic Division.
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Drop Picks On ‘Em: Week 7

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October 10, 2013
College Football, Sports
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20131010-130437.jpg

This week’s College Gameday is heading to the University of Washington for the first time ever since the show’s first broadcast in 1987. This is huge news for the Huskies, who find themselves in the middle of a period of resurgence as of late. But if you’re an individual on the East Coast (such as myself), you probably know very little about Seattle, the city that houses UDub. In fact, the only thing you probably know is that Seattle is the home of Starbucks, rain and grunge. And that’s fine. Be prepared to face the unknown. Seattle is strange to you, but don’t fret, it’s not Portland weird.

Also – I am not really sure what the Washington fan base is like. I’ve seen them pop on random message boards from time to time recalling the Don James era, but I am really unfamiliar with how these people operate or how they tail- WAIT, WHAT? THEY TAILGATE ON BOATS? CAN WE GO TO THE GAME NOW? PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASEEEEEEEEEEE.

Enough of this wishful thinking about boatgating – LET’S GET IT.

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PAUL RHOADS IS STILL PROUD: Lessons from Week 6

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October 8, 2013
College Football, Sports
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If Paul Rhoads is one thing, he’s proud. He’s in a perpetual state of pride. He is your dad whenever you make honor roll or change your own oil. The Iowa State Cyclones put up a damn good effort in running their own small business; it’s not their fault that big corpo is pulling the strings and has all that lobbying money to monopolize the market. Rhoads is still proud, dammit.

In the game of life, you win some, and you lose some. And sometimes you are screwed over by the officials at the one-yard line. You lose some because you are not Texas, but hey, I’m just making excuses. These are hard truths learned by all. Especially by a Cyclones team that, no matter if it’s their first 1-3 start since 2007, you should be proud of. Why? Because Mack Brown is on thin ice, regardless.

So, what else did we learn in a weekend full of near whiffs, alternate uniforms and late night football?

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The Hypothetical SuperContest – Week 5

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October 4, 2013
NFL, Sports
4 Comments

Peyton Manning

Last Sunday was beautifully horrifying.

I sat staring into the 8-bit stream of NFL RedZone that my computer is capable of hijacking overseas, worrying. Not because everything was going awfully, but because everything was going great. After a miraculous comeback cover in overtime by RUSSELL HUSTLE BUSTLE WILSON and company, my drunk picks were looking like they might go 5-0, which would mean another night of Sambuca and misery come this weekend. Thankfully, my Philadelphia Eagles couldn’t come close to covering +10.5 against the Broncos, and my picks settled at an absolutely brilliant 4-1.

I am not bad at this, folks.

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Drop Picks On ‘Em: Week 6

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October 4, 2013
College Football, Sports
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You’ve been furloughed Ha Ha. Sorry – *you’ve been furloughed, Ha Ha.

It’s shutdown week and at TwH we are all about keeping you informed about how this fiscal crisis will affect your Saturday afternoon:

  • Army, Navy, and Air Force games are were at the risk of not occurring 
  • If you’re a member of our nation’s armed forces overseas, you may not be able to see a game
  • You will not be able to visit any national parks or monuments so you might as well be a shut-in for one weekend, you outdoorsy, patriotic weirdo
  • You will not be able to see Ha Ha Clinton-Dix play because he has been furloughed by the University of Alabama
  • The Department of Defense has been forced to cancel their experiment in Boulder against the Oregon Ducks where the real Colorado Buffaloes were replaced by Buffalo androids to see if they could stop the Oregon offense
  • Lil’ Red will not be in attendance at the Illinois – Nebraska game because of the halt in agricultural subsidies to pay for two Cornhuskers within Memorial Stadium
  • “THE GOVERNMENT SHUT DOWN MY OTHER SIGN” at College Gameday (YOU CAN DO BETTER, NORTHWESTERN)

Now that I’ve given you a small run-down on the reach of the federal government into your college football Saturdays, let’s get down to business (that’s non-profit business with little to no federal contracts, government. Please don’t shut down Saturday).

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Fire(d) Lane (Kiffin): Lessons from Week 5

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October 1, 2013
College Football, Sports
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If getting fired after being pulled off the team bus from LAX to campus isn’t the most Hollywood thing ever, please give me another example. This felt like a seedy termination. A scene, not unlike the one in Dog Day Afternoon, where the main character fails, and the repercussions involve a swift execution. Lane Kiffin didn’t even step foot on the USC’s campus before Haden uttered the words that put Kiffin out of job and Ed Orgeron in control of a faltering program. Now, the hunt begins anew for the Trojans, who have slowly started to slide into irrelevancy as the Pac-12 has started to gain notoriety as the second-best conference in America. Gone are the days of USC and everybody else. USC can’t compete with Arizona State, or even downtrodden Washington State. The whole country says “adieu” to Kiffykins, the man responsible for Tennessee fever dreams and the underdevelopment of all-around awesome Marqise Lee.

While your favorite team’s coach may not have been fired as soon as he exited the plane, his days as head man may be numbered. Look at UConn. Now Earl Campbell’s taking shots at Mack Brown? The coaching carousel may be fired up sooner than expected.

Aside from learning that, yes, the world of college football is on fiiiiiireeeeee, what else did we take away from this marvelous weekend?

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A Tale of Two Quarterbacks

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September 29, 2013
College Football, Sports
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Aaron Murray jumped around excitedly with his teammates as Zach Mettenberger’s last-ditch attempt to convert on 4th and 10 ended in an incompletion. Mettenberger looked over across the field dejected. There was a little less than a minute left on the clock; the game was all but over. Murray put his head gear on and headed out onto the field to execute the victory formation. Meanwhile, Mettenberger sat on the bench, staring into an endless sea of red shirts, dresses, and poms poms. He wanted a chance to play in Sanford again. He wanted a chance to beat his old team. Instead, he’d have to settle for watching Murray flip the helmet off of his head, flash a winning smile and embrace his coach.

As the clock wound down to 0:00, the score stood at 44-41 Georgia. It was over. And it was one of the best football games I have ever watched.

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What is and Never Could Be

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September 28, 2013
Auto Racing
2 Comments

PedrosaCOTA1It’s been four months, I know, but we should go back over some groundwork together. As a reader of this experiment, good for you: You know your limits. You embrace hypothetical supercontests. You have time to read the legalese between EA Sports and the NCAA. You snagged Yeezus the hour after the hour it leaked to ensure you got a decent rip. You know Messi’s first name. You see baseball as a New York-everything else binary. You follow the important Tumblrs. You care about The Roots on Fallon. You get it.

There are, of course, things you don’t know or get. You don’t know about Rodan live in their prime, say, or life writing poetry under Pol Pot. You don’t get motorsports. Again: Good for you, you know your limits. A delusional Dale Earnhardt Jr. commercial? Sordid tales of French all-nighters three months ago? If you click on the Categories sidebar to the right long enough, any Chipotle pitstop can eventually seem effortless.

You know it’s easy to visualize experiencing “The Everyday World of Bodies” in person with the help of a VHS rip to YouTube. You know it’s easy to compartmentalize the struggle of a ruthless dictatorship when you parse out the prison lit. You get guiding a 160kg piece of machinery at 200+mph when you’re doing it from the comfort of your wireless Xbox controller. You’re also smart enough to know these are approximations. You don’t really know Rodan. You don’t know Pol Pot.

And you don’t get having to guide a 160kg piece of machinery at 200+mph year after year, on the best piece of engineering available, with the highest and darkest forces of sports and politics backing you, for millions of dollars, and losing. Dani Pedrosa does. And it’s about to happen again.

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