
Five Thirty-Eight, which as we all know is Nerdvana, has figured out that it is time for you, you lazy slug, to be excited about the Warriors’ chances of winning 73 games.
In other words, stop arguing about whether the current winning streak is 23 or 27 (and why isn’t it 26, with the three playoff wins, or 24, with the win in the last exhibition game?). This is something that can entertain you until Tax Day.
After all, a Slinky stops being fun when you tangle it, but as long as you can maintain its integrity, you can have months of fun.
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Sincerely, Geoffrey from Toys-Backwards-R-Us.
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Sunday’s 49ers-Browns game has not been hyped by the networks as the battle of the most dysfunctional operations in the National Football League, and I found that curious until I remembered one thing.
The Dallas Cowboys.
News
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Antonio Brown gets fined for using his goolies as a prop –- if that doesn’t explain the National Football League more than “Concussion” ever could, then you simply don’t want to know.
And based on the ratings, most of you don’t.
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Michael Crabtree found his bliss in Oakland -– at least four more years of bliss, anyway. How could Paraag Marathe have let this kind of miscalculation happen four years ago? And if we can gin up a way to blame him for this, what can we expect from the Sacramento Republic?
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Jerry Jones speaks, and when he speaks, he manages to demean and elevate head coach Jason Garrett.
“I am stunned that we haven’t been able to win more games without Tony,” Jones told Drew Davison of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “And I would have thought that we could have coached it up enough, and put it together enough, that we would not have lost those games without Romo early. We would be in better shape than we are right now.” He also said the Cowboys “won on will, not tactical mastery.”
On the other hand, Garrett just signed a five-year, $30M deal a year ago, and that’s a lot of tactical non-mastery to eat.
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It may be time for MLS supporters (as opposed to fans, we speak here of media types who have been relentlessly rooting for the u.s. to get a domestic league that makes people want more than just the World Cup, Premiership and Champions League, to recalibrate its pompoms. Comparisons to 30 years ago aren’t working any more.
From Christopher Harris of World Soccer Talk, the 2015 MLS Cup Final drew its lowest total audience ever (874,000) and the second fewest number of English language viewers in the last six years. Viewership was down nearly 40 percent from the 2009 final. The MLS Cup Final has not drawn 1 million English language viewers since 2011.
Your chart of English-speaking viewers:
2015: 668,000
2014: 964,000
2013: 505,000
2012: 797,000
2011: 1,030,000
2010: 748,000
2009: 1,100,000
Sure, Columbus and Portland might be small markets, and the title game keeps being played on an NFL Sunday, but everywhere else, soccer is growing as never before.
The answer: We are Eurosnobs, and proud of it. Take that while you’re expanding every three weeks, Donny Garber.
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And finally, Dez Bryant and Calvin Johnson have both volunteered top be on the rulebook revision committee Commissioner Roger Goodell has said he will assemble. They won’t be included. The catch rule will actually be made worse.
It’s an immutable law of corporate physics -- in all cases in all circumstances, committees meet, unclog their nostrils on your food and claim they've seasoned it to perfection. Book it.