All of a sudden, Sunday’s match for America’s Team looks to be much more challenging than expected.  I started hyping Goff as Aaron Rodgers Lite a couple years ago, and everyone’s been harping on that ever since.  Yeah last year was pretty brutal, but then Goff got a new coach, a revamped offensive line, some actual receivers, etc. etc. and now everyone is shocked that he looks kind of awesome.  Whaddya know!!

It’s just so odd how much this has taken people aback.  It’s almost as if #1 overall draft picks are too talented to call busts by the time they’re 22 years old.  Especially when the closest counterpart in the draft (Wentz) was a first year starter for Division 1-AA North Dakota State at that same age.  Crazy how that shit works out…

While we’re on the subject, I’d like to go off on a short tangent regarding Jeff Fisher.  Stan Kroenke paid him $35 million over 5 years and gave him an undisclosed extension right before firing him.  A lot of people say that said it was dumb to pay him for all the losing.  Those people have been hoodwinked.  There’s a lot of bad things you can say about Kroenke, but one thing you cannot say is that he’s bad with money.

Fisher was a legend for Tennessee.  One of the great coaches of the era.  Then he got paid half a hundred mill in his late age to help a team tank.  Kroenke wanted that team to suck so he could make sure it got the fuck out of St. Louis, and he paid Fisher out the ass to make sure it happened. Brilliant if you ask me.

writers America’s Team united as an organization and took a knee with the explicit purpose of promoting equality, and some respecteddeemed it meaningless because it right before the national anthem.  That was confusing as shit.  Martellus Bennett drafted a statement for fans to join in locking arms during the anthem, and these same writers decried unity as ‘maddening and gutless’.  What?

Listen, I’m as down as the next guy for ending [or at least scaling back] the pregame anthems.  The ceremony has become diluted, fabricated and outdated.  That being said, if we want to see reforms, it might be time to take a step back and understand why our simple peers are not getting the message.

Millennials are the first generation to come of age unaffected by World War II.  We’re two generations away from true wartime in general.  Sometimes, people who grew up in vastly different times have vastly different (non-racist) perspectives in life.  If you grew up in a family with veterans, especially deceased veterans, you were taught the anthem as a sacrament.  Trust me on that – I speak from personal experience [as do heroes like Drew Brees].

Nationalism is pointless and counterproductive in this era of globalization, but most Americans lack the experience or education to understand that like urban millennials do.  National anthem protests are non-starters for them.  We got their attention, but now it’s time to get them to actually listen.  Why not switch things up to do that?  It’s easily the most harmless political compromise we could make with these people; why can’t we jump on it?

I don’t condemn what Kaepernick did; he’s a patriot in my eyes.  And when the president threatens your constitutional rights with a racially tinged tirade, you have to react exactly how NFL players and owners did on Sunday.  It was the proudest I’ve ever felt being an NFL fan.  However, going forward, maybe we’ve reached a point in this movement where the message should take precedence over the method.

Some cynical people condemn the newfound owners’ participation as a marketing scheme.  Maybe true, maybe not.  If they help the movement, does it really matter?  Shit, if they’re finally propagating the movement because our wallets started speaking loudly enough, then we’ve got ourselves a paradigm of great American capitalism.

I know the bar is pretty low here, but I think ESPN just hit a new nadir.  Easily the worst week since the Tebow days.  They started off on Monday night with the worst NFL broadcast of all time.  Not because they had Rex Ryan up in the booth to mail in more work, not because they had that drama queen Sergio Dipp doing his best dreamer impression, but because they had that serotonin-sapping hag Beth Mowins calling play-by-play.

She is the absolute worst.  It’s not because she’s a woman – I don’t mind Jessica Mendoza!  No, it’s because she’s a woman trying way too hard to sound like a man.  God her voice is so fucking horrible.  If you really want to push gender diversity into sports broadcasting, give us women that sound like actual females instead of this depression-inducing drag.

The sad thing is, she’s not even ugly!  Look at her, wasting such a pretty face through such an ugly voice.  Sad

Just as ESPN was trying to recover from their MNF disaster, Jemele Hill decided to rock the boat even harder and go out on a little tweet tantrum.  Political implications aside – anybody with a brain knows what’s wrong with the White House, and anybody without a brain is not changing tune over the term ‘white supremacist’ – this was bad news for ESPN.

It means they have to wait at least a few more months or so before they pull her godawful SportsCenter show.  I don’t know who had the idea to take two middling daytime personalities and turn them into SportsCenter anchors, but it was the worst idea ever.  No exaggeration, I don’t think I’ve ever been able to sit through more than a full single minute of SC6.

The sad thing is, I used to like Michael Smith.  I didn’t even hate Jemele Hill when she was breaking in either.  Once the two of them got together, it’s been some of the most cringe-worthy TV in sports.  They’re a classic case study of why sexual tension in the office is bad.

They should never have been promoted; they should’ve gotten canceled.  Now that Jemele played the race card, we gotta wait longer before getting fun ESPN back.  That’s too bad.

So everyone knows by now the heartbreaking story of Deondre Francois shattering his kneecap against Alabama the other night.  It does truly suck.  A lot of people say that it’s Jimbo Fisher’s fault for having such a piss poor offensive gameplan leaving his star QB so vulnerable.  I did a little digging, and apparently this goes much deeper: that Alabama safety wanted to play for FSU.  Damn…  He grew up in Tallahassee, was good enough to start for Alabama, and got passed over by Jimbo Fisher?  That’s a recipe for ice cold revenge if I’ve ever seen one.

Butch Jones – Biggest Fraud in Football

Tennessee was a measly 3 point favorite over Georgia Tech in the biggest sharps vs squares trap we’ll see all season.  Most casual fans saw the talent and resources of Tennessee and thought them a no brainer to beat a bunch of engineering students who actually have to go to class.  Most gamblers saw the fact that Butch Jones was still employed and laughed their way to the bank.

I said this two years ago, and what followed was one of the worst coaching seasons of all time.  There was the chickenshit game management against Oklahoma, blatantly throwing the game against Florida, then blowing a two TD lead to 1-3 Arkansas.

Heading into last year, people had the audacity to pick them as the team to unseat Alabama.  That was retarded.  They opened the season having to catch every break in the world to survive App State at home.  Jones got another miracle against Georgia and then cried like a little baby.  He then spent the rest of October getting thrashed before ending the season with a loss to Vanderbilt.  Yes, Vanderbilt.

So last night they started the season getting gifted two missed field goals to survive against a school-first triple option team…  When are the Vols gonna fire this dude?  Maybe once he stops being able to sweep their rapes under the rug.