The_Admiral

Okay well you have to understand that I was a huge Bret Hart fan as a kid and the idea of a developmental hockey team continuing to honor him tickles me.

You can't use "Lions aren't blue" with the Ravens, though. The term "raven-haired" exists for a reason; what could a raven be but black? Red and blue would make no sense at all. 

The Hitmen should absolutely have hot pink accents all the time, it's the one uniform issue in major-junior that I can work up any passion for. Don't overdo it, a little goes a long way, but it's ridiculous to do anything else. They're the Hitmen from Calgary, Alberta, Canada! Come on!

7 hours ago, Bucfan56 said:

I've never really understood why the A's have always seemingly had such impoverished ownership groups.

They had some decent Levi's money behind them until the mid-'90s, but then the patriarch died and thus began the series of piecemeal ownership consortiums (consortia?) that were only just getting by, which in turn begat Moneyball.

Is there room to start on that or do they have to demolish the arena first?

Narwhals?!? Stop indulging Reddit!

Wasn't Jersey City's gentrification a direct result of 9/11? I believe a lot of WTC tenants wound up moving over the river.

I think all that speaks to why I've always had such a soft spot for Oakland teams: it's basically a hard-done-by Midwestern city but on the Pacific Ocean. You could be writing similar stuff about Chicago or Detroit.

Why is it "midnight green," anyway? Midnight blue makes sense, it's the color of a midnight sky. It's like calling lavender "creamsicle purple." 

The problem with that video is that you have Mitch Trubisky, who's as dumb as a box of rocks, and George McCaskey, who, like all McCaskeys, radiates a general weirdness. They had the vibe of people who were kidnapped by ISIS but not aware that they'd been kidnapped by ISIS.

EDIT: someone who watched the Hawks game said Foley was in a foul mood all night because he had to work with an unfamiliar production crew and basically warned the audience that the broadcast would suck, so I guess he felt he would do his part. I'm not sure what the appetite here even was for exhibition hockey against a European club team, but NBC Sports Chicago, having poached the Bulls/Hawks/Sox WGN packages but having lost the Cubs, probably feels they have to telecast every last ass-scratch from their remaining three teams. How will Neil Funk debase Chicago sports when he has to call a preseason game against a D-League team on a neutral court in North Dakota? Only time will tell.

I didn't even know that anyone did. I just saw the Bears release a video where George McCaskey and a bunch of players woodenly apologized for their jerseys being from the color-line era. Oh, and big lol to "a contrast between two organizations" as if the Chicago Bears are some kind of model franchise and not two-and-a-half steps at best above the goddamn Cincinnati Bengals. Team makes the playoffs for the first time in eight years and suddenly they have their finger on the pulse of America.

He didn't retire! He'll probably die with his boots on, yelling "LOOKIT THE WAY THIS COWARDLY RUSSIAN, AS THEY DO, RAN MARNER RIGHINNA THE BOARDS," then keel over and die. Then Ron will say "I guess Don got board to death." 

I mean, it would be one thing if he had some long pattern of racial insensitivity on the air, but I don't think that's the case. Most likely he was cranky about having to work preseason hockey in Berlin, wasn't taking the broadcast seriously, and got sloppy.

Of note, according to the Tribune, the player Foley insulted would not accept his apology. Things are getting a bit salty between the Chicago Blackhawks and some bender who plays in the German league.

UPDATE: as expected, he apologized for it, and people who already didn't like him think he should be fired for it

No, Pat Foley isn't getting fired. If there were a shortstop named Gord Schysynchuk, I'd expect someone to say he sounds like a goalie. But I'm sure the Julie DiCaro Twitter squad is irate and prepared to get him cancelled. And during Latino Month too!

If I had to guess, he'll apologize or be apologized for and that'll be the end of it, but it's just as likely that they pretend nothing happens. It was a preseason game against a German team, no one was watching except this guy. But some Hawks fans have been gunning for Pat Foley for a while for being insufficiently statistics-friendly and I'm sure this will be used as ammunition against him. They're vastly outnumbered by people who like him, though, and the Hawks surely know that.

Always thought of Wes Anderson as more of an Austin guy.

Off-topic, the "Judy Is a Punk"-"Needle in the Hay"-"Fly"-"She Smiled Sweetly"-"Ruby Tuesday"-'Stephanie Says" run in the Tenenbaums soundtrack is maybe the best sequence of songs in any movie ever

2 hours ago, BellaSpurs said:

 it would’ve been much better for a team in a tropical setting such as Miami or LA

Houston is more like living in a fat guy's ass crack than Los Angeles is

It looks chintzy when the helmet is seen by itself, but it works as an accent color in the gestalt. With their wispy little baseball pennant logo and the uniform's general Y2Kitsch, the facemask is the least of their problems.

Is that dolt Gladwell still trying to argue that a student of Greek and Roman history had never heard of pederasty? The balls on him.

I didn't just fall off the turnip truck! Child molesters "being left in gen-pop" is and has always been code for punitive rape. We shouldn't have the death penalty and shouldn't have the rape penalty. 

47 minutes ago, Red Comet said:

People like Sandusky don't need a psychologist, they need to be thrown into GenPop. They know how to properly handle sick :censored:s like him.

Now now, let's not advocate for rape to be used as de facto state-levied punishment.

Well, we all have our NFL team where we dig in our heels and say they look like crap. Mine has always been the Buccaneers. 

Awful Texans uniform right here.

This one is very good. They can look great, but there's also a low floor, and they scrape their knees on it regularly.

Maybe there's not a point to ESPN itself anymore, but they still have programming hours to fill outside their game properties. I guess we should be grateful that they're letting Chris Berman do one more lap of yelling WHOOP! over dated production music instead of much cheaper options. Would you rather have a simulcast of ESPN Radio doing, like, Sarah Spain Is Raspily Indignant About Crap No One Cares About? 

But they were one of the best brands: great color scheme, a name that feels locally appropriate, and a logo that passes the doodle test with flying colors. They were in so many ways the football Whalers: a second-rate team in a cradle of its sport, with great aesthetics, a quirky theme song, years of .500 records, an absolute dump of a venue, and both were doomed in 1996.

One thing I would have done to spruce up the Houston Oilers going forward was to tweak the numbers. The Oilers had those cool Futura numbers early on that they got away from, and had that deeply drop-shadowed wordmark that felt big and bold and therefore Texan, but also far more modern than the very Western-styled Cowboys wordmark (or the Edmonton Oilers, for that matter). 

So then obviously, sans-serif numbers of one form or another, whether that's something vaguely Helvetican to match the wordmark or something in the Futura family like they had in the '60s. I'd keep everything else and mix and match the road uniforms week by week to best complement the home team: if they have white pants, wear the blue pants with white socks, if they don't, wear the white pants with blue socks, and then maybe once a year go head-to-toe white just for fun.

The Titans were cool in the 1999-2001 End Of History but got stale fast, and the Texans tweaked themselves out of an outstanding set with pants that matched socks, monochrome blue sets, and "Battle Red" anything. I think the Oilers were much more built to last than either.