FiddySicks

Yeah that black sweater absolutely :censored:s. Should’ve stayed an alt, though. 

I really miss that entire set for the Flyers. Their current look is probably technically more traditional, but it just doesn't quite hit with the same ferocity that the Lindros era set does. 

That rules. Social D was basically the soundtrack for my high school years. I may have to pick up that hat. 

12 hours ago, Bmac said:

Would the Phoenix market have benefited from having less teams? Rather than three new teams entering the market from 1988-1998, say only one or two did. Would support be spread better between two or three teams rather than four, or is the market just not a good fit for pro sports in general?

It’s got a few things that make it an inherently tough market to build up a long term fanbase (lots of transplants, a big chunk of which aren’t there for part of the year, it’s hotter than the surface of the sun like 9 months of the year, etc). But the biggest issue has been the attempt to shift the facilities to the west side of the county. There’s really nothing of note out that way even now and it’s a real head scratching location. The fact that they made that move nearly twenty years ago is downright baffling. I guess they thought it would help to build up that part of the county, but it just seemed like a big ask at the time and really hasn’t worked. Like, I can’t emphasize how much of the population is east of Phoenix proper. It’s enormous. Everything of note is out that way. The Coyotes struggle for a lot of reasons, and have made a ton of very stupid choices in their time in the desert, but them playing in the opposite corner of the county away from the majority of the population is probably the dumbest thing they could’ve done. They had a real tepid, yet growing, following back in the day, and closer to downtown and east to Mesa would’ve helped them a lot. But instead they decided to take a product people were at best room temperature about and made it nearly impossible for most of the county to get to smoothly. It’s so frustratingly on brand for Maricopa County, which is EASILY the dumbest run county I’ve ever spent a significant amount of time in. And I say that as someone who grew up between dysfunctional counties in Northern CA and NV. 

Wow first playoff win for a Sacramento Kings head coach in 16 years. 

Reminds me of all of the Nexflix emails I’ve gotten lately begging me to come back at the original price point. 

1 hour ago, Carolingian Steamroller said:

 

I have a cousin who grew up in Phoenix (her father is a Chicago transplant) but spent many summer here and considered herself more a Chicagoan to the point where she eventually moved here becoming indistinguishable from any other Lincoln Square lifer.

 

We in Old Northwest send a lot of people to Arizona because our winters are good and truly miserable but we tend to get people back over time because our summers cannot be beaten.

Arizona works for people from Chicago and other areas around the Midwest. They’re already used to spending half of their time indoors because it’s too miserable to be outside. They just change the time of year they do that when they move south. 

Phoenix is the strangest place I’ve ever lived. I moved there sight unseen (like, the first day I ever stepped foot in the state was the day I moved there), and it was absolutely NOT what I thought it was going to be. I came from a small mountain town so I saw a population of 5 million people and I was expecting (foolishly) like, I dunno, a real southwest version of New York City or something childish like that. Instead, it was just a bigger, angrier, more relentlessly hot version of Reno. Everything was a dollar cheaper, but everything was also worse, somehow. 
 

I just remember most people I came into contact with there being angry, sweaty, and depressed. In a weird way, that mentality sort of translates to how they root for their teams. It’s like, even when things are going well and the fans are engaged, the whole thing still just feels somewhat exhausted and traumatized. Needless to say it wasn’t a place that really helped my mental health. And I didn’t really bounce back from that until I decided I had enough with Phoenix come my second summer there and moved to Seattle (Where I lived in the house right next door to where Ted Bundy started his killing spree. With another CCSLCer). Endlessly fascinating city compared to Phoenix. 

5 hours ago, GhostOfNormMacdonald said:

As an Anglo Arizonan (originally from the Midwest but I've spent my entire short adult life here), not enough people care about the D-Backs. If anything a Spanish name would have probably made Anglo Arizonans more likely to keep following the team for the faux-thentic Mexican culture that all the suburban Scottsdale moms that took 10th grade Spanish seem to love more than their kids. And it might have actually won over more Hispanic fans instead of the community being split almost 55/45 in favor of the Dodgers. I can't wait for this team to move to Vegas so we can get a team with a better name down here. 2001 is a literal lifetime away for people like me, and the amount of people my age wearing D-Backs stuff is outweighed by people that wear Cubs/Dodgers/Whitesox/Angels/Twins/Brewers ect. Unless the D-Backs turn it around, they're dead in their own market

Probably the first honest assessment of the AZ market that I’ve ever heard. People down there really want to see things through rose colored glasses, but my goodness is the entire scene just straight up bleak. They have teams in all four of the big sports and their games almost always feel like going to a wake. I don’t know if it’s the heat making everyone lethargic (it’s not because ASU football pulls it off just fine. Albeit, with mostly out of towners. And they’re the only ones who actually play outside!), but AZ sports fans “getting hyped” is a sad, straight up cringeworthy experience. It’s frustrating having a town that big with that much to do and NOBODY ever gives a single :censored:. 
 

Oh, and if the D Backs ever move to Vegas (which seems increasingly likely, weirdly enough), Phoenix is never getting a team again. Why bother when it’s the spring training home to half of the league? Maybe the A’s would work, but again that’s just capitalizing on the former Bay Area residents, which is still a lot weaker than So Cal, so it’s not gonna drown out any Dodgers love. 

On 5/4/2022 at 2:57 PM, oldschoolvikings said:

Um... Okay?

 

I guess I kinda got it when Kevin Durant was there, and it seemed unfair when the best player joined the best team. I get why that would make someone dislike them.  But that does seem to be how the NBA works now. Everybody just seems to try to recruit a super team and take their shot. It's pretty much what the Lakers did when they won the exhibition covid tournament championship. At least the Warriors actually drafted their superstars. 

 

That's the entire answer? They won a lot?

Sort of. Durant leaving OKC, who had just lost a tough WCF to Golden State, specifically to sign with Golden State just straight up melted some people’s brains with rage. They felt it was disrespectful. It’s the one NBA moment that I think people felt was even more off putting than “The Decision”, which was also looked at as disrespectful, but for totally different, weird NBA fan reasons. 
 

NBA fans as a whole are a really fascinating bunch. They latch onto things so strongly, and have SO much passion for things. Including what they hate. The reaction is a big part of what makes the league so interesting IMO. 

Philly just cannot catch a break. Yikes. 
 

https://basketball.realgm.com/wiretap/266753/Joel-Embiid-Out-Indefinitely-With-Orbital-Fracture-Mild-Concussion
 

Honestly I think they may have went with two seasons in anticipation of it getting knocked down in appeals. Might’ve been a better guarantee that he serves at least a full season. Not sure they can or would want to vocalize that, though. 

God damn. That’s for sure gonna get appealed probably down to a full season, but that’s quite the statement for MLB to make. It’s also the correct one, and :censored: Trevor Bauer. I’ll take two more seasons of this particular “Bauer Outage”. 

The drop shadow on the T has never really worked, because (as far as I can remember) they’ve never had the wordmarks or numbers that follow the same lead. They had the black drop shadow but those don’t really count, and the current cursive script has it, but it’s a totally different font. Why bother having that unique outlaw style wordmark prominently outlined, yet the primary logo uses a drop shadow instead? It’s always made the entire set look totally disjointed and unprofessional. 
 

All the Rangers need is a white T with a consistent blue and then red outline. Then reverse it on the red caps. Home cap should use that with a red bill. The fixes for the Rangers are SO simple, yet they’ve always flubbed it up and every time they release a new look, it’s worse than the last. 

On 4/27/2022 at 12:35 PM, Survival79 said:

 

 

 

 

Have we seen these before?

 

Not at all a fan. For some reason it feels like the Chiefs and Packers had a baby and this is what came out. 

The Niners really don’t need gold on the jerseys, but if they were to insist, something closer to the last iteration (white number, gold outline, black drop shadow) would be much much better. 

4 hours ago, Pyromania1983 said:

 

This is so much better than their current primary look. 

34 minutes ago, TBGKon said:

So if Montreal, Vegas, and Nashville aren't viable in your opinion....then where is?

Honestly, you know what market is viable?  Oakland, CA. It’s not even the location. It’s the ownership group. 

Hey, um, so, remember that really small crowd from last night? Well, it looks like they drew more than a thousand people LESS today. :censored:ing how? Manfred, come get the A’s, they’re WASTED. 

What is even happening this off season? 

On 4/17/2022 at 10:54 AM, CaliforniaGlowin said:

Is this sarcasm?

 

This is probably sarcasm, but for teams that expect a certain amount of stock every year, I could see where it would cause some issues. Teams kinda supplement their equipment staff’s time to launder these items by having an alternate set to ease some of that burden. Not having the extra jerseys just means they don’t have anything to swap out for, and all of the jerseys have to be laundered way more often, which trust me from experience, can be a bit of a :censored:. 

Now, you could argue that there are teams like the Yankees and Dodgers who don’t wear alts, but they supplement that by having extra sets of the home/road jersey. If the Rangers only have, say, 40% of their expected jerseys to work with, that could in the very least be a huge headache. 

I’m not entirely sure who to believe here, but one thing I do now know is that this league is already a :censored:show, and I think I’ve lost any interest in it for good. 
 

@Skycast are you like a burner account for the USFL or something? 

3 hours ago, heavybass said:

And if you think I was joking.... it was because he didn't want a chicken salad, that is a big major YIKES. 
 

Jesus.... not a good start to the USFL.

Lol, THIS is the league y’all are freaking out so hard about when we say it’s not starting out well? 

3 hours ago, Red Wolf said:

 

Is there compelling evidence that spring football could work long term? We've been chasing the high of the original USFL for decades with diminishing returns. I'm certainly not wishing for failure, but the crown jewel of spring football was a league that lasted three seasons nearly 40 years ago.

Yeah, this is pretty much where I’m at with it. I think it’s a bit dramatic to say people are “rooting” for these leagues to fail, when all people are really doing is following the evidence. We’ve had nearly 40 years of these leagues popping up, and the majority of them don’t last more than a season. In fact, have any of these leagues made it to the five year mark? 
 

Look, I really couldn’t care any less if leagues like this succeed. Hell, the idea of a sustainable spring league is something I would really like to see, because it means more football. But we’ve been shown time and time again that there’s very little room for error with these leagues, and a rough opening weekend like that probably doesn’t help. 
 

So really, it’s not cheering for the demise of the USFL, it’s just being realistic. I think people want this idea of spring football to work so bad that they’re kind of overlooking the reality of the situation. 

I dunno. I’m honestly not sure why they keep having these leagues in the first place. We have quite a bit of evidence showing that spring football  doesn’t have much staying power. 
 

Edit: Aaand now the Tampa Pittsburgh game has been rescheduled for tomorrow. Rough second day. 

Yeah, I dunno about this one. Play is meh, crowds are embarrassingly small, announcing isn’t great. Not quite sure who exactly this one is for. 

Unless there’s a huge injection of cash from the networks and they have to hold onto it like the NHL holds on to the Phoenix market, I’m having trouble seeing this one lasting more than a season or two.