sc49erfan15

I watched just about all of the racing at Daytona this week. Qualifying, Duels, trucks, ARCA, Xfinity, the 500. This was my favorite part. A 41 year old fence company owner from Indiana just won a 4th-tier series race that pays like $25k to the winner and you'd swear he just hit Powerball. I absolutely love it.

Slap's got some good videos. Not sure if you've seen the Brock Beard "Rise of the Field Fillers" series he mentions in that video, but it's some pretty obscure '90s-'00s NASCAR stuff. Can get monotonous at times, but it's very nostalgic for me.

I had forgotten all about this. Re-reading this made my night.

I'd like to call particular attention to the new Netherlands hat. The logo is, uhh, "quite similar" to the logo of the city of Charlotte...

Not sure how official this is (certainly looks legitimate), but these hats showed up on Twitter about an hour ago:

Sure - I didn't mean "only _____ people drink _____" like it's, I dunno, Black Rifle Coffee or something. I guess "social implication to drinking _____" is different than "heavily marketed toward _____," which is more how I took it.

Really? This surprises me. Apart from Mountain Dew and its XTREME!!! branding in the '90s (which morphed into the "gamer fuel" branding today), I can't think of a stronger tie between a soda and any demographic than Sprite and the Black community. Going as far back as I can personally remember, almost every Sprite commercial I can think of features either hip-hop artists (KRS-One, Nas, ATCQ) or basketball players (Grant Hill, Kobe, LeBron). I'm sure there are outliers, but I can't think of any.

I was aware of this brief transitional color scheme, being a self-professed ABA fan (or as big of a "fan" as one can be of a league that ceased to exist 11 years before I was born). Your point about the "cheap one-color iron-ons" is a good one, never really considered that - it's especially weird considering the Spurs seemingly reverted back to this "cheap" look almost a decade later. Take a look at the following 3 jerseys and tell me which order you'd assume they were worn in: Makes sense that those would be in order, right? The plain white "San Antonio" font on the first black jersey is clearly a holdover from the red one, right? Wrong! The red jersey is from the 1973 preseason, as you said. Then the third "black-on-black" was worn from 1975(6?) until 1981-82, then back to the boring plain white font from 1982-83 until 1988-89! It's like they discovered a stash of old jerseys in 1982 and decided they'd trot them back out. I feel like there's got to be a story here - or not? Things were weird in the early '80s NBA. Bonus: here's David Robinson wearing the plain white script jersey, which he never wore in a game (unless there's another "old jerseys in the preseason" situation), as the "Spurs" wordmark was added to the front for the Admiral's rookie 1989-90 season:

It's all going to depend on the seller. I've bought and sold dozens of items on Poshmark. As a general rule, if they're using only stock photos (no photos of the actual jersey) then it's 99.9% going to be fake.

Bubba's win at Kansas should theoretically shut some people up, but now they're only whining louder because of course they are. "he only won because he was driving Kurt's car" ... "Denny let him win" ... Bubba/Denny finishing 1-2 (either order) is my optimal NASCAR result. Happy for him!

It's a great gesture that I'm very glad to see happen. I never went to North Wilkesboro as a kid, it closed just as I was getting to the age of being able to go to Cup races. My dad and I went to Darlington, Rockingham, and Charlotte together but never made it to NW. I'm excited for it and will definitely look into going. My wife and I went to the late model race at the end of August (the one Dale Jr. raced in) and had a blast - it truly felt like I time traveled back to 1995. It looked, sounded, felt, and smelled exactly like going to those early-mid '90s races with my dad. That said, traffic was definitely an issue that I hope they can mitigate somehow. We got there around 5pm for the 7:30 start and that included waiting in about an hour of traffic. It got even worse toward start time, and they actually delayed the green flag for almost an hour to allow the crowd to file in. Granted, that was on a Wednesday evening, so plenty of people were all cramming in at the same time after work. North Wilkesboro + Wilkesboro = population of less than 8,000 and the infrastructure just plain isn't there for big crowds. US-421 runs alongside, but doesn't provide direct access to the speedway - the only way in/out of North Wilkesboro Speedway is a single two-lane road. Current capacity of NW is listed at 18,000 and the race sold out, I'm sure there were 20,000+ total people there. I have no idea how they did it back in the '90s with crowds of 50 to 60,000. Being on the weekend helped, and I'm sure there were a lot of campers, but yikes! The '95 and '96 Cup races were paired with a Saturday truck race (looking this up, I just found out that the Busch series only raced at NW from '83-'85, which I find odd), but man... 60,000 people there sounds like a transportation nightmare. Anyway, good on NASCAR. I'm excited to see what happens with it.

lol, what? KFB blew an engine, Truex lost a water pump belt, and who knows what happened to Harvick. That's 3 cars, not a quarter of the field. It just happened to be 3 playoff guys. Sometimes parts fail, them's the breaks. I was in Darlington on Sunday and it was awesome. Great weather (the initial "shower" was a little exaggerated, I felt maybe 15 medium raindrops over about 10 minutes, but I understand the restraint after last week's debacle), once the clouds passed, it cooled off and was very comfortable. The racing itself was a little ordinary, especially considering it was Darlington - but I think once Elliott and Harvick were out of contention, the rest of the playoff guys seemed pretty content to hang onto what they had and not take any huge risks. That didn't make for late-race drama like Larson/Creed/Gragson on Saturday, but it's like that sometimes. I thought Larson and Chastain were done early, but seeing them both battle back to something respectable was intriguing. Would've loved to see Denny get the win, but nothing wrong with 2nd and it's always a treat to see the 43 in victory lane.

Queens University of Charlotte to the A-Sun. Interesting move here, as Queens is currently a non-football playing member of the DII South Atlantic Conference. Private Presbyterian school with ~1600 students. They've had some good basketball seasons recently, but that doesn't quite move the needle like football does. Does this somehow fit in with the A-Sun's underpants gnomes mitosis scheme? (brand new sentence) I don't even remember anymore. Either way, this is a bit of a head-scratcher. As far as NC schools moving up, I would've picked Winston-Salem State, Wingate, and (I can't believe I'm saying this) Fayetteville State to go D1 before Queens.

I'm absolutely in love with the 49ers changes. Sure, they're small - but they fix the two things I've been anal about since the 2009 set debuted. I hated - hated - the "new" wordmark. Sure, the font matches the "SF" logo - but the "SF" logo is itself rather unremarkable, a holdover from 1950s-60s helmet logos. If not for the warm and fuzzy feelings from championship years past, they'd be better scrapping it and starting over. Basing the wordmark off an otherwise-subpar helmet logo is a bad move. I personally refused to buy any merch with this logo on it, and only own a few jerseys with this wordmark. It's just plain not good. The "saloon" font is much, much, much better. The truncated "Reebok stripes" in 2009 were a disaster from the get-go. The switch to two stripes in 2017 was a band-aid that looked okay but stopped just short of doing it for me - 3 stripes are perfect. I'm ready to buy a new jersey immediately!

Interesting - as a late '80s baby growing up in South Carolina, I didn't encounter too many serious winter coats. Starter jackets, sure - but not these.

I stumbled across this line of 1990s NFL coats while browsing Ebay, and noticed some rather interesting patches on them that I'd never seen before and thought would be of interest here. First, the coats are made by a company called "Triple F.A.T. Goose," which I had never heard of. Apparently the "F.A.T." stands for "For Arctic Temperatures" and they're still in business making higher-end winter wear. Judging by the logos featured on the coats (mainly the pre-1996 49ers logo), these were made in the early-mid '90s - I'd guess 1992-1995. A Google search only shows a few teams in this particular style (Packers, 49ers, Cowboys, Browns, Giants). Given that these coats were likely quite expensive, it can't be a coincidence that those were all popular teams in the early '90s and are mostly cold weather cities. I'd imagine there are probably Bills, Vikings, Bears, Jets, and Steelers coats out there in this style - Buccaneers, Chargers, Saints, Cardinals... not so much. Anyway, the logos in question: An eagle (duck? goose?) carrying a football while running across the crossbar of the goalposts (???) with some unnecessarily-intricate design flourishes and a banner beneath. My favorite part of this is undoubtedly the 60 yard line! The "NFL" wordmark superimposed on what looks like a very bloated, pre-forward pass era football with too many panels on it. An eagle swooping down onto (or is it carrying?) a shield logo with uneven stripes, a smattering of differently-sized stars, and this time, a too-skinny football that still has too many panels on it. I get a 1940s-50s vibe from this one, and with a few tweaks, this could make a somewhat believable "alternate history" NFL league logo from that time - similar to the delightful 1950s CFL logo with the red/yellow/green maple leaf. Information about this line of coats (when they were made, exactly which teams were made, how/why these pretty goofy fake logos made it into actual production) is probably pretty scarce, but I at least thought these were interesting.

Close - you're thinking of Xavier New Orleans. Loyola is (rather obviously) a Catholic university, but isn't an HBCU.

A post with @B-Rich mentioning New Orleans and @leopard88 mentioning Lafayette College? I'm only "needs stripes" and "today we are all _____" away from bingo! I kid I have nothing else to add to this post except: that the wolf logo is indeed pretty bad; and I also had the opportunity earlier this season to announce some men's and women's basketball games at Loyno, but I turned it down (a 2-hour drive round trip meant I'd essentially be breaking even after getting paid). Now I wish I would've done at least one of them - announcing for a national champion, even if it's NAIA, would've been pretty cool.

Fontana turned out to be much more entertaining and less of a cluster than anyone thought. Cars still have problems with flats after spins (not to mention the perplexing tow truck situation, did they not think this through?). There seemed to be a few more spins than normal, but I think that was more attributable to the terrible racing surface than the next gen car. There weren't many "ugh this next gen car" moments. I'm tired of Kyle Larson, would've loved to see Suárez pull it out, but it was overall a pretty good race.

Last night was the most deflated I've felt about sports in a very long time. For some reason, this felt worse than the Chiefs comeback in the Super Bowl. I didn't expect the 49ers to get this far, but it still sucks. On the plus side, my best friend is a lifelong die-hard Bengals fan, so the 49ers coughing it up saved my friendship and group chat a lot of potential anguish over the next 2 weeks. I'm all in on the Bengals.

Did you see the deal McNeese was reportedly given in order to stay in the Southland? Apparently it includes hosting rights for the 2023-2026 championships for men's/women's basketball, baseball, and softball + no exit fee if McNeese leaves the Southland for an FBS school. Insane.

Austin Peay to the ASUN, if anyone's counting. https://www.theallstate.org/report-austin-peay-plans-move-to-asun-conference/ Peay spent 59 years in the OVC.

It's not really a "wrong" uniform, but I couldn't find the thread for "I can't believe he wore this uniform." Deion Sanders wore the BFBS Reds uniforms for 32 games in 2001. It just stuck me as odd - Deion Sanders playing baseball seems like such a "early-mid 1990s" thing, and the BFBS Reds duds seem like such a 2000s thing. I had no idea Deion played baseball as late as 2001.

Yeah, I don't know if I'd like to go down the "X never would've gotten into Y if it wasn't for sports" path. With anyone. And before anyone else goes there, "X had his work done for him at Y because of sports" isn't the same.

I love the Spartanburgers! The Beacon is a well-known "drive-in"/burger/fried everything restaurant that I'd wager at least half of all native South Carolinians (at least those upstate of the fall line) have patronized at least once. My only gripe is that the burger doesn't have chili and cheese on it. The chili cheese a-plenty is what I picture when I think of the Beacon - even though it's apparently not their "signature burger" according to their site. The fries/bats logo is fantastic. Overall, I think the identity is perfect for a collegiate league.