Digby

These three post-ring coaching gigs he's got have always been with front offices that I would, charitably, say have championship ambitions but a lack of smart and rational thinking. Also, messy bitches who love drama are always drawn to each other. I'm still in disbelief at this business about under-the-table working for/maybe undermining the previous coach while also analyzing that team on TV. I do think he was a good coach for that Celtics team, but that Celtics team was also the end of an era of the NBA, and the rest of us have moved past that template/system.

I would die laughing if they tried to pull a chop shop aesthetic off. They should have a Disney World-ified "chop shop" concessions row of $20 chicken sandwiches and acai bowls at Citi Field, if they don't already.

Bucks fired Adrian Griffin. For those keeping score at home, that's two coaches they've fired in the past 6 months or so despite being a 2nd-place team. Trying to hire Doc Rivers as his replacement. Apparently he's was being an informal associate for Griffin. Not that I hold ex-jock, ex-pro TV commentators to some lofty journalistic ethical standard, but doesn't this seem a little weird?

I don't know much about Front Office Sports as an outfit but they seem to have even more detail. Apparently the content-farm current publisher missed a licensing payment, which caused the weird IP holder operation to revoke the licensing (but they were thinking about doing so anyway). Also the guild employees still have 90 days to work while the others get laid off immediately. Unionize your workplaces, kids! If you'd like to read several layers of sordid, gross, boring business machinations by suits who add no value: https://frontofficesports.com/sports-illustrateds-publisher-lays-off-entire-staff-future-unclear/

This latest Revolution stadium push has gone quiet since the attempt to get first-level state approval got dropped at the end of the last state house session, but the current governor has been low-key signaling support to resolve that via a standalone bill, so it's not dead, just in stasis with a renewed push coming in next session. It would be very weird but funny to me if the Krafts never managed to get state support for a stadium when it was a long line of Kraft's milquetoast corporate country-club bros as governor, but the progressive lesbian manages to help make it happen. I'm increasingly suspecting that the Boston NWSL team will end up there too, if they ever exist at all. I have a bad feeling about the Franklin Park stadium project. (Also the Revs quietly announced Richie Williams as their new Revs II coach, which is interesting as the rumor mill has suspected him of being the one whose HR complaints got Bruce Arena forced out by the league. But nobody really knows.)

I don't know what equivalent we have to SI in modern times; every second of every game can be archived on YouTube and yet that has nothing to say and feels like a substantially worse way to catalogue an era. There's no particular reason this has to happen except that robber barons got put in charge of the thing.

I knew she's been having knee problems since basically the 2019 World Cup but still, bummer news for Sam Mewis at age 31. A sad day for (half of) the pride of Hanson, Massachusetts.

Orlando's stadium is being renamed to Inter&Co Stadium. I am losing my mind at how dumb this is. What a time to be alive. https://www.orlandocitysc.com/news/inter-co-naming-rights-orlando-soccer-specific-stadium

Siakam is probably a good get for this particular Pacers team. Three firsts is overpaying for him and whatever contract they throw at him this summer will probably also overpay, but what else are they gonna do? They're playing with house money, which is the only way they'll compete these days, so you may as well.

I know we're past the era of American soccer fans as the hipster set, but in this case the soccer crowd has had needless money-suck Peacock exclusives AND leagues/networks as 100 percent state-run media before they were mainstream. Those poor, poor MLS Extra Time dudes having to deal with the Open Cup abandonment with the vibes of a hostage tape. I guess the good news is that Peacock has gone through every possible channel to offer free or heavily discounted subscriptions. I think I'm currently getting it for free through my credit card. As long as you're setting reminders to cancel once a month, it's still basically free. But the principle of it remains dodgy as hell. We don't need to feel too sorry for Tony Dungy either, the man gets a multimillion salary to be a part-time talking head despite being the sort of person who believes that purple-haired teens are using litter boxes in high school.

That shade of red strikes me as too dark for a color-vs-color matchup... sounds about right for a year of NBA that's had its share of unwatchable matchups.

I've always thought "NWSL" is a clunky acronym that doesn't roll off the tongue at all, but that train long ago left the station. All the women's leagues want to use the "W" and it's a shame that, as a letter, it's a lot of syllables to add in there. W-League would've been nice but now the USL one's got that. Considering the long history of women's soccer leagues folding after a few years, it's probably best to keep the NWSL name and lean into it being relatively stable at this point, but upgrading the branding to something more distinct and less low-rent would be a win in itself.

Gavin Wilkinson, last seen being run out of Portland due to his complicity in one coach's sexual abuse and his conveniently accidental cover-up of a player's wifebeating, is the newly hired sporting director at Sporting Kansas City. https://www.sportingkc.com/news/peter-vermes-named-sporting-kc-chief-soccer-officer-and-manager-gavin-wilkinson-

This is so bizarrely stupid, and so perfectly ESPN. Basically a dumb Emmys rule, the network with an orders-of-magnitude dumber response, all just to get participation trophies and keep Kirk Herbstreit's ego healthy. Industry award stuff is always pretty self-aggrandizing and pointless, so it's a natural thing to hatch a whole scheme over. What a stupid timeline.

That is kind of the thing about these conversations always ending up in both-sidesism, as if it's still pre-2015. The size and the ultimate effects of the respective grifts are not proportionate.

Thorns badge could be tweaked. That Bank Gothic font choice was dated from the day they released it, beyond being way too boxy for a round badge. But the colors and graphic elements are hard to beat.

I'm just wondering what happened to the other two Crew men.

That crest looks like a quick Photoshop recolor job if you look closely, so I'm wondering if it'll still be tweaked ... but not a lot of time for a move of this magnitude. I do think blue, a darkish-teal maybe too, and silver are the best look for them. The Sounders color scheme wouldn't fit this logo and it's too good to start anew. But anything that's a step away from the international franchization of teams is a positive.

First news: The Seattle-area team most recently known as OL Reign is in the process of being sold and is returning to its original name of Seattle Reign FC, as well as the original branding with an updated color scheme. This was a no-brainer but I'm pleasantly surprised that it's happening so quickly, and bringing back the original top-tier crest. (Not loving the update of adding gold to it, but fine.)

I don't think the off-centered chest logo on a pullover looks weird at all. Even in soccer I don't think there's a need to reach for poetic license. Embroidery over the left breast is a pretty common standard on tops going back a very long time, even on certain formalwear. I'd actually take that over the old Blue Jays pullover that put the arched wordmark over the centered bird/ball logo. The size and placement of the graphics there made the jersey look even more like a fan t-shirt, not the gravitas you'd expect with a piece of the pro sport uniform.

I would imagine any sort of pullover works better from a merchandizing perspective because they're a better fit for off-field wear for fans to buy. A basketball jersey looks very silly as a piece of casualwear for a regular person, but it just looks "right" in-game (and trying to nudge that toward casualwear is a bad idea, as Adidas found out in the '10s). A button-down baseball jersey isn't quite that extreme, but does follow a similar arc.

Range of incoming MLS coaching changes is interesting. You've got Charlotte hiring an English Championship/Premiership guy, RBNY hiring a Bundesliga guy, Revolution hiring an MLS guy but one with title pedigree. (And also the forever on again/off again relationship between Klopas and Chicago.) (And no use trying to explain Phil Neville in PDX.)

One thing I find kind of confusing, aesthetically, about some of these games is how the on-ice product is meant to look "faded" or retro or fauxback or whatever, but then you have all the elaborate, theatrical decoration around the ice, putting up fake shipwrecks and docks like it's a touristy mini-golf course. Feels like those two things are a little at odds.

For me the gold that Vegas was using is juuuust brownish/mustardish enough that it didn't bother me as much as, say, last year's Penguins cream/yellow combination. In general I agree that shades of yellow/gold tend not to go well with the vintage white schtick, yet it keeps happening in Winter Classics.

I think the "V" logo just let it down a little bit. Not sure that I have a better idea necessarily, but it just felt kind of lost, especially lined up against the rightly beloved "S" of the Kraken.