CS85

I wonder if Seattle's a fringe market for the XFL. It's probably expensive as all hell to maintain a sports franchise there, and considering how every team is more or less based out of Arlington anyway, I wouldn't be shocked if Orlando and Seattle are punted to Birmingham and either a Chicago (iffy, probably similar to Seattle at least in terms of taxes/fees/etc) or Atlanta/OKC/Tennessee. As far as Vegas goes, you'd think they'd find a way to get them established far more firmly, as the gambling aspect is such a huge part of their broadcasts, but I don't know the ins and outs of how logical/cost-effective it would be to maintain a low-end team there. All I know is that they can't under any circumstances play next season at a rickety high school field. I cringe whenever Vegas is at home; it's such a black eye for the league, especially compared to the Battlehawk fans in full costume, hurling streamers, etc. in the comfort of an actual football structure.

I've been occasionally providing the BASS guys my two cents regarding the XFL, and I'll summarize my thoughts to this point: St. Louis and Washington are embracing their teams and it sets fine examples for the rest of the XFL (and arguably is all that makes the league compelling at this point). Their fans make for great atmospheres that the players buy into and it looks so fun on television. Orlando and Vegas have virtually zero fan buy-in, and their teams are appropriately unwatchable, but one is not causal of the other; each sucks respectively. Seattle has perhaps the most fun team to watch but the locals don't seem to give a rat's ass. The three Texas teams are holding their own, both in terms of fan buy-in and on-field product. That said, it makes me uncomfortable when the big voice guy erotically grunt-shouts, "DRILL, BABAYYY, DRILL!!" after the Roughnecks score.

I miss fun. Fun was fun.

The animosity in this thread is weird. Answer these questions: 1. Do you like football? 2. Do you want to watch football when the NFL/NCAA are off? If the answer to either of those is yes, maybe learn to take your meds consistently and find the pleasure in life, not sweating the small stuff like "which is the best spring football league" debates. I think the Arizona Coyotes/Glendale thread turned a lot of people on this board into weirdos who want to poorly cosplay icecap, admiral, sodboy, etc. by dropping trow and urinating on any Sports Thing that seems buffoonish or amateur. Besides the unoriginality of those knock-off posters, they're only mocking the NHL, and it's 100% merited. These fledgling spring football endeavors are only acceptable to trash in a Basically Sports podcast, and that's heavily tongue in cheek, because we not-so-secretly love all janky smalltime sport ops. If the USFL looks crappy to you, don't watch. If you prefer the next iteration of the XFL, cool. But mocking attendance and overall function of a league that barely exists is low-effort posting, IMO.

In a few months we'll likely see the ratings returns, which I have no doubt will be excellent (by spring blah television standards), and the ad investors will pile on. They'll take a big loss this year, but if they survive and the revenue comes, it's a done deal.

Kentucky should have a smidge of blue in there to honor "the bluegrass state" aspect of their identity, IMHO.

REDACTED Fellow mods, feel free to take this down if it's in too poor taste.

I don't think it's a hot take to say what a shame it is he didn't give the 8th a shot. An 80-pitch perfect game going into the final two innings doesn't exactly occur with regularity.

I mean, I semi-respect the audacity to come right out and say publicly what every Big 4 exec in a non major market says in private. On the other hand, I hope the consequences are unrelenting and vicious from Reds fans. What a slap in the face.

This is all becoming a big jerkoff.

You walk into a bowling alley and you see thiry two people bowling. Some bowlers are using bumpers, some aren't. All bowlers are white. Meanwhile there are several Black people waiting at the counter to get a lane, but the owner of the bowling alley keeps telling the tellers to skip to the next white person instead. When the local newspapers get ahold of this information, they ask the bowling alley ownership why so many Black customers are getting denied entry, and the owners counter by saying they have repeatedly offered Black people jobs as custodians and shoe-cleaners at all of their alleys.

I like it. Feels very 70s to me. The old logo looks like a Six Flags sign.

Is anyone else only seeing the bottom image?

This objectively sucks ass.

I like these. The petals on the W are too much, but the rest is actually very nice, IMHO.

The Haslems said they didn't need any validation from any of the women in their lives. Be it victims they know personally, friends and family, even their own daughters, they only acknowledge "how hard" it is, and what a difficult thing this must be. All they know is that they LOVE Deshaun Watson "the person," and feel like given enough time, everybody will heal or something. Give it several months, Watson will have done some good PR with photo ops, settled all of his cases, and won a few games as a Brown. As soon as there's early wins over the Steelers or Ravens, all will be forgiven. Cleveland sports radio today is already rife with cretins calling in to defend Watson and basically say the 22 women are lying skanks.

What a terrible day to have eyes.

Nah. Seahawks and Panthers both have decent cap space and could shed a conditional pick to acquire Mayfield. Falcons appear to be talking to Marcus Mariota's people. Jimmy G is still out there, but I don't think SF's in any hurry to deal him away.

He's 36 years old, man. 3rd is pretty good return for a guy his age who hasn't won anything in awhile.

Since I'll be out for tonight's Basically Sports, here's my NFL thoughts for the day: The Browns trading for Deshaun Watson is sad. He's the type of player who brings out all the worst in everyone. It reveals gross Browns fans who immediately take his side, claiming that bitches are liars and thieves. It exposes the "only football matters" aspect of the people running the Browns operation, who are delighted to blatantly lie to their fans, and crafted the abhorrent contract so that if Watson does have to serve some form of suspension or miss time due to being a criminal sex offender, he will barely be financially impacted. What a great league, yeah? Speaking of great people with high integrity, how about that Urban Meyer? You gotta think that he was never interviewed once by the Jaguars. They hired him on the recommendation of Some Football Guy that Shad Khan met at a Buffalo Wild Wings, right? "Hayell yeah, mayn; Urban Meyer is a *belch* fuggin' WINner, mahan!" Honestly we should thank the Khan family for selecting Meyer for a few months of beautiful, wretched exposure. We got to see him fingerbanging an adolescent at his bar (be sure to order the cocktail named after his wife), learn about how he knew precisely dick about the NFL's players, kicked and berated his staff and roster, and overall wet his pants on the largest football platforms. Ideally he'll never work again, but you know some pissant NCAA team will pay him out the ass to come transform their school's football program, giving him full agency to ruin young people's lives for as long as he wants. Bears fans can be really dumb sometimes. WHY'D YA TRADE MACK?! said the dope who has watched Mack miss a lot of games and underperform regularly in ones he did appear in over the last three seasons. WHY AIN'T YA RE-SIGNING ROBINSON AND NICHOLS?! said a boorish oaf who fails to comprehend that hiring a new general manager and head coach almost always means massive changes in philosophy and roster management. WHY AIN'T POLES SIGNING ALL THE FAMOUS FREE AGENTS?! shouted the imbecile who has no comprehension of how dead money, cap space, and what constitutes a good contract work. DIS TEAM IS GONNA SUCK said the idiot who has watched the Bears go ~.500 or worse the last two years. Surliest, dopiest gaggle of beef-swilling yokels, I swear. Russell Wilson's Walmart Family Portrait is, in my opinion, the least of his crimes. The rest of the BASS gang will no doubt stab him repeatedly with harpoons, and they have their reasons, but the portrait is fine. What else would you expect? He's basically corporate Tim Tebow. Nobody should be talking about Tom Brady. No more for you, you attention-greedy bastard. Baker Mayfield should probably end up going to the Colts, but my heart says he'll go to the Carolina Panthers. I think he'd do very well there, well, by Baker Mayfield standards, anyway. Mitch Trubisky gonna do great as a Steeler. And by "great," I mean he'll throw 1:1 touchdowns to interceptions over the course of the year, will lock onto his top target constantly, and fail to understand how a progression works. Anyone thinking he's going to be a long-term fix at QB for Pittsburgh is likely mistaken. The guy's just OK. The Browns guaranteeing Watson's contract spells disaster for future QB contract negotiations, and likely will cause a labor strike, as the threshold for what merits a 100% guaranteed contract has just been obliterated. If you guarantee hundreds of millions to a criminal sex mutant who hasn't played in a year, who knows what Justin Fields or Trevor Lawrence are going to demand. Pay attention to the situation in Chicago that occurred with DT Larry Ogunjobi. Guy agreed to a lucrative contract that was announced during the tampering period only to fail his physical and void the deal. Just because agreements in principle are announced before the start of the league year doesn't mean those are locked in, especially if the player's coming off of surgery. Congrats to the Packers on signing longtime Bears punter Pat O'Donnell. Your atrocious special teams went from awful to meh in a single move. Also Aaron Rodgers is a douchebag - sniffer, and I hope Davante Adams nukes them at the earliest available opportunity.