Kramerica Industries

Detroit vs. Kansas City

Cincinnati vs. Cleveland

Houston vs. Baltimore

Tampa Bay vs. Minnesota

Carolina vs. Atlanta

Arizona vs. Washington

Jacksonville vs. Indianapolis

San Francisco vs. Pittsburgh

Tennessee vs. New Orleans

Las Vegas vs. Denver

Philadelphia vs. New England

LA Rams vs. Seattle

Miami vs. LA Chargers

Green Bay vs. Chicago

Dallas vs. NY Giants

Buffalo vs. NY Jets

It's Labor Day, so you know what that means.

Week 1:

Detroit vs. Kansas City

Cincinnati vs. Cleveland

Houston vs. Baltimore

Tampa Bay vs. Minnesota

Carolina vs. Atlanta

Arizona vs. Washington

Jacksonville vs. Indianapolis

San Francisco vs. Pittsburgh

Tennessee vs. New Orleans

Las Vegas vs. Denver

Philadelphia vs. New England

LA Rams vs. Seattle

Miami vs. LA Chargers

Green Bay vs. Chicago

Dallas vs. NY Giants

Buffalo vs. NY Jets

Good luck.

On 8/21/2023 at 1:08 AM, who do you think said:

 

Not wrong, but he still pulled it off. Al Michaels in his heyday was so naturally good that he could do play-by-play for the kitchen at Chili's and I'd probably still watch.

 

 

Exhibit A of the gulf between NBC and ESPN is Game 1 of the 2001 Finals. Irrespective of the game itself - which was compelling going in and turned out to be a classic - it just feels like every single person involved in that broadcast, from Marv Albert and Doug Collins all the way down to [whoever, name a grunt position, I'm not in the business] was absolutely locked in. Multiple times I've opened the full-game broadcast on Youtube intending to skip ahead to overtime and/or the Iverson stepover, and instead get suckered in and end up just watching the whole thing. I'm sure there's some nostalgia at work there but whatever. ESPN has never and will never put on an NBA broadcast like that. Even when they've had truly classic games to work with - like 2016 Game 7 - the energy just hasn't been there.

This is from 1993 and yet it's better than anything ESPN has ever done for promoting an NBA game of any kind. And there are several more examples I could find if I wanted.

At this point, the Yankees might as well sell naming rights to the stadium as well. If the most iconic uniform in North American sports isn't sacred from cash grabs, then nothing else is either. Rip the entire Band-Aid off and just be done with it.

19 minutes ago, Sec19Row53 said:

Why would you assume that? Because this somehow makes it 'safer' or 'better' or something? They're consuming 60 hot dogs. Nothing is gonna make it ok.

You bolded the preceding sentence,  so I'm hoping you saw "ignoring that literally any food or beverage in excess is still bad for you, no matter their nutritional value" that followed it. I don't care about this event at all and I don't condone it's existence given that people are gorging themselves no matter what, but, yes, I would assume that hot dogs that aren't loaded with preservatives (if that's the case here) are still "better" than hot dogs that are loaded with them. It's bad enough to gorge yourself on anything, but you might as well at least not be stuffing yourself full of toxins while you do so, you know? That's the only reason I mention that.

Having said that, if they indeed are having regular Nathan's hot dogs, as @dont care says, like from the packages you'd see in the grocery store, then even that point is null and void as well, because they're packed full of crap. I was trying to find a small ray of sunshine in a large pile of .

12 minutes ago, DG_ThenNowForever said:

I've never seen the actual contest until I caught a prior year's event on ESPN the other day.

 

Actually watching them deep throat hot dogs right after inhaling bread water is pretty disgusting. I get why it's compelling, but it's also stomach churning too.

 

I had one hot dog yesterday and I can't imagine what it does to your body to have 60. They must immediately get that stuff right out of their bodies, right?

I would have to presume the hot dogs they're given aren't hot dogs that are loaded with preservatives and have ingredients lists longer than a Tolstoy novel. So assuming that much - ignoring that literally any food or beverage in excess is still bad for you, no matter their nutritional value - I don't think they're eating hot dogs that we see in grocery store frozen sections. At least I would really hope so.

But I'm really making an assumption here on something I know nothing about, so I could be entirely wrong. I don't know how hot dogs are made, and I don't care to know. I generally think hot dogs are quite disgusting and I haven't eaten one in years. And while I'm here, I would also say I find ketchup and mustard to be disgusting as well, ketchup especially.

4 hours ago, maz said:

 

Phil Kessel is a Stanley Cup champion again.

 

I was rooting for whoever would cause the most gatekeeping-fueled outrage among the hard traditionalist sect of the hockey fandom, and boy did I get it. The more these people rage about it, the more I'm starting to come around and like Vegas again. To play off the lyrics of a song I have unwillingly heard too many times - rooting for the anti-hero wasn't exhausting at all.

 

I mean, I didn't much care at all for how Las Vegas managed to jump out so quickly as a successful team, and I still think it's a fair bit embarrassing they managed to reach the SCF in their very first season, but they've kept up their success since then even as most of the original misfits have come and gone. And while their struggles are of a different and more preferred type compared to, say, the Blue Jackets, there is something about having three successive playoff appearances between 2019-'21 that ended in abject disappointment, be it blowing a 3-1 series lead (and a 3-0 lead in Game 7), or losing consecutive WCF's as a heavy favorite. The Knights between 2018-'22 had a ton in common with the Lightning between 2015-'19 so I can relate. 

Most importantly, they were playing the Panthers in the SCF. There's only one team I would ever root for the Panthers to win against in the playoffs, and that's the Bruins. So this was an easy choice in terms of my preferred winner in this series. The only team from Florida that's ever won the Cup are the Lightning, and I hope that remains true forever.

6 minutes ago, Cujo said:

 

Would actually like to see this list. 1994 Knicks/Rangers is all I can even come up with off the top of my head. But would assume it happened a few times the with Celtics/Bruins.

I thought it was the fourth time tonight...it actually looks like it's at least the fifth. Your last sentence prompted me to look it up, and in 1958 the Celtics and Bruins both lost in the NBA/SC Finals. The other double whammies that I know about are 1980 Philadelphia (Sixers lost to Lakers, Flyers lost to Islanders), 1994 New York as you mention, 2016 California Bay Area, as mentioned above, and 2023 Miami-area.

7 minutes ago, SCMODS said:

Not a fun time to be a Miami/South Florida sports fan right now. I believe this happened in 2016 as well when the Warriors & Sharks (Bay Area) lost to the Cavs & Penguins. 

I think I saw on Reddit - can't locate it right now because of the silly blackouts - that this is the 9th time where a market had finalists in both the Stanley Cup and NBA Finals. On zero occasions has the market double dipped and walked away with two championships. This is the fourth time where the market has hit snake eyes and lost both series'.

The Florida Panthers are:

• 1-8 in nine games played in their Stanley Cup Final history
• Have been outscored 43-16 across those nine games
• Are tied with the Blackhawks (1962, 1973) and Maple Leafs (1918, 1942) as the only active NHL franchises to have given up 8+ goals in multiple games in their Stanley Cup Final history. The Leafs have played in 21 Stanley Cup Finals, the Blackhawks have played in 13, the Panthers have played in 9...games

LOL.

Really awesome to see such a well-built and well-coached team like the Nuggets finish on top like this. They were the most consistent team throughout the postseason. Well deserved. Happy to see another team get on the championship board. This shouldn't be the last time these Nuggets win one, either.

40 minutes ago, habsfan1 said:

 

Someone on Youtube brought up the pandemic, income loss, and having something to fall back on if there's difficult times. But it's definitely not a necessity for the most profitable franchises.

 

Maybe it'll benefit teams that can't sell out their building every game...

Even then, nobody's stupid here. We all know that "added revenue streams" are a one-way street. Once something becomes normalized, that genie doesn't return to its lamp. I don't imagine for one minute in 2020-'21 that anybody here believed "helmet advertisements for this season only". The NHL has never been a truthful organization. And once we broke that threshold of "ads on uniform parts", it's was only a matter of time for more to follow.

Since the COVID season, we've added helmet ads, jersey ads, and got to hear the NHL tout their digital TV board ads so much (like that's something we're supposed to be impressed by, rather than something we try to actively ignore like we always did before with board ads). I'm terrified to wonder what's next.

5 hours ago, Kevin W. said:

What the actual :censored:?!

Look up EDP445 on Google if you want to know what's up.

Actually, don't do that.

14 minutes ago, habsfan1 said:

Too bad. Celtics could have made history tonight.

First home team to come back from 0-3 to force Game 7 and then lose that Game 7. The other three teams who did it lost Game 7 on the road.

There's your history.

Carolina goalies have a .942 S% in this series, and the team is down 3-0.

When a goalie gets on a heater to the degree that Bob is on - .978 S% in this series - there's nothing you can do. It has to be the worst feeling in the world to be on the other side of that,

Hope Denver wins the championship. They were a great team before Murray got hurt, they're a great team with Murray back, who knows what chances they lost because of Murray's injury these past two seasons. It's wonderful to see a new team in the Finals.

1 hour ago, Digby said:

When was the last time the Celtics fired a coach? Not counting dismissals due to HR violations/legal peril. Even Rick Pitino resigned if memory serves.

O'Brien resigned, Pitino resigned, M.L. Carr was replaced but given a different role in the organization upon that so even he wasn't fired in the sense of being dismissed from the organization completely.

The problem is that Bayern is wearing white shirts/red shorts, in Munich, against Leipzig, who usually wear white shirts/red shorts. To make matters worse, Leipzig is countering by wearing red shirts, traditionally the color of Bayern.

This is like those times when the Pacers or Warriors have worn gold against the Lakers at Staples Center. It looks completely backwards and it took me a long time to get my bearings straight.

The Panthers last playoff OT loss was Game 6 against the Islanders in 2016. They've won seven in a row since then, six of them on the road.

The Hurricanes last playoff OT loss was Game 4 against the Preds in 2021. They've won six in a row since then.

Maybe it's not surprising that this game is going to a 4th overtime.

I appreciate that the Lakers have stuck to wearing the only two uniforms that they should ever wear at Staples. 

This was inevitable when the Sixers had their chance to clinch at home, held the lead with under 5 minutes to play, and couldn't close the deal. This was the exact same series the C's had last year with the Bucks.

I guess I'm rooting for the Heat.

6 hours ago, the admiral said:

The culture at Turner and Time Warner had never been "well, let's just churn out some acceptable crap,"

Well, with one notable exception - their Champions League coverage for the 1.5 years that they had it between 2018-pandemic beginning was absolutely abysmal. Worse than anything ESPN's done that I know of. It was Kate Abdo, Steve Nash (really), and a rotating cast of former USMNT players dressed in street clothes operating in a studio that looked like it was in somebody's basement with lighting to match and absolutely no substance whatsoever to their commentary. I would also dock points theoretically for just using world feed commentary, but soccer is the exception in this country where international commentary is almost always better than domestic commentary, so less was more on that count (for the sake of discussion, hiring British commentators to broadcast to a USA audience still qualifies as "international" in this case; fair or not, American accents calling European soccer games just doesn't work, and I'm very much guilty of this bias). In any case, thank goodness they bailed on that the moment they lost the coverage rights for the next cycle, even if the next cycle wasn't set to begin until 2021-'22. The pandemic happened, they told CBS "here, take it" and CBS has done an outstanding job with it ever since.

When I think about it, it does seem kinda vexing to me how they do the NBA so well, they would later prove to do the NHL very well, but they got every single thing wrong with soccer. Probably just hired the wrong people in the wrong positions and put too much trust in them.

On 5/11/2023 at 10:15 PM, Cujo said:

Maybe it's just me -- but TNT's hockey coverage compared to ESPN's are night and day. TNT blows away ESPN in almost every aspect, in-game and in studio.

On 5/11/2023 at 10:28 PM, DG_ThenNowForever said:

 

With the exception of Mike Breen, that's true for basketball too.

ESPN's coverage of both leagues is a disgrace. Turner has better talent behind the scenes and on camera in literally every position. Their broadcasts look better and they sound better. We're all losers when TNT airs their last NBA game of the season; at least they get the SCF in alternating years, this year being one of them, so there's that.

Home teams are 18-31 this postseason. 3-11 in OT. 0-2 in Game 7. There isn't a single 1st round matchup where the home team did better than .500. Six of the seven series that have been clinched were done on the road, with the only exception being Las Vegas.

8 minutes ago, TrueYankee26 said:

 

That's not the first time Jack's likened something to the Hindenburg. Seems like that's a particular historical event he likes referencing.