Sport

Terrible time to trip over my own butt. That 8-6 skidmark probably just killed me. Raiders Vikings Steelers Bengals Bills Cowboys Eagles Titans Chiefs Seahawks 49ers Dolphins Patriots

49ers need to bring back the enormous pants stripe and striped socks and the uniform is complete.

I watched the first half of that game last night. They don't look like the Saints. They look like a Pop Warner team named the Saints.

I know how the new playoff is going to work. I'm saying I don't like it. I'm saying I don't like how the current playoff works. I'm saying I don't want any at-large bids. This year, 5 years from now, 7 years ago - At-large bids are, will be, and always were a mistake. They undermine the results of the regular season. Period. I can go through the list of great games this season that would have been completely unimportant if they used a 12 team playoff season. It's bad enough that OSU-Michigan didn't matter at all this season with a 4 team playoff, but people actually want to make that problem worse, destroy more results, by expanding the at-large field? I know. My system is simple: Take the 4 best conference champions. If one of them has 2 or more losses then I don't care because they took the path to the 4 team playoff that was outlined to every team before the season in the FBS. Win your conference or you can't gripe. It would be purely based on results on the field, still exclusive for the regular season games to matter same as they always have, turns the conference championship games into games with some actual stakes, essentially turning them into playoff games of their own, and it would lessen the power of committee bullshirt. I get that the playoff is going to expand. I get that. I don't like it for reasons I've already explained - It's going to neuter the drama of the best regular season in sports in exchange for a few more playoff games that likely won't be that good anyways.

Yes. The FBS season has always been different from the NFL and other levels of college football and I think it's what makes it great and I'll be sad when that element where winning nearly every game matters is gone. I'm not afraid of an 8-4 team making the playoffs. I'm afraid of a two (or three) loss at-large like this year's Alabama, OSU, Tennessee, Penn State, USC, etc making an expanded playoff because of how that undermines the regular season results. When Alabama lost to LSU this year it meant something. If we had a 12 team tournament it wouldn't have mattered at all. What I'm saying is conference championship games are often meaningless (See: Michigan-Purdue, See: Alabama-Georgia last year), but what if every single one mattered every single time? You can build some actual stakes to the conference title games by tying them to a playoff berth and removing at-larges. That way they'd be defacto playoff games. That also makes a game like OSU-Michigan for the right to go to the Big Ten title game into a defacto playoff game. That's your expanded playoffs, but it still preserves the demands of being perfect in the regular season. Would it suck to lose one game all season and have the season end there? Yeah, but also tough ti***es. I grew up in the 90's and it happened all the time, I was in college in 2006 when we got them back, which is why the game mattered so much. Those stakes are pretty much gone now and it's a bummer.

The difference between football and, say, basketball, is the college football regular season plays far fewer games and has always demanded start-to-finish (near) perfection. That's why the college football regular season is the best regular season in any sport. Every regular season game means a lot more because they're scarce and because one loss can eliminate a team. If you expand the tournament then suddenly Alabama's loss at LSU doesn't matter. The reason that was such a huge win and dramatic moment was it basically ended Alabama's shot at the playoff. If you expand to 12 and give Alabama an at-large bid then it literally meant nothing. Because they cheapen the actual results on the field. Take OSU-Michigan, again. The winner of that game made the playoffs and the loser of that game made the playoffs rendering the game nearly pointless. I would even argue that OSU benefitted from losing the game because then they didn't have to go tear themselves up and risk injury in a meaningless conference championship game. That's a bad and dumb system. The more at-large bids you dole out the less losses sting, the less wins matter, and the less fun and dramatic the regular season becomes.

I'm strictly talking about football.

I do realize that. I'm saying we've been doing it wrong this whole time and even as an OSU fan their inclusion this year goes against my belief of how the system should work. The new system will only make the problem worse with the extra at-large bids. It's too bad.

I know why they don't do this (money) and I'm an Ohio State fan who will watch the playoff game against Georgia and root for them, but I must be consistent in my stance from previous years and say that I don't think you should be in the playoff without winning your conference. It diminishes the importance of rivalry and conference championship games. This season that would mean taking the 4 best conference champions, which would be 1. Georgia 2. Michigan 3. Utah and 4. Clemson. Now, people are going to circle Utah and Clemson and say "are they really deserving?" Sure. They're not "great", but they won their conferences and fulfilled my hypothetical requirements to qualify. OSU, TCU, Alabama, did not and their entire cases is all based on opinion. My system is based entirely on results. People want an expanded playoff, but we already have an expanded playoff - It's called the regular season, which acts as round one of the playoff. The conference championship games would act as round 2 of the playoffs. With the system as it is now, though, the OSU loss at home to Michigan effectively means nothing. TCU's loss to Kansas State in the Big 12 title game effectively means nothing. How many SEC championship games have we seen lately that effectively meant nothing? Imagine if Georgia-LSU had had actual stakes. Why are we okay with neutering the importance of these big end of season games? Every time I say this people respond, "yeah, but would you really want to see Georgia play Clemson and Michigan play Utah?" IDK. Not much different from UGA-OSU or UM-TCU to me. First of all, we've had like 3 good games in the 9 year history of the 4 team playoff so potential game quality shouldn't be a consideration. Second, most years the 4 best conference champions would not have such a wide gulf of quality between the top 2 and 3/4. This is kind of an aberration this season. Notre Dame fans will then chime in and say "BUT what about us?" I don't give a honk if Notre Dame ceases to exist. Join the Big Ten West if you want a shot. I'm tired of giving you special treatment, ya dorks. That's what I think. In conclusion, the conference title games should actually mean something and expanding the playoffs beyond 4 will make the regular season matter less.

They've been really annoying about who they've chosen to wear it against. This gets my vote for worst looking NFL game of all-time. It was physically difficult to watch. But yeah they keep wearing orange against KC. It's bothersome. This was 2015.

I'm trying to imagine what it would look like. You would also hang a defender back to counter the cherry picking in open play so I think it mostly cancels each other out, but I feel like it would open the field more and you'd get more goals off set pieces because you could run like a post play, similar to American football. I just want to see 4 or 5 games without offsides and if it sucks then I'll shut up forever. I actually think hockey offsides should be a hybrid thing because at the NHL level they're getting too big and too fast for the size of the ice, which they can't easily change. You can't do away with offsides entirely because clearing the zone is a key part of playing defense. My idea is first guy into the zone can cross the blue line without the puck, but once the whole team is in the zone then you still have to hold the line because that's a critical and exciting part of the game.

All they need to do is lose the navy blue. The logo looks great on the helmets with just red, white, and blue, but then every other element gets muddied by the unnecessary and thin dark blue outlines/stripes. It's a great example of less is more.

I get why soccer offsides is the way it is, but I'd love to watch a game where it's not a rule just out of curiosity to see what that game would look like.

I don't know how the Bengals keep beating Kansas City, but it's very fun. This is all I ever asked for as a fan - to be in big games and watch the team perform well in big games*. Not confident that they'll be able to survive the gauntlet that will be the AFC path to the Super Bowl and make it back, and if I were a gambler I'd take the field, but I can confidently say that the team is better now on December 5th, 2022 than they were on December 5th, 2021. It's a more sustainable and repeatable way of playing. For no reason I'm thinking about how Bill Barnwell's preseason preview of the 16 teams with the best chance to win the Super Bowl didn't include the AFC Champion Bengals. He did include the Colts, Cardinals, Rams, and Browns, though! *as opposed to the Marvin Lewis era when they'd find themselves in big games and then every starter on both sides of the ball would get simultaneous brain diarrhea and forget who they are and how to play football.

That totally sucked. Worst part is if we had Rourke playing we probably win that game by two touchdowns. 0-5 now in the MAC Championship game. Brutal.

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Holy moly I was certain the refs were going to screw us in the last minute.

I've seen this a thousand times before - I believe the medical term for this injury is he got drilled in the nuts.

I attended the Bengals-Titans clash in Nashville on Sunday. Thoughts: - Bengals won! I'm 2-0 all time when attending road games. The other was week one 2018 when the Bengals upset the Colts. - Not to be dramatic, but realistically a loss there would've probably been the end of their season. They'd be 6-5 going into games against KC and Cleveland (who they can't seem to beat) and then at Tampa, at New England, Buffalo, and Baltimore. It's a gauntlet, but being 7-4 gives them way more of a fighting chance. Chasing down the Ravens for the division is not out of the question (thanks, Jaguars!), though neither is missing the playoffs altogether. - Joe Burrow is great and everything I hoped for. Keep him safe and he's our guy for the next decade. Watching him without Chase the last 4 games has made this even more clear. - Bengals beat the Titans at their own game, which was not surprising to me, but may have been to national pundits. - Burrow got sacked 9 times in the playoff game at Tennessee last year. I think he got sacked twice on Sunday. The new o-line is gelling and Burrow has figured out the ways to play behind them. Any Titans fan who expected another sack parade must've been disappointed. - I get why they're trying to replace that stadium, but it's not nearly as awful as I was expecting. - I was supposed to go to the Blue Jackets - Predators game on Saturday night, but a water main break in the arena on Friday morning flooded everything and the game was cancelled. My dad said, "I've never seen a hockey game get rained out before." Was a bummer, but there's worse places to be when plans get changed - Nashville is a rip-roaring good time. - Titans fans were a bit more surly than I expected. I guess that's what happens when you actually beat someone in the playoffs. Forgive us, we're new at this whole 'Being Good' thing. When we got to our seats the whole section groaned and booed and I said "Sorry sorry. I'm the best behaved visiting fan you'll ever meet." which is true. I followed that with "I've dealt with too many Steelers in Cincinnati so I know how it feels" and the Titans fans around us all chimed in with how awful Steelers fans are. It's my experience that everyone can agree that Steelers fans are the worst people alive and it can be a useful bonding exercise. - Seeing all the Bengals fans down there was a blast. I like being the tiger stripe team. It makes for some fun fan attire.

Chiefs and 49ers

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Beating the Steelers, who are, indisputably, the worst people alive, is always a great time. I will never tire of it. That field was absolute trash and the NFLPA should not allow their members to play on it.

He's a born-again contrarian and he loves to take the minority opinion with everything because he thinks it makes him smarter when it really just makes him annoying. His siding with Precourt in the whole Crew saga was upsetting and annoying. He was the only person I saw in favor of the super league and his take on Qatar was the other countries should've bribed FIFA more. His religion now is the free capitalist market over anything else, which is, again, weird for the guy who was the face of hippy soccer in the 90's. His response on Qatar has been, "if you don't like it then don't watch" and it's like obviously, that's why I'm mad about it, idiot. Also weird stance for someone who should be trying to grow the sport's popularity in the US. I'd like to watch, but they're putting me in the position of choosing to ignore human rights abuses in the name of entertainment. He lives in a very black or white world - I am capable of not watching soccer while also voicing complaints on social media, Alexi. Those two things are not mutually exclusive.

I know this is well-covered territory, but it's still so weird to me that this guy turned into such a corporate shill.