Sport

Triple digit losses for the Reds. Sad, appropriate, but also kind of amazing they only lost 100 considering they were 3-22 in the first 25 games. Hopefully this is rock :censored:ing bottom.

Tom ruined his marriage for a Bucs team that is a wildcard exit at best. Wild. What's everyone's favorite Blake Bortles moment? Mine's when he beat the Steelers in Pittsburgh in the 2017 playoffs and the Jaguars went to the AFC Championship game, which they should've won. Myles Jack wasn't down. Honorable Mention is when he got COVID and the Broncos had to play a practice squad wide receiver at QB.

Yeah that's what I was getting at. I was not one of those 1,358,304 fans this season and I won't add my 1 for the game this afternoon. First season I haven't been to a single Cincinnati Reds game since I think 1992. Ten years ago I went to over 30. I did go to 4 FCC games and I've already been to 1 of the Bengals games. It's important to me that Phil knows he f***ed up and to do my part to make sure he never tries anything like that again. I don't suffer that sh** he said on opening day. You don't destroy a playoff team and then tell me to be grateful we have a team at all, then declare me a bad fan for not coming to the ballpark. I kind of can't believe even that many went to games this season. They out-drew Cleveland, even. I expect a lot of season tickets won't be renewed and next year will be worse attendance if the team isn't markedly better on the field. I feel bad for guys like Hunter Greene and Nick Lodolo who won't know Cincinnati as anything other than quarter full and apathetic unless they're part of the team to things turn around, which feels less likely than the likelihood of them getting traded off for prospects in 2025. At least they avoided tying the franchise loss mark last night? They can still clinch their second ever 100 loss season with an L this evening and I haven't decided if I'm rooting for that or not. 100 losses has a weight of stink to it that 99 just doesn't.

That's if you count the COVID NIT, which I do for the Marlins who won their play-in series, but don't for the Reds who were eliminated in 2 games by the Braves without scoring a single run. The Reds haven't been in the real playoffs since 2013, and haven't played in a series since 2012. Speaking of the Reds, they're one loss away from clinching only the second 100 loss season in franchise history. Their win last night means they can only tie the franchise record for futility, which was 1982 when they went 61-101. I'm rooting for it, honestly. It's important to me that Phil Castellini is humbled and embarrassed and I feel like he's not so cynical and/or dumb that he won't be humiliated by watching his crowds dwindle to all-time lows thanks to his behavior on Opening Day. In a perverse way I'm proud of the city for sending him the message that we're not going to tolerate that. Remains to be seen whether he gives enough of a care to do anything about it.

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I had a very nice time yesterday watching the Browns, Steelers, and Ravens all lose within a few minutes of one another. Can't remember the last time the Bengals won and the all 3 of the Triumvirate of Ass****s lost. I took an awesome nap in my backyard hammock at 4:15 and slept like a baby.

My take on the uniforms is they look cool and it's also really weird to see them in something other than the classic orange helmets and I don't want to see them again until next season. That they're wearing them once more this year in a road game, which means only one game in their orange jerseys is a weird choice.

Good thing they still have their regular uniforms. I believe the context of a team called Bengals wearing them eliminates any confusion. You mean like the Eagles in green, Colts in blue or Jaguars in teal, etc? The Bengals have always been the most literal about their uniforms matching their animal namesake so it makes sense to base an alternate uniform then on a variation of that animal, no? Not a real far walk. If you don't like them that's fine, but it's not an insane reach for this specific team to wear white and black.

They only have two pairs. One with the orange stripes that inexplicably look like a clownfish and the other is the plain black stripes. Same pants they wore the previous game at New York.

I was thinking about this not too long ago. They last time I played in a baseball game was when my high school team was eliminated from the state tournament in 2006. So it's been 16 years. If you made a graph of baseball games I played in by age it would be heavily skewed to when I was a child. I'm 35 now and the thought of rounding up some buddies and playing baseball feels laughable. 38 year old Joey Votto spending his adult life swinging a bat at a ball? It's a little bit silly! And he's older than me. It's 100% a kid's game that a lucky few get to play for longer. And sports are taken far too seriously and we prioritize sports far too much as a society.

Hilarious. Dolphins fans crying online that this is what the Patriots got in trouble for like it was a Bengals spy and not some kid on his way to ECON 101. Probably because Miami fans cannot imagine a football stadium being located ON campus rather than 30 minutes away and next to a highway. For those that don't know, the stadium was built around the campus and the campus was built around the stadium. The students are able to use the stadium and field in much the same way they use the library and other school resources and it's a main thoroughfare through campus. Several academic buildings and dorms have windows that look down onto the field. It's why Nippert Stadium is one of the coolest venues in sports and why the Dolphins couldn't have picked a more humorously visible place to practice if they'd tried.

I'll forget the Blue Jackets jersey ad is there by like game 5, but that doesn't mean I like it. I saw some doofus on CBJ twitter who was like "I think it looks good!" How does it look good? You might say it looks "less intrusive than I thought it would" or "It could've been worse", but it doesn't look good. It doesn't look better than it would without it.

Unrelated, this tweet made me sad For context Bob Castellini took control of the team in 2006 so in 17 seasons they are responsible for more than half of our 90 loss years. They have two division titles, a wildcard appearance, and an appearance in the COVID Tournament to speak of in that time. This franchise mattered when I was a kid. They had recent championships and some of the best players in the history of the game. When I moved here after college the city was in love with the Reds and they were a bigger deal than the Bengals. A civic institution. We had legit fun rivalries with the Cardinals, Brewers, Cubs, and Pirates. Teams came to town for important series and the city felt hyped. That's over. Now it feels like we don't even have a team. Nobody talks about them anymore, local media barely bothers to cover them, and when they were semi-competitive the last two years it wasn't near the level of interest I saw ten years ago. They're just a schedule filler for the rest of the league and it's a top two reason why I've drifted away from baseball the last 5 years. I 'm not sure tanking is not a net negative, even if it happens to result in a 2015 Royals like championship. If you make your customers eat s*** 4 years for every 1 year of semi-competitive baseball then eventually they're going to say "Hey, I don't have to eat this s*** anymore. The one year out of 5 that doesn't suck isn't worth it." What Bob Castellini and his silverspoon, dickhead of a kid have done to the Cincinnati Reds is tragic.

The "AL Record" is convenient code for "clean home run record" and we all know it. It allows them to cover this like it's a big deal. I have no idea what they'd be doing right now if Aaron Judge played for a National League team.

I think the key difference for the Bengals here is there's some actual reasoning behind the look as opposed to like the Bears' orange helmets because they felt like trying orange helmets. They've asked people to wear white and I think most will, but I'm seeing a lot of "I PAID XXX DOLLARS FOR AN ORANGE JOE BURROW JERSEY AND IM GONNA WEAR IT DAMMMMIT" online. I agree. There's too few games to play around with brand recognition this much, but we have lost that fight and because it's over I might as well celebrate the alternates when they're good and the Bengals' alternate is good.

Hmm yes ironic that [GENERALIZATION INVENTED FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT] could be contradicted by [GENERALIZATION INVENTED FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT]. Very strange indeed.

I would've gone no stripes on the pants to avoid the issue entirely. To me that just looks like a bad approximation of the original uniforms created from memory without using a photo reference. Since we're not using the old jerseys and socks exactly as they were, but somewhat close, it requires some deviation from the old look so it's not in this Knockoff Sharks uncanny valley, which is why I like the teal pants and helmets. Also I like more color whenever we can find it. This looks great, always has, and I wouldn't have hated them going back to the proper throwback full time like the Oilers, Flames, Coyotes, Senators(ish), Sabres, Islanders, etc, did, but that's not what they did so I think the teal gear is necessary.

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Okay.

No, but I'm complaining about the Apple TV user experience. If you tell me I can hit a button to watch the At-bat that you just alerted me about then that button better take me directly to the game.

Sort of related - three times during the weekend I was watching TV and a box popped up in the corner of my AppleTV saying "Aaron Judge goes for 61 home runs. Press this button to tune in" or something like that. Normally I hate that because it's always like "CLOSE GAME! Minnesota Twolves down 5 at Sacramento Kings". I don't care. But I actually did care this time and all 3 times I pushed the button they told me to it just took me to the Apple TV home screen and not the actual game. If it's not taking me to the game with the push of a button then I'm not going to then try and navigate through the menus to find it.

The NFL never fails to amaze me in the "Needlessly Complicated and Pointless Rules You Didn't Know Existed" department. They said this wasn't a TD on the field and then upheld the call after a challenge. How's this not a touchdown? Two feet clearly in with control of the ball, right? Nobody could dispute that. Not a TD because of one of the weirder and dumber rules in the sport. WHY IS THAT THE RULE? Why is there a higher standard for if your feet are pointing up as opposed to down? My whole life I've seen catches stand because guys got two toes in and now you need both heels in too if your feet are pointing into the field? I feel like I'm being Mandela Effected here. The Bengals scored a TD on the next play so it didn't end up mattering (save for Higgins getting the old slippery salmon there from the Jets' DB and the Bengals losing their first half challenge and Timeout), but still. WHY IS THAT THE RULE?????

That's what they're going to do along with the usual skills competition stuff. I wonder how Robert Edwards feels this morning. This is like 30 years overdue, but also sort of surprising because the game always got better ratings than the World Series and NBA Finals. I feel like the players kind of forced their hand because last year's game was such a farce, even by pro bowl standards, that they felt like they couldn't go through the charade of dressing the players in pads any longer. I wish they'd made this decision years ago before Tyler Eifert was injured in a pro bowl and required offseason surgery.

Pro Bowl Dead.

Blue Jackets wore red pants with white jerseys yesterday. They announced they'd be wearing blue pants on the road this year so I'm assuming (hoping) that it's just a preseason only decision.