An advice column for people who live with people who live for sports
What happened on Monday, December 29, 2014?
Everyone got fired: The day after the last regular season game in the NFL is unofficially known as Black Monday because it’s a day when many teams, whose owners feel they underperformed, fire their coaches and general managers. Yesterday the Chicago Bears and New York Jets fired their coach and GM, the Atlanta Falcons fired their coach, and the San Francisco 49ers and their coach, Jim Harbaugh, “mutually agreed” to part ways. Line: I flip flop between real sympathy for those fired and indignation that I should feel any sympathy for people making millions of dollars who will easily find other high-paying jobs.
Two duds and a gem: Of the three college football bowl games yesterday, two were lopsided duds: Clemson beat Oklahoma 40-6 in the Russell Athletic Bowl and Arkansas beat Texas 31-7 in the Advocare V100 Texas Bowl. Only the Liberty Bowl between Texas A&M vs. West Virginia was a good game. Texas A&M narrowly edged West Virginia 45-37 thanks to a big day from their freshman quarterback, Kyle Allen. West Virginia almost won despite their quarterback having even less experience. How can you have less experience than a freshman? You could be like Skyler Howard, who (according to ESPN) was “making his second career start in place of Clint Trickett, who announced Friday he was giving up football because of multiple concussions.” Line: College football shootouts are so much fun to watch but they make me feel a little dirty.
Liverpool crushes Swansea: Liverpool beat Swansea 4-1 yesterday in the only game on the British Premier League schedule. This victory vaults Liverpool up from 10th place, all the way to… 8th place. But really, the victory was actually kind of a big deal. Liverpool was all over Swansea, who had been ranked ahead of them. They even scored one of those fluky goals where an attacker leaped at the goalie as he was kicking the ball up-field and it actually bounced off the attackers back and went right into the goal. Line: This victory puts Liverpool in striking distance as the first half of the season ends.
Wizards prove themselves: I said yesterday on the daily Dear Sports Fan Sports Forecast that the game between the Wizards and the Rockets was a good chance for the Wizards to prove themselves as a championship caliber basketball team. They did just that by beating the Rockets in a close, one-point game, 104-103. The Wizards fired on cylinders young and old. 21 year-old Bradley Beal led them with 33 points and 37 year-old Paul Pierce did his share with 21. Line: Looks like the Wizards are for real!
