Dear Sports Fan - Page 94 of 133 - An advice column for people who live with people who live for sports

NFL Week 7 Good Cop, Bad Cop Precaps

The NFL season has started but how do you know which games to watch and which to skip? Ask our favorite police duo with their good cop, bad cop precaps of all the Week 7 matchups in the National Football League this weekend. To see which games will be televised in your area, check out 506sports.com’s essential NFL maps. If you’re worried about watching too much football or if you’re negotiating for a little break during the weekend, read our weekly feature, Do Not Watch This Game.

Week 7

Sunday, October 19, at 1:00 p.m. ET

Minnesota Vikings at Buffalo Bills

Good cop: This is a must win game for both teams!

Bad cop: If you’re playing a must win game in Week 7 it’s because you’re not very good. Two not very good teams = a not very good game.

Atlanta Falcons at Baltimore Ravens

Good cop: Birds vs. Birds! The Quarterbacks even played at bird-related colleges — Joe Flacco for the Delaware Blue Hens and Matt Ryan for the Boston College Eagles! Birds!

Bad cop: You’re right. Birds. Very exciting.

Cleveland Browns at Jacksonville Jaguars

Good cop: This is a “trap game” for the Browns! One week after beating the dreaded Steelers, will they trip up against the Jaguars!??!

Bad cop: No. No one trips while playing the Jaguars except the Jaguars.

Carolina Panthers at Green Bay Packers

Good cop: Last week, these teams played in two of the most exciting games I’ve seen in a long time! The Panthers tied and the Packers won in the last eight seconds!

Bad cop: Ugh. This will not be a feast for the eyes. Teal and silver vs. green and gold. Clash city.

Miami Dolphins at Chicago Bears

Good cop: It’s the Brandon Marshall revenge game! A few years ago he was run out of town by the Miami organization, fans, and media! Now he gets a chance to beat them as a wide receiver on the Bears!

Bad cop: They paid him millions of dollars and then traded him. That’s not exactly tarring and feathering in the grand scheme of things.

Cincinnati Bengals at Indianapolis Colts

Good cop: It’s the new elite of the NFL! The Bengals and the Colts are the two top ten teams without recognizable, veteran stars! I want to see this!

Bad cop: The Colts are for real but the Bengals are not. In the last two weeks, they’re defense has given up eighty points!

New Orleans Saints at Detroit Lions

Good cop: The Saints haven’t won an away game yet this year but this will be the week! The Lions are ripe for an upset and they play in a dome, just like the Saints! A dome is a dome, amiright?

Bad cop: You’re right. Football is always better played outside on grass instead of inside on a carpet though.

Seattle Seahawks at St. Louis Rams

Good cop: The Seahawks lost last week to the Cowboys! They’re gonna be out for blood this week!

Bad cop: The poor Rams. So many good teams to play, so little hope.

Tennessee Titans at Washington Redskins

Good cop: Oh boy! That’s all I can say! Oh boy!

Bad cop: Things are really bad when Good Cop is speechless. This is a bad game. Watch something else. Like paint drying or grass growing. Even grass not growing or paint getting wetter would be better.

SUNDAY, October 19, AT 4:05 and 4:25 P.M. ET

Kansas City Chiefs at San Diego Chargers

Good cop: This is going to be rock-em-sock-em, full throttle, no-holds-barred, offensive football!

Bad cop: Too bad I’m going to miss it. I’ll be watching the National Mixed Metaphor Championship.

New York Giants at Dallas Cowboys

Good cop: If I could scream like James Brown, I would for this game! It’s a titanic clash of popular divisional opponents! Great teams, great players, great game!

Bad cop: The bigger they are, the harder they fall. Do not watch this game.

Arizona Cardinals at Oakland Raiders

Good cop: The Raiders almost broke through last week in their game against the Chargers! I think they have a chance!

Bad cop: Did you really just say “I think they have a chance” in defense of this game? Sure they have a chance. Just not a very good one.

SUNDAY, OCTOBER 19, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

San Francisco 49ers at Denver Broncos

Good cop: It’s the Super Bowl runners-up versus the team that’s made the NFC championship game the last three years! It’s a game with star power all over the field! Will San Francisco’s physicality beat out Denver’s precision?!!

Bad cop: Yeah… but you never know… it wouldn’t be fun to watch if the field was made of quicksand!!!

MONDAY, October 20, AT 8:30 P.M. ET

Houston Texans at Pittsburgh Steelers

Good cop: Steelers quarterback Ben Roethlisberger is 6’5″, 241 pounds, and has a habit of holding the ball longer than most quarterbacks, trusting on his size and instincts to make plays! J.J. Watt is 6’5″, 289 pounds, and loves tackling quarterbacks who hold onto the ball even a second too long!

Bad cop: That’s a recipe for an undramatic game if I’ve ever heard one. Pshhh.

Goal horns and hockey highlights

The 2005 comic book film noir, Sin City, has a line in it that is equally true of the internet as it is of the eponymous city in the film:

“Walk down the right back alley in Sin City and you can find anything.”

Today, I’m sharing a couple of the best hockey related things I’ve seen in a long time in the back alleys of the internet.

Don’t Tell Me The Score

Live sports are one of the few reasons to keep getting cable television. It’s just not the same to watch sports after the fact and it’s very difficult to see many games without cable unless you live in a bar. I have a friend without TV who is a die-hard Pittsburgh Penguins fan and he listens to the games on the radio. I don’t know how he does it. Hockey is so chaotic when you’re watching it in perfect conditions, I can’t imagine trying to visualize the movements of ten whirling dervishes plus two goalies and a puck. Don’t Tell Me The Score is a brilliant alternative. If you miss a game but manage to make it through the social and social media mine-field without finding out what happens, (probably by loudly proclaiming everywhere you go, “don’t tell me the score!”) you can use this website to watch 5-10 minute highlight packages. The site has a crisp, clean, authoritative look. It’s design says, “we’re here to show you highlights and we know how NOT to spoil the game.” It’s a great resource.

We Just Scored and FF Goal Horns

Every sport has its own sounds. Basketball has the squeak of shoes on wood, and the swish of the ball traveling through the net. Football has quarterbacks barking commands and players hitting and grunting. The game of hockey has the “tsk tsk” sound of skates cutting into the ice and the thunk of the puck hitting the boards. From sport to sport, team to team, there are special sounds created when teams score. My college’s football team, the Rutgers Scarlet Knights, are among the set of teams that fire cannons off when they score. Soccer goals, if you’re at home watching on TV and Andrés Cantor or one of his many imitators is announcing, will be accompanied with a “Goooooooooooooooooooooal!!!!” Goals in the National Hockey League are celebrated with the blast of a horn. Each team has a slightly different horn and over time, hockey fans learn to dread the sound of their rivals’ horns and love the sound of their team’s horn. Pavlov would be so happy.

FF Goal Horns is a section of the hockey site Frozen Faceoffs that has information about the history of each team’s horn, photos, and sound clips. We Just Scored is a simpler but potentially more satisfying site. It presents visitors with an array of teams. Choose a team and you get a screen in that team’s primary color with a big, easy-button looking image in the middle. Click the button and it depresses visually while playing the horn and accompanying arena noise of that team scoring.

Many of the horns, including my favorite team’s horn, sound like fog hornsI don’t know if there’s any real parallel between ships in fog and hockey but I know that if I’m ever out at sea and fog descends, I’m going to be celebrating like crazy.

Friday, October 17

And then there were two: The San Francisco Giants finished off their series with the St. Louis Cardinals in a 6-3 victory. The game was closer than it sounds from the score. The last three runs were scored on a home run by Travis Ishikawa in the ninth inning. The Giants actually had to score one run in the eight to tie the game at three runs apiece before winning it in the ninth. Although the game was close, the series was not — the Giants won four games to one. It’s been a pattern this playoffs. For all the excitement over the Royals run and the close individual games, the series scored have all been sweeps or three or four games to one. I, for one, would like to see the World Series go six or seven games.
Line: The Giants don’t lose championships on even years but the Royals don’t seem to lose at all!
What’s Next: The Giants play game one of the World Series against the Royals on Tuesday, October 21, at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.
The Jets were valiant but the Patriots won: In the continuing feud between the New York Jets and the New England Patriots, last night’s game was typical. The Jets came into the game with a losing record, the Pats with a winning one. The Jets played the Pats better than one would expect given their respective records and rosters. Tom Brady played great and the Pats found a way to win. The final score was 27-25 and the Jets had a chance in the last second to win on a 58 yard field goal. That’s pretty far to kick a football, two yards farther than the Jets’ kicker had ever successfully kicked before, but we’ll never know if he was going to make it because a Patriot managed to block it at the line of scrimmage.
Line: Brady and Bellichick won’t be around forever to beat the Jets infinitely but they’ll probably outlast the Jets quarterback and coach if the Jets keep losing.
Double overtime in college football: The Utah Utes barely got by the Oregon State Beavers (how come pro teams don’t have such awesome names?) 29-23 last night. In fact, they needed double over time and 229 and three touchdowns from running back Devontae Boooker to do it. That’s a good two or three games for most running backs! This game does nothing to dispel the sneaking suspicion that the PAC 12 might be the strongest conference in the country.
Line: You gotta say, the college football overtime rules, where teams get alternating possessions starting at the 25 yard line until one scores more than the other, are really exciting!

Thursday, October 16

The Royals are in the World Series: The Kansas City Royals continued their magical post season run last night, beating the Orioles 2-1 in the game and 4-0 in the best-four-out-of-seven series. The Royals will host the first game of the World Series next Tuesday. This gives us plenty of time to appreciate their achievement so far! Winning eight games in a row is unusual; eight playoff games in a row is almost unheard of; eight playoff games after being one of the least successful sports franchises in any sport in the country for the last 25 years? Incredible.
Line: There’s plenty of time to analyze and project and worry before Tuesday. Let’s just enjoy today.
One small step for the Giants: The San Francisco Giants are one game away from joining the Royals for a date in the World Series after beating the St. Louis Cardinals 6-4 thanks to some great pitching by Yusmeiro Petit and some not-so-great fielding by the Cardinals. The Giants won the World Series in the last two even years (2010 and 2012) so if you’re really superstitious, you’re beginning to wonder if something is up here…
Line: The Cardinals keep shooting themselves metaphorically in the foot. I just hope that if they lose, they don’t lose on another mistake.
What’s Next: Game five is today at 8 p.m. ET on FS1.
U.S. women win but don’t inspire: The U.S. Women’s National Soccer team won its first World Cup qualifying game last night 1-0 against Trinidad & Tobago. A win is a win, but it won’t be analyzed that way by fans of the team. We expect domination from a team that is looking to win its first world cup in 16 years next year in Canada, especially against an opponent who we normally beat decisively. That said, the team will take the win and move on. They’ve got four more games in the next eleven days, all of which are opportunities to improve.
Line: Sure, we won, but if last night’s performance is representative, we won’t win the World Cup next year.
What’s Next: A World Cup qualifying match tomorrow, Friday, October 17, at 8 p.m versus Guatemala on FS1.

Bob Ryan's book: Scribe

What? You think it’s too early to start shopping for Christmas? I agree with you but it’s not what some of my local stores think because they’re already gearing up for the rush. I say, skip the stores and buy the sports fan in your life the new autobiographical book, Scribe: My Life in Sports, by Bob Ryan. Bob Ryan is one of the best known and most respected sports writers in the country. He started as an intern at the Boston Globe in 1968 and retired from full-time work there in 2012 after 44 years as a beat writer and columnist. He is a Boston sports writer, through and through — never bothering to adopt the feigned objective neutrality of many journalists in sports. When asked about that in a recent interview by Ryan Glasspiegel of The Big Lead, Ryan said:

I don’t see why anybody would ever have a problem with it. If you’re not a sports fan, why are you in the business? To me, I don’t quite understand people who aren’t true sports fans who are involved in this business.

It’s not that hard. You internally root. You don’t sit there and externally root — you internally care. And you do your job. It’s just not that hard. You see a game, the team wins or loses, you go talk to people, and if somebody stinks you say so. If it’s a good story, you’re positive. I just don’t understand what the inherent conflict is.

I haven’t read Scribe yet — it just came out — but I’ve enjoyed reading Ryan over the years as well as seeing him on TV as a panelist on the Sports Reporters, Around the Horn, and as a substitute host on Pardon the Interruption. He’s one of my favorite guests on the Tony Kornheiser radio show. Ryan is the most enthusiastic and knowledgeable sports personality out there. The Boston Globe review of Scribe noted that writing autobiographically, Ryan “offers a bonus: a reflective humor that can only come from years of working at a job you love.” I believe it!

It’s been quite enjoyable to have the publication of Ryan’s book as an excuse for a real Ryan love-fest in sports media. My favorite article about Ryan was Bryan Curtis‘ homage in Grantland. His reverential tone serves to lift your own appreciation of Ryan as a writer and person. One of the effective tools he uses is including quotes about Ryan from athletes. For those of you who don’t follow sports that closely, athletes generally consider journalists to be a form of life somewhere between the mosquito and the raccoon. Bob Ryan is an exception:

The players followed Ryan, too. “He was an artist,” said guard Paul Westphal. “You could actually learn something about basketball, even as a player, by reading Bob’s articles.”

“I remember Bob coming up to me one day and asking if I wanted to have a beer after practice. I said, ‘Sure.’ We were just talking, and then Bob starts describing what we were doing on the court. He knew all our plays. He knew when people came off the bench. I was a rookie, remember. I started thinking, Do all the reporters know everything we’re doing out there?”

Scribe: My Life in Sports is available in hardcover and kindle now. It would make a great Christmas present for the sports fans in your life… and apparently, it’s time to think about that sort of thing!

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US Women's Soccer begins its World Cup run

The US Women’s Soccer team begins its World Cup run tonight with a game against Trinidad & Tobago. The US Women’s Soccer team is everything the men’s team is not. In men’s soccer, the United States is David without the slingshot. In women’s soccer, we are Goliath without the acromegaly. The thing is… we haven’t won the World Cup since the famous 1999 game versus China. You know, the one in California where we won in a shoot out and Brandi Chastain celebrated by tearing her shirt off in triumph? Yeah, that one. Since then we’ve placed third twice and second once. It’s incomprehensible to fans and unacceptable to players. The US Women’s Soccer team is on a mission to win the 2015 World Cup in Canada and it all starts tonight with their first qualifying game against Trinidad & Tobago.

The game tonight will be televised live from Kansas City on Fox Sports 2. I can’t promise it will be an exciting game — according to the official preview, the US is 7-0 in games against Trinidad & Tobago and we’ve hit double digits in three of those seven games — but it will be an important game. For the players on our team, the arduous five games in twelve days schedule of the qualifying games will be more about simultaneously gelling and competing with each other for places on the team and in the starting line up. For fans, it’s a chance to get to know the team a year before the spotlight of the World Cup starts shining in earnest on them.

My favorite player on the team remains Abby Wambach. Wambach has scored more goals in her international career than any other soccer player ever, male or female. This remarkable fact often gets lost in conversation about soccer. Take Landon Donovan, for instance, who recently retired from the Men’s National Team and was widely referred to as the leading American goal scorer in history. As Valerie Alexander points out in her wonderful article on “the issue of establishing women’s achievements as “women’s” but allowing the male position to be the assumed baseline,” “every time [Donovan] sits there, silently allowing that phrase to be rattled off — “all-time leading U.S. goal scorer” — without pointing out that he is the all-time leading men’s goal scorer, it does take away from what Abby Wambach and Mia Hamm have achieved — total world domination.” Wambach is a great, great soccer player. She’s also fun to root for because she breaks through a lot of the conventions of the popular female athlete. Beautiful though she may be, she is not a sports pin-up sensation like fellow national team players Alex Morgan, Syndey Leroux, or even Hope Solo. Although she is happily married to a fellow women’s professional soccer player, her sexual preference is almost never mentioned in discussing her. What people talk about when they talk about Wambach is her ferocity, her unwavering drive, and her unparalleled athletic achievements. Abby Wambach is a bad-ass and I would want my kids, girls AND boys, to play soccer like her if they choose to play.

Wambach is 34 years old now and what seemed inevitable before — that the U.S. would win a World Cup and that she would be the starting striker of the team — is uncertain. Even more uncertain is her life after soccer. Michael Jordan, equally dominant and driven, has struggled to find a balance in his life without basketball. Kate Fagan recently spent some time with Wambach and profiled her in the twilight of her career brilliantly for ESPNW. It’s an inspiring and troubling article. The ode to the great athlete is there but the overarching theme is Wambach’s impending retirement and the fear, held jointly by Wambach and her friends, teammates, and wife about what happens after soccer. It’s a transition that all great professional athletes have to make but I’ve rarely heard it talked about so honestly and revealingly:

“I know that I was put on this planet to be an athlete,” she says. “But what else is there? What is my point in life? This might sound masochistic or narcissistic, I don’t know, but when I’m not playing the game, the validations I feel about life are always through the hardships. I relate more to sadness, in a lot of ways, when I’m not playing. You can imagine how many people tell me how great I am every day. So for me, it’s a balancing act, trying to be and feel like a normal human being. I have to, not exactly dim my light, but alter my expectations, so I can start to be happy in ways that are sustainable for the rest of my life.”

She takes a deep breath, then lets out the air. “I’ve never actually said that out loud.”

Whatever the world has in store for Wambach after retirement, she says “it will be a lot easier… if I go off into retirement with a World Cup title.” I will be rooting for her all the way. The first step on the trip to the World Cup title starts tonight. Be a part of it!

Wednesday, October 15

Royals yet to lose: Remember way back when the baseball playoffs started and the very first game was a freakishly exciting one between the Kansas City Royals and the Oakland Athletics? The Royals haven’t lost a game since winning that one. They beat their next opponents 3-0 in a best three-out-of-five and after last night’s game, they’re up 3-0 in their best-four-out-of-seven series with the Baltimore Orioles.
Line: The Royals might never lose again!
What’s Next: Game four, today, 4 p.m. ET on TBS
Giants sneak by Cardinals: The other series remaining in the baseball playoffs has been a lot closer. The Giants lead two games to one after just barely beating the Cardinals yesterday thanks to a wild throw by a player trying to field a bunt in the tenth inning.
Line: The other series might not be close but this one is. That’s two games in a row that ended 5-4.
What’s Next: Game four, today, 8 p.m. ET on FS1
Honduras even with the United States: The U.S. Men’s National Soccer Team played an exhibition game last night against Honduras. After an early goal by Jozy Altidore in his first return to the world stage since he pulled up lame in the first game of the World Cup, the U.S. tried to hold on to the lead. They weren’t successful thanks to a goal in the 86th minute by Maynor Figueroa. That’s two games in a row that the team let up a goal in the last five minutes — not a good trend, even in exhibition games.
Line: I know they’re just friendly games but you never like to see the team concede late goals.

Deciphering TV Graphics: Fox and CBS NFL Football

Sports is no fun when you don’t know what’s going on. That’s never more true than when a beginner sports fan sits down to watch football with a bunch of die-hards. One of the constant challenges in that scenario are the television graphics that overlay the football game. Every network has a different way of displaying information to the viewer. These graphics are packed with information and mostly well designed but they are never explained. Networks simply assume that viewers will be able to decipher the TV graphics for themselves. Most long-time football fans can but for casual fans, it’s just one more artifact that makes getting into the sport difficult. That’s not how it should be! I took screenshots of the Fox and CBS NFL Football TV graphics so that I could explain them in detail. Both graphics show exactly the same set of information but they arrange it in different ways. I’ll do the other two NFL stations next week and more sports later. Send me an email at dearsportsfan@gmail.com or leave a comment if you have a particularly problematic graphic for me to unravel.

What information is encoded in these TV graphics?

Possession

Possession is simply which team has the ball at the moment. This is one of the harder things to discern from the graphics. Fox uses a yellow bar which is easy to miss and looks a little like the timeout counter. CBS uses a small white dot next to the name of the team that has the ball.

Score

The score should be one of the easiest things to see from the graphic and indeed, it is. Fox does a better job of this by making the score by far the biggest numbers out there. CBS’s score is only marginally bigger than the other numbers on its graphic.

Timeouts remaining

Each team gets three timeouts per half. Fox and CBS both show the number of time outs remaining by using yellow bars. In our screen captures, both teams have three time outs remaining in both games.

Quarter

Pretty intuitive, this is just which quarter the game is currently in. Since quarters range from 1st to 4th and so do downs, it’s better to have the quarter close to the time remaining and far from the down and distance. I like CBS’ approach to displaying the quarter better than Fox’s.

Time left in quarter

NFL games are organized into four quarters of 15 minutes each. Like basketball and hockey, the clock counts down from 15 as opposed to soccer which counts up to 90.

Down and distance

Down and distance are football shorthand to express the situation of the game. Which of the four chances a team has to move the ball ten yards are they on and how far do they have left to travel? I wrote a whole post on this which I recommend if you, like the person who asked me this question, have always wanted to know what down and distance were but were afraid to ask.

Play time left on clock

Teams with the ball have forty seconds from the end of one play to start running another. This is an important tactical factor because teams can stretch out the time between plays if they are ahead or rush them if they are behind. A penalty is assessed for letting the play clock run out without running a play. For viewers it can also tell them when to look up from whatever else they’re doing so they don’t miss a play.

Got it, let’s see the graphics

Why do people like tennis?

Dear Sports Fan,

Why do people like tennis?

Thanks,
Heidi

Dear Heidi,

Tennis is a great sport to play and watch but its charms are not always immediately obvious. To the uninitiated, tennis can seem like watching a game of Pong but with horrible grunting and screaming instead of charming, robotic “bong bong” noises. Tennis is a relatively easy sport to learn and I think it’s worth picking up. Here are some of the reasons why I like tennis.

Long, stable rivalries: Tennis players these days have long careers and at least in the men’s game, the best players stay at the top of the game for a long time. This leads to wonderful rivalries that last for a decade or more. It’s rare and rewarding to see two or three great players battle each other for years on end.
Personality shines through: More than any other sport, as a viewer of tennis, you get to know the players you’re watching. You learn their nervous tics, you see them get mad at themselves, you witness their struggles with fatigue and injury, and if you and they are lucky, you get to see them celebrate the pinnacle of their professional lives.
Psychologically challenging: Tennis is the most psychologically challenging sport. More than any other sport I have seen, tennis players are alone when they compete. In major tournaments they are actually prohibited from having any communication with their coaches. The way the sport is constructed, there are almost always lots of ups and downs in any match and the margin between success and failure is literally inches. You’ll often hear people say that great quarterbacks or baseball hitters need to have “short memories” so they can approach each pass or hit with a blankly optimistic mind. Quarterbacks throw thirty passes in a game. Baseball players get four or five attempts at the plate. Tennis players have to blank their minds this way hundreds of times in every match.
Matches last as long as they are good: The way tennis works, uneven matches are over pretty quickly — an hour for a three set match or two for a five set match — but great matches stretch out in enjoyable luxury. A close, hard-fought match can last three hours for a three set match or more than five hours for a five set match. It’s like there’s a built-in mechanism in the sport to make the better viewing experiences last longer and the worse ones end quickly. Compare that to timed sports like soccer, basketball, and hockey, where the great games fly by and the bad ones feel like they are going to last forever…
Has its own vocabulary: Tennis has great words and phrases that only exist in the context of the sport. They’re easy to learn and once you know them, you feel like an insider!
Stylish players: Dressing to play sports is not usually the time you choose to make a fashion statement. There are so many sports fashion choices that are about function over style: bike shorts, squash goggles, over-sized hockey jerseys — but tennis has always prioritized function and style. Even at Wimbledon, where the players are required to wear only white, tennis players exhibit their own styles. Rafael Nadal and Rodger Federer are known for capris and gold accented clothing as much as they are known for winning titles.
Varying surfaces make for different styles: Most sports are only played on one surface. Professional basketball is played on wood, baseball on grass and dirt, football on grass and fake grass. Ice hockey is played on ice and swimming is done in water. Only tennis is played on grass and clay and asphalt where each surface is meant to influence how the game is played. On grass, big serves rule the day. Clay is slower, encouraging defensive tactical play. Hard court falls in between. As a viewer, you develop a preference for watching one surface or another (I love clay) or you just appreciate each of them for their peculiarities.
Wimbledon: Alone among the major sporting events, Wimbledon retains an air of gentility while being a thrilling, top-level competitive event. Let football have it’s Tostitos Fiesta Bowl and hot dogs, tennis fans are happy with Wimbledon and strawberries and cream.

Enjoy the tennis,
Ezra Fischer

Tuesday, October 14

Niners win, Rams lose — There were two things that stood out in last night’s football game which ended as a 31 – 17 victory for the San Francisco 49ers over the St. Louis Rams: The first was a phantom penalty call against the Rams at the end of the first half which stopped them from increasing their lead from 14-3 to 21-3. After that bad call, the 49ers scored 28 of the next 31 points in the game. The other notable thing was the Rams wearing their bright, beautiful (to my eyes) yellow and blue uniforms from the 1990s. Fun!
Line: If it hadn’t been for that phantom offensive pass interference call at the end of the second quarter, things might have turned out a little differently.
Baseball playoffs quaintly rained out — It seems like a remnant of a nicer, kinder past for sports, but the baseball playoff game last night between the Baltimore Orioles and the Kansas City Royals actually got rained out! It’s kind of cool that some things, even if they are elemental, are more important than sports and television schedules.
What’s Next: The game has been rescheduled for tonight at 8 p.m. ET and will be televised on TBS.
Topsy turvy start for some hockey teams — The Boston Bruins played a rare Monday matinee hockey game yesterday against the Colorado Avalanche and lost 2-1. This brings their record to 1-3 and means that after a win on opening night, the Bruins have lost three games in a row. This is a rare bad patch for the Bruins. It’s been 145 games since they last lost three in a row. That said, it’s probably a little bit too early to worry. Just like no one really expects the Tampa Bay Lightning or Nashville Predators to remain undefeated.
Line: It’s a long season, let’s all just take a deep breath.