The Wudder Sports FALL BACK Spectacular: Live From The US Open, Trojan Man, DJACK BACK, Chip KeLOLy, Mike Scott Ninja Warrior, AB C-Ya, and More Fire
The American sports landscape from mid-July thru August is a slow burn.
Header Photo Courtesy of RSP3: taken during the early dawn witching hour before a Birds Sunday, in the OG Jetro Lot, directly across from The Vet, September 2000.
There’s a dearth of distraction that sometimes feels like The Endless Bummer.
2019 was certainly no exception.
Unless you take great pleasure in events like Major League Baseball’s black-and-white-softball-uniformed “Players Weekend”, the Pan-Am Games, Little League World Series, or preseason NFL football.
If so?
We don’t count ourselves among that crew.
Outside of struggling to maintain a modicum of attention on an aggressively mediocre Phillies season, that’s about eight-weeks of “naw” from me, dawg.
But with the first full weekend of both college and regular season football, along with both the Women’s and Men’s Finals of the US Open…
The Dawg Days Are Over!
Wudder Sports is ready to cool out like the weather, set up near a television, and start chugging sports like a college freshman on a binge.
Time to spring forward past the summer doldrums, and fall back into sports fandom.
Labor Day weekend is a sports warm-up. We’re not back to school, but the first week of the US Open up in Queens, along with college football’s first full slate of games, can serve as a chance to catch up on the summer reading.
Still, the first Saturday of college football, was less compelling than the juice built up for Coco Gauff and Naomi Osaka’s face-off that night, or even their on-court interview after the match ended:
Speaking of post-match interviews, in the lead-up to the final week of the professional tennis season, a star was born inside Arthur Ashe Stadium.
One seemingly sprouting up from a Russian Troll Farm.
While that would be problematic in many other areas, like *ahem* politics, or business, for the business of the “gentlemen’s game” of professional men’s tennis, someone setting fire to the sports cathedral can sometimes have a cleansing effect.
Enter Daniil Medvedev into the American sports landscape.
Over the course of a couple matches during the Open’s first week, this 23-year-old Russian threw a towel back at a ballboy, tossed his racket towards a chair umpire, gave crowds of paying customers the middle finger, and as boos cascaded down on him during two contentious post-match interviews, his taunts seemed to titillate the US Open crowd like an Eastern European tennis equivalent of “Ravishing” Rick Rude.
It all made for some good copy and sound bytes during a slow sports week.
Sports, especially individual competitions like tennis or boxing, are better with a villain.
But a Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the (2019 US Open Final) Forum.
The crowd began to gain a begrudging respect for Medvedev.
That respect slowly built, match by match, towards appreciation.
The troll then began to discover he could gain not only attention, but love, from the American tennis audience, which led to him displaying more decorum.
By the time Medvedev was digging deep to pull out the third set of a five-set marathon US Open Final, versus one of the all-time greats, plus a fan favorite, in Rafa Nadal, he was hearing his name chanted out from patrons up in the Loge section of the stadium.
While that might seem nice to some of y’all, as a lover of sports anarchy, born in Philly?
I much preferred Medvedev in his wrassling heel, rather than babyface, incarnation.
As for Nadal, what can you say?
He showed up every night and gave the star-studded Open crowd what they wanted.
Impossible shots, indefatigable court coverage, bronze skin, delay of service warning shrugging, 800-thousand-dollar-Richard Mille-watch-rocking, loud grunting, wedgie-picking, crotch-adjusting, finger-sniffing, title-collecting commitment.
The full armament of Rafael Nadal things, en route to his now-just-one-away-from-Federer’s-Grand-Slam-title-record 19th win.
A crazy stat sent to me today from my man Jason Keenan…
Bjorn Borg + John McEnroe + Jimmy Connors=26 Grand Slam Titles
Roger Federer + Rafa Nadal + Novak Djokovic=55 Grand Slams and counting
Some Random Notes Upon Returning to the US Open for the First Time in 22 Years With My Parents For The Quarterfinals Last Week:
1) The NJ Transit Path Train (coming from south of NYC) to 34th Street Penn Station is strongly recommended over driving. Wherever you’re coming from, once you arrive at Penn Station, you’re two Long Island Railroad stops away from Mets-Willits station, which ascends almost directly into the Tennis Center.
2) Give yourself plenty of time to kick around, the grounds are akin to an Olympic village, with lots of things to check out, in terms of:
a) Shopping: in addition to the spots selling US Open swag, there’s a two-level Wilson sporting goods store, and even a Ralph Lauren outlet.
b) Eating: There’s a huge food court with every kind of option (Steak, Chicken, Sushi, Vegetarian, Pizza, Indian, Pasta, Sausage, Salad, etc) available.
There’s also several outdoor and indoor restaurants and cafes if you want to sit down to a full dinner or lunch while on the grounds.
c) Drinking: there’s several beer gardens, wine-tasting tents, plus you can walk anywhere on the Village grounds, including in and out from stadium to stadium, holding onto a Honey Deuce, the US Open’s official cocktail in the vein of a Mint Julip at Churchill Downs, or a Black-Eyed Susan at Pimlico.
I’m thinking they crack 250,000 sold during this year’s Open
Ingredients? Vodka, Raspberry Liqueur, Lemonade, 3 Honeydew Melon Ball Garnish. Hold onto the commemorative glass, with a list of every Men’s and Women’s US Open Winner, over the past 50 years.
Sidenote: it’s a little funny to notice, whether printed on the souvenir glass, or engraved on the plaques posted outside the main entrance to the stadium, the different surnames some winning women players have depending on the year. For example, Christine Marie Evert in the 70’s, gives way to Chris Evert-Lloyd in the early 80’s, then Chrissie Evert again. A similar story in the early 2000’s with Justine Henin and Justine Hénin-Hardenne. Do they give these ladies a chance to approve how their name reads on a plaque after the fact? Before last week, I’d never thought about that.
c) Activities: the Fan Experience has plenty of different types of games to play among the attendees, even a full-scale indoor tennis court with drills run by pros, and a King of the Court competition in which I was let down by my randomly selected partner, before getting to reach the mountaintop ;)
*in Eric Clapton voice* ”Anyone for tennis? Wouldn’t that be nice?”
Full Disclosure: that ‘alright, alright’ reply after the surly tennis pro chided me for running around my backhand on that last shot.
d) Exhibits: the Billie Jean King museum-like exhibit thru her career in tennis and later activism was cool, the Arthur Ashe gardens, the World’s Fair Unisphere, the new Althea Gibson Sculpture Garden (there was a line of people taking snaps for their socials in front of this, I suppose since it premiered a week ago).
e) People-Watching: You see some of the more beautiful people you’ve ever seen in life, in every shade and style of dress, while overhearing a UN dinner quantity of different languages. The staff is overwhelmingly friendly and all the patrons seem happy, except a few being held up by the ushers because they picked the wrong time to re-enter (word to the wise, make your move to the bathroom or concessions during early odd-game changeovers during sets, I found myself having to watch the Bencic/Vekic first-set tiebreaker from the tunnel.)
3) The US Open is a rain-or-shine event when it comes to the big matches scheduled on Arthur Ashe. We watched Bencic defeat Donna Vekic in the hot sun. By a little later in the day, while Gael Monfils and Matteo Berrentini were midway thru their five-set, four-hour-war of a match, the threat of rain had the US Open officials declaring a brief break (approximately ten minutes) to close the roof of the stadium, while the venue’s music-programmer got a little clever.
Songs played as the retractable roof began to close: “Come Together” by The Beatles, followed by Maren Morris’ “The Middle” as the two sides grew closer to connecting.
![The Beatles - Come Together [2015].jpg](https://images.squarespace-cdn.com/content/v1/56b51d4a1bbee0058010134c/1568180854850-9KON8IWD0KL8TBTP6NZD/The+Beatles+-+Come+Together+%5B2015%5D.jpg)
For my folks running the Arthur Ashe Stadium PA system….
I was disappointed in Naomi Osaka, not only because she knocked America’s Next Top Sweetheart, 15-year-old phenom Coco Gauff, out of her first US Open before reaching the Wednesday Quarterfinal for which we had tickets, but even more because she immediately turned around and lost once again to Switzerland’s Belinda Bencic the next match, ensuring we wouldn’t get the chance to see Osaka (last year’s US Open champion) play live either. In tennis, like boxing, styles make fights. And right now, Bencic has Osaka’s number, having beaten her all three times they played this year.
Speaking of Bencic, she’s the first woman from Switzerland to make waves here since the Swiss Miss, b/k/a WTA Hall of Famer Martina Hingis, who won it in 1997 by beating an unseeded Venus in the Final of her first US Open. Hingis made the Final again in ‘99, losing to Serena, who won her first Major. Hingis’ mother, who coached Martina during her peak, was also Belinda Bencic’s coach while she was in juniors.
Think about it this Hingis is nearly the exact same age as Serena.
Serena and Martina were born on September 26th and 30th 1980, respectively.
Serena’s made the US Open Final nine times since 1999, winning five more, for a total of six titles, which ties her for the top spot all-time with Chris Evert.
The Swiss Miss never won another Grand Slam, or even reached a Slam Final after the 99 US Open, besides the 2000 thru 2002 Australian Opens, losing in those Finals once to Lindsay Davenport and twice to Jennifer Capriati in her early 2000’s renaissance.
And Hingis is probably the next most decorated non-Williams during the Sisters Era beginning with Venus in 1997.
Venus has made 15 Grand Slam Finals since 2000, winning seven of them.
Seven of Venus’ eight losses in those 15 Grand Slam Finals came at the hands of, you guessed it, Serena.
Does that help illustrate how these two women, from one family, have carried the mantle for tennis over two decades now?!?
Cool.
With that said, let me keep it moving, then…
Serena’s Grand Slam Record Chase Gets Lost in a Canadian Mist.
I was rooting for Belinda Bencic to beat Bianca Andreescu in the Semifinal.
Not out of affinity for Bencic, (who by happenstance, I met briefly en route to her ESPN and EuroSport desk interviews following her quarterfinal win).
But simply because I knew Bencic couldn’t beat Serena.
Andreescu, on the other hand, is a teenager with swagger, power, too young to truly feel fear, who grew up on Serena, with a game clearly patterned in her image. This was the same recipe that Osaka brought to the table in last year’s Final, or Sloane Stephens beat Serena with at the Australian in 2013.
Serena herself even predicted Andreescu would be in the final after Bianca won her second match at the Open, after failing to qualify just last year.
Serena hasn’t been at previous peak levels of fitness, or match-play toughness, since the baby was born.
Still, this 2019 US Open had been easily the best she’d looked in a major since, and I, like the experts + odds-makers in Vegas, thought she’d win.
But I was nervous.
The nerves grew stronger when Chris Evert started commenting on Serena’s lack of foot movement in warm-ups.
When Andreescu won the toss and elected to have Serena serve first, I was almost offended, thinking:
First game deuce: this was what I worried about with Bianca that I wasn’t with Belinda…this girl is still wet behind the ears, breath smelling like similac, but she’s also too young to know how big a spot this is, or be intimidated by The GOAT, plus she can WHACK.
So instead of her learning, she or someone on her team did their homework on how Serena has been serving in the early stages of Finals lately.
Saw a “WE THE NORTH” shirt in the crowd, in an otherwise overwhelmingly Serena crowd. Flashed back to another Canadian-induced bummer, from early this summer:
Andreescu broke her right away.
Serena, carrying the baggage of 0-3 post-childbirth in Major Finals, and stuck since 2017 one Grand Slam title shy of the record-tying 24, desperately needed to get off to a good start here. All the sudden, she’s down a break at 3-1 before you could blink.
They then go the stands to speak with coach Patrick Mouratoglu, in a player’s box of folks that only Serena could bring together: her husband/Reddit founder Alexis Ohanion, Trainer Mackie “Nutrition Guru to Sugar Ray Leonard & Ozzie Smith in the Eighties” Shilstone, her sister Venus, Anna “Vogue Editor-in-Chief/Devil Wears Prada-inspiration-for-the-character-played-by-Meryl-Streep” Wintour, her mother Oracene Price, and Meghan “Duchess of Sussex” Markle.
They were asking Pat about that match.
C’mon, it’s hard enough to shake the bad juju as is, let’s not talk about that match.
By this point, I’m double-checking to make sure that sniveling little shit Carlos Ramos wasn’t back up there lording over the umpire’s chair.
Luckily, he wasn’t.
But Serena had enough of an obstacle to overcome just by Bianca being across the court.
This girl is a straight THUMPER.
By the seventh game of the match, it takes a full ten-minute game from Serena just to hold serve.
She does so.
But by Game 9, she double-faults on break point to lose the first set 6-3.
And by then, she (and the royal we) officially entered the danger zone.
Bianca fires herself up like Serena does, shouting “C’MON!”-s at high volume after winning big points.
Serena has to start feeling like she’s trapped inside that Spider Man pointing meme scene.
Unforced errors start piling up.
Serena becomes demonstratively frustrated in the second, and Andreescu is suddenly up a break again.
Serena misses the chance to break back by yanking a backhand second-serve return into the net.
Venus, a grand champion at not displaying emotion, hangs her head for a second.
Another break-point blown on a tight backhand that doesn’t come close to the net.
On that one, from his front row seat behind the baseline, Spike Lee nearly wept.
Soon she’s down another break, on a bizarre point I can’t really describe at 4-1.
Andreescu holds serve to make it 5-1.
This is a painful way to see The GOAT go out.
But suddenly, Serena starts stemming the tide to stop the route.
She holds, breaks, then holds again, while on 30-0 literally jumping over a way-long-sprayed Andreescu forehand.
Alicia Keys is jumping out of her seat clapping.
Bianca is showing her first signs of nerves all day.
Suddenly it’s 5-5.
This joint is jumping!
Are we gonna get a second-set tiebreak, or is Serena gonna take this set overcoming a 1-5 deficit to win the last six games?
I woulda guessed the outcome would have to be one of those two things, it felt like that level of momentum swing.
But the teenager from Canada, much to her credit, channeled her inner Kawhi Leonard.
Andreescu will never make a bigger service hold in her life than the one she did to go up 6-5.
Seemingly moments after that, Serena is back serving down 15-40, double-match point, and desperately needing an ace.
She gets one.
It’s 30-40 now.
Serena then misses wide with her first-serve on the next point.
Uh-Oh.
Her second serve, fittingly, Bianca pounces on, as she did all match long, for a forehand winner.
And with that, Serena’s bid for a record-setting 101st win at the US Open, 7th Open Championship, and a record-tying 24th Major, goes by the boards.
Since returning from a brush with death due to complications caused by her first childbirth, Serena Williams, in Grand Slam Finals, is 0-4.
Doubt The GOAT at your own peril tho.
She’s still Serena.
My money will be on her coming back for more.
As for Andreescu, her power, plus the poise she displayed on Saturday, make her a threat for the foreseeable future.
All in all, this US Open defeat went down a lot easier than 2018’s US Open Final debacle against Osaka.
Antonio Brown’s Raider Era Proves Shorter Than Danny Tartabull’s Phillies Tenure.
editor’s note: the content below went up before the civil suit allegations. Now the swirling shitstorm revolving around this dude feels a lot less funny.
Tartabull went 0-for-7, fouled a pitch off his foot in the eighth at-bat, went on the DL for the season, and never played Major League Baseball again.
Brown’s Napa Valley Hot-Air Balloon Circus Tent Show even outlasted Andrew Bynum’s ill-fated Sixers career.
A Sixers career that consisted of a bowling injury, zero practices, a few bizarre hairstyles, plus a pic of him posted up at a Philly steakhouse bar in sweats and house-shoes.
But in terms of impact, Brown’s Careening Clown Car Campaign since Week 17 of 2018 clearly outpaces both by several country miles.
Brown gave us Dat Demolition Man ‘Stache, leading to the unintentional hilarity of watching Bron and Mav having to pretend to take him seriously on The Shop.
Then there was Thee Agony Of Da Feet
Then there was Helmet Gate, a story too stupid for me to explain here if you don’t already know the details.
And a few moments of seemingly unintended hilarity on HBO’s Hard Knocks.
All culminating in a wild weekend that went from AB allegedly trying to fight GM Mike Mayock over fines for missing practice, publicly apologizing to the team with a potential suspension looming, cutting a surprisingly well-produced bit of video content that released a potentially illegally taped conversation he had with Raiders head coach John Gruden, only for us to later find out Gruden approved the use of his voice on the video, and then finally Brown reversing course once more by demanding his release on Twitter, the same place he leaked the video, and a letter from his employer levying his fines.
After all that, the Raiders quickly complied, releasing him Saturday, saving themselves further headaches or embarrassment, while also ensuring they wouldn’t owe him any of the 30 guaranteed million he was owed if he remained on the team, but still being out a third-round draft pick for their troubles, without ever being able to access a single game’s worth of Brown’s Hall of Fame on-the-field talent.
Then at 4:01 PM Saturday, a minute into AB’s first foray into free agency, he signs with the New England Patriots, receiving an offer on a temporary place to stay at the home of Tom Brady. If I’d pitched that story line to Oliver Stone on the set of a sequel to Any Given Sunday, he’d tell me it sounded too crazy.
Portrait of the Artist as a Young TROJAN MAN!
It’s been a relatively disastrous decade for USC Football. And in part due to SC’s legacy as the greatest college football program of all-time (yeah, I said it, all you Bama-come-latelies and Notre Dame dorks can debate deez) the Trojans keep doubling-down on hiring old football players from their 1960’s and 1970’s teams to run their athletic department in the new millenium. It makes zero sense.
Neither did hiring Steve Sarkisian, or retaining bum interim coach Clay Helton.
So, in a weird way, rooting for them to win games like the one against Stanford on Saturday night, almost don’t make sense for the long-term success of a program.
SC is always just a real coach away from being a national powerhouse, so long as they’re not handcuffed by NCAA sanctions brought about by their weak basketball program, long-distance phone calls by the women’s tennis team, or Reggie Bush’s stepfather stiffing a South East San Diego loan shark after Bush got drafted #2 overall.
But I digress. Let me try to focused.
The Trojans headed into this season, for the second year in a row following Sam Darnold leaving early for the NFL Draft, led by JT “Jack” Daniels at quarterback.
Daniels fits the mold of the prep-school (Mater Dei, like Matt Barkley), Orange County-bred USC QB from central casting, even if he looks more like Uncle Rico.
In the season opener against Fresno State, coming off USC’s first losing season in twenty years, Daniels went down for the season with an ACL injury.
Here’s to wishing him a speedy recovery.
But I have some bad news for him, after watching the play of his understudy, Kedon Slovs: you are never getting that job back, JT.
Life Is Unfair.
Slovis, starting in his first game as a true freshman, at the Coliseum against a nationally ranked Stanford Cardinal team, put on maybe the best quarterback performance I’ve seen since I was in attendance, watching Cal’s Aaron Rodgers put the fear of GODgers in a national champion Trojan team back in 2005.
The kid was dropping balls in there like a ten-year vet, and displaying a level of poise that arguably even Darnold, let alone Daniels, hasn’t shown yet.
Slovis was an underrecruited prospect out of a small town in Arizona, who just so happened to have a pretty well-respected coach in high school:
NFL/Super Bowl MVP/Hall of Famer Kurt Warner, whose son attended the school.
Warner broke my heart at least twice as a football fan.
Once while watching the 2001 Eagles season come to an end at the hands of the Rams in Saint Louis, a town that once again doesn’t have a football team.
And then once in person, while in attendance at the 2008 NFC Championship, in Phoenix, the city that took Saint Louis’ team the first time.
You know what?!?
Nevermind.
Let’s just say it’s good to have God’s Favorite Shopping Bagger on my side this time.
Is Kedon Slovis good enough to save Clay Helton’s job, even after his biggest backer, Athletic Director (and NFL HOF WR) Lynn Swann was forced to resign?
Personally, I don’t think any teenager could, or should, be.
But if somehow Slovis is?
Then that’d be just fine.
Flock Of Eagles’ Season-Opener:
*cues up “Return of the Mack”*
DJACK BACK!
The last season the Eagles opened with a win over Washington, they won the Super Bowl.
And that game was even more forgettable than this.
I’m not sure how much to take from this one, the Eagles held so many of their starters out during preseason, that the first half itself felt like a preseason game.
Their secondary has depth, but it’s pretty clear if they don’t get pressure, they’ll be easy to attack.
I don’t think even Duce or Doug knows the best way to juggle all the new faces at running back.
The Malcolm Jackson injury, and a lack of depth at defensive end, could both hurt down the road.
All I know is it’s nice to see Carson Wentz looking fully healthy for the first time since December 10, 2017.
And last but certainly not least, it’s great to have DJACK BACK.
Eagle Fans, you remember #10, right?
The guy with a proven ability to make momentum-shifting, game-winning plays?
How good does it feel to see Jackson’s #10 streaking behind the secondary in Eagle green again?
This should give some of the more stubborn Eagle homers a mulligan to appreciate what the man brings.
Of course he was gonna go off in his first home game back in Philly, a city he never wanted to leave, playing against his old coach on that team from DC.
Desean Jackson always gets his revenge.
Do you know how hard it is to lead the league in yards-per-catch and chunk-plays touchdowns, while stuck fielding hopeful heaves from the likes of Robert Griffin, Kirk Cousins, Colt McCoy, Jameis Winston, Ryan Fitzpatrick, back to Jameis Winston again?
Desean is still lightning-quick, even by NFL athlete standards.
That’s despite being smaller than me, and now in his twelfth season in the league.
It’s been a full decade since a washed and in denial Donovan McNabb played his last game as an Eagle, an unforgivable third loss to the Cowboys in one season, after a playoff game in Dallas where Mike Vick (as third-string QB on a Wildcat gadget play) was the only Bird to throw a TD, while #5 tried to throw Jackson and Jeremy Maclin under the bus with his‘we showed our youth today” passive-aggressive post-game buck-passing. McNabb was out of the league 18 months later.
Maclin, drafted the year after Desean, has been out of the league now for two or three years, following what was a pretty solid NFL career.
Desean is still here, out there running by people, doing Desean things.
With two more on Sunday, Desean moved into second place alone all-time for 50+ yard touchdown receptions. Before Sunday, he’d been tied for second, with a guy named Randy Moss. With a little help from his new friend Carson Wentz, Jackson could get the five more needed to pass Jerry Rice by season’s end.
For a fan since he was in college doing his thing, it’s tough to put into words the level of joy that brings, just like it’s nearly impossible to overstate how much a guy who can take the top off a defense adds to an already-good offensive team.
Why did we let him go again?
Oh yeah….this dude…
The one who cut him over nothing, while instituting his “culture beats scheme” and “no assholes” policies, failing to recognize that first part is megalomaniac coach-speak bullshit, or that perhaps it’s he, after all, soon to be a New Hampshire high school offensive coordinator, who is actually the asshole here.
Chip has now lost TWENTY-FIVE of the last thirty games he’s coached.
Chip Kelly, once widely known as an innovator, did something Saturday that none of his UCLA predecessors could do before him: lost to San Diego State.
The coach hit a new low with a team careening toward historic indifference, the Bruins falling to the Aztecs, 23-14, before an announced crowd of 36,951 that was their smallest at the Rose Bowl since making it their permanent home in 1982.
The Rose Bowl seats 96,000.
The only lower-percentage than the 37% capacity they got for their first loss ever to SDSU, is Chip’s 16% winning clip since getting kicked out of Philly.
As an Eagle Fan who happens to root for UCLA’s big brother USC, who quit Chip the moment he decided to cut Desean (and went on a run of unprecedentedly awful GM moves that nearly shipwrecked the franchise), plus leaked a bullshit story about gang-ties to Elliott Shore Parks in order to provide cover for an on-its-face indefensible and illogical football move, I can’t tell you how hilarious all this is to me.
This Week In Mike Scott News:
Don’t Step To The Hive, Unless You Wanna Get Stung b/w Shame On A Ninja
I didn’t know much about Mike Scott before his arrival in Philly, but it took him less than a week to win me over, while watching his brutal appraisal of his own performance during a Sixers post-game interview scrum, following a win over Houston.
You gotta love a guy that plays hard, is not afraid to be his authentic self, plus likes to get out and interact with the people.
This has been Charles Barkley’s method for thriving up here for the past 35 years.
Scenes like this led to the organic building of the “Mike Scott Hive” in the City of Brotherly Love.
Mike Scott would’ve entered my world view a lot sooner if my favorite college basketball team, the Temple Owls, legendary Hall of Fame Coach John Chaney hadn’t retired exactly when he did, because according to Scott, he was coming to North Broad.
Instead, he stayed closer to home, attending University of Virginia, became a role player during a rare stretch of Atlanta Hawk success, interspersed with some stints in the d-league, two cups of coffee with the Wizards and Clippers, before arriving in Philly in February along with Boban, as part of the Tobias Harris trade.
When I type out that brief transaction bio, it occurs to me: Mike Scott, the man I’ve dubbed “3MOJI” in a nickname that thus far is primarily only utilized by me, usually when this man covered in emoji ink knocks down another dagger three, has only been in Philly for a little over six months, while his impact in just the past six days have already made him a Philadelphia folk here athlete forever.
First, check out how Mike Scott was actually the first to break the news Friday on Twitter, that the NBA would be banning “ninja-style headbands” next season, as the league soon afterwards came out to confirm, in a bizarre written statement that felt more David Stern commissioned, during the Airbrushing-of-A.I.’s-Tattoos Era, than a policy set in motion by thus far more player-friendly, forward-thinking, Adam Silver.
Dear NBA Hall Monitoring Team,
This is an international league built on athletic skills and player personality.
Please Cease and Sekkle with any of this Podunk Peoria Paranoia mentality.
Thanks In Advance,
Bomb Lee
Which brings us to Sunday’s instantly infamous Eagle tailgate incident, where some troglodyte strain of Iggle Fan, more than likely the same “Flyer Fan” type too stupid to realize the 6’9” black guy with emoji tats in a Sean Taylor jersey plays for their city’s basketball team, but still dumb and awful enough to lob racial epithets and try to scrap with him for wanting to take a closer look at the coffin they brought to the tailgate, barking up the wrong tree and getting handled accordingly, with 3MOJI as one of the twins from the Double Dragon arcade game, and these dummies as one of those zombie-like gangs on the prowl, minus the bat and whip, getting tossed into shit.
A Picture’s Worth A Thousand Words: KD #35 Warriors Tee On Sale In Odd Company at a Camden Gas Station on Admiral Wilson BLVD.
Photo Courtesy of MG, who I made get out of the passenger seat to take this shot while I was getting gas before our trip to Grabbe’s Seafood for a crab feast.
9/5/2019
Nick Foles In A Sling By The Second Quarter of His First Jaguars Game.
Damn.
Foles’ fortunes seem to swing the opposite way whenever he puts on some other uniform.
Will it be 2020, or 2021, before Nick returns to the City of Brotherly Love, to finish his career as a Bird in his rightful perch as Bona-Fide Best Backup of All-Time?
Jameis Winston Has Tasted Defeat In Twelve of His Last Sixteen Tries Since The Strangest Pre-Game QB Speech of All-Time.
Just sayin’. At this point, I don’t even think Paterson, New Jersey’s Own QB Whisperer, Coach Kangol aka OG Kid Ray bka Bruce Arians, can save ‘em.
“I’m not droppin’ out, I’m movin’ on”
Five years in, Winston is historically one of the NFL’s least accurate deep-ball passers.
While in the conversation with Lenny Dykstra for “Worst Pro Athlete UBER Passenger”.
This just in, Tom Brady still owns the Steelers.
We get it, alright!
NBC, please stop force-feeding the rest of us this tripe.
Until Brady and Belasterisk retire, it’s time to turn those terrible towels white.
The Cleveland Browns have been back in the league since 1999, they have won once in their 21 season openers since then.
That was a home victory in 2004, quarterbacked by Jeff Garcia, defeating the immortal Kyle Boller of the Ravens, in his first/last full season as an NFL starter.
Let’s slow our roll a bit on Freddie Kitchens and Baker Mayfield bringing the Browns back to the glory days of Bernie Kosar and Marty Shottenheimer’s two gut-punch AFC title game L’s, let alone becoming the only ones besides LeBron to bring a title to The Land since Jim Brown left football for Tinsel Town.
Welcome Back, Legends of the Sporting Fall.
Editor’s Note: This Space Is Reserved For Nostrabombus’ First Round of Fall Picks Later This Week.
Between me and you, I’m already giving that Eagles/Falcons line the Larry David Stare.
