Roger Goodell Is a Small, Awful Man

It has been a year of small men in big roles working from skyscrapers in New York.

In politics, we've got Donald Trump, a tantrum-throwing bully whose immediate response to the slightest perceived insult is a blustering threat matched with a schoolyard insult. And in sports, we've got helmet-haired vacuity Roger Goodell, the gloriously compensated commissioner of the NFL and king of self-sabotaging, awful inconsistency. 

Why NFL Ratings Are Down

I've got the secret. Are you ready for it?

It's not weird start times of games from London. It's not Colin Kaepernick, no matter what your cranky uncle might say. It's not any of the million and one convoluted reasons people are coming up with to avoid the simple truth.

Your Weekly ACC Football Roundup: Week 8 (Is More Than Enough)

Short schedule in the conference for week 8 means a short writeup.

Don't look now, but the 'Cuse is 2 wins away from being bowl eligible.

I Can't Believe I Have To Say This Again

Some thoughts on MLB's replay rules:

Your Weekly ACC Football Roundup - Week 7

Let's get one thing out of the way:

If you have any kind of claim of being an upper echelon team in a Power Five (or as we like to call it around here, Power Four, Texas, Oklahoma and the Mountain West-alikes), you do not lose to Syracuse. 
Like, ever.

Your Weekly ACC Roundup - Week 6

That's all you really need to know about last week in the ACC, other than the fact that Florida State managed to barely avoid losing again, thus keeping Jimbo Fisher out of Baton Rouge for another week. Oh, and Larry Fedora's high-powered passing attack apparently doesn't work terribly well in a hurricane. Who could have known?

Dear Baseball

Dear Baseball:

I know this is a crazy idea, but hear me out. Maybe, just maybe, the next time you assign broadcasters to your playoff games - you know, the ones the whole country watches, not just the local market - you might want to think about picking people who actually like baseball the way it's played now and are excited to talk about it.

Your Weekly ACC Roundup - Week 5

Important takeaways from Week 5 of the ACC football season, as we bask in the knowledge that the conference is A)sticking to an 8 game schedule and B)pulling its championship game out of North Carolina because of the misbegotten abomination that is HB2:

• Notre Dame still isn't that good. This is important in the direct sense - steamrollering Syracuse gets you precisely zero cred these days; giving up 33 points to an Orange offense that scored just as many against Colgate gets you deductions you can't write off on your taxes - and indirectly, as we learn that Duke's surprise victory over the Fighting Irish was maybe not quite the resume-builder they thought it would be. Then again, taking it on the chin from Virginia ought to be a wake-up call in its own right.

119 and counting

For those who have read my posts before, you may remember I am on the ultimate stadium journey to visit all 128 (soon to be 130) FBS stadiums.  As of last season I was up to 115, and this year I have already visited 4, with 8 more on the list for this season - I plan to finish up next year.

The Patriot Under Center

Here is the state of the quarterback position for the New England Patriots going into week 4:
First stringer Tom Brady is A)suspended and B)sunbathing naked
Second stringer Jimmy Garoppolo has an injured shoulder and may not be able to play
Third stringer Jacoby Brissett has an injured thumb and may not be able to play

Which, in case you hadn't noticed, is all of the quarterbacks, potentially leaving the Patriots with none.