Ok, so you’ve never officiated a match. Have you ever played the game?

Clear and obvious is the VAR standard. As far as the handball, for it to be rightly called, it must be deliberate. There is no clear and obvious reason to believe that Perisic deliberately handled the ball (this is where it gets into natural vs unnatural hand position) thus the VAR penalty should not have been given.

If it was clear and obvious, it would've been seen either the first time the referee consulted VAR or on the pitch. FIFA NFLd the final which is less shocking than that somehow they hadn't done it before.

Try jumping without raising your arms and see how high you can get.

I mean sure but if there was a single tactical decision that determined the flow of the match, it was the way Croatia defended the free kick for the opener. Apparently they’d been doing that for much of the tournament, and it’s not hard to attribute Griezmann's dive to that knowledge.

Griezmann receives the ball, pushes it forward, pulls his feet together and falls over. The challenge comes in, but Griezmann was already going to ground rather than run after the ball he'd kicked. It was a dive.

Yup. Abstract it if you need to. He wants not to have lost anything from the injury. The fact that that specifically includes the ability to play football matters much less.

By your own numbers, this is a bad take. 20 minute sets mean you spend more time waiting for bands to play than watching them.

While I don’t doubt ESPN played their part, I think the lion’s share of the journalistic malpractice credit on that one goes to the Gray Lady herself. ESPN couldn’t come close to making that kind of noise.

He doesn’t, and here’s why. Miller’s income is broken down into Program Salary (i.e. normal paychecks), which are subject to broader University policy, and Additional Compensation (various incentives, which aren’t).

This is such an odd take. Where would Kane go? He grew up a Spurs supporter in a family of Spurs supporters and is the odds on favorite to wear the armband for England in Russia next summer. At 24 and with two Golden Boots, he’s about to stake sole claim to being the biggest star in a generation of English soccer.

But that’s the fun: he wasn’t cut because of the arrest because he can’t be cut because of the arrest (the NFL reserves the right to punish under the Personal Conduct Policy). He was cut because of “performance related reasons” that just so happened to coincide with reports of the arrest, but not only can…

In every state that has a minimum liability requirement, minimum liability is included in every rental contract. They’d be unable to operate (either from a regulatory or an insurance standpoint) otherwise.

It was more or less exactly a B side, from Vorm to Son. And I think it’s foolish to call it a lack of respect, when it’s more obviously a lack of depth leading to some terrible defensive organization. Vorm’s not up to the job, Wimmer’s a mess this year, and CCV’s inexperience was there even before he got run over by…

It’s not a bad call. They were in field goal range but wanted the touchdown. Having the timeout doesn’t just mean you can play the middle of the field, but protects against penalty runoffs and any other unexpected clock shenanigans.

They also seemed intent on calling Jordy Nelson’s going out a “hip injury” despite the dozen replays showing him taking a helmet to the kidney. Never doubt a broadcaster’s willingness to adopt the comfortable narrative.

Let them play. Not as a Packers fan, but because you can’t have that many people tracking one ball in the air in such a small space without some illegal contact happening. Every Hail Mary would end up being PI in at least one direction if called strictly, so it evens out in a sense.

the concept of buying players who are still on contract

Also worth noting that the NFL has been squatting on Aldon Smith’s reinstatement appeal for the last 9 weeks.

Oh, it’s worse than that. Year 3 is the greater of top 5 at the highest-paid position (so moot bc QB) or 144%. So ~$24M next year, but at least ~$34.5M the year after.