What sins did we commit in an earlier life that resulted in Jon Freaking Gruden being a $100,000,000 coach?  Musta been something really bad...

I didn’t watch this game -- I gave up on college football years ago over the grossness factor -- but if I had I would have spent half my time wondering if there was some little-known way for both teams to lose.

I am by no means a Pats fan. I hate them as much as I let myself hate any sports team. But I expect them to bounce back, at least somewhat, this season, and go no worse than 10-6; I’d predict 11-5 at this point.

The NHL is the league in the Big Four sports that is most damaged by its addiction to its tradition or culture or whatever. The assholishness in their games and the comments of ex-players and fans is mind blowing. This morning I heard a talk show in Buffalo (on WGR) with two ex-players saying that this event was…

Interesting that you assume he didn’t.  I wouldn’t make ANY favorable assumption about anyone involved in one of these countless messes.

Oh, please. This morning I saw someone on the twit-machine refer to him as “vat-grown Nosferatu”.

For this, I award you one star and four holographic Lombardi Trophies.

Seriously can’t decide if this more a “Florida man” story or a “football is fucked up” story.

The over/under on how many days before Trump or someone in his inner circle is linked to this mess should be, what? 20? 30?

I watched this shit show in real time, with the all-too-familiar feeling modern sports fans have of seeing something awful and unprecedented that somehow feels crushingly inevitable.

Agreed. I want to see excellence in sporting events, with spectacle being secondary. And even then, I want the spectacle to arise from the performances, as in a fifth-set tennis match needing a 33-31 tie breaker.

Tamagotchi Loofamitt.

And to think, I have to explain to friends and relatives from time to time why I’m not a college football fan...

Had no idea what the hell you were talking about until I looked at the pic again.

The NFL is in a very nasty situation. Football is not just a contact or a collision sport, but a carnivorous one. It’s built on violent, destructive player-to-player contact. But we are slowly becoming enlightened about the human cost of those impacts in the sports world, the NHL excepted. So the NFL has to try to…

Yes, under these far from normal circumstances, it IS their job to cover politics. But ESPN knows that if they get too political they will surely alienate a lot of the mouth breathing, knuckle dragging fans we keep reading about in the “Why Your Team Sucks” installments, which would make advertisers very unhappy.

I’m listening to WGR as I type this, and I’m right with you regarding the Bills, the NFL in general, and the Sabres.

This is why I find the Buffalo-area discussion about a new stadium fascinating. The non-plan seems to pendulum between one one hand either heavily renovating the current stadium (way out in the burbs) or building a new stadium next door, or on the other hand building a much smaller stadium — as in about 50,000 seats —…

For a long time, the #1 example in economics classes of a company you couldn’t start from scratch was a car manufacturer. Insanely high barriers to entry in terms of capital expenditure, supply chain management, human resources, etc.

The logical thing MLB could do, but never will: Put in place a schedule of escalating punishments for BS like this. Every time you repeat, you go up a level, from 5 games to 10 to 20 to 40, etc. Go at least half a season (not counting suspensions) without a repeat offense, and you drop one level of punishment.