Whipped Cream Difficulties

Before we jump into this week’s column, we did want to make note of the not-technically-a-firing-but resignation of ESPN president John Skipper. We think it is appropriate to note this here because this is sportsfirings.com, and for reasons we will get into shortly.

We really don’t have much to say about this: we don’t care much for ESPN, or the way Skipper’s been running it. But substance abuse of any sort sucks, and we wish the man all the luck in the world.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

…of which about the first 900 words (out of 6,300) are devoted to the proposition that Black Monday is taking place earlier and earlier each year. (“Black Monday”, for those unfamiliar with the term, is the day after the NFL regular season ends, and the day on which many low-performing coaches are fired.)

Santa hasn’t even begun to pack his sleigh and already an NFL head coach, two general managers, and three coordinators have been shown the door, along with numerous head coaches and athletic directors cashiered at Power Five football programs.

Seems to us that most of the significant college firings took place closer to the end of the season this year. As for NFL firings, by this date last year, Jeff Fisher had been fired as head coach of the Rams, Gus Bradley had been fired as head coach in Jacksonville, Norv Turner was out as OC in Minnesota, and there may have been some other coordinators whose firings we missed or who got swept up in the head coach firings. Plus too many college coaches to count.

This is for Lawrence:

..let’s marvel that in early December, the Browns fired general manager Sashi Brown—the man who passed on Carson Wentz and Deshaun Watson in the last two drafts—yet so far retain head coach Hue Jackson, whose record for Cleveland is 1-29. This would be like the Democratic party retaining Nancy Pelosi and Steny Hoyer as its House of Representatives leadership despite their overseeing four consecutive blowout defeats at the polls, costing the party 63 seats.
Oh wait—that happened. Pelosi and Hoyer, collectively the Hue Jackson of American politics, got to keep their lofty posts. Maybe the Democratic party and the Cleveland Browns secretly are run by the same person.

But why is Black Friday coming earlier and earlier each year? (If it is, and we obviously dispute TMQ’s assertion.) Two words: angry fans. Two more words: more information.

…the one dramatic gesture that can placate the base is to fire a coach, coordinator, or general manager.

And then Easterbrook segues less than gracefully into yet another of his patented “creep” rants about how everything is accelerating. (Ding!)

“New England at Pittsburgh was the best game of the year so far.” If you don’t mind the officiating. Or the poor tactical decisions. But TMQ will get into those. Indeed, he starts right here with chicken-(salad) kicking by Pittsburgh. Plus the fake punt by Dallas, which has nothing to do with New England and Pittsburgh. And we haven’t even gotten to the stats yet.

Stats. Sweet: New England (Rob Gronkowski). Sour: Pittsburgh (mostly Ben Roethlisberger, though the Jesse James not-a-catch is touched on briefly. As you might guess, this will come back around.) Mixed: Kansas City-Chargers. (Huh. TMQ seems to be aware that there was another game last weekend.)

The New York Times reported that the Pentagon is spending at least $22 million per year to determine if spaceships from other worlds are visiting Earth.

While we are opposed to government waste, $22 million seems like a small drop in a large bucket. And note this is coming from the man who advocates a planetary defense system in case Earth is menaced by asteroids. And we’d bet a large percentage of that money isn’t being spent on “is this a starship?” but is being spent on “is this a new advanced Chinese stealth aircraft?”

There’s no reason to assume that all UFOs are swamp gas.

Correct. Many have explanations other than “swamp gas”. There’s no reason to assume that any UFOs are extraterrestrial intelligences, or anything other than literally “unidentified flying objects”, unless we see compelling evidence to the contrary.

Gregg Easterbrook badly needs the complete works of Philip J. Klass. Anyone want to kick in to the fund?

With, most likely, billions of Earth-like worlds in the cosmos, why shouldn’t one, or billions of them, host intelligent life that builds starships?

(Sigh.) There are books full of answers and speculation on this subject, Gregg. We wouldn’t be so bothered by this if you actually showed any evidence that you’d done some reading on the subject.

Who can say what kind of advanced transportation space aliens may devise, or whether it would necessarily require ships?

Reminder: this is the same Gregg Easterbrook who thinks travel to Mars is a stupid idea because we can’t develop the necessary advanced propulsion devices.

Also: nearly 600 words on how dumb aliens in the movies are, with some bonus (spoiler-free) “Star Wars” commentary.

The attack is staged by bomber spacecraft that operate like the B-24s and Lancasters of World War II: They fly above the target, then bomb-bay doors open to allow bombs to tumble downward. But there’s no gravity in outer space. The bombs wouldn’t tumble!

Actually, another podcast we listen to made a similar observation: it seems to us in retrospect that Lucas put a lot of WWII iconography into that first movie, and it’s kind of interesting to see that Rian Johnson is carrying along with this.

(Another podcast we listen to claims that one of Rian Johnson’s favorite movies is Robert Altman’s “The Long Goodbye”. To which we say, “Whaaaaaaaat?” We watched that a couple months ago: as Lawrence put it, “Everyone in this movie seems to have wandered in from a completely different movie, and has no idea what’s going on.”)

Ah, yes, the “Authentic Games” return. “Unlike certain others in sports analytics, I admit that my numbers are cooked up.”

More chicken-(salad) kicking: da Bears, Cincinnati, Miami.

Christmas thoughts. Gregg Easterbrook going on about contradictions in the gospels sounds like an edgy teenage atheist.

Scripture contradictions do not stop your columnist from believing Jesus was an actual rabbi who said and did what the Gospels report.

But do you believe he was the son of God, Gregg? And do you believe he was sent to redeem mankind? After all, isn’t that what your Baptist upbringing taught you? (We ordinarily wouldn’t drag up someone’s religion, or lack thereof. But Easterbrook repeatedly makes a point of mentioning his Baptist upbringing, and we’re pretty sure we’ve seen him claim current Episcopalian affiliation in his column. We figure, if it’s in the column, it’s fair game for comment.)

And as of this writing, the tax bill protects tax-free bonds for professional sports stadia.

600 more words down.

Tax-exempt muni bonds are presented to voters as not costing them anything, but the result is always that other forms of taxes must rise to compensate.

Or spending has to be cut, which never seems to occur to Gregg Easterbrook.

They’re like a restaurant that says, “Your cheeseburger is free but the soda is mandatory and costs $10 a glass.”

We’ve been to that restaurant.

Congress is a bunch of hypocrites. Not just about harassing women, but also about budget reform.

“Aerated glove boxes” and “premium water”. Premium water’s been around for a long time, Gregg. And back when Saab was a going concern, we remember a friend of a friend buying one with a refrigerated glove box. Which is something we could see as being useful, if you had a baby and needed to store milk. Or a diabetic and needed to store insulin.

Why are the football gods chortling at trick plays by three teams failing? TMQ loves trick plays.

“Adventures in Officiating”: see, we told you Jesse James was going to come back around again. We don’t have much to add to Easterbrook’s commentary about the inconsistent catch rule, other than: the NFL appears to have finally taken notice, too. Granted, this is Mike Tomlin making the statement. But the Steelers aren’t the only team that’s been burned by catch/no catch.

“How Can the Cleveland Browns Be So Bad?”: maybe they’ll get better now that they’ve replaced Sashi Brown with John Dorsey (late of KC).

The 500 Club. Mount Union 12, Mary Hardin-Baylor 0. More auto-text from Gregg Easterbrook’s copy of Microsoft Word. So much for editors.

And that’s a wrap for this week, folks. We do plan on doing TMQ watch next week. But Gregg Easterbrook doesn’t plan on doing TMQ.

I ain’t watchin’ no football on Christmas Eve, my favorite day of the year, nor on Christmas.

Yeah, we totally get not wanting to work on Christmas Eve or Christmas. But does Easterbrook really consider watching football and writing this column “work”? We were under the distinct impression he did this for fun.

My holiday gift to readers is a full column on how little humanity knows about the cosmos and about the history of life, and why this is an encouraging, not disheartening, situation.

So basically an entire column of Easterbrook’s cosmic thoughts. To quote Norm McDonald, “Happy birthday, Jesus! Hope you like crap!”

This entry was posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2017 at 6:59 pm and is filed under Books, Christmas, Firings, Movies, NFL, Sports, TMQ watch. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.