Augie

I have a nephew who killed someone driving drunk on St Patrick’s Day years ago. Please don’t judge me.

Ahh, a classic! Pulling the old Brock Osweiler Maneuver out of the bag of tricks!

You’re right, that is all tailgate stuff. I hate to mess up the house on game days.

What? You never need a nap? I’m excited to see next year. I enjoyed a TON of Bills football last season. I wish we were still playing, but I still had a good time. I know we have holes to fill, again, but I believe we will be in the hunt again as well. One day…..

It was my fourth time buying tickets to see her, and the third time actually doing it. I got these tix for my wife and myself months in advance, maybe as a Christmas present? The other time my college hoops team made a run and the wife took a friend. I recommend Kathleen Madigan, and her opener tonight was fantastic.

Now I’m just chuckling. Thanks. I’m leaving to see Kathleen Madigan in a few minutes, and you are like a Pre-warm up act. You can tear up ANYONE if you want to point out the players a GM passed over. Montana went in the third round, Brady in the 6th. That is the weakest approach I see on this board. .

The words were he couldn’t evaluate them, I believe. You said Beane couldn’t evaluate WR talent. I and others have pointed out that to date he’s been a later round WR guy. Yes, he had other priorities, but that says nothing about his ability to evaluate. He may have been 100% right on ranking the top WR’s, but we just don’t know since he never swung the bat there. Belichick did swing the bat, and he is a guy I don’t want picking my WR’s. I don’t give a rip about him or his legacy, I’m just pointing out a fact. .

Sign ‘em both!!! 😋

I hope she doesn’t make me hate her. That would be terrible.

The NFL would probably put that on PPV, and that I would gladly pay to see! Because he hasn’t drafted one early does not mean he cannot evaluate them. Those are two different things. Belichick is the guy who can’t evaluate WR’s. He’s proven it. .

Well, we have to put somebody out there on the DLine.

I really shouldn’t have answered, because there is not enough info. What is the cost? Sure, I’d love Marvin Harrison Jr if we only have to kick in a 6th rounder, but that will never happen. I said no way because I have to assume the cost would be enormous, and we have holes to fill with cheaper, younger guys. We need WR and defense.

I’m with you, but only if Butch Byrd goes up first. He should have been there long ago.

Like in life, I suspect the best prospects get the best opportunities. It’s all about what you do with it.

My family had season tickets at both stadiums. I went to a LOT of games back when we were losing a LOT. My numbers are not very attractive, I’m sure. More troubling, I’ve started going to more games again over the last decade or so. I try to do one home game (preferably the opener) and one road game. My winning percentage is atrocious. I think I may be part of the problem. Please don’t hate me, I mean well. 🤷‍♂️ P.S. - I can be bought.

Well, I came here to see what the erudite among us were reading. I didn’t expect to see this. Is it a signed first edition?

I’m sure a policy of nudging games one way or another would never leak out. Let’s think of how many different people will have to know about this arrangement, and how many people come and go every year, and how it has never come to light. Not one of those countless persons has ever spilled the beans after one drink too many. This is secret keeping in line with covering up the studio where they filmed the moon landings! 😋 .

Yeah, I could check off most of the things you mentioned. We saw a lot of that over the years, and it was indeed unsavory. Our son was a top 3 player on a soccer team and he was playing up a year. For some reason they no longer let you play up so he had to try out for the team his age. But they already had tryouts (no, they didn’t), and their team had been together for years. Everyone just expected to be on the team. It sucks for somebody, because my son thought he deserved a chance to try out and some kid was gonna get bumped after like 3 years on the team. The only positive aspect of that part is kids are learning how the world works. It might not be a pleasant lesson, but at least it’s something. When the adults go crazy, there is zero redeeming value. You are always teaching your children, even when you don’t mean to. They can learn proper behavior….or something else. Full disclosure, I was a hot head when our kids first started playing sports. I admit it, but I came to see how awful it is. By the time we got to high school sports I had mostly grown out of that kind of obnoxious yelling at refs and such and by graduation I was the calmest person there. I’m still a bit embarrassed by the way I behaved early on.

RIP I had no idea he played in the NFL. Quite a life.

Care to expand on this? I’ve been there, but what happened behind the scenes was mild compared to what the parents were up to. We had our sons in travel league sports for years, and there were embarrassing moments for sure. There are behind the scene drama regarding who gets more minutes, etc, but the biggest problem, BY FAR, was with the parents. Oh, and in case you didn’t notice, this was not people “popping off” or getting “mouthy” from the stands with something to say. These were adults rolling around on the floor. At an AAU hoops tournament one of the dads (a coach even!) had to be held back by the other adults or he would have been arrested for assaulting the clock operator, a guy at least 100 lbs smaller. It was embarrassing just to be there. We had one dad banned from high school campus because his roid rage was out of control and he was pinning people up against the wall by the throat in the gym. His son went on to Va Tech to play football, but it was pretty clear he was juiced up, just like his dad. Kids learn this shameful behavior from the adults, they don’t invent it.

I love the 25 (light beers) before 5:00pm challenge. But I want no part of the “explosive diarrhea” that may come with it. 😂 I’d have to be wearing a life preserver before I got half way.

What fine examples we set for our children. My son played in an AAU hoops game in Miami where the refs stopped the game until they could get police in the gym. In so many ways those were great times, but also cause for shame at times. It’s a game, played by kids. Chill.

A ball gets caught, a ball gets dropped, a guy fumbles reaching for the end zone……you have ample points of interest. I just call it sports.

I apologize if I came in late and missed something, but gambling would be my first response. You don’t even have to decide the winner, maybe just be sure the spread isn’t covered. There’s a LOT of money involved as the NFL embraces gambling sites while crushing players for using them. I don’t see a league conspiracy, but I’ll never bet that human greed will not surprise.

The title asks if the league is fixed. No, there is no script for how the season will play out because…….ya know. But, college basketball games and Tim Donaghy in the NBA remind us that anything is possible in a single situation. Having said that, I worry about incompetence FAR more than corruption.