Billy Claude

Bass was never close to 3rd: 2020 82.4% (20th) 2021 87.5% (15th) 2022 87.1% (11th) 2023 82.8% (23rd) GunnerBill did a deeper dive and found that Bass was 33 out of 35 from the 2nd half of his rookie year thru the first half of his 2nd year. That is the reason people have the impression that he is elite. Outside of that span he has been slightly above average (except for the 2nd half of last year where he was just bad).

To be fair he did have a broken thumb the last 12 games of that season.

He wasn't overdrafted in the sense that people would not have been surprised if the Browns picked him at 4. However, the general consensus both among the local and national media at the time was the Bills substantially overpaid for him, especially given the recognized strength of the WR draft class that year. This was one of those lose-lose trades. The Browns used the Bills draft choices to pick epic bust Justin Gilbert (1st 2014), ordinary bust Cameron Evans (1st 2015), and a JAG 5th rounder, Ibrahim Malcolm-Campbell.

He had three so called arm punts, all within the first five games of last season. None after and none before (at least within the last three years). I am guessing the coaches told him to stop it.

That was a fake statistic. The numbers were about the same. However, I agree that randomness plays a much bigger role than folks are willing to admit.

The only thing the two have in common is they both don't play defense.

Yeah, it's all s guess but I assume have models. Like I said, the NBA offers single team packages but at 80% to 90% of the full package. I assume if forced the NFL would do the same.

They would lose a lot of money. Like you said many people really just want one team but a lot of those people are paying the $350 even if they are not super happy about it. For your scenario to work, they would need to pick up 6 new subscribers for every subscriber that downgrades from the full package to the single team package. That isn't going to happen.

I didn't know that there was a lawsuit. It wouldn't matter, because the NFL would offer a single team package at 90% of the full package, however ,if the NBA and NHL are required to offer single team packages why isn't the NFL also required?

With NBA League Pass you are allowed to choose games just for one team but the discount is only about 10%. I would think very few people choose this.

Returning to the original question: Karlos Williams -- looked like a beast the whole 2015 season behind Shady McCoy but especially in two wins against the Dolphins, 21 carries for 220 yards and 3 touchdowns total in the two games.

The Letterman Top 10 List was great. I never saw this one. Loved the replacing Warren Moon by Suzanne Vega line. Surprised no one has ever tried to revise the Top 10 List.

It is a pretty interesting business model. Ticketmaster claims the venues set the fees and then Ticketmaster (and other companies presumably) bid on how much of the fees goes to the venue and how much goes to the ticketing agency and what guarantees are given. They claim that fees are typically 1/3 of the face value of the ticket and on average 2/3 of the fees go back to the venue. Therefore Ticketmaster actually ends up with 7 to 8% of the total cost of the ticket. Whether this is true or not, I don't know, but that is what Ticketmaster claims. Here is the version of the story from Ticketmaster: https://blog.ticketmaster.com/the-truth-about-ticket-prices/

I assume a large part of the "fee" goes back to the venue to obtain exclusive rights to sell the tickets. This is what makes it difficult for another company to come in, especially if Ticketmaster is willing to take a loss and increase the payment to the venue to eliminate the competition.

There is zero correlation between the NFL adding a revenue stream (in this case, an extremely small one) and PSL/ticket prices being reduced. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if the correlation was negative.

OK. I certainly agree that Kobe believed that you had to work hard to be your best no matter how talented you are. Some of ths stuff he said was probably shade at Shaq who probably was the most talented player in the NBA at the time but definitely did not work as hard as he could.

Sorry for being a PITA but maybe you got Kobe Bryant mixed up with someone else? Kobe was well known for worling hard but it wasn't because he didn't think he was incredibly talented. He was well known for his supreme arrogance regarding his athletic ability. The guy was drafted into the NBA out of high school . A player (especially someone from a well off family) does not declare for the draft out of high school if they didn't think pretty highly of themselves nor does the NBA draft players out of high school because they try hard.

They are playing some of the T20 Cricket World Cup in the US and what is less American than cricket?

He was 3rd among running backs but 6th among all players. He was 450 yards behind McCafferty which is about 30%. He was also about 20% behind Tyreek Hill and Cee Dee Lamb. I would be surprised if Cook finished first in yards from scrimmage. If Cook finishes first it would probably mean McCafferty is injured and a bunch of other things fell his way. It would probably also mean Davis is not getting a lot of touches.

Rodgers claimed he knew he couldn't come back and wanted to be put on IR but the Jets wanted to keep up the illusion that he could come back. https://www.nfl.com/news/jets-qb-aaron-rodgers-says-it-wasn-t-his-idea-to-be-activated#:~:text="I assumed I was gonna,I know how this works. However, that's not what he said while he was recovering: https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/nfl-aaron-rodgers-makes-remarkable-172522138.html

So based on the responses, we can conclude (1) There is a lot of older people on this board (at least the ones that responded to this thread). (2) Surprisingly large number of folks with PhDs and/or work in R&D.

I think that is basically correct. Porter did make numerous (13) smaller bets on NBA games including betting against the Raptors but those weren't the ones that triggered the gambling investigation. The bets that he made himself were only discovered during the investigation and he did not play in any game that they know he personally bet on. He made about 20K on 50K of bets. Considering his lifetime NBA income was about 2.7M, it was obviously stupid to risk it for 20K but it was probably as much about adrenaline as the money. The bets that aroused suspicion were in January and March. For the first game, there was an unusually large amount of money bet on Porter making all the unders and also on him making less than the average number of three pointers. In that game, he removed himself after 4 minutes due to injury. Draftking stated that it was the biggest winner on any individual player prop that night. These bets were paid out but I assume that it caused the gambling houses to start paying attention to Porter. I don't believe these winnings were ever clawed back. The 2nd game that triggered the actual investigation was in March when Porter removed himself after a few minutes due to illness. That was the night with the 80K bet and these bets were voided. If he hadn't been so greedy to try it the second time they would probably not have went after him. It is hard for me to believe he is the only player to ever try something like this and it would be only a matter of time before somebody in the NFL is caught.

They definitely paid out the first time and he would have probably not been caught if he didn't get it twice in a few months. But I am not saying it is the smart thing to do but sooner or later there will be players desperate enough or stupid enough to do it.

He didn't make the bet himself. I assume he was paid to make sure the unders hit. There was a lot of money from various sources placed on the unders. That's how he was caught. The biggest single bet was 80k which have pay off 1.1M.

The prop bets parlays are so easy to fix that it is ridiculous that they have them. The Raptor player, Jontay Walker, simply had to take himselft out of the game with an "injury" to make sure the parlay that he wouldn't make his averages in points, rebounds, and assists hit. Payoff on the parlay was a bit under 15 to 1. I was very surprised that the gambling sites allow a parlay on something that is so obviously correlated. He wouldn't have been caught if he didn't do it twice and if fewer people placed bets on him.