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Weekend winners
Luke List. Yes, Hideki Matsuyama won the Genesis event Sunday with a sizzling final round, but List, a Chattanooga-area native and Baylor School alum, got a T2 and cashed a tidy check for $1.8 million in one of the new PGA Tour super events. What a great weekend for one of the most deserving area superstars I have had the privilege to know.
Kentucky. Wow, that was a gutsy win — maybe the best single-game win of the entire season across all leagues considering the absence of Tre Mitchell — and with all apologies to Dalton Knecht, Antonio Reeves is the best player in the league.
Adam Sandler. Wow, what a perfect Sandler handling of last night's "Icon" award at the People's Choice Awards. No, I did not watch it. C'mon. But Sandler is a great story, no? The silly dude who started on MTV's "Remote Control" and probably had to sleep on a couch as a bit player and occasional contributor early in his SNL days is now an icon and will receive the Mark Twain American Prize for Humor later this year. And it's well deserved, too. No, not all his movies are home runs, but almost of his movies are at least enjoyable in some way. Well, other than "Jack and Jill," of course. And "Grown Ups 2." Let's just move along.
College baseball fans. Man, has any sport grown as much in popularity and crowd size over the last couple of decades than college baseball? Did you see some of the crowds at some of these season-opening games? Welcome back, and spring is right around the corner.
Dame Time. Damian Lillard won the 3-point contest and was MVP of the All-Star Game. Or what used to be called the All-Star Game and now looks more like a really bad church league pick-up game with a whole lot of disinterested folks who have no idea what defense is.
Jay's Plays. Yes, we missed the aforementioned AU-UK game. Badly. But wow, a 5-1 Friday pushed us north of plus-100 units. God bless us everyone.
Weekend losers
Auburn basketball. Yikes, what a terrible shooting performance, and sometimes shots don't fall. But in a strange turn of events, ESPN's College GameDay, actually took away from the energy of the crowd. The officiating was excruciatingly bad. Neither is an excuse — AU played rotten; UK played tough, mentally and physically and deserved to win — but both are true. And Jaylin Williams hurt his knee, although it reportedly does not appear to be season-ending.
NASCAR. Wow, the weekend of the Daytona 500 — and a weekend when the rest of the sports world is rather quiet by comparison — was marred by weather and worse yet, a bubbling legal battle about revenue sharing and compensation. The death spiral continues.
All-Star games. Is there a good all-star game left? The NFL Pro Bowl is nightmarish. (Yes, I know it still gets impressive numbers, but so does "The Bachelor" and that's terrible TV, too.) The MLB All-Star game is a shell of what it used to be. And last night's NBA "gala" was gratingly awful. And what are they doing with the lights and the surroundings? Man, this used to be a true event. Now it's a joke. And last night's NBA event was unwatchable. Heck, Anthony Davis said the most enjoyable part was the hype crews from the Bulls and Pacers doing their routine between the third and fourth quarters. This story details the huge issues with the NBA event, which used to be a weekend that was truly enjoyable and now is a complete clown show.
Tiger. Bruh?
Jonathan Frost. Bruh, times two? Man, how many live did that dirtbag ruin? Here's more from the weekend, and wow, Johnny's rich parents covered his multi-million dollar foreclosure. Who woulda guessed?
Step to the plate
So this week, after multiple pushbacks, our City Council and County Commission are set to vote on the proposal to fund the Lookouts' next stadium.
Yes, we've been over this 1,000 times.
Do I believe we have a slew of issues in and around Chattanooga that should have as much focus as giving a company worth tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars that much tax-payer-backed support? Yes, but that's the nature of private-public cooperation.
Do I think that these hurdles have been placed because of vendettas and vitriol? Largely.
Do I wish the Hardball folks had more front-end skin in the game? Yep.
Do I want the Lookouts to stay? Double yep.
Do I know 100% that without a new stadium, the Lookouts will be on the move in less than two years? Infinity yep.
Those are the condensed facts and to pretend anything else is folly.
It also is a fact that something will be done with the foundry site at some point, and let's ask ourselves if we really need another condo project or Hilton downtown.
The sides have galvanized and the emotion has continued to percolate.
But the gist of today's beef centers on the elected officials who are charged with making this decision.
Commissioners and council members know this: Vote or get off the pot.
Put your name on something, because time is now becoming of the essence. And kicking this can down Interstate 24 is feeling less like bargaining and more like gutlessness.
Because at some point, all these delays will force the Lookouts' hand because MLB will force their hand, and then the elected officials will try to play both sides of the fence.
Hogwash. Running the clock out on this is the height of cowardice.
Vote for it or against it. That's your right, and hopefully each of you is reflecting the views of your constituents and not your campaign donors.
But letting the clock run out to possibly be able to talk out of both sides of your mouth down the road (i.e. the next time you run for re-election) is not leadership.
It's politics as usual, circa 2024.
This and that
— Yes, rules are rules, and when Hargis writes about high school sports it is almost always a must-read. But this one, friends, is assuredly that. Here's the story of Camron James, Howard's first college baseball signee in the school's 159-year history.
— So Rick Pitino — who is extremely fortunate to have a big time job again — blasted everyone (but himself) after St. John's blew a 19-point lead and lost Saturday. Man, he used to be on a path to being an all-timer. Now he's a loser.
— So Travis Kelce reportedly spent roughly $14,000 on Taylor Swift for Valentine's Day. First, Valentine's Day is a sham. As for Travis, he bought the woman who could buy anything a whole bunch of super-expensive roses that reportedly last up to a year and a $5,000 handbag. Side note: The only way I am spending $5,000 on a purse is if there is $5,100 inside it.
— Rory seems to be changing his tune a fair bit, and now is pitching different ideas for reconvening the best golfers in the world. Here's more on Rory's idea for the PGA and LIV to come together — "right now, over me" — in a model based on the European Champions League in soccer.
— Speaking of golf and going back to the Genesis, where Luke had everyone's focus around these parts over the weekend, fellow Baylor alum Harris English finished seventh, which netted $700K. Here's the full payout list, and yes, that's good work if you can swing it.
Today's questions
Weekend winners and losers. Go.
As for multiple choice Monday, let's go this way:
Which pro all-star game is best?
— NFL.
— NBA.
— MLB.
— They all suck.
As for open forum, is there anything they can do to fix the NBA All-Star game when LeBron James says last night's debacle was a success "because no one got hurt" moving forward?
As for today, Feb. 19, let's review.
Lee Marvin would have been 100 today. I watched the "Dirty Dozen" last night and had truly forgotten how great that movie truly is.
Also, on this day in 1878, Thomas Edison was granted the patent for the circular phonograph machine.
And this Rushmore will be personal, and you likely will not like my answers Friday, but what's your Rushmore of all-time albums.
Not the best, but the collection of four albums if you were going to spend a year on Gilligan's Island and that was all you had to listen to in between visits to Ginger's or Mary Ann's huts?
Go.