Happy football start everyone. Hooray. Yippee.
From the "Talks too much" studios, down, set... Omaha, Omaha, ... Hut. Hut.
Weekend winners
Ronda Rousey. Wow, what do you say about an athlete this dominant? In fact, Rousey's last three championship fights have lasted 14, 16 and now 34 seconds after whipping Bethe Correia on Saturday. Here's a tip for advice: Don't go bad-mouthing Rousey's family.
Los Angeles Dodger pitcher Clayton Kershaw will take the mound Wednesday at AT&T field.Clayton Kershaw. Dude put the books on a July for the ages. OK, so his eight flawless innings on Saturday were actually in August, but you get the idea. Kershaw has not allowed a run since July 3, and is the first pitcher since Orel Hershiser in 1988 to go four straight scoreless starts and pitching at least eight innings. In those four starts, his line is ridiculous. He's pitched 34 innings, allowed 16 hits, walked one and struck out 45.
Football fans. Yep camps are up and running and there is actually football things happening. Good times. And where did July go.
Tiger Woods. Three rounds in the 60s - and yes it was a very getable golf course that yielded a 61 to some golfer named Troy Merritt ("Hi, I'm Troy McClure. You might remember me from such self-help videos as "Smoke Yourself Thin," and "Get Confident, Stupid." Wait different Troy.) - and a top-20 finish is a welcomed rebound. More importantly, he shot a 74 hitting it all over the yard on Saturday. That's a good thing because he was able to score; a month ago he would have shot 85 with the way he hit the ball Saturday.
Chattanooga downtown Saturday night. The Chattanooga FC had almost 10,000 folks there and a 3-0 win at Finley. The Lookouts had sell-outs Friday and Saturday (Used Car Night and the 5-at-10s were there). War Chattanooga.
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Weekend losers
MMA pay-per-view fans. Rousey's fight started at $44.99, which means it was a little more than $1.32 per second. Plus, the undercard took so long that the Rousey fight started after 1 a.m. Eastern. No es bueno.
Washington Nationals. We've hit August and the Nationals are going in the wrong direction. Losers of seven of their last 10, Washington was swept by the Mets over the weekend and are now tied with New York atop the NL East. Other than Bryce Harper, that's a pretty pedestrian lineup for a team with World Series aspirations.
Subway restaurant spokesman Jared Fogle walks to a waiting car as he leaves his home Tuesday, July 7, 2015, in Zionsville, Ind. FBI agents and Indiana State Police have removed electronics from the property. FBI Special agent Wendy Osborne said Tuesday that the FBI was conducting an investigation in the Zionsville area but wouldn't confirm it involved Fogle. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)Jared Fogle. The Subway pitch man who is being investigated on child porn allegations had his text messages subpoenaed. Ugh.
Kyle Busch. He was leading on the final lap Sunday at Pocono before running out of gas. It would have been his fourth consecutive win on NASCAR's top level. Still, kind of tough to say he lost considering he won the pole, won the truck race and won an Indy car race. Right now, if they are racing about anything the two safest bets are Kyle Busch and American Pharoah.
Aaron Kormer. The Bills' offensive line coach settled out of court with the family of the teenager he hit. Bad situation all the way around. The Bills suspended him for the first six games of the season.
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Chip Kelly
Another roster move and another player throwing verbal bombs at Chip Kelly.
This time it was Brandon Boykin, who was traded to Pittsburgh and said on the way out that Kelly has a tough time connecting with his players.
That immediately rekindled "racist" talk started by LeSean McCoy and continued by Tra Thomas, to former stars that Kelly shipped out of Philadelphia.
OK, first, we hate the cliche "Where there's smoke there's fire" because it so often leads to assumptions and guesses. In truth, where there's smoke, there's smoke.
Philadelphia Eagles head coach Chip Kelly listens to a question from a reporter during a news conference before organized team activities at the NFL football team's practice facility, Thursday, May 28, 2015, in Philadelphia. (AP Photo/Matt Slocum) The numbers do not justify the racist claim, no matter how many times it is offered.
When McCoy was dealt, Kelly replaced him with DeMarco Murray, who is black. Boykin, who came back Sunday and said his comments were not about race but about connection and comfort between Kelly and his players, was made expendable because Kelly signed Byron Maxwell, who is black. Kelly has seven black assistants on his staff and the team's first five draft picks in the spring are black.
Plus, Kelly has cut or traded former Pro Bowlers Nick Foles, Evan Mathis and Todd Herremans, all three of whom are white.
This is not about race as much as it's about the chase. Kelly is chasing winning in his own style and the results will be either ground breaking or disastrous, and there's no in between.
Kelly has a system - the spread-out, spacing attack he used to elevate Oregon to the status of college football royalty - that he believes can succeed without high-priced star power at traditional spots like quarterback and wide receiver.
If he continues to have success - he has won 20 games in his two years in Philadelphia as he overhauled the roster to his liking - it will be a model for a vast majority of the league trying to win without a franchise quarterback.
Right now the model is so quarterback-driven, that even if you don't have a true franchise guy, a top-five, elite quarterback, you are forced to pay mediocre quarterbacks like franchise guys.
It's a spin cycle that screams mediocrity as guys like Flacco or Cutler or Stafford and potentially Russell Wilson or Colin Kaepernick, consume a large chunk of the salary cap to the point that the rest of the team suffers.
It's viable to spend huge dollars on a Luck, Brady, Manning or Rodgers, but the rest become liabilities because the current organization flow chart dictates that having a pretty good quarterback making elite-level money is better than having quarterback questions.
Kelly has a different view. It's a claim that his system creates space and situations advantageous for the offense regardless of the quarterback and the receivers. It's a claim backed by his meteoric rise up the coaching ladder, from being the offensive coordinator ay New Hampshire less than a decade ago to being in the NFL today.
Kelly's decisions are made as he crafts a roster that maximizes the strengths of his system - bot on the field in matchups andoff it in value and salary cap savings.
Those decisions may make Philadelphia a franchise to copy or the next cautionary tale of an NFL team trying to use a college-crafted structure with disastrous results.
Those decisions, though, are not about race, and that narrative is getting more and more tired.
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This and that
- Big opening weekend for Tom Cruise and the Mission Impossible franchise.
- Russell Wilson certainly could be on the weekend winners list, considering he signed a four-year, $87.6-million extension. That said, the Seahawks had to cut starting defensive tackle Tony McDaniel to make the salary cap numbers work. Welcome to the next phase of success in a cap-dictated NFL.
Jockey Victor Espinoza, on Triple Crown winner American Pharoah (4), wins the Haskell Invitational horse race at Monmouth Park in Oceanport, N.J., Sunday, Aug. 2, 2015.- UTC puts on the pads today, and here's TFP UTC beat ace Mean Gene Henley's five questions heading into camp.
- This is kind of cool. American Pharoah is still racing, and of course still winning, as TFP ace columnist Mark Wiemder shares here.
- San Diego pitcher Ian Kennedy was ready to skip his start Friday and go to be with his wife as she was giving birth. He could not get a flight because of the weather, so he headed back to the ball park, watched the delivery on the interweb and then pitched Friday night. Well-played indeed.
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Today's question
Tom Brady turns 38 today. He's been in the news a little bit of late.
New England Patriots quarterback Tom Brady passes during an NFL football training camp in Foxborough, Mass., Saturday, Aug. 1, 2015. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer) Here's another angle to DeflateGate that has not been mentioned but seems plausible. This theory says that, according to an NFL official, because the balls were man made they could have lost air naturally.
Oy vey.
Anyhoo, on Tommy B's big day, we have a couple of questions.
First, Rushmore of QBs. Easy enough, right? Or wrong. He's still there, right?
Secondly, what's your prediction on the final ruling on DeflateGate?
Go, and happy football starting day everyone.