Weekend winners
NASCAR simulations. Troy Aikman told the racers to start their simulators. A member of the Grateful Dead sang the national anthem. Two things were clear about Sunday's NASCAR iRace, which was the second in a series of virtual events between actual drivers and some mad-skilled video gamers: First, people are looking for something - anything - to do. How often do you get a Hall of Fame quarterback to start your video game? Second, these things are pretty doggone cool. I watched a fair amount of this one, and the realism is downright unbelievable. (And yes, you still got NASCAR drivers talking like NASCAR drivers. Here's Clint Bowyer, who won the first version of the NASCAR iRacing series and finished 11th Sunday at virtual Texas Motor Speedway: "Today was all about survival, guys. I needed a redo for my Rush Truck Centers Ford Mustang because I got together with [Greg] Biffle." Perfect. Well, as close to perfect as we're going to get for a while.)
Rumors of Tiger-Phil, part II. There was a Twitter back and forth asking Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson to get mic'ed up and go at it again for 18 holes with a couple of cameras. If it was wishful thinking, well, it hardly would qualify as a weekend winner. But when Mickelson responded to the idea with "Working on it." And to emphatically hammer home that six-iron from the pine straw, when someone said, "Please don't tease," Mickelson responded with, "I don't tease. I'm kinda a sure thing." Yes, please.
Stephon Marbury. Did you see this story? The former Georgia Tech superstar and NBA all-star who became a big-timer in China is using his foreign connection to try to get 10 million medical masks to New York City. Very cool.
Shirt makers. Did you see over the weekend that at Wal-Mart, Target and almost all of the online clothes sellers, shirts are greatly outselling pants and bottoms. The reason? With all the tab home work being done on Zoom and other telecommuting accessories, people are embracing the need for business-snazzy tops while knowing no one on their group chat can see them working in their jammy pants or comfy shorts.
The 20-K marathon Saturday. Yes, we're sports starved. And yes, watching old games with no drama is no one's cup of Joe. But the 20-strike out performances ESPN rolled out Saturday were actually pretty entertaining. And dang, Roger Clemens whiffed 20 Mariners in 1986 and the ump was squeezing him. Incredible. And the nastiness of Kerry Wood's breaking stuff when he mowed down 20 Astros was next world.
Weekend losers
The "Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness" craze. I tried. Truly. With everyone talking about the Tiger King series on Netflix, I was willing to give it a go. I can't understand why this thing is sweeping the country. I didn't even make it through the first episode, and maybe it gets a lot better. In this scary time of unknown, watching someone else plow through a bigger train-wreck existence is cathartic, but I thought it was really bad.
My On Demand bill. Yep, missing a couple of cycles of movies - when we have gone to the movies in the last few years, it almost assuredly has been animated - is working to our favor right now. Hey, the rentals are cheaper than the tickets. (This weekend, we watched "Knives Out." A B-minus at best, and in truth, a big part of that is because I expected it to be a lot better. And Daniel Craig's Southern accent was really bad.)
All of us. Forget sports for just a second - and with each passing week, forgetting sports has become kind of the norm - we lost a couple of famous names who made a great impact. Sen. Tom Coburn of Oklahoma died over the weekend after a long fight with prostate cancer. He was 72. And by every measure - including a couple of touching stories from Weston Wamp - Coburn was a true statesman. Also, complications from the corona got Joe Diffie, one of the kings of catchy 1990s country lyrics including "John Deere Green." He was 61.
Is it OK to put Will Wade here? We know that it did not happen over the weekend, but this excellent story from TFP college sports guru David Paschall details the reference we made to our Press Row interview with Pat Kondelis, the director of "The Scheme." It will be on HBO on Tuesday and it sounds juicy.
Voting eligibility
Almost all of us can agree that the cancellations around the sports world have been life-changing.
We also can agree that of all the games and tournaments that have been postponed or wiped all together, the lose of the final chapter or the final season for the high school and college athletes - especially those in their final spin in their chosen sport - are the most heart-wrenching.
So, if the only move for the NCAA - which will vote today on whether it will allow winter or spring semester senior athletes (or both) an extra year of eligibility - was doing the noble and kind thing, it would be an easy and quick "yes."
But the layers of this are thick and complex.
What about the cost of the extra scholarships for mid-level schools like a UTC? What about the roster and scholarship limits, and how would granting an extra year of eligibility impact the incoming recruits, be they transfers or high school recruits? How crazy - and crowded - would the transfer portal get? What about the sophomore who was waiting for the senior to leave so he or she could play, do they get an extra year ,too? Is every non-redshirted underclassman allowed to use 2020 as a redshirt season?
The layers are deep and important and the ramifications would be far-reaching. And let's be quite clear, I don't trust the NCAA leadership to make a good decision on which three choices to get in the Appleby's Trio, never mind something as intricate and complex as this.
It's anyone's guess to how this will go, of course. I kind of believe that the NCAA will give the spring semester athletes - who had almost all of their 2020 season washed - will get another year, but the basketball players will not.
We'll see, but consider my confidence in the decision-making prowess of Mark Emmert and Co. at an all-time low.
This and that
- Apparently the IOC has officially rescheduled the 2020 Olympics for July and August in 2021. Here's more.
- Golfers, like a lot of individual sports stars such as tennis or MMA folks, live in a simple fiscal realm. You play well, you get paid well. You don't play, you don't get paid. Yes, golfers fight for insane purses, and even the most mediocre of modern players has made more on the course than Nicklaus or Palmer. (Jason Gore has made more - $6.46 million - than Nicklaus' $5.73 million in career on-course earnings.) But with those big checks come big, high-dollar lifestyles, and when the checks stop being available the bills keep coming. Here are some ways the PGA Tour is trying to help players. Most of the efforts are offering ways to collect now on future bonuses, and while those are fine, you have to wonder how hard this will hit the lower-level, less-accomplished players. Nevermind the caddies, who are being allowed to make financial requests to the Caddie Benevolent Fund.
- Enjoyed Sunday's TFP sports page, which included three winter sports Best of Preps pages and this interesting story about the NCAA tournament floors from local company Prater's from TFP all-around ace David Paschall.
- Here are some thoughts on a couple of other movies we consumed this weekend. First, we watched "The Kitchen" with Melissa McCarthy. Unlike "Knives Out" - or Tiger King for that matter - I went into this one with zero expectations, and the first 75 percent of "The Kitchen" were highly entertaining. The ending was dreck and clearly was the reason that movie lasted about three days in theaters. We also did a classic rewind and saw "The Help" for the first time. It was fantastic.
- This story was heartbreaking and punches a big hole in the reasoning for the folks that are not following the "No more than 10 people gathering" rule as a baseline and out-and-out social distancing as a whole. This chorus held practice March 10, before the complete shutdown of schools and most business as we know it now. There were 60 in attendance. In less than three weeks, 45 have the corona and two are dead.
- OK, I know all of this Corona is creating a lot of craziness and even a lot of fear. That's understandable. It's also understandable that every time any of us sees a celebrity's name trending on social media, our first thought is "Dang, they got the corona." This morning was Eric Clapton, and thankfully, arguably the best guitar player since Jimi was trending because it's his birthday and not because of his health. (And while we are here, can we put a kibosh on that Denzel, head-shaking, sigh-of-relief GIF that is mandatory on these situations? Yes. And thank you.)
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- This was a crazy story about how Aaron Rodgers was almost trapped amid the shutdown in Peru.
Today's questions
Weekend winners or losers. Go.
On the other end of Daniel Craig's horrible Southern accent, is Judge Haller in "My Cousin Vinny" - which was also on this weekend - the best Southern accent in movie history? Discuss.
If Tiger and Phil played 18 mic'ed up - but almost assuredly with limited camera angles - would you pay-per-view it?
How will the NCAA vote go today? How should it go?
As for today, March 30, let's explore.
Today is National Doctor's Day. And dang-nation we need to celebrate them today. In fact, if you know a doctor, call them, text them or write them a quick thank-you. Trust me on that one.
"Chariots of Fire" premiered on this day in 1981. That's an all-time instrumental right there.
Vincent van Gogh would have been 167 today. Clapton is 75. Celine Dion is 52.
Secretariat was born on this day 50 years ago. Rushmore of horses, and be creative.
Go.