A Loony Thursday
OK, we're dealing with crazy people in crazy times, don't you think.
Heck, when I am the voice of reason, we know we're so off track Edwin Moses couldn't even help.
We're so far in left field, Yaz is wondering who we are.
(That one was for you Spy. Rushmore of left fielders? Go. Side note: Hey, Intern Scott, left field is easily the least important defensive position, right? For Pete Incaviglia's sake, I'm not even sure Greg 'The Bull' Luzinski even owned a glove playing left for the Phillies in the late 70s and early 80s. And don't even get me started on Ron Kittle. Side note on the side note: Luzinski hit behind Mike Schmidt, a no-doubt Hall of Famer and, for my dollar, the best third baseman ever. Luzinski played next to center fielder Garry Maddox, who had this no-doubt Hall of Fame description of his defensive abilities: "Water covers two-thirds of the Earth; the other third is covered by Garry Maddox." Good stuff. Nay, great stuff. Side question on the side note on the side note: Without looking it up on the interwebs, do you know who played right in that outfield that helped the Phillies to the 1980 World Series crown? Answer in the This and That, and no I did not need to look it up. This one I knew.)
Where were we? Oh, crackpots.
Well, how about the trio of stars, scorers and fringe personalities the Brooklyn Nets have now assembled.
Hey, ball don't lie and the addition of James Harden to Kyrie "The World is Flat" Irving and Kevin "Burner Twitter accounts" Durant gives the Nets two former MVPs and a trio that could average 80-plus points per game together. (Side note: Yes, Durant's past is more about his youthful sensitivity than his teetering in and out of reality like the other two, but egad, welcome to the bench first-year coach Steve Nash.)
As for the trade, big picture, holy buckets of getting buckets, the questions are endless, and I'll start with one TFP UTC beat ace Mean Gene Henley asked properly and succinctly on Twitter: "Did the Nets get better?"
It's straight and to the point and clear. And hard as bleepin' anything to answer.
Will the three egos adjust? Will the three scorers share? Will guys with MVP pedigrees and bigger than MVP egos be able to coexist?
And the Nets dealt a legit good player Caris LeVert and all of its future in terms of draft picks for Harden, who has been a playoff basket case and who became a disgrace in his final chapter of his MVP-winning time with the Rockets. (Side note: Why the Rockets sent LeVert to Indianapolis, which made out quite swimmingly in this four-team transaction, escapes me.)
Of note here about those draft picks, well, Houston got Brooklyn's unprotected first-round picks in 2022, 2024 and 2026. The player options on the contracts for Harden, Kyrie and KD come at the end of 2022. If this fails, the Nets could fall from star-studded to lottery overnight and the Rockets would be holding lottery selections.
As for the big-picture question Mean Gene astutely summed up in five words, the answer will be the same as the answer to this five-word question some time in 2022 "Did they win a title?"
Crazy QB conversation
OK, this headline assuredly caught my eye. "Dolphins players not confident in Tua Tagovailoa's quarterbacking abilities, per report."
Wowser.
(Side question: Is quarterback the only position in sports that becomes the full verb when describing the essential parts of the job? Like, no one says 'Running backing' abilities? Yes, you could say tackling abilities, but you are not talking about your left or right tackle that point. Even in baseball, it's not left-fieldering, or forwarding in hoops. Anyone? Bueller? Bueller?)
The original report came from the Miami Herald and cites three unnamed players who said the offense preferred journeyman Ryan Fitzpatrick.
Now the players did say "they remain hopeful Tagovailoa will improve" according to the quote in the Herald, but still.
Again, wowser. And this was with the fact that Tua was picked one spot ahead of Justin Hebert, who just rewrote almost all of the rookie QB records.
It also led me to a really interesting email I got from my friends at SportsBettingDime.com that is offering odds on who will be the starting QBs around the NFL.
With the report on Tua, I scanned the odds on the Dolphins next year, and the former Alabama star was a 1-to-3 (bet $300 to win $100) favorite to have the Dolphins QB1 take for next year's season opener. DeShaun Watson was 4-to-1, which would require a blockbuster deal with the Texans, and Fitzpatrick is 50-to-1 with the field being 32-to-1.
It's an interesting list that features multiple betting options for 19 teams, including the Falcons (Matt Ryan is 1-to-4 with Justin Fields at 13-to-1) and even Green Bay (Aaron Rodgers is 1-to-9 with Jordan Love at 24-to-1).
The most-crowded betting board is in Foxboro with Bill Belichick as 11 options were available:
Jimmy Garoppolo is the favorite at 4-to-1 followed by Cam Newton (6-1), Jarrett Stidham (7-1), Matt Ryan (14-1), Ryan Fitzpatrick (15-1), Matthew Stafford (19-1), Philip Rivers (30-1), Jameis Winston (75-1), Mac Jones (80-1), Trey Lance (90-1) and everyone else on planet Earth at 4-to-1.
The Pats' QB1 job is one of four around the league in which the favorite was not the team's QB1 at the start or 2020 - Taysom Hill in New Orleans is 3-to-2, Taylor Heinicke is 5-to-2 in Washington after his dazzling wildcard performance last weekend and one Trevor Lawrence is a 2-to-5 favorite to land in Jacksonville, which is very close to landing Urban Meyer, ESPN's Adam Schefter is reporting.
Also of interest in the odds for QBs on opening day 2021, is that you can get 15-to-1 that none of the Hall of Fame trio of Drew Brees, Ben Roethlisberger and Philip Rivers will start opening day next September and the over/under on rookie QBs to start Week 1 2021 is 2.
Thoughts? (And yes, it's flat crazy and yes, you can bet on anything these days.)
All sides of crazy
OK, let's get to it.
Donald Trump was impeached by the House of Representatives. It was his second impeachment, which makes him the all-time record holder in that category. (Told you guys and gals four years ago he could be historic. Kidding, Chas.)
The actions last week were deplorable, and I used that word intentionally.
But as we move forward, the sins of Trump should not blind us from the power grabs and falsehoods his biggest detractors are making and saying because they have the extra juice of Trump's mega-mistakes.
Bernie Sanders as the boss of the Budget Committee? AOC video rant that the South needs to be liberated and the Georgia senate wins for the Democrats was grassroots? (Uh, Ms. AOC, if the South is that bad, why are hundreds, if not thousands, of folks of all colors and creeds moving here every day. And apparently the definition of grassroots is the biggest budgets - financed primarily with out-of-state donations - and national political coordinated effort. Who knew?)
Apparently because Donald Trump has completely gone off the rails, we're not going to check anything anyone says or question the logic of some of these decisions?
And let me be clear: I'm not comparing shortcoming or sins, because there is no parallel to what we witnessed last week.
Thankfully, we are less than a week from not having to worry about Donald and his decisions. And I made one of my New Year resolutions to avoid the 'Whataboutism' denials and distractions like unmasked strangers.
But it's not whataboutism, in my mind, if you are pointing out the flaws in logic and the mistakes in leadership from both sides.
And as we all should know what happened last week at the behest of the president was a disgrace.
But we as Americans - all of us - must make sure that as we recoil from the end of the failed Trump administration we are pointed in the right direction not just the opposite direction.
This and that
- Speaking of unstable, uh, Marjorie Greene is cracked. KER-racked I say. That is all.
- Speaking of questionable decisions uh, Whitfield County, how in the world are you repealing the mask mandate now? What in the world folks. Thanks to Jim Coppinger for extending the mask mandate in Hamilton County. Gang, none of us like it, but we are limping to the finish. Let's all help each other and try to get as many of us there as possible.
- Speaking of crazy, anyone else losing their mind with all the Taco Bell nacho fries commercials? And how'd they get Haley Dunphy for a fast-food commercial?
- Trivia answer: Bake McBride played right field for the Phillies in 1980 and led the regulars with a .309 average. (That I did look up.) And while I was scanning the stats of a baseball team that amazingly won it all 40 bleepin' years ago, man, the names and numbers brought me back. There was Manny Trillo and Larry Bowa up the middle. (Side note: Spell check changes Bowa to Bona. Why? Bona is a word. Cool.) The best seed since the Alou's daddy or the DiMaggio's, Bob Boone, caught. And 39-year-old Pete Rose played all 162 games - and likely bet on at least half of them - and hit .282 and scored 95 runs. At 3-bleepin'-9.
- And speaking of crazy, Auburn's new five-star point guard Sharife Cooper is a dude gang. He played 34 minutes in Athens last night and went 28-5-12, and those 12 assists were a mixed bag of perfectly timed swing passes to left-handed hook alley-oops from the top of the key and just about any and everything in between. Cooper, who was cleared by the NCAA - "What, a Bruce Pearl coached team that raises NCAA eyebrows, the heck you say?" - and despite an uncharacteristically bad nigh from behind the line, led Auburn to a whipping of Georgia last night. All five starters scored in double figures and the 56.5 percent from the field was the second-best of the season for Bruce's bunch.
- That Auburn win also made the debut of the college hoops guesses a very 2020 1-1. Shut it Spy. We had the Tigers, and we needlessly added the Razorbacks, who got rocked in Red Stick. Give me Stanford laying 1.5 at Utah this afternoon at 5 p.m. (Seriously loving the mid-afternoon hoops now that I have all this extra free time.) I'll also ride with Belmont laying the lumber - it's at 11 right now and climbing - over 1-12 Tennessee Tech.
- Speaking of hoops, that was a really good win for Lamont Paris and his UTC Mocs last night. Hey, all Ws are tasty - ask Jameis Winston - but being down 19 and to storm back to topple the Mercer Bears is an especially nice W. Here's more from Mean Gene.
- You know the rules. Here's Paschall on Zamir White coming back to Georgia for the 2021 and the next Alabama super-dude wide receiver.
- Speaking of college football, Steve Sarkisian appears to be landing former Alabama OL coach Kurt Flood as his OC at Texas. It also appears the reports of Bill O'Brien replacing Sark as Bama's OC are true and it's almost a done deal.
Today's questions
I truly meant to be much shorter today. Well, that failed.
There are a slew of questions throughout, so feel free.
I will offer this as a springboard for conversation - other than the assured political stuff that will come - which first-year coach will have the most success next year, Sark at Texas or Bryan Harsin at AU?
If I gave you over/under 6.5 wins for Urban Meyer and Trevor Lawrence with that young Jacksonville group, where you going?
As for today, Jan. 14, well, it's Jason Bateman's 52 birthday. Count me a fan of Bateman's work, even if Teen Wolf 2 is worse than dreadful.
LL Cool J is 53.
The Today Show premiered on this day in 1952.
We'll stick with the original Rushmore we offered above, and ask for the Rushmore of left fielders. Go and remember the mailbag.