Posts tagged “football”

• Take a moment this holiday season to indulge in the Southern University sousaphones playing the Veggie Tales theme in the Superdome parking lot.
• Actor Michael Sheen purchased and then forgave $1.3 million of his neighbors’ debts.
• This first-person account from a high school kicker of what it’s like to miss a game-tying PAT is riveting.
• There are no words to convey how excited I am about the return of The Muppet Show, even if it’s just a one-off. See also: Forks Out: A Benoit Blanc Sesame Street Mystery
• Yes, There’s a Parallel Parking Championship – via Jason
• “For every complex problem, there is a solution that is clear, simple, and wrong.” – H. L. Mencken

  If you’ve been extremely online (and building things on the web) since the middle of the 1990s, you will enjoy reading this Christoffer Artmann essay: 30 Years of <br> Tags

• After much cajoling, last night our son finally convinced us to watch Interstellar (2014, Matthew McConaughey) and I loved it. Brilliant film.
• I feel like this archive of fictional companies is missing a few thousand references from The Simpsons alone, but it’s a good start.
• Fahlo is a wonderful service that (for a nominal fee) allows you to track an animal in the wild. I can confirm that kids love this app.
• The full story of Fedora Man is in the running for the best thing on the Internet this year.
• Ugh: The rise of deepfake cyberbullying poses a growing problem for schools.
• The serial killer epidemic in 1970–80s US may have been caused by lead fumes from cars and factories, and solved by environmental regulations. – via Tom Whitwell
• Take a minute to recall The 2017 Hater’s Guide To The Williams-Sonoma Catalog – via Lauren
• Friendly reminder: The mass deportation of undocumented people was one of Hitler’s largest coercive policies before the war.
• Just in time for Christmas! “This lightproof, soundproof vat filled with our signature vine-ripened, zesty sauce marks the beginning of an exciting new era in tomato-based relaxation.

• New jazz fellowship honors the genre’s elders and gives them each an unrestricted $100,000 grant. – via @phillewis.bsky.social
• Welcome to Chicken Town presents exactly what its URL says it does. – via @erikahall.bsky.social
• Thomas Perry is likely the strongest player in the 2025 NFL Draft. You’ve probably never heard of him.
• While the individual accumulation of wealth offers an illusion of safety, does it simply create more instability and insecurity in the long run?
• After Pressure from Georgia Senator Ossoff, White House Restores Funding for HBCU Students Studying Agriculture
• College Football 25 broke video game records. Can EA Sports keep everyone happy?
• You Have No Rights
• Good News for People Who Love Bad News
  • Once social security checks stop showing up, millions of Americans will finally understand the scope.
  • After All This
  • The Environmental Protection Agency will move to reverse its 2009 declaration that greenhouse gases endanger human health and welfare — a step that would threaten most major climate regulations and make it harder for future presidents to enact new ones. – via @vanhollen.senate.gov
  • “You’re not going to like what I’m saying next, but we are in the middle of a totalitarian fascist coup in this country.” – via @anildash.com
  • FDA Cancels Meeting of Vaccine Experts Scheduled to Advise on Flu Shots
  • It IS Happening Here
  • The White House on Wednesday denied reporters from Reuters and other news organizations access to [the administration’s] first cabinet meeting.
  • It seems almost unavoidable that we are headed for a deep, deep recession.

• Congratulations to Dr. Patric Gagne, author of Sociopath: A Memoir, which was recently included in the NPR Books We Loved list for 2024. – via @patricgagne
• This is probably a day late and a dollar short, but I found great success following the suggestions in this How to Cook a Turkey: Turkey Temperature & Doneness guide from ThermoWorks. Maybe bookmark it for next year?
• If, like me, you save every cool knot-tying video you find, give a follow to @knot_short on Threads or Instagram.
• Pretty much everything is 25% off at Field Notes this weekend. An annual subscription makes a great gift for the lovers of little notebooks in your life. [Ed. note: This is not an ad! I just really like the brand.]
• There are far too many football games to watch this weekend. If you get tired of leftovers, bake a batch of my favorite chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. I promise you’ll love them.
• If you are worried about your writing, just remember that somehow, Palpatine returned. – via @zacharyseda
• It’s in the Game: MADDEN NFL on Amazon Prime is a new 4-part documentary series all about the Madden NFL video game (which I’ve been playing for 34 years). There’s a great article at The Athletic with all kinds of details.
• Just started watching the latest Keri Russel show The Diplomat on Netflix. Only through S1E3 but so far it’s at least as good as The Americans, which I loved.
• Selling Christmas wrapping paper that is impervious to standard scotch tape should be considered a war crime.
• Anyway here’s a cheerful piece about how the Sun will eventually destroy all life on Earth (but not by exploding, so, you know, there’s that) – via @astrokatie.com

Sportico published a great article this month that should really drive home just how much American football dominates television broadcasting right now. NFL Swallows TV Whole, With 93 of Year’s Top 100 Broadcasts details the stranglehold the NFL has on the country’s advertisers. And three of the remaining top 100 were college games! So really 96 out of 100 broadcasts last year were football.

It’s literally the end of an era. After seven national titles, eleven SEC championships and one hundred and twenty-three players drafted into the NFL, Alabama Crimson Tide head football coach Nick Saban is retiring. College football is not going to see another legend like him for a while. I admire what he did at LSU and Alabama almost as much as I hated when Florida played against him.

The last regular season NFL game was a banger. After spending the day logging and wrapping and putting away all the decorations, my son and I spent a few lovely hours watching the Bills beat the Dolphins before I shushed him off to brush his teeth and get in bed. Goodbye, Christmas 2023.

The complete lack of urgency from players and coaches, in the NFL and college, when down by two or more scores in Q4, makes me question whether any of these guys have ever played Madden.

Yet another NFL season begins with a terrible implementation of the on-screen possession indicator. Who at NBC thought a half-circle around their logo would be cute?

PSA: It’s still easier to win back-to-back Super Bowls than it is to bat .400 for a season.