Posts tagged “football”

• 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?