Fifth Down

If you are a consistent reader you know that this is my season of sports depression as Football season and March Madness are over, and I have a long 4 more months before meaningful football is played again. This year, I have been trying to embrace other sports specifically the NBA and NHL playoffs. So here are few reactions and thoughts as we enter into the second round of the Playoffs. Also, shout out to Jim Mora pictured above who had one of my favorite press conferences of all time. After turning the ball over 5 times and obviously losing, he was asked about their chances at making the playoffs. His response is classic and worth a google. It’s right up there with Allen Iverson’s “we talking about practice” rant, Mike Gundy saying “I’m 40…I’m a man!” and Hal McRae throwing a phone (among other things). I feel you Hal, I want to throw things because of the Royals too. So this post is also a tribute to Jim Mora. And the Colts in fact did not make the playoffs that year.

Avs lose so I lose:

Of the 4 major American sports, I care the least about the NHL. Growing up in KC we never had an NHL team when I was alive. Apparently we had the Kansas City Scouts for a couple of years in the 70’s. Then they became the Colorado Rockies before there was a Colorado Rockies baseball team, but by the time I was 3 they had become the New Jersey Devils which they remain to this day. We have the Blues across the state, but if you know me, you know how I feel about St. Louis things. So the closest thing I ever had was the Kansas City Blades. They were part of the IHL and the games were quite fun and better yet, affordable. Although, I grew up hating the Broncos and specifically John Elway, I had no real hate for the city in general. So it is easy to get behind teams like the Avs and Nuggets. My wife is a big Avs fan and is eh about the Nuggets. She went to a lot of games back in the day when they won their first couple of championships. She has remained a loyal fan and was not happy after the loss on Sunday. As we all know, happy wife, happy life and so my life was less happy which I am against. Denver and Seattle have a rough history together. Seattle crushed the Broncos in the Super Bowl a few years back. Then they gladly traded Russell Wilson to the Broncos and you now know why. Now the Seattle Kraken, an expansion team, beat the Avs, the reigning champions, in their first ever playoff series. I of course was cheering for the Avs but you can’t help but sort of like the Kraken. They are scrappy and play hard without having any real stars. They are so unknown that I didn’t even know they existed before this series. Also, their mascot is the Kraken which is a pretty awesome name and one of 7 teams from the 4 major sports, NHL, NBA, MLB and NFL, that don’t end in “S”. Here is a fun game, name the other 6. You are welcome.

Bruins have best ever record in NHL history and are already out:

I don’t really follow hockey much as I have said but apparently the Bruins were real good this year. So good that they had the best record in the history of the sport. This has never bode well for teams as the best ever regular season record in the 4 major sports has zero championships. The Warriors won 73 games in 2015-16 and lost to LeBron and the Cavs in 7. Tom Brady and the Patriots went 16-0 and then lost in the super bowl to Eli. And whether you pick the 1906 Cubs or the 2001 Seattle Mariners, neither of them won the championship despite winning 106 games. It’s an odd trend but it goes to show you that the playoffs really are a whole new season. So the key is to be real good in the regular season but not too good.

The series that makes the NBA happy:

Overall, besides the Nuggets, the NBA has to be pretty happy about who is left. Boston, Philly, New York and Miami are all big markets with lots of basketball fans. But the other West series has to be what they are most excited about. Typically when you get 6 vs 7 in the second round it is not a win. But when the 6 is Steph and the Warriors vs the 7 which is LeBron and the Lakers, it makes the NBA very happy. Consider the alternative. While the Kings are a fun story since they had the longest playoff drought and Memphis would be a good story since they never win anything. But lets be honest, good stories don’t always equal good ratings. Warriors vs Lakers equals great ratings. I of course am all in on the Warriors in this one. I felt bad cheering against the Kings but they did leave KC so that made it easier. I have always liked the Warriors (before they were good) and never liked the Lakers. I love Steph and Klay is probably my favorite basketball player of this era. I don’t like LeBron, never really have. Not a big Anthony Davis fan either so from a fan perspective this is about as easy as it gets. It should be a good battle as the Lakers can’t shoot and the Warriors have no big guys that can score. The Warriors were historically bad on the road and very good at home during the season. In a change of events, the Warriors won game 5 and 7 against the Kings on the road and lost game 6 at home. I like the Warriors to win this one in 7, which would be almost ideal for the NBA. The most ideal result would be Lakers in 7. I also am aware that a good portion of people out there hate both teams. But guess what…you are probably going to watch too. Game 1 is tonight. Looking forward to the Warriors taking a 1-0 lead.

Suns are done:

No one in Denver cares, but the Nuggets are real good. They took care of Minnesota with ease and now are up 2-0 on the Suns. They gave the Suns a beat down in game 1 as Jamal Murray and others shot lights out. In game two, it was a low scoring defensive battle at least by NBA standards. On a night that Murray went 0-9 from 3 point range, the Nuggets still won by double digits. If you aren’t going to beat the Nuggets when Murray shoots that poorly, you aren’t going to beat the Nuggets at all. The Suns are going to lose for two main reasons. First, the Suns basically have no bench and the Nuggets bench is pretty dang good. Secondly, the Joker is the MVP. He probably won’t win because the world doesn’t want to give it to him for a 3rd time in a row. Jokic is quiet, laid back and doesn’t make much of a fuss. He gets the least amount of calls of any MVP ever and he doesn’t complain or make excuses or make a lot of noise in general. He just plays really good basketball all the time. He does it all. Even if you don’t think he should be MVP, he is still the best all around basketball player in the league. Last night when Murray couldn’t shoot and Porter wasn’t doing anything, Jokic put the team on his back. The Suns had no answer for him and he dominated most of the second half. I don’t see how this series goes more than 5 games. I think the Nuggets are good enough to sweep them but they tend to get bored and not play well in one game a series. My guess is that is game 4 and then they come home and seal the deal in game 5. Again, that is not what the NBA wants as the Suns with Booker, Durant, and Chris Paul are much more marketable. But the Nuggets are on a roll no matter what the NBA wants.

Glad I live where I live:

Mountain time zone is where it is at. It is by far the best time zone to watch sports in. Central time zone is next , then pacific and finally eastern. I don’t want to start watching the NFL at 10 in the morning so I am out on the Pacific time zone. Plus a bunch of stuff would start before you get home from work. Central is actually ideal for football season. 11 AM kickoff and trying to go to church on Sundays do not match up well. I am not going to tell you which one I choose more often, but Jesus loves me anyway. But imagine being on the East Coast and trying to watch these games. The Lakers vs Warriors starts at 10 PM eastern tonight. That is brutal. I like to be in bed by 11 at the latest. Why would I even start watching this game if I was on the east coast. Sunday night football starts at like 8:30. Brutal. I guess people do it but I think my fandom would dramatically slow down. Okay, maybe not, but I would be way less productive during the day.

Stay tuned for more posts later in the week.

I’m a day late as I was hoping to get this out on Sunday but here are reactions to rounds 2-7 and the draft overall.

Eagles turning into Bulldogs:

The Eagles went all in on Georgia players drafting two defensive linemen and a defensive back. They also traded for DeAndre Swift, another former bulldog. They have several Alabama players in the last couple of years as well. It is a strong strategy to draft players from arguably the best two college programs right now. How Jalen Carter and Nolan Smith fell into their hands is beyond me. It’s like the rest of the league wants them to win. Eagles are my way too early Super Bowl favorites.

Can I kick it? Yes you can!:

6 total kickers were taken in the draft, 3 punters and 3 place kickers. This isn’t that abnormal but what is abnormal is taking kickers in the 4th round where two of them went to San Fran and New England. Another went in the 6th and 2 punters went in the 6th as well. New England actually drafted a kicker and a punter. There are not that many kicking needy teams out there so drafting one before the 6th round makes little since. Only one punter went in the 7th. It was an odd draft in a lot of ways but San Fran and New England taking a kicker in the 4th was certainly in the realm of odd.

Stenston Bennett…in the 4th…really Rams?

The Rams think they are pretty smart in general but this was pretty dumb. The Rams have had very draft picks but they had lots of picks in the later rounds this year. So why waste a 4th rounder on a guy who is likely never going to play a down in the NFL and you already have a clear starter anyway. Bennett would have been available in the 6th or 7th. Heck, he might have been there the very last pick of the draft. Now I know the Bennett defenders will say, keep doubting him like everyone did in college. Well, in college he had all the best players in the country surrounding him. He is not going to have that with the Rams. And it doesn’t matter because he isn’t good enough to play in the NFL to begin with. To be fair, I really dislike Georgia and Stetson Bennett but most analyst agree, this guy is never playing a meaningful down in the NFL. He is a practice squad guy at best.

Analysts who don’t follow college football grade draft:

There are a bunch of grades out on the draft. While there are certainly some guys who qualify for this job, most of the grades are coming from people who report on the NFL every week. The problem is these guys don’t follow college football that much and are not doing the amount of homework that a Daniel Jeremiah or a Todd McShay is doing. Those guys follow the NFL but are constantly looking at the incoming talent and where they might fit best. Even then, grades are stupid. We should grade the draft after a season or two. This is like showing up to the first day of class in college and the teacher looking at you going, you like like a smart kid…you get an A. And then I walk in and the teacher says…oh man…looks like it is a C for you. First of all, I would have welcomed this option. C’s get degrees. But it is illogical to grade people before they do any work. Who knows which teams get which grades until we see how it plays out. Nobody thought Jaylen Watson and Isaiah Pacheco were these amazing draft picks a year ago. So who knows who will be good and who won’t. All grades should be I’s at this point for incomplete.

Chiefs draft is good in theory:

In general, the right approach is to trust in Veach. I mean he was the guy who wanted Mahomes and since he has been in charge we have two super bowl wins and have never not made it to the AFC Championship. The Chiefs drafted players in position of need; DE, WR, OT, Nickleback (the position not the band), DE, DT, CB. Besides the last one, I think these are all positions that make since. And by the 7th round you just sort of get whoever anyway. I am not super excited or upset by any of these picks. I’ll wait and see how they play out. But Veach knows his stuff and so I’ll trust him for now. Also, I do think it was funny that all these guys worked out with Mahomes and the one receiver we actually drafted worked out with him as well but no one mentioned him or let that out of the bag. Classic, Veach.

Impact of draft on predictions:

Everybody is a contender. The draft solidifies the beginning of paper champion season. The grades on the draft make people highly overvalue teams. But spoiler alert, if your team sucked before they still suck. Sorry Texans, Cardinals and Bears…you still aren’t good. But for fun, here are my playoff teams post draft:

AFC Division winners: Chiefs, Bengals, Bills, Jaguars

AFC Wild Card teams: Chargers, Steelers, Dolphins

NFC Division winners: Eagles, 49ers, Packers and I guess the Saints

NFC Wild Card teams: Seahawks, Vikings, Cowboys

There you go…of course I only know this information because it is all scripted.

The NFL Draft started last night. Here are 5 reactions the big night and round 1 of this year’s draft. More reactions on the other rounds this weekend but for now let’s get started.

What the hell is everyone doing???

After Bryce Young, I don’t know what the first 10-15 teams were doing. The Texans took Stroud…okay. But then trade a bunch of picks including there 1st round pick for 2024. Spoiler alert, that will be a top 3 pick they just gave the Cardinals. They did this to get a defensive end, arguably the deepest position in the draft. I thought the Texans would screw things up by not taking a quarterback. Instead they were like, surprise, Jeff. We are going to screw things up in a new and creative way. Colts take a QB, probably too high, but fine. Then Seattle drafting 5 because the Broncos are idiots, take a corner. I mean, it’s fine but is he even the best corner? Seems like a reach. Then things start to get nutty. The Cardinals trade back up to 6 giving up some of the draft capital they just gained. Raiders take a DE when they literally don’t have anyone who can cover anybody. Falcons take a running back at 8…when they have 3 good running backs. Eagles trade up 1 spot and somehow land the highest rated player in the draft. Bears and Titans reach on linemen and then the Lions go running back too. More on the running backs in a minute. Packers sort of get things back on track with a reasonable edge rusher pick. The Steelers trade up for an O-lineman which makes sense because they can’t block anyone. And then the Jets draft an edge player despite their defense already being stacked and their O-line being terrible. The Commanders who pretty much need everything, pick the 5th best corner in the draft to wrap up probably the most bizarre first 16 picks I have ever seen. This is why bad teams stay bad. Speaking of which…

Lions and Falcons fumble picks:

See what I did there…fumble…get it. Anyway, I am not sure what the crap these teams are doing. Let’s start with the Falcons. The Falcons have so many holes and had so many options at pick 8. Including Jalen Carter the highest rated player in the draft who just got done playing ball in your state. Instead they pick the running back from Texas. Look, I get that he is the best RB in the draft but why, just why? Last year you ran for over 2700 yards. You have 3 capable running backs in Allgeier, Patterson and Huntley. Allgeier had a thousand yards as a rookie. Meanwhile, your defense is terrible and your o-line isn’t all that great. Then Detroit who couldn’t stop anyone besides Aaron Rodgers last year, decided to trade back so they could take the second best running back in the draft. Mind you, they already have Swift who is very good and just spent money in the offseason to get David Montgomery from the Bears. So why spend this pick on a running back when you have so many other needs? These loser franchises really show you what they are made of in these moments.

This Draft was almost perfect for the Chiefs…Almost:

With the stupidity of the 12 out of the first 16 picks, things were looking great for the Chiefs. All four of the top wide receivers were still on the board along with multiple defensive linemen we would be interested in. Then pick 20 came along. Four receivers in a row go and then after a tight end, a DT, OT, DE, DT, and DE that all would have been great picks. But alas, we didn’t get any of them. The whole time I thought, well maybe we will get this guy and then that guy immediately got drafted. It was a bummer but it is the price you pay for winning. We draft last and no one wants to give us a reasonable trade deal to move up. It’s all good though because we have Mahomes, Kelce and Reid.

No more excuses for Lamar:

The Ravens caved and paid Lamar. I believe they will regret this by mid October. One of two things usually happens with the Ravens if not both. They either start off hot for the first 4-6 weeks and then fizzle off or everyone gets hurt. Lamar just isn’t that good of a quarterback. Everyone is blaming the lack of weapons but I am not buying it. Now he will have Mark Andrews, OBJ and Zay Flowers, arguably the best receiver in the draft. No excuses. My bet is he will put up slightly better stats but still be middle of the pack before running a bunch and getting injured. The Ravens run a lot for a reason. Making him the highest paid player in the league is ridiculous and sets them up for problems for years to come. Maybe he will prove me wrong. Or maybe he will be on the injury report in November.

Well Done KC!:

The draft set up is amazing. The lights changing colors for each team was really cool. The place was packed with fans and especially Chiefs fans. We represented well. Mahomes and Kelce kicked off the draft and Clark Hunt closed out the night. We are the champs and we acted like it but were excellent hosts as well. The whole place looked great and was a good representation of KC. Excited to see what Veach does with the rest of the draft and excited to see KC shine for the next two days.

Tune in on Sunday when I do a recap of rounds 2-7.

It’s been another fun week in sports. This week we cover how bad the Royals suck, my futile attempt at caring about the NBA, Russell Wilson can no longer ride, Denver Sports rankings, and getting you ready for the draft. Let’s dive in.

Royally Bad:

I did not think the Royals would be good this year. I tend to set the bar pretty low. I grew up in the 80’s when the Royals were literally competitive every year. The year after winning the series, we went 76-86. That was our worst year. If we went 76-86 now, the stadium would be packed and we would all be celebrating. But since the strike in 94, I have only ever entered 2 years with any expectations. The first was 2004. The previous year we went 83-79 to capture our first winning record in 9 years. We had a cast of young talented players. Tony Pena was a fun, energetic manager. Lima Time was in full effect. And if you were at any of the games, you likely got to experience the Lemonade guy. (If you know, you know). The following year, I thought hey this is going to be the year we finally make the playoffs again. We did not. Instead we went 58-104. This culminated arguably the most disappointing year of my sports fandom. The year really needs its own column but in 2003, the Royals had a winning record, Mizzou football had turned the corner, Mizzou basketball was ready to take the next step and the Chiefs had the best record in the NFL. 2004 would be the year…of disappointment. More to come on that in a later blog. The other year I had expectations was 2015 and we won the World Series, so that was cool. But for the most part I expect us to lose a lot and be bad. But this team is at a whole other level. After having one of the best records in Spring Ball, we now have the second worst record in baseball. The only team that is worse is a team that is trying to move out of it’s city. Apparently all things in Oakland are headed to Las Vegas. We are 4-15. We are 1-9 in our last 10. We have lost 6 in a row. We are the only team that doesn’t have at least 60 runs. Our run difference is -51. To put that in perspective, Tampa who has the best record is +83. And we can no longer use the small market excuse. Literally no one cares about the Tampa Rays. Their stadium is a dump and no one goes and they still win all the time. We are just awful. I always joke about being mathematically eliminated by the end of April. But this year, they might just pull it off. We’ve played 19 games and we are already 7 games back in our division.

Go NBA…or whatever:

As I mentioned before, I have entered my sad, sports season. Football is over. March Madness is over. The Royals suck. And I am “sports” depressed. I decided to try and remedy the situation by trying to get excited about the NBA playoffs. I’ve been checking in on all the games. I’ve watched more NBA basketball this week than I have all year. The great thing about the NBA is that you really only have to watch the last 8 minutes of games. I am trying to care about who wins and loses. But here are my top 5 problems of trying to get into the NBA Playoffs.

1. Who are these guys? I don’t know very many players. I was watching the 76ers beat Brooklyn last night and even though I was cheering for Brooklyn because I think it would be funny if they won after trading Kyrie and Durant, I literally don’t recognize one player on their team. At best I might know 3 or 4 players on any team.
2. Nothing significant happens until the 4th quarter. If the players are only going to try 25% of the time, then I am only going to care 25% of the time.
3. The teams I like are all playing each other. Kings versus Warriors in the first round? Come on. Nuggets vs T-Wolves in a battle of cities I have lived in that are not in Missouri? The team my son cheers for (the Bucks) vs the only team that LeBron has ever been on that I cheered for (the Heat)? I always liked Dwayne Wade and everyone was mad at LeBron for leaving the Cavs so I of course went against the grain and cheered for him.
4. It’s not late 80’s-90’s basketball. I’ll be honest I’d rather watch the Last Dance or a replay of an old game then watch this new stuff. Little defense is played. Everything is a foul. Last night I saw Embid take like 5 steps in different directions and scored and the announcer said great footwork by Embid. This new basketball game baffles me. Sure there are more points but at what cost? Also, there is no offense anymore. You remember the Triangle offense? Those were the days. The Warriors who I used to love to watch because they all moved around so much without the ball, don’t even run an offense anymore.
5. No one I care about, cares. I text my brother last night and said, “I’m trying to get into the NBA playoffs.” He didn’t even bother to respond. That is how much he cares. I go to work and no one is talking about the NBA. All my Facebook friends are either posting about the draft, the Cardinals or how bad the Royals are. My son is a Bucks fan, but he doesn’t really watch the games. He just plays as the Bucks on NBA 2K. My wife last night was like I want to watch some of the Avs game tonight. The night before she said, the Nuggets are playing? What round are we in? How are they doing? Her whole family is from Denver and I don’t think any of them have ever even mentioned the Nuggets. When you really don’t care about something, it is really hard to care about it by yourself.

Denver Don’t Care:

Speaking of the Nuggets, it is an interesting sports hierarchy here in the Mile High City. In Kansas City, the Royals were king in the 70’s and 80’s. Then they got bad and the Chiefs got good and it has been Chiefs, then Royals, then whichever college team you cheer for next. This makes sense. What is interesting here is that the Nuggets are always pretty good and no one cares. Here the Broncos are king, no matter how bad they are. This makes sense. They have been here forever. They have had a lot of success and even though they are bad, football is pretty much king everywhere. Next up is the Avalanche. Sure they won it last year but even before that they were #2. Maybe this stems from them winning a couple championships in 96 and 2001. But the Avs are very popular. Danielle for instance is always at least somewhat interested in how they are doing. Her and her family text back and forth about them during the playoffs. There is real interest here. Up next is the Rockies. The Rockies are historically terrible. The owner literally doesn’t care about winning. But yet, they are top 10 in attendance every year. Maybe it is the nice weather. Maybe it is all the bars right around the stadium. Maybe it is because it is right downtown. Whatever the reason, people go to Rockies games all the time. Myself included. Up next might actually be the Rapids. They are the soccer club here. I see people wearing Rapids gear. People talk about how fun the games are. Apparently it is a good time. And then finally the Nuggets. No one cares about the Nuggets. Did you know the Nuggets have made the playoffs 15 of the last 20 years? No one cares. Maybe it is because 10 out of 15 of those years they lost in the first round. As my wife said the other day, the Nuggets always choke. But still, this is a winning franchise. No one cares. This actually makes it easier to cheer for the Nuggets. But at the same time, I have lived here two different times for multiple years and never made it to a game. Maybe next year.

Russ can’t ride:

Just when you think things can’t get any lower for Russel Wilson, he goes and does something else dumb. Russ flipped his golf cart by a sand trap. Guess what the golf course is called…Arrowhead. Russ has had a rough 12 months. This time last year he was deemed the savior. “We have a great roster, all we need is a Quarterback,” is what I heard for 3 years. Then they got Russ. All of the sudden they were the best team in the division and super bowl contenders. I always defended Drew Lock, not because he was good but because he wasn’t the only problem. The whole roster was highly overrated. Now that Russ sucked, all of the sudden the roster has all these issues that no one was talking about before. They went from supposedly the best team in the division to not winning a divisional game until the last game of the year. Russ kept his “Let’s Ride” tag line way too far into the season. The whole thing was a disaster. And now here is poor Russ wrecking his golf cart. Maybe the next 12 months will be better, buddy.

Draft Day!:

This time next week we will have just experienced the first round of the NFL Draft. This is my favorite part of April. The draft used to be on the weekend. Rounds 1-3 would be on Saturday and 4-7 on Sunday. I remember going to Buffalo Wild Wings with Danielle and baby Walker. We hung out all day, watching and predicting who would get drafted next. It was a great Saturday. But as the NFL does with all things, they found a way to drag it out and make more money. So now we get round 1 on Thursday night, rounds 2-3 on Friday and rounds 4-7 on Saturday. I actually prefer the old way but I am still going to watch. I will do a 5 for 5 next week just on the first round of the draft, but here are 5 predictions for the big night.

1. Chiefs don’t pick #31. Veach does what Veach does and I bet he either trades up or trades back. If he can get a receiver in the mid to late 20’s, I bet he trades up. Otherwise, he trades back. If he trades back people will boo. But then in day 2, they will all love Veach again as he picks up a couple of steals in the draft.
2. Houston trades out of 2. They are idiots so why would they take a QB? Rumor has it, Young is going to the Panthers and Stroud is the next best dude. But Stroud has the same agent as Massage boy. Amazingly, Watson is still screwing this franchise among other things, I’m sure.
3. Detroit quickly asks all their potential draft prospects if they like to gamble.
4. The Rams decide to trade their next three first round picks for overpriced talent assuring that they will basically never have to do draft homework again.
5. The Raiders over reach and the person they pick is a bust and the Patriots draft someone that no one has ever heard of. You can count on these things pretty much every year.

Next week, I’ll be posting my top 11 baseball stadiums I have attended and reactions to the draft on Friday. Thanks for reading!

I don’t get to as many stadiums as I used to but over the years I have hit 21 stadiums. Some are certainly nicer than others and they all come with a little adventure as well. So lets dive in to the 10 worst stadiums I have watched a game at. I am ranking them from 21 (worst) all the way to 1 (best). This week you get the worst 10 and next week you’ll get the best 11.

21. Old Minnesota: The Metro Dome:

When I was wholesaling, I lived in Minnesota. I had never been to the Metro Dome before although I did attempt once to go to a Vikings game but failed due to a snow storm. I told that story in a previous blog. I decided that I should at least check out the stadium since I lived there. I took Danielle and one of my better reps and his wife. We had a good time at the game but baseball inside is dumb. Really most sports indoors are dumb. But baseball is especially bad. The whole ceiling is white and you sort of feel like you are sitting in a big balloon. I crossed it off the list and never went back even though I lived there for almost 3 years.

20. Tampa:

I went with 3 of my buddies and they were playing the Royals. One of my buddies girlfriend’s family had some connection to a hotel chain so we were able to stay at the same hotel as the Royals. We had drinks in the same bar as royal players and then I believe the Red Sox were coming into town next so we saw some of them as well. That was for sure the highlight. The stadium is indoors again and kind of dumpy. I think we went to two games but I can’t remember for sure. We all had a lot to drink on this trip and this created some tension because people say dumb things when they drink too much. The highlights were seeing Frank White, who was a commentator at the time and John Smoltz, who I believe was with the Red Sox at the time. I for sure saw Frank White. There were for sure many other players that we saw but I don’t remember them. This was the trip I decided shots were bad. I literally haven’t had one since on a baseball trip or otherwise. It has kept me from getting in fights with my friends and I remember everything now. So although a dump, thanks for the life lessons, Tampa. (Although the stadium is actually in St. Petersburg.)

19. The Nationals (Old RFK Stadium):

Woof, this stadium was rough. But it edges out the other two because it is at least outdoors. They had some nice things sort of around the stadium but it was run down and pretty bad. But at least you could imagine there were once some good football games played in the stadium, so it had that going for it, which was nice. This was a little baseball tour we did, where we went here and then to Philly and then New York. My buddies came back down and caught a game in Baltimore. But I had to fly home early for work. Stupid responsibilities. I still haven’t made it to Baltimore yet.

18. Toronto:

Toronto is actually a great city. Its big but much cleaner than the big cities I have been to in the United States. The Sky Dome however, is eh. It’s fine. There is nothing wrong with it but it sort of feels like you are watching the game in a big hotel. Overall, this was a good trip but the stadium is so-so. It was an adventure crossing the border. Our buddy Wads, was driving and on the way there it was real late at night as we had just left Detroit after a game. (more on that in a bit). Wads decided to tell the boarder patrol officer that we didn’t have anything illegal in the trunk. Which is about the dumbest thing you can say to a border patrol. They let us go on through which tells me, Canada doesn’t have a lot of concerns with Americans coming into their country. Or more likely, the guy thought there is no way these 4 idiots are going to do anything. Also, we sailed through the boarder on the way into Canada because it was like 2 in the morning. We woke up Sunday morning and assumed it would be the same result at 10 AM. It was not. I missed my flight and had to hang out at the airport even longer trying to get my butt home. Baseball trips with your friends are fun but the smartest decisions are not always made.

17. Chicago White Sox:

I don’t have much to say about the White Sox stadium and that should tell you everything. It’s not in a particular fun place in town. The surrounding area doesn’t have much to offer. The inside of the stadium is fine but nothing real exciting. It’ all so-so. To add to the issues is it is in competition with Wrigley. Wrigley has it’s own issues but it is historic and the area around it is fun. Basically you ride the train to White Sox stadium, go to the game and then immediately get back on the train so you can go some where nice and fun in the rest of the city. It doesn’t help things that I don’t particularly like the White Sox. However, for whatever reason I have visited this stadium multiple times and it ranks 4th on my most visited stadiums in my lifetime. I have been to games there on 3 different occasions. First I went with my dad and brother when we were trying to relive our experience from the year before when we came to Chicago to go to Wrigley and watched Big Mac and Sammy Sosa battle it out. Shockingly to no one, it was not as good. Then on our inaugural buddy baseball trip, we hit the stadium on our way up to Milwaukee. Finally, I drove up to meet some of the same buddies when they were on their way back from going to a game somewhere else. I think Milwaukee again. All the experiences were fun but mostly due to the people, not the stadium. The last trip was especially memorable because instead of getting us two hotel rooms or a hotel room with two beds, my buddy Ben booked the rooms for the wrong weekend. So we settled into a room with just one bed and four dudes. I don’t remember how it all worked out but it wasn’t the most comfortable sleep I have had.

16. Angels stadium:

California, Anaheim, Los Angeles…whatever they are called that year, their stadium was eh. I ended up in their stadium after failing a test for work. When things went bad in my life I used to take drives across the country to clear my head and hopefully get back on track. When you get married and have kids, this strategy doesn’t work as well because your family is like where the hell do you think you are going. I drove from Denver to San Diego and then up to Angels stadium before heading home. The drive to San Diego was beautiful and fun. The drive from San Diego to Angels stadium was rough. Lots of traffic and then you finally end up at this place. The stadium is fine. There are some rocks behind the wall in the outfield for some reason. People were nice for the most part. The place was sort of half full so I could move around a lot which was nice. The drive home was rough because one of my contacts dried out and I didn’t have a replacement on me. So I drove a lot of the way home with one eye closed. It was pretty rough.

15. Dirty Detroit:

Me and the boys flew into Detroit on one of our famous baseball trips. This was prime baseball trip time. Prior to kids and working for a non profit so I had money and time. Those were the days. Anyway, we landed in Detroit and headed over to the stadium. We parked and tried not to get robbed or stabbed on the way in. Then we got into the park and it was actually quite nice. Nice stadium, good seats, good ball park. We were there like 8 years after it opened and so it had that new ball park field. The field looked great and there is a nice scoreboard in leftfield. Center field opens up and you can see buildings in the city that actually look nice and trick you into thinking you are somewhere else besides Detroit. There were lots of fun things to do around the park. It was very nice. Then the game ends and you walk out of the park with a smile on your face until you hit the gate and you are like…oh yeah…I’m in Detroit. Our routine at the time was typically go to the game and then hit a bar and have a few drinks. We looked around, there was one bar that was Red Wings bar and then a lot of sketchy areas. The plan was to spend the night in Detroit and then head to Toronto in the morning. We all looked at each other and without saying much, got in our car and just went ahead and drove to Toronto. That is how bad Detroit is. We chose leaving over drinks and sleep.

14. Old Yankee stadium:

This was a great trip as we hit DC, went up to Philly and then NYC. Jason and Ben had friends for us to stay with in the Big Apple so that was nice. NYC is fine. It’s very busy as you would expect with lots of historical sites. We headed over to the stadium by train or subway. I don’t remember which. The stadium had that historical feel and I am glad I went before they replaced it. I can say I went to a game in the house that Ruth built. Babe Ruth that is, not my sister. She hasn’t built any houses. But I can also see why they wanted to replace it. I haven’t been to the new one but besides the history, there wasn’t much to like about the place. It was old and there were lots of bad seats where you couldn’t see real well especially down the 3rd base line where we were sitting. People weren’t very friendly and for a place that was that old, it had sort of a stuck up feel to it. Like I’m better than you even though I am a dump. Anyway, glad I went but not one to write a book about.

13. Cleveland Indians:

I know they are the Guardians or whatever now but back then they were the Indians. It was the year after we won the World Series. They were on the rise and we were on the decline. Cleveland is basically a nicer Detroit. People aren’t friendly and of course I was repping my Royals gear since they were playing them. Walker and I drove up from Columbus to catch a game. Danielle’s sister and her family live in Columbus. There was a massive rain delay that lasted a couple of hours. They had a bunch of cool kids stuff going on. Walker would have been about 8 at the time and so he thought it was awesome. He was seeing how fast he was, how high he could jump up the wall and a few other things. After the rain delay a ton of people left so we went down to the lower level and and sat a few rows behind the Royals dugout. We lost…by a lot. But when the Cleveland fans were taunting the Royals players, they all pointed to their ring fingers to signal that they had the championship. It was a fun adventure with my son in a pretty nice park. I just don’t like Cleveland or the Indians or the Guardians or whatever they are called now. I got cussed at and called names on our way out. Nothing like winning a game and then saying degrading things to the opposing fan with his kid. Stay classy Cleveland.

12. Milwaukee Brewers:

I probably need to go to this one again. I liked this park and Milwaukee in general. They are my kind of people. Friendly and nice and a fun town. It has a little bit of a Kansas City sort of feel. The surrounding area of the stadium is nice. And it has a retractable dome. Rain was in the forecast and so it was shut during the game we were at. This was also the one and only trip that my friend Kyle went on. It was myself, him and Jason and this was our first baseball trip. It went so well that it was Kyle’s last baseball trip. To be fair, Kyle doesn’t really like sports. The other issue is that Jason and I together are an acquired taste. We sometimes fight like brothers and can be pretty relentless in making fun of others together. We also can be making fun of something and laughing and you think it is you that we are making fun of but it really isn’t. But of course we don’t tell you that it isn’t you and so then you get even more frustrated. Sounds fun…right? Well it is a lot of fun for the two of us. A memorable moment was we were waiting for the elevator at the hotel and it was taking forever so I said I’ll take the stairs. I was all proud of myself for beating them to the lobby and then the elevator doors opened up and they walked out of the elevator with several beautiful girls. I went quickly from very proud to very sad. The actual stadium is nice and has a good feel to it. People were friendly and they were playing the Cardinals so that was sort of fun. I need to get back there to catch a game when the dome is open as I think it would be a better experience. But there was a leak in the roof and it dripped right by the on deck circle. It was fun to watch the annoyed baseball players have to deal with the dripping. We were able to walk up and get seats behind home plate. The Brewers were not good at this time and it was a Sunday and football season. Although this is on the worst list, it really is the beginning of good baseball stadiums I have been to.

Tune in next week for the top 11 stadiums I have been to.

It’s been a busy few weeks at my real job so Top 10 Tuesday has taken a bit of hiatus but 5 for Friday lives on. Let’s get to this week in sports.

NBA Play in Tournament:

Did you know this was a thing? I’ll be honest, I didn’t understand how this worked until Tuesday this week. I was like why would you have the 7 seed play the 8? Then I realized that the loser of that game plays the winner of the 9 vs 10 game. I am guessing there are others of you reading this that didn’t know how this worked either. This is the dumbest, most pointless playoff addition in all of sports. The Hawks were the 8th best team but are now the 7 seed because they beat the Heat. Now the Heat, who were the 7th best team in the East have to beat the Bulls who beat the Raptors on Wednesday. If the Heat wins then they become the 8 seed. If they lose they don’t make the playoffs at all. What sense does that make? Also, so many teams already make the playoffs that this is highly unnecessary. Also, do we really think that any of the following teams, Hawks, Heat, Bulls, Raptors, are going to beat the Bucks or Celtics in a playoff series? This Play in tournament is so bad, I had to google it to see how it works. The 7 or 8 seed rarely win a series and I am sure the 9 or 10 seed has even less of a chance. Just eliminate this stupid thing already. Also, aren’t the NBA playoffs long enough? It is mid April and this thing still doesn’t end until sometime in June.

Washington gets a new owner:

First they changed their name and now they are changing their owner. Dan Snyder has to be one of the worst owners in sports of all time. Besides all the controversies, which were many, he also managed to run a once proud and successful organization into the ground. Growing up in the 80’s and early 90’s the then Redskins were one of the top teams in the league. They won 3 super bowls. But since Snyder got there, they slowly got worse and worse. And then you add in all the non football issues. It’s a complete mess. But this is the power of the NFL. It is a mess worth 6 Billion dollars. If any one took over a highly successful business and ran it into the ground and along the way did a bunch of shady things, the value of that business would crash and burn. But in the NFL, the value greatly increases despite Dan’s best efforts. How bad is Dan? Normally when a team gets sold, no ones outside of that fanbase cares. Dan is so bad, literally the whole country is celebrating this sale. So if you are ever feeling sorry for yourself because you feel like you aren’t well liked or popular, you can think of Dan and feel better about yourself.

OBJ gets paid to catch passes from Tyler Huntley:

The same team that doesn’t want to pay Lamar is willing to flop down 18 million for a receiver coming off an ACL injury who didn’t even play last year. The Ravens who have basically done nothing at receiver while Lamar has been at QB, all of the sudden decide to go all in now that Lamar is probably not going to play. And OBJ who said he wasn’t asking for 20 million but just didn’t want 4. Well, he is a lot closer to 20 than 4. I know there were some Chiefs fans out there that were hoping we would get OBJ but 18 for 1 year for a guy who hasn’t played a complete season in like 5 years is insane. But OBJ should have a good chance at staying healthy because the Ravens only throw the ball like 20% of the time.

Speaking of Chiefs receivers…:

Many seem to be worried about what the Chiefs are doing at receiver. They have made some news recently by signing Richie James from the Giants and today resigned Justin Watson. I know these aren’t the most exciting moves in the world, but we don’t actually need great receivers. We have Reid, Mahomes and Kelce, that is all we need. Not to mention, we have 4 tight ends we can use and we use our running backs a lot. I would like us to resign McKinnon but I am not worried about it. My brother is confident we are going to end up with Hopkins. I think this is unlikely but you never know. If we got him, I think you can go ahead and pencil us into the AFC championship game again. But even with the dudes we have now, even if we don’t draft anyone I am fine with who we have. Toney, Moore, MVS, Watson, James and one of the guys who’s last name is Ross is fine with me. That is how confident I am in Reid and Mahomes. I literally don’t think it matters who we have.

Teaching my son the ways of watching golf:

Easter Sunday was also the conclusion of the Masters. I don’t watch a lot of golf, but there is something about the Masters that draws me in. So I flipped it on. Walker was like, why are watching golf. Because it is the Masters. We watched a few holes and Walker said I am getting sleepy watching this. I said that is the beauty of golf. Don’t fight it, hit the pillow and lay on the couch and slowly drift away while Jim Nantz describes a putt. This is the other reason I watch golf. If I am stressed or tired, turn on golf, you will fall fast asleep and wake up with all of your worries gone. Walker was still not feeling it or so he said. But he stretched out on the couch anyway. I had to get up to help out with food preparations for a while. About 15 minutes later I hear Walker yell, “Dad, Rahm is up 2 on Koepka now.” That a boy, Walker, that a boy.

Even with the Madness over and NFL Free Agency dying down, there are still some things going on in the sports world. Here are 5 of them.

Cam is being Selective even though no one is selecting him:

Cam Newton has always been a polarizing figure from stealing computers or whatever at Florida to wearing flamboyant clothing and hats in present day. He had a great year in college at Auburn and had a few good years in the NFL including leading the Panthers to the Super Bowl. My wife is a big Broncos fan and a big hater of Cam. “He’s cocky, annoying, etc.” She claims that the Broncos broke Cam in the Super Bowl. And honestly I can’t disagree. He really has never been the same since that game. His play has deteriorated but he is still loud and cocky. He recently claimed that there wasn’t 32 other quarterbacks better than him. He said it less nicely. But it appears that the league disagrees. Now he is willing to be a back up but only in certain places. He has a list of places that he is willing to go. His list is odd and inconsistent but so is Cam. The problem for Cam is not that he is being selective it is that no one is selecting him. I had the same problem once. I was out on the play ground and they were picking teams for kickball and I was like I will either be shortstop behind Jason Jenks or JD Smither. And the team captains were like…I pick Shawn Benson. I then went and sat on the swings. So I feel you Cam, I really do. I am in a sports group on Facebook and they were saying Cam is way better than Brian Hoyer. But what you want in your back up quarterback is someone who is out of sight out of mind. He is the guy on your team you hope never plays and you sort of forget about. Chad Henne was great when he came in a couple of times but most of the time I forgot he was even on the team. That’s Brian Hoyer. That is not Cam. But don’t worry buddy, I got a seat on the swing set open for you.

10 year old Daughter wins Bracket Challenge:

We did a family bracket challenge this year. My 10 year old daughter won. She knows the following things about college basketball.

1. Dad loves Mizzou.
2. Mizzou is terrible in the tournament.
3. Uncle Asa loves Duke.

That’s it. And that worked to her advantage. While the rest of us thought it through and picked wisely, she just picked randomly with her heart. Danielle even went with the Luke Neal (Luke is a friend of ours) philosophy of picking all the higher seeds. Usually a strong strategy, it failed miserably this year. I finished second in our bracket with a whopping 53 points. To put this in perspective there was a total of 192 points possible. Savannah didn’t crush it by any means. She was towards the bottom for most of the tournament. But she did pick the champion. I was watching her make her picks and she said I like UConn. They are the Huskies. I like puppies. And off she went scoring 90 points with the only team out of all of us in the final four. So next year’s strategy…pick your favorite mascot and roll with it.

Royals start the season in the most Royal way ever:

After 7 games, all at home the Royals are a whopping 1-6. After a promising spring, we are right where I thought we would be. Terrible. All the young exciting bats have led us to lead the league in fewest runs scored with 17. It took 3 games to even score a run. We are basically already mathematically eliminated. The Royals either go one of two ways. Start out hot and then quickly crash in a few weeks giving us a slimmer of hope for a very short time. Or start out bad and then keep being bad until September and then tear it up for a month to give us false hope going into next year. So be ready for some exciting baseball once football season starts and you no longer care. Go Royals.

Tyreek is saying dumb things again and is plotting to take over the world:

I love Tyreek, I really do. But he is one crazy dude. I don’t know why you would talk smack on the Super Bowl Champions in the month of April, but that is how he rolls. Apparently we better watch out because he knows all our signs. I am sure it will be tough to change those if we haven’t already but thanks for the tip. He also said he hates to have to put up the peace sign on us but you know what for some reason I don’t believe him. I think he is real excited about putting up the peace sign. I am excited too because now that is a penalty. Chris Jones had the best response stating that the only time he is going to put up the peace sign is on his way to the bus. Classic. Speaking of Jones can we sign him to an extension already? Dude is amazing and loyal. He has said he will never play for another team. So let’s get this deal done. Did you know he is the only Chief in history to have multiple seasons with 15 or more sacks? Not even DT ever did that. So let’s make him a lifer already. Kelce, Mahomes, Bolton and Jones. Those 4 need to stay no matter the price.

Anyway, apparently Tyreek is also already planning his retirement and then is going to take over the world one video game company at a time or something. Tyreek was talking to Gehrig Dieter who is a long time practice squad guy who finally retired to become Tyreek’s wing man. This whole conversation between the two of them reminded me of Pinky and the Brain from Animaniacs. For those of you who don’t know, they are Pinky and the brain, one is a genius, the other is insane, they are labratory mice, who’s genes have been spliced, their dinky, their pinky and the brain, brain, brain, brain, brain. Now that I have got that song stuck in your head, I’ll let you decide which of Tyreek and Dieter are the genius and which one is insane. (Spoiler alert, I don’t think either one of them is a genius). Anyway, congrats to Tyreek on his near retirement.

Sports Depression Season:

Every year around this time, I get sort of grumpy and annoyed and moody. And every year, I think what is wrong with me. Danielle has to remind me it is your Sports Depression Season. Apparently I have 4 seasons of my life as well. While the world has Spring, Summer, Fall, and Winter, I have the following seasons: Football Season, Playoff Football Season, NFL Free Agency/March Madness Season, and now Sports Depression season. The depression really starts the day after the Super Bowl. Now if the Chiefs win it starts like 2 weeks after the super bowl because I spend about 2 weeks rewatching at least parts of the Super Bowl each night. It starts sooner if we don’t win the Super Bowl. But either way it actually starts sooner but it is sort of hidden by NFL Free Agency and then March Madness. But after the Madness it really sinks in. The Royals are terrible and baseball isn’t real exciting to watch on tv. My family bans me from watching the XFL or whatever other crap leagues are playing football which is fair because I am pretty obsessed during the NFL season. You remember that streak of terrible Thursday night football games that were so bad that Al Michaels was making fun of them? I watched all of those from beginning to end. The NBA is eh, I mean I don’t think they care too much so why should I? I think hockey might still be going on…I’m not sure. Really I am just moping around until football starts again. I am finding out that I am not the only one who suffers from Sports Depression Season. So here are a ten tips to help you through this difficult time.

1. Throw yourself into your work: If you work really hard now and hit a bunch of your goals then you won’t have as much to do during football season.
2. Fantasy Football Mock drafts: the system isn’t up yet but sometime after the draft, you’ll be able to waste hours upon hours mocking drafting with playa69 and other random people on the web who will talk smack about who you picked in round 8. If you really want to piss off complete strangers pick players from all one team or all one position.
3. Watch the second half of the super bowl over and over and over again: This is the cure for all depression really.
4. Google your favorite football team and read articles about them: It is so much fun to read the exact same article on 6 different outlets. Or even better read some commentary about who the Chiefs should draft writtin by some guy who is a whopping 5% more qualified to write that article then you are.
5. Read a book: Just kidding…no one wants to do that.
6. Go outside: Apparently there is a whole world out there with mountains and water and trees. At least that is what I see on commercials.
7. Spend lots of time with your kids: Fill up those relationship buckets now so that you can drain them dry from September through February when you are glued to the TV seeing which crap NFC south is going to win the divison.
8. Do that thing your spouse has been asking you to do with them for the last 6 months: That way when it is the middle of October and you are watching the Colts play the Texans on Thursday night and your spouse says “you care more about football than you do me!” You can fire back, “That’s not true! You remember that time we went downtown and had fondue back in May? That’s true love, baby!”
9. Write a Sports blog for your friends and family to read: But make sure we have different friends and family, I don’t need the competition.
10. Watch Friday Night Lights and Ted Lasso over and over again: It’s the gift that keeps on giving.

There you go, now you are all healed. Happy Good Friday and Happy Easter everyone!

MLB Baseball started, College Basketball is ending and the NBA playoffs are right around the corner. Here are reactions to that and more.

The True sports fans:

I grew up on baseball. I loved it. I would listen to games on the radio while playing dice baseball. Even though I gave up the sport at an early age (I once struck out in t-ball but that is a story for another day), I still loved watching and following it. I have many great memories of going to games with my dad. My buddies and I still travel to different stadiums although we do it less and less because we are all busy and have kids now. But I have been to 20 different MLB ballparks which is pretty strong. This gives me an idea for the top 10 next week. Anyway, I lost some interest after the strike in 94. The Royals went through a pretty dark 20 years of sucking from 94 to 2014 so that didn’t help my fandom. And now, I am honestly too busy to follow 162 games a year. But for those that do…you are the truest of the true sports fans. Being a die hard NFL fan is easy. You just have to watch on Sundays and the occasional Monday or Thursday. But I know people who check the box score of their favorite baseball team every day. Cardinal fans claim to be the best baseball fans which I highly dispute. The truest of the truest are those that check the box score of their terrible last place baseball team 162 days a year. You know who you are and we see you. We aren’t going to be you but we see you.

Opening day and the Royals are eliminated from the Playoffs:

Okay, not really but yesterdays performance was about as Royals as it gets. They had all this excitement. New Manager, bringing back the original powder blue uniforms, Salvy becomes the 4th captain in franchise history, Frank White throws out the first pitch and what do the Royals do? They lay and egg and lose 2-0. Classic Royals taking away your hope as quickly as possible. Maybe I am wrong. They had a pretty good spring but I think this team is still a long ways away from being good. 70-92 is my predicted record and we are basically already out of it before it started.

The Madness of March Madness:

The Final Four is tomorrow featuring FAU, San Diego State, UConn and Miami just like we all predicted. We did a family tournament challenge made up of myself, my wife, my two kids, my two siblings, my brother and sister in law and two of their kids. Out of 10 brackets, only my 10 year old daughter has a team in the final four with UConn. None of us are college basketball experts. My brother in law probably follows it the closest because he is a Duke fan. But just the odds of this happening are slim. Danielle picked all chalk and went 0-4 for her final four. In fact none of the top seeds even made it to the elite eight. This was the maddest of the march madness. I am sure things will be back to normal next year but what a crazy tournament. Savannah has UConn winning it all, so she still has a chance to have the champion. But she is the rarity. I am sure we are not alone but I don’t remember a more top to bottom tournament where no one, two or three seed made the final four.

NBA Playoffs are next:

The NBA Playoffs are right around the corner so there won’t be a shortage of meaningful basketball. However, have you noticed how many teams make the playoffs now? 20 freaking teams, that is how many. There are only 30 teams in the whole league. I mean if you don’t make the playoffs you really suck. The regular season is basically worthless. No wonder guys don’t play defense and sit out games. There is no reason to play until the playoffs. You have to play just enough to make it in the top 20? How hard is that. Anyway, in case you are like me, and don’t really have a team, here are 3 teams to cheer for in both the East and the West.

Milwaukee Bucks: My 14 year old son is a Bucks fan. Apparently he only cheers for teams in Wisconsin now. He is the moodiest of the moody teenagers lately. It would be nice for that mood swing to swing positively occasionally and the Bucks winning would help that. So for the sake of Danielle and I’s sanity, please cheer for the Bucks.

Atlanta Hawks: uh, win with Quin. Duh! Go Hawks!

Toronto Raptors: O.G. Anunoby plays for them. He is from Jefferson City. My buddy, Jordan was his coach. I occasionally played basketball with him at the Y. He was real good. I was really not. But it was fun and I can say I played ball against an NBA player. Anyway, O.G. is a good kid so cheer for the Raptors.

Denver Nuggets: The Chiefs have beaten the Broncos 15 times in a row. Come on, we can give them this.

Golden State Warriors: Everyone hates them. Join me on the dark side. Go against the grain. Plus when they are playing well they are really fun to watch. Also, speaking of the Warriors I don’t think I have ever seen a more bizarre home/away record. They are 31-8 at home and 9-29 on the road. Unbelievable. Unfortunately for the Warriors, not all the playoff games will be at home.

Los Angeles Lakers: Just kidding. Screw the Lakers, they always win and LeBron is lame.

Sacramento Kings: They used to be in Kansas City until I was like 5. They played at Kemper. Everyone loves Kemper. Plus they haven’t made the playoffs in 16 years. two thirds of the league make the playoffs and they couldn’t make the cut for 16 years. I can’t name a single player on their team but go Kings.

There you go…now you can care about the NBA. You’re welcome.

Lamar Jackson’s Problem:

Lamar wanted to get paid fairly and he is not. This is absolutely true. The Ravens say they want to keep him but don’t want to give him a ton of guaranteed money which also makes sense. There is lots of blame being thrown around. Some are blaming the Browns and Massage boy for having a deal that guarantees everything. Richard Sherman tried to blame Mahomes for signing such a team friendly deal so he can win a lot. But the real issue is something no one wants to talk about. Lamar is not that good and has a short shelf life. The way he plays leads to injuries. He can’t throw accurately down field. He is a unique talent but not a sustainable one. The Ravens basically built their whole offense around him. So the Ravens are hosed if he leaves. But no one else thinks they can just plug and play with Lamar in their offense. So Lamar is hosed as well. During his MVP year, everyone was saying that the Ravens were changing football forever. But instead, the Ravens haven’t accomplished much since and Lamar has been injury prone. I feel bad for Lamar, I really do. But the bottom line is that the Ravens are the best place for him and no one else wants him. The press is saying he is a top 10 quarterback but the press say a lot of dumb things like the Chiefs can’t win without Tyreek. The league has spoken. It’s time to work out a deal with the Ravens. Unfortunately now he is in real trouble. He has dug his heels in so to speak, demanded a trade and will probably sit out Deshaun Watson style minus all the creepy massages.

Tune in next week for the top 10 baseball stadiums I have visited.

I mentioned last Friday that I am a lefty and the effect that had on me writing things and my hand going over everything I just wrote and leaving a stain on my hand. Well that isn’t the only thing challenging about being a lefty. Try finding left handed scissors in the eighties. Everyone is used to teaching right handed people and so it was hard for coaches and teachers to teach me how to do things. It was a burden I had to overcome. The prejudice were many and the obstacles were plentiful. But I fought through it all and here I am, a somewhat functional adult. One of the challenges was finding sports heroes to connect with. I mean, you righties could go in the backyard and throw like Marino or Montana, pitch like Ryan and shoot like Jordan or Bird. But us lefties had to look a little harder to find players to imitate. So without further ado, here were my top 10 favorite left handed players from my childhood.

10. Boomer Esiason

You might be surprised to see a Bengal on the list but this was years before my hatred for the Bengals. I mean I have only hated the Bengals for 2 years so that isn’t really that hard. So why did I like Boomer? Well he was pretty much the only left handed show in town. Steve Young came along later but I was a Montana guy so I never embraced Young. Boomer was it. I was never a huge fan but he was pretty good and was left handed so that was enough for him to make the list. He’s the only football player to make the list because it really didn’t matter if a receiver, safety or running back were left handed.

9. Jim Abbott

If you don’t know who Jim Abbott is then stop reading and start googling. Abbott was a phenomenal athlete who overcame a lot to have a MLB career. Jim was forced to be a lefty because he was born without a right hand. So he literally had no choice. Abbott played every sport and was part of the 1988 baseball Olympic team that won a gold medal. He played most of his career for the Angels but bounced around a little as well. He threw a no hitter for the Yankees and just the fact that he was out there was impressive. Because he only had one hand, he would rest his glove on his right arm, pitch and then slide the glove onto his left hand to field. I may or may not have borrowed my brother’s glove occasionally to try it myself.

8. David Robinson

The Admiral was a great player and by all accounts a great guy. He served our country in the Navy and was part of the Dream Team. He is a hall of a famer and won a couple of championships. So why isn’t he higher on the list? Well he was a big guy and I wasn’t. I was your guard/small forward type. So it was hard for me to emulate playing like him.

7. Tom Glavine

Glavine was part of arguably one of the greatest pitching rotations in history joining John Smoltz, Greg Maddux and fellow lefty, Steve Avery. Glavine was phenomenal. And he helped a terrible Braves team be good. They were a great team to cheer for because they had been bad for so long. And they had a ton of left handed players, Sid Bream, David Justice, Deion was on the team. Former Royal and lefty, Charlie Leibrandt played for them for a bit. But of all the lefties, Glavine was the best.

6. Stacey Augmon

Augmon was never great but always a very solid NBA player. I became a fan before that though when he was playing for the UNLV Running Rebels. He was the only freshman to ever be on a US Olympic Basketball team in 1988. He was part of one of the greatest college basketball teams of all time joining Larry Johnson, Greg Anthony (another lefty) and Anderson Hunt. Augmon could score but was also a great defender. Augmon was drafted by the Hawks and joined Dominique Wilkins another one of my favorite players. He had a very solid career for the Hawks averaging double digits for about 5 years. He moved on after that and bounced around the league for several years without much success. But he was fun to imitate on the playground.

5. Danny Jackson

If you aren’t a Royals fan or maybe a Reds fan you might not even remember Danny. But if you were around in 1985, then you for sure remember him. He started 32 games for the boys in blue in 85 and went a 14-12. But it was the playoffs where he truly shined. Down 3 games to 1 in the first ever best of 7 series of the ALCS, Danny stepped up and pitched a complete game shutout. The Royals rallied to win the next two and make it to the playoffs. In the World Series against the Cardinals, Jackson again took the mound down 3 games to 1. Jackson actually started game 1 and pitched well giving up only 2 runs over 7 innings in the loss. In game 5, Jackson was awesome again and kept us in the series. He pitched another complete game only giving up 1 run. He also pitched the only immaculate inning in World Series history in the 7th striking out 3 batters on 9 pitches. In order to be nice to Cardinal fans on opening day, I’ll avoid talking about game 6 and game 7. Danny had trouble getting wins in 86 and 87 although his era wasn’t terrible. Unfortunately we shipped him off to the Reds after that for Kurt Stillwell and another player I think. Jackson responded in 88 by winning 23 games and 15 complete games. He threw more complete games in 88 than the entire league did last year. (this is a made up stat, I have no idea how many complete games there were last year, but it sounds right). Danny was always up and down, year to year, but he was part of the 1990 Reds that won the World Series and the Phillies team that made the World Series in 93. I wish he would have been a Royal longer. Saberhagen gets all the credit for our championship in 1985 and it is well deserved because he was great. But he only had an opportunity to be great because of Danny.

4. Barry Bonds

This might be controversial for some but remember this is from when I was a kid. I was an adult or at least legally an adult when the controversy came. I am not saying Bonds was on anything but before Bonds got huge, he was already arguably one of the greatest baseball players of all time. He was a consistent 20 and 20 guy (20 home runs and 20 stolen bases) and often a 30 and 30 guy. He could field, run the bases and obviously hit for power or contact. I know many baseball purist hate him, most of which are baseball writers that were drooling while writing stories about McGwire and Sosa and only later looked down on them all. There has always been cheating in baseball. The fact that this guy isn’t in the hall of fame is stupid. But then again, hall of fames are stupid. If you took away all his stats from 1998 on, he is still a shoe in. He is the all time leader in home runs, a career batting average of .298 and is the only guy in baseball history to have 500 homeruns and 500 stolen bases. And he never actually got caught doing anything illegal. We can assume what we want but he never was busted for anything. Anyway, as a kid he was great and fun to watch except when he was trying to throw out Sid Bream at home in the playoffs.

3. Chris Mullen

Mullen was actually a very good player. He was part of two Olympic gold medal winning teams in 84 and 92. The dude could flat out shoot. He played my position and of course was a lefty. I love the guy. From 88-94 which was prime kid fandom for me, he was one of the best players in the league. He was the reason I became a Warriors fan. He had some injury issues after that and ended up with the Pacers for a few years. But the guy could flat out shoot. He is a career 38 percent shooter from behind the arc before shooting 3 pointers was all the rage. He was the guy I pretended to be when I was at the playground by myself shooting around. He never won a championship, besides the gold medals of course. In 98 with the Pacers he got close as Indiana lost in 7 games to Jordan and the Bulls. Since retiring he has bounced around coaching a bit but to this day he is one of my top 10 favorite basketball players of all time and as a kid he was #1.

2. Tony Gwynn

I don’t know if there was ever a nicer guy in sports than Tony. He entered the league as an athletic right fielder. His rookie year he batted .289 in 1982. He would never bat under .300 again from 1983 to 2001. That is insane. He led the league in batting 8 times. In the hated strike year he was batting .394 when they shut things down. His inability to chase .400 because of the strike still angers me today…stupid baseball. The guy is a career .338 hitter. His career batting average is higher than most guys bat at any point in his career. In 20 years he struck out 434 times and never struck out more than 40 times. That is an average of 21.7 strikeouts a year. There are so many crazy stats around his batting career. He actually is also the all time assist leader for the basketball team at San Diego State. Over time, Tony got a little out of shape. And by a little, I mean a lot. But before that he won 5 gold gloves. He had some injury issues and later health issues, but one thing never changed. The dude could flat out hit. He was a 15 time all star and was voted into the hall of fame with 97.6% of the vote. The 2.4% that didn’t vote for him is what is wrong with the baseball hall of fame. Stupid Baseball writers. Tony passed away a few years back and he is greatly missed in the baseball world.

1. Ken Griffey Jr.

Does it get cooler than Ken Griffey Jr.? Dude was a young phenom. He wore his hat backwards. He smashed the ball all over the park. His swing was pure and beautiful. I was 10 years old when he entered the league and in full kid fandom mode. It is hard to put into words how fun it was to watch Griffey play. He was awesome. He could hit for average. He could hit for power. He could run the bases. He was phenomenal in centerfield. He could do it all. He is my all time favorite non royal. I have a booklet of Ken Griffey Baseball cards. If I could create my dream outfield of non Royals, He would be in center with Gwynn in right and Rock Raines in left. Speaking of which, my wife read my blog of top 10 expos and then got me a Tim Raines autographed card for my Birthday. It was an awesome gift. But now I am writing blogs to motivate her for future gifts. So I am fully expecting an autographed Ken Griffey Jr. card for Father’s Day.

Anyway, Griffey is the best and had so much fun doing it. He rarely made the playoffs because back then only 4 teams made it and the Mariners weren’t very good most of the time even though he was awesome. He even got to play with his dad for a little bit. How cool is that? He was the MVP in 97. He made 13 all star games. He won the homerun derby 3 times. He won 10 gold gloves. He had 630 home runs. He is top 20 all time in home runs, RBI’s and total bases. He was the hitting coach on the WBC team this year. He is even teasing a comeback because he can still hit. And my most recent finding is that he is in the top 5 paid players for the Reds this season because he signed a Bobby Bonilla deal and the money was deferred over a bunch of years. Genius move. Everybody loved Griffey but if you are lefty you love him a little bit more.

Don’t miss the top 5 for Friday tomorrow as I discuss the start of baseball, the final four, Lamar Jackson and more.

Lot’s happening in the world of sports this past week, NFL Free agency continues, the madness is in full effect and apparently there was some baseball world championship thingy. Let’s jump in.

Every Free Agent is signing with a Super Bowl Contender:

You may not follow the whole NFL free agency scene like I do, so you may miss some of the comments after a player signs. Every player that signs with another team has a glaring endorsement of how great the team is. Which makes sense. They can’t be like Morgan Freeman in Hard Rain and say “We just want the money!”. I have actually never seen Hard Rain. But for some reason I distinctly remember him yelling that in the preview that was on tv way too much. Anyway…of course players who leave for more money are going to say can’t wait to be a part of a great team, this is a championship caliber team, etc. But some are certainly more believable. Recently Juan Thornhill said that Cleveland had all the pieces or something to that effect. He could be right but Watson looked terrible last year, their offense is uninventive and the defense was sort of eh, unless they were playing Joe Burrow before the Bengals started playing well. Also, they are the Browns. They never win anything. Since 1995, they have two playoff appearances and 1 playoff win. To put that in perspective, I was 16 in 1995. I am not 16 now. The even funnier one in my opinion, was Adam Thielen. He is now a panther. When giving reasons for picking the Panthers one of the reasons was to win a championship. The Panthers have been a disaster for most of their time as an organization. They currently don’t have a quarterback on their roster. Oh wait, I think they signed Andy Dalton. Like I said, the don’t have a quarterback.

The Jet jets for the Jets:

Mecole Hardman is now a Jet. His nickname is the Jet so it is fitting. Hardman got mixed reviews from Chiefs fans. Many were critical that he never performed up to expectations. While others said he never got the opportunity. Last year was that opportunity and he was somewhat effective but then he had a weird abdominal injury that kept him out most of the season. Perhaps we will never know what Hardman could be. But while many probably don’t care that he is gone, I for one always liked him. He and Pat always seemed to be a little off though so they never reached their full potential together but Hardman was fast, resilient and great around the goal line. He had some huge plays in the playoffs and was definitely a weapon. You could argue that there isn’t much he can do that Toney can’t do. However, even though Hardman was hurt last year, Toney is always hurt. Hopefully we draft another fast guy to run jet sweeps. Can’t have enough of those. I wish Hardman the best of luck…although I am also sort of cheering against the Jets because of Rodgers shenanigans. Anyway, Hardman was a part of the greatest runs in Chiefs history. Thanks for the memories, Jet.

Who has a good Bracket?

You get a busted bracket! You get a busted bracket! You get a busted bracket! Everybody gets a busted bracket!!! This is what I imagined Oprah was screaming last weekend as teams like Purdue, Arizona, ku, and Duke went down. I texted my sister and said my bracket is a disaster. And she said everybody’s bracket is a disaster. On Sunday night I texted my brother and said, I don’t have anyone left in the East. He was like that is rough. About 10 minutes later, he texted me back and was like wait…I don’t have anybody in the East either. This is the madness part of March. Sometimes the better, higher ranked teams win and it is sort of boring minus a few games and other times you get total chaos like we have now. FAU is in the elite eight for goodness sakes. Princenton plays Creighton tonight. The Midwest region is really the only one that makes some sort of sense as 1 plays 5 tonight and 2 and 3 play each other. But this is what makes college basketball fun and different from other sports. But next on the list is what makes it not fun.

Worst Officiating…ever:

Basketball is a great sport. It was probably what I was best at in high school. It is fun and you can play pretty long into your life. My dad played into his 50’s. And no officiating is perfect. I get that. People complain about the officiating in all sports and talk about things being rigged. I am usually the first to defend them saying they are humans too. But here is my struggle. I have watched a ton of high school basketball in my life and the officiating for the most part is pretty good. I have watched quite a bit of NBA basketball and the officiating is mostly pretty bad. However, it is consistently bad. You know what you are going to get night in and night out. You know what is a foul and what isn’t.

College basketball officiating is awful and inconsistent on a level like nothing else in sports. It’s hard to know what is a foul and what isn’t a foul. Things like over the back seem to no longer exist. At the same time offensive fouls are rampant so much so that you are in more danger of getting a foul if you touch another player if you have the ball than if you don’t. But the worst part is the wild inconsistencies both from game to game to within the same game. On Saturday I was flipping back and forth between watching my favorite team and my least favorite team lose games. At one point with both games in the second half with a lot of time left, there had only been 4 fouls in the Mizzou game. 3 on Mizzou and 1 on Princeton. Meanwhile in the kansas vs Ar-Kansas game, they were both already in the double bonus. Now were there really that many more fouls in that game? Then in the last 5 minutes of the Mizzou game all of the sudden there were a ton of fouls. And I am not talking about the very end when Mizzou was fouling on purpose to drag out my misery as much as humanly possible. I am not making excuses here. I am not claiming this is why Mizzou lost. Mizzou lost because they got outplayed and it was the tournament and if you don’t know about Mizzou in the tournament go back and read about it from my blog on Tuesday. But it is why the sport is so hard to watch. I used to love it. But now I’ll watch the occasional Mizzou regular season game and then the tournament. That’s it. And even that is hard to watch sometimes. I don’t know if they will ever fix it at this point. It’s been bad for a better part of a decade. And it is damaging a great sport.

Something was happening with Baseball:

So apparently, the US almost won something called the World Baseball Classic. Every once in a while, I would see a post about I hope the USA wins today. I thought maybe there was a gymnastics or swim meet going on I was unaware of. Or maybe we had gone to war with Russia and no one had told me. Nope, baseball stuff was going on. Which is fine. I don’t know why they picked the exact same time as March Madness to do it. But apparently there were some good games and stuff and we barely lost to Japan in the championship…I think. It might still be going on, I don’t know. This is how much I care about baseball. I loved baseball in the 80’s and 90’s prior to the strike. I would watch games, listen to games and even played a game called dice baseball that my dad taught me. I never had video games as a kid so I had to draw out a score sheet in a notebook and roll the dice to see if Tim Raines was going to get on base or be out. I would have lots marks on the side of my hand that only a left hander would understand. But post strike minus a few bits of time here are there, baseball hasn’t been my thing. So that is why I don’t know what was going on in this world classic thingy and I don’t think I was alone. But a big shout out to my 3 Facebook friends who were posting a lot about it. You are true baseball fans. I don’t know why you are true baseball fans but thanks for sharing and letting the rest of us know that this event was going on.

Enjoy the weekend everyone…and the madness. Check out the next top 10 on Tuesday of next week.

There are some certainties in life. Death and Taxes are the most common ones. But there are some sports related ones too. Andy Reid beating his division. Travis Kelce getting a thousand yards. The Raiders making terrible offseason decisions. The Royals being eliminated by the end of May. Cardinal fans complaining for the first 4 months of the season and then spending the rest of the season talking about how awesome they are as they make the playoffs. But there is nothing more certain than Mizzou losing in the tournament. The hardest part of this was finding 10 times we actually made the tournament in my lifetime. But finding brutally painful ways of losing was quite easy among the times we made it. Without further ado, here we go.

10. 1994 Mizzou loses to Arizona in the Elite Eight:

Okay, so this is sort of out of the ordinary which is why it is #10. I was a freshman in high school and this was a quality team although it didn’t start out well. Early on we lost to Arkansas 120-68. Watching this game, Paul O’Liney was watching the game and said to himself, they could use me so he joined the team. And he did help. But the Tigers found their rhythm. They went a perfect 14-0 in Big 8 play. The gained the #1 seed in the West and things were looking good. This was the first time in my lifetime we had made the Elite 8. Then we ran into Damon Stoudamire and the Arizona Wildcats who smoked us by 20. We finished 28-4 and had a great season. But this was probably our best shot of making it to the final four and we came up short so it makes the list.

9. 2003 Loss to in OT to Marquette:

This was another not so bad loss. After all, Marquette was the 3 seed and we were the 6. We battled all game and I specifically remember watching this with my friends Dave and Karen. Ricky Paulding specifically raised his game. After being down 10 at half we worked things back to a tie to send it to Over Time. Quin seemed like the real deal as he had led us to the elite 8 the year before and looked like he was going to make another run. But in OT they absolutely destroyed us, outscoring us 21-12. We played hard. We just couldn’t stop some guy named Dwayne Wade for some reason. Turns out he was pretty good. It was a tough loss but it is worse looking back due to what happened next. More on that in a bit.

8. 1983 Mizzou loses to Iowa in the round of 32:

It looks like we won a tournament game that year but we didn’t. The field expanded to 64 in 1985. I was too young to remember so this almost didn’t make the list but I have heard my dad complain enough about it that it feels like I was there. We had won the Big 8. We had a couple of guys on our team named Sundvold and Stipanovich. Apparently they were real good. We were the 2 seed and if we had won this game we would be playing at Kemper which would have basically given us home court advantage. Dad went ahead and bought tickets. Unfortunately, we lost to 7 seed Iowa and never made it to Kemper. If I was older, this would probably be higher on the list. But as my brother said this weekend, they still went to Kemper and got to see Houston and the five slamma jamma team. I reminded him that the coolest thing I saw at Kemper was the Blades. So it isn’t all bad.

7. 2013 9 Seed Mizzou loses to 8 Seed Colorado State:

I sort of forgot about this one because there is one the year before way worse but this fittingly popped up on my FB feed today as a past memory. This is what my post 10 years ago said:

“Thank you Colorado state for ending this embarrassing and disappointing season. It has been a miserable year of under achieving. I for one am glad I don’t have to watch pressey turn the ball over, Jabari brown shoot 1 for 67 from the field and haith stick to line ups that aren’t working. Time to cheer for who ever is playing Kansas.”

This pretty much sums it up and honestly sums up being a Mizzou basketball fan in general.

6. 2023 Losing to #15 Princeton:

It’s hard to be mad about Princeton. But man, losing to a 15 seed again? Also, hard to be mad as overall this team wildly overachieved and actually won a tournament game. Something we hadn’t done since 2010. 13 years. We went 13 years without winning a tournament game. That is how bad it is being a Tiger fan. It’s not like I overlooked Princeton as I felt there were a handful teams that we couldn’t beat if we played well and pretty much no one I thought we couldn’t lose to if we played poorly. But this was rough. Princeton being the smart guys that they are (it is Princeton after all) exposed all our weaknesses which we have many of, half court defense, running an offense for long period of times, defensive rebounding, offensive rebounding and settling for bad shots. They played lights out, shot lights out and this game was never really close. And let’s be honest when we didn’t have to play Arizona then you sort of assumed we would win this. After all, how often does the #15 seed win after beating the 2 seed? The odds go way up if that second game is against Mizzou. It wasn’t just that we lost. It was more because we got dominated by Princeton…a 15 seed. They looked like the better team. I think the overachieving season overshadows how bad this loss really is. But it was bad.

5. 1987 #3 loses to #14 Xavier and 1988 #6 Mizzou loses to #11 Rhode Island:

I’m lumping these two together because I sort of remember the games but remember the teams better. This stretch of Mizzou Basketball is full of lots of great talent and absurd underachievement. They had Derrick Chievous, Doug Smith, Lee Coward, Byron Irving, Nathan Buntin and Mike Sandbothe. This is when I really became a Mizzou fan. So much talent. Sure, some of it was there illegally but no one knew that at the time. We would pay for that later. In 87 we won the Big Eight and were a 3 seed. We somehow lost by a point to a freaking 14 seed in Xavier. I was 8 and I just remember being real disappointed. In 1988 it was more of the same. This team was stacked. Some how this team went 19-11. They should have done much better. Then we headed to the tournament and ran into an 11 seeded Rhode Island. I had just turned 9 so I don’t remember this game real well either, but I remember being pissed. A feeling I would feel again and again and again.

4. 2004 Didn’t even make the tourney:

Okay, maybe I am cheating here but this team was supposed to be a contender and instead fell apart. Most of the team that almost beat Dwayne Wade the year before was back. Arthur Johnson, Ricky Paulding, Travon Bryant and Jimmy McKinney were all back. And we added strong freshman in Thomas Gardner and Linas Klieza. We were ranked to start the season. And then day by day we became more of a mess. Turns out Quin Snyder was a mess. He was recruiting illegally, doing some things outside of his marriage he wasn’t supposed to do and I am pretty sure was doing mountains of cocaine. Or at least he looked like he was. Quin gave us so much hope. The two previous years he had done well in the tournament. Something Norm struggled to do. He was recruiting like crazy. But the dude just had problems. And if we are honest Mizzou Basketball hasn’t been the same since. Sure, we had a couple decent years here and there. But this was really the beginning of the end as the next year Quin would resign and our basketball future was grim for many years.

3. 1990 loss to Northern Freaking Iowa:

After two brutal defeats, the 89 team pulled it together and made a run before losing a close game to a higher ranked Syracuse team in the sweet 16. In 1990, we won the Big 8. We were led by Doug Smith and my all time favorite Tiger, Anthony Peeler. Another one of my favorites, Lee Coward was still on the team with Nathan Buntin and John McIntyre still around to round out the starting 5. Late in the season we were the #1 ranked team in the nation. We beat #1 ku twice both at home and in Lawrence. But then at the end of the year we lost to #10 Oklahoma, got blown out by Notre Dame and then lost in the first round of the Big 8 tournament to 8 seed, Colorado. That knocked us from being #1 in the country to a 3 seed in the tournament. We faced Northern Iowa who had never been in the tournament before. They went up 2-0 and never trailed. Doug Smith fouled out with like 7 minutes to go and Peeler only had 3 points. It was a fitting end to the underachieving of this insanely talented run of Tiger teams filled with NBA players from 86-90 that made the tournament every year but only got out of the first round once.

2. 1995 Somebody get in his way!!! (loss to UCLA):

If you want to make any Mizzou fan upset by saying one name, that name is Tyus Edney. If you google Tyus Edney the first thing that pops up is the play against Mizzou. This guy played in the NBA for like 10 years, won a national championship and is now a coach and this is still the first thing that came up.

The 90’s were full of almost for Mizzou sports. The 5th down, the fleakicker and Tyus Edney. Until Gary Pinkel, these were the most memorable Mizzou sports moments and if you are just a sports fan and not a Mizzou fan then these are still your top 3.

We really had no business being in this game. We had squeaked by 9 seed Indiana and were facing the 1 seed and the #1 ranked team in the country. Yet we had them on the ropes. Down by 1, we milked the clock as much as we could and then made a great play to dump it underneath for an easy bucket to take a 1 point lead. There was 4.8 seconds left. UCLA called a timeout. They came up with this amazing play where everyone just gets out the way and Edney dribbles all the way down the court. Our strategy apparently was to let him. Sutherland escorted him down the court and then Derrick Grimm stood right in front of him but even scooted back a little and didn’t jump as Edney laid it in over him. I am sure the discussion was to not foul but I was yelling the whole time, “somebody get in his way!” It was a brutal way to lose. UCLA went on to win the whole thing and we didn’t make the tourney again until 99. It took what should have been one of the greatest victories in Mizzou history and turned it into one of the most brutal losses in Mizzou history. If you would like to suffer all over again, you can watch the clip below.

1.The Loss: 2012 to #15 seed Norfolk State:

There is only one answer for #1 on this list and it is losing to Norfolk State. This was brutal. I don’t think I have ever been more mad about a basketball game in my life and that says a lot. Mike Anderson had left and Frank Haith had taken over. The cupboard was pretty bare but a rag tag group of players were left. Kim English, Marcus Denmon, the Pressey brothers, Michael Dixon, Ricardo Ratliffe and fan favorite Steve Moore. These guys felt like Anderson had quit on them so they rallied together and became quite the team. They won 30 games. They won the big 12 tournament. The finished second in the league but split games with ku. They were fun. They were likable. They were inspiring. The got a 2 seed and a matchup with little known Norfolk State. We played so well in the big 12 tourney it seemed like we were due to make a run. Instead, we absolutely could not stop Norfolk State all game. They out shot us, out rebounded us and out played us. We took two ill advised shots in the last minute and Norfolk shot 2-6 from the free throw line to give us a shot. We probably shouldn’t have called timeout after the last missed free throw as we might have caught them off guard and got an open shot. However, instead we took a timeout and gave them a chance to set up a defense. We inbounded to Phil Pressey who dribbled down the sideline and missed a highly contested 3 that went off the rim and we lost. It was brutal on every front. You wanted this team to win. And to lose again…in the first round was so painful. My wife can tell you for sure but I don’t think I talked to anybody the rest of the day…maybe the rest of the week. In fact, even after writing about it, I don’t want to talk to anyone anymore. There have been a lot of brutal losses but this is clearly #1. If you would like to punish yourself you can spend 10 plus minutes watching the last 50 seconds here just like I did. Now excuse me while I find a hole to crawl into after reliving all these depressing moments.

It’s been a crazy week with NFL Free agency and the March Madness. Let’s dive in!

Hello, Darkness, My Old Friend:

Aaron Rodgers was up to his normal shenanigans on Wednesday. He went on the Pat McAfee show to detail his decision that apparently wasn’t a decision. He said he went into his Darkness retreat 90% going to retire and 10% not retiring. But he came out “different”. I got news for you Aaron, you were already different. He then announced he is committed to playing for the New York Jets. He then said it because the Packers said they didn’t want him anymore and he wished they would have told him earlier. Dude, you have been playing this game every year for like 4 offseasons now. Everyone is over it, even the Packers. They are also tired of him skipping OTA’s and then complaining about all the players not doing what he wants them to do. Hey, I didn’t show up for practice but you should know all the things I want you to do without me telling you. He then went on to talk about how he is probably the greatest Packer ever and how no one bled green and gold more than him. He’s absolutely ridiculous. He said that reporters were ridiculous for stating he was demanding certain players being added to the Jets. Even though it is pretty obvious. This guy is a hoot. He is going to hate the NY press. Also, since he is going to be on a new team is he going to practice? Or is he just going to wing it like last year? My guess is he does the latter. Bold prediction, Packers make the playoffs and the Jets don’t.

Tigers vs Tigers:

Guys! Mizzou won a tournament game! We had not won a tournament game since 2010. That’s right, it has been 13 years since we have won a game in the big dance. Last time we won, Mike Anderson was our coach and JT Tiller and Zaire Taylor were on the team to give it some perspective. That’s how long it has been. Unfortunately, I was at work so I did not watch the game. But apparently it was real close until the last 4 minutes and then we ran away with it. That sounds about right as that is about how every game we play in goes. To make the situation better, Princeton upset Arizona. Arizona has good big players and I was worried about that because we are terrible at rebounding and guarding big guys. Now I am in no way assuming we will beat Princeton. We are Mizzou, I never assume we would beat anyone. But it is a much better match up for us. We could make a little run though. Sweet 16 and Elite 8 aren’t out of the question. Anyway, it should be a fun Tiger vs Tiger game. I mean if you are going to lose, it is hard to be mad about losing to Princeton.

Bengals “steal away” Orlando Brown:

I have seen this headline a lot. They did not steal him away. We didn’t want to pay him whatever big amount of money he wanted and so we moved on. Then he went to free agency and according to Adam Schefter, the league saw him as a right tackle, not a left tackle. The Bengals signed him to a 4 year deal. He got the largest bonus in history for an OT. It was a whopping half a million more than what we offered him last year. Lots of people on line apparently think Brown is good. Brown through most of the year lead the league in pressures allowed. People point towards his playoff success, but he was the one who allowed the guy to get by in the Jags game who hurt Mahomes. In the Bengals game he allowed 7 pressures. In the Super Bowl, the field was a mess and the Eagles defensive ends were slipping everywhere. Look, I have nothing against Brown personally. But he is not nearly as good as he thinks he is. I am yet to see a Chiefs fan upset about his departure. Instead, most seem to be excited about our defensive ends matching up against him against the hated Bengals.

Bracket Busters Bring Us Together!:

The Madness is the best. So much fun. And it gets everyone involved. Anyone can fill out a bracket. We have a family one going much like we do with fantasy football. Last night, Danielle, Walker, Savannah and I were doing well so Danielle’s sister is claiming conspiracy. I can say I did not help any of them with their brackets besides getting them logged in. Last night we were all cheering for 16 seed Northern Kentucky to beat 1 seed Houston, except for Danielle. Danielle’s strategy was to pick the higher seeds throughout the entire bracket. It is working out for her so far but this is also why she was cheering for Houston. But typically this is the one time you cheer for the team you picked to lose. Because upsets are fun and are what make the Madness great. Savannah bravely picked ku to lose in the first round because she knows we cheer against them. Even my sister got into the act and was very proud of herself for picking the Furman upset. Although to be fair, we all should have picked Virginia to lose. They haven’t won a game in the dance since they won it all and they are even the only 1 seed ever to lose to a 16. Mental note for next year, pick Virginia to lose. I am looking forward to more Madness tonight and this weekend. For the record, my final four is Alabama, Purdue, Texas and Gonzaga with Bama beating Gonzaga in the championship. This of course assumes that Bama doesn’t have half their team arrested for murder.

Paper Champions:

NFL Free Agency is quickly followed by everyone thinking their team is going to be awesome and everyone else’s team being trash. The talk on the radio around here in Denver is already about what a great team Sean Payton is putting together. Bears fans are claiming they are back even though most of their new team came from the Panthers who were not good last year. The Packers are going to be terrible without Aaron Rodgers even though they have a pretty solid team and we don’t know if Jordan Love is good or not, but he looked alright in limited time last year. Every team is going to win their division because they signed some cornerback or wide receiver. It’s a great 6 months or so for a lot of teams. And then the season starts. It’s all down hill after that for about 15-20 fan bases. So I say soak it up. Enjoy the ride. Fill your little heart up with misplaced enthusiasm. Just be careful as Tina Turner said, who needs a heart when a heart can be broken. Anyway, let me join in on the fun. My bold and way, way to early Super Bowl prediction is Chiefs over Saints.