Paul Lukas, who is a god, runs UniWatch, which means if it’s uniform-based, he (along with Chris Creamer) is your standard.
That said, he ranked the 20 cities/metro areas with three or more sports teams by uniform looks, and the Bay Area came in a dismal, offensive and downright wretched fifth, behind Boston, Pittsburgh, Chicago and Philadelphia. Of course, this could be in flux if the Raiders, one of the three teams to get a maximum score of 10 (with the Steelers and St. Louis Cardinals) move to Los Angeles, which finished a pedestrian 11 on the strength of the rancid new Clippers look.
The worst uniforms? The Arizona Cardinals, which have sucked since the mid-70s when they were in St. Louis; and the new Atlanta Hawks, which have not yet been unveiled on court but are universally considered a cornea-searing nightmare.
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Mike Rosenberg of Media.com, a site apparently populated by workers with way too much free time, listed the FBS college football programs by arrest over the last five years, and found 918 arrests, one every other day over the calendar period but one-eleventh the national average for college-age men and women in general. He also found that Washington State has a nation-leading 31, or 13 more arrests than wins, an anomaly in that most teams with winning programs rank high on his list.
What he did not find is a coach fired because of too many arrests, or a coach not fired because not enough wins. I mean, there are numbers and then there are numbers.
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Jed York should have seen this from The City Paper’s Brandon Weigel about three years ago, but time is a royal pain sometimes and the fact that he neither wrote it in 2012 nor needed to do so gets in the way of this otherwise crystalline logic.
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Sometimes you can’t make sponsors do what you want them to, which is why the relationship between English Premiership side Sunderland and their shirt sponsors Dafabet may have turned a bit odd. Normally, money is money, but in this case Dafabet is telling you that a smart bet for you is to bet that Sunderland is relegated. From Chris Wright of Who Ate All The Pies:
“Dafabet, who were unveiled as Sunderland’s new shirt sponsors in June, have made Dick Advocaat’s side 5/8 favorites for the drop after being soundly beaten by Leicester and Norwich in their opening two fixtures of 2015/16. Not only that, but just to rub it in even further, Dafabet have also made Sunderland (whose club crest appears proudly at the top of their homepage) 1000/1 outsiders of all 20 Premier League teams to finish inside the top four.”
That’s like CSNBA predicting that the Warriors will finish last this coming year, only Sunderland is a lot more like the Minnesota Timberwolves than the Warriors.
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Steve Smith cannot retire, I forbid it. This is what he said Wednesday. After a fight-free practice with his former team, the Baltimore Ravens, the new Eagle wide receiver was asked about any benefits from playing against his old team.
“I’d rather be at home,” Smith said. “Today’s my wife’s birthday, so I’m not at home. I’m over here doing this bulls--- and missing my wife’s birthday. That’s my honest opinion. I’d rather be at home singing happy birthday to my wife, but I’m out here getting questioned to assess a rookie corner.”
That was Eric Rowe, who said when asked about defending against Smith, “He’s like, ‘I saw it in your eyes, you about to s— yourself.’ I’m like, ‘Nah, I don’t panic.’” Rowe told Jeff McLane of the Philadelphia Inquirer. He may not panic but he will tell his grandchildren he was accused of soiling himself by the best smacktalker of his generation.
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And finally, the Football Writers Association of America will name its 75th anniversary team on Thursday and according to proud member Rick Gosselin of the Dallas Morning News, the quarterback of said team is . . . wait for it . . . Roger Staubach.
Don’t yell at me. I didn’t vote. I don’t have a vote. I’d have voted for Sam Etcheverry anyway.
