What A Silent Retreat Is Like For Someone Who Can't Shut Up
Seriously, I can’t shut up. “Loquacious” would be putting it nicely. “Needy, overwhelming persistence” would probably be more accurate. Hell, it’s why I’m a journalist: because I can’t keep myself from expressing every single utterly useless thought that slips into my head. Although I can fend off t...
The Profane Teachings Of Johnny Rodz, The Wrestler Who Jobbed His Way Into The Hall Of Fame
I’m standing in Gleason’s Gym in Brooklyn, New York, a place Ali and Jake LaMotta trained in decades ago, and Johnny Rodz is giving me shit because I told him I like The Wrestler....
How To Party Without Drinking
About two years ago, I quit drinking. Initially, I didn’t attempt to “mask” my teetotalism at social gatherings: I’d meet a group at a bar, never order anything, and give long-winded answers to anyone who asked why. As my friends and coworkers can attest, it can be awkward as hell being stone-cold s...
How Dinesh D'Souza Damaged My Faith
So conservative superstar Dinesh D'Souza recently went on Hannity and insisted that opposition to Indiana's Religious Freedom Restoration Act "is a selective attack on Christianity," which might surprise those of you who thought it was simply about denying gay people the right to have Gay Pizza ...
Red Hair Is The Most Contentious Hair
From ginger haters to redhead fetishists, red hair polarizes the populace. It's a high-risk, high-reward volatile substance that rocks the scales of attractiveness. No other hair color can claim as much. So what the hell is going on here?...
Fuck Ties
In formal or fucking situations, people gauge commitment by whether or not you're wearing a useless fashion accessory that serves no other purpose but to give death an upper hand. I'm talking about neckties, the bearers of mythical "power" and evolving "rules," leaving fashion writers tripping all o...
This Year's Super Bowl Teams Really Are The Best In Their Conference
Hey, here's a change. The participants in this year's Super Bowl, through the NFL's single-elimination playoff format, were actually the best in their respective conferences this year. That never happens! Except, uhm, when it happened last year. But otherwise—that almost never happens!...
Ohio State's Loss To Va Tech Was The Worst Ever By A National Champ
It's nearly inconceivable that a national championship team, one that defeated the top two teams in the country with its third-string quarterback, lost earlier in the season to a school that had a losing conference record and barely qualified for a bowl game. But somehow Virginia Tech defeated Ohio ...
Sure, <i>Now</i> The Jets Make The Biggest Plays Of The Week
After the Jets let Miami's Lamar Miller dash for a 97-yard touchdown run at the beginning of the third quarter, which was the longest play from scrimmage in Dolphins history, they trailed by 10 points, their WPA sat at 20 percent, and it appeared Rex Ryan would lose his last game, which seemed f...
Miami Lost And Then Won The Game On Two Huge Special-Teams Plays
With about five minutes remaining in a tied contest against Minnesota, Miami received a kickoff with the game seemingly tilted in their favor with Win Probability at 61 percent and an opportunity to run clock and take a late go-ahead lead. But rookie wideout Jarvis Landry slipped on the return, got ...
Here's A Mutant Hybrid Of Everyone's NFL Playoff Projections
With the NFL playoffs just a few weeks away, there are a lot of playoff probabilities going around. Functionally, these all do more or less the same thing. So instead of churning out our own—which, face it, we are probably not going to do better than what's already out in the world—we're mashing eve...
This Year's Bad NFL Teams Are Some Of The Worst Ever
Every season, there are at least a few atrocious NFL teams, teams that are disasters. But this season there are six of those teams—Jets, Jaguars, Titans, Raiders, Buccaneers, and Washington. Which seems like an abnormally high amount of shitty teams. So using Pro Football Reference data, we examin...
Chart: Which Fired NCAA Football Coaches Were Biggest Disappointments?
Around this time every year, a handful of major college football programs dump their coach in search of quick success. Some moves work better than others. ...
The Biggest Two-Yard Run Of Week 14
Glancing briefly at box scores will tell you the Colts beat the Browns and Andrew Luck threw a go-ahead touchdown with 32 seconds remaining. But the box score won't tell you the leverage of the plays leading up to the touchdown, or that Boom Herron's two-yard rush immediately preceding the touchdo...
Big 12 Announces There Could Be Two "One True Champions"
Since it's believed the College Football Playoff selection committee will reward teams for winning conference championships, knots in the Big 12's undies tightened because the Big 12's highest rated team, No. 5 TCU, doesn't control its own destiny in winning the conference's championship. Afraid it ...
AC/DC's New Album Sounds Like All Their Other Ones, Thank God
AC/DC's Rock or Bust, out today, sticks to the band's basic three-chord structures, same as always. But I'm talking about emotional chords, not musical ones: Namely, their holy trinity of Rock, Drunk, and Fuck. ...
Andy Dalton Dug His Team A Hole With An Early Interception
Whenever we round up the most highly leveraged plays every week using Brian Burke's WPA from Advanced Football Analytics, the list is usually littered with late-game turnovers and touchdowns. So it's interesting that Andy Dalton getting picked off by Tampa Bay's Johnthan Banks on the very first pl...
Who Regressed More After His Rookie Year, RG3 Or Charlie Batch?
Since Robert Griffin's spectacular rookie season, there have been an previous few other things to talk about with regard to Washington—especially once he started to regress. Now there's speculation he could be traded. It's obvious his production has declined, but to what extent exactly? Is it as bad...
Few Teams Have Been More Mediocre Than Nebraska This Decade
There are two ways to go about being mediocre in college football. Strictly definitionally, a team can settle in somewhere directly between schools like Stanford and those like Eastern Michigan—finishing around .500 every season. But the more sneaky and much more frustrating sort of mediocre is the ...