Thursday, September 12, 2013

FMTMQR: The more things change...


Actually nothing changes, ever, because this guy is a repetitive, unoriginal, faux-intellectual piece of garbage.  How many times can you keep reading my same old comments on his same old terrible writing/analysis?  I know I always say I'm going to stop doing these, but this year I really might have to.  Let me know in the comments if you really think this is worth my time or yours.  (Not trying to beg for affirmation, but really, kind of begging for affirmation.)

TMQ is reporting on an exclusive basis that during the first half of the Washington-Philadelphia game on "Monday Night Football," Chip Kelly shouted into the Eagles' helmet radio, "Mr. Sulu, engage warp six!"

*crickets*

In other football news, Peter King of Sports Illustrated and NBC Sports 

Another man who knows a little something about long-winded uninsightful writing!

has decided he will stop using the franchise name "Redskins," shifting instead to "the Washington team." TMQ has been on this bandwagon for a decade, and it's nice to have company on a bandwagon. (Some sousaphones would be nice, too.) 

Find a more perfect example of a terrible TMQ joke.  I dare you.

King's decision shows he listens to his conscience. The world would be a better place if more people with insider status listened to the voices of their consciences.

In the context of this particular issue, the problem isn't powerful people not listening to their consciences.  It's powerful people who really don't give a shit about racial slurs.  Their consciences aren't coming into play.  

/stops writing post and watches Eminem's "Guilty Conscience" music video because that last line reminded me of it

Two weeks ago, this column called the moniker "Doomed, doomed. No chance this team name survives." 

As long as Dan Snyder is alive, the nickname will be just fine.  He's 48.  He's just as horrible as Al Davis, who died at 82.  I'm tempted to post a link to that horrible picture of Davis bleeding at that press conference a year or so before he died, but I won't, because maybe some of you have eaten recently.  So anyways, we can expect the nickname to maybe change in 2049, depending on who Snyder gives the team to in his will.

Tick…tick…tick. That's the clocking ticking down on what this column will call the Potomac Drainage Basin Indigenous Persons until its new name is trademarked.

*crickets*

Just remember this column's motto: All Predictions Wrong or Your Money Back. TMQ is free, so if any of my predictions actually proved correct, you would receive -- oh, never mind.

*crickets*

The asteroid capture plan would require a new heavy-lift rocket unimaginatively called the Space Launch System, with roughly the power of the old Saturn V. Dull names are a symptom of the lack of vision at today's NASA. 

That is the whitest sentence ever written.

The space station is just the International Space Station: it might as well be called the Please See Disclaimer Space Station. SLS is the dumbest rocket name ever. How about calling it Artemis? She was the sister of Apollo.

1) Who gives a flying rat's fuck
2) No, this is Artemis:













This problem stretches broadly across the football factory landscape: Boosters and the sports press fixate on game performance, avoiding the issue of the education that big universities are supposed to be providing to football players to justify their indentured status. Monday's noon "SportsCenter" led with 12 minutes -- a long time in live broadcast terms -- on Texas allowing 550 rushing yards in a loss at BYU. This was spoken of as some kind of calamity. The calamity in the Longhorn football program is that in the most recent year, 46 percent of African-Americans graduated. That was not mentioned.

There's no sportswriter out there who is better at being on the right side of an argument conceptually, and still managing to make you want to punch him in the face for the way he expresses his thoughts.

Buck-Buck-Brawkkkkkk: The Bills entered their opener on an incredibly lame 3-25 streak versus New England. Trailing the Patriots 10-0, home crowd roaring, Buffalo reached fourth-and-2 on the Flying Elvii 44 -- and punted. You don't need to know anything else about the game.

Fuck you.  Fuck you twice.  Fuck you with a Space Launch System rocket.  Fuck you, you fucking ass fucking hole.  I do not have time to do it this week, but sometime in the coming month, I am going to go through the game logs of the previous weekend's games, and find every team that punted in opposing territory on 4th and short and won the game.  And then I'm going to post them here, and I'm going to email them to Greggggggggggggg, with the subject line "Some thoughts about scientific inaccuracies in Back to the Future."

The Big-Bad Character in "Under the Dome" Was Bald -- Coincidence? The hit summer series "Under the Dome"

BWHAHAHAHAHA

In "The Simpsons Movie," the solution to a town under glass was Homer Simpson. If Homer appears to save the day in "Under the Dome," perhaps he will explain how a river flows through Chester's Mill. The impenetrable dome is said to cut off the outside world and extend to bedrock, rendering it impossible to tunnel in or out. So where is the river water coming from, and where is it flowing to? Clouds float by. Breezes gently waft through the trees of Chester's Mill and cause 

He's still doing this.

Because the night was unusually hot for Denver, kickoff temperature was 70 degrees higher than when Baltimore visited in the playoffs. Not counting kicking-play specialists, the Ravens started five gentlemen from below the testosterone-pumped level of Division I; Sunday, Dallas would also start five from below the football-factory level.

Could be an editor's mistake, but is there supposed to be a line break there?  I, like you, find it CAPTIVATING that it is hot in the summer and cold in the winter in Denver.  But what does it have to do with SMALL SCHOOL NON-GLOREE BOYS?

Denver used aggressive defensive tactics, keeping six or seven men on the line of scrimmage, big-blitzing on third-and-long. 

How did they not lose by 60 points?  

By the second half, the Broncos' front was noticeably outperforming Ravens offensive linemen. Bear in mind -- big-blitzing usually works early in the season and fails late.

No support for this.  No citation, no evidence.  Just a throwaway assertion to support his long-held and utterly retarded thesis.

The Football Gods Chortled: 

Oh indeed they did wax wroth so forth, verily!

Jacksonville lost 28-2 at home to Kansas City, which was last season's worst club. 

Actually, they were both last season's worst club.

Remember, Jacksonville is the team that's too good for Tim Tebow.

Remember, every team in the NFL, and most in the CFL, is too good for Tim Tebow.  But of course TMQ is carrying water for Tebow; that's a contrarian thing to do right now, and implying that Tebow could actually be a successful NFL QB over the course of a full season, and without the benefit of a very good defense, a great kicker and several miraculous breaks is a Smartest Guy In The Room thing to say.  Next on Gregg's list of things to be snarky about: MOST OF YOU PROLES HAVE NO IDEA THAT REX RYAN IS ACTUALLY A GREAT COACH.

Located in Cambridge, Mass. the Massachusetts Institute of Technology offers intramural air pistol. Located in Claremont, Calif., Pomona College and its next-door neighbor Pitzer College field combined teams known as the Sagehens; here is their angry-grouse logo. That the University of South Carolina's sports nickname is the Gamecocks has long led to snickering about the women's teams, though Gamecock in this usage refers to Revolutionary War hero Thomas Sumter. A sage hen can be of either sex, but just as the South Carolina nickname makes the women's teams sound male, the Pomona-Pitzer nickname makes the men's teams sound female. This alone may be enough material for a college gender-studies course.

*crickets*

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

No comments yet - so I will give my affirmation!

Biggus Rickus said...

Here's my issue with harping on graduation rates. It ignores the fact that many, many football players would not be able to attend most I-A Universities if not for the reduced standards granted to football players. Why are people surprised or outraged or whatever that people ill-equipped to graduate college are not graduating college? Inasmuch as it is a problem that needs solving (and I'm not sure it is), it makes far more sense to me to force athletes who attend a college to meet the same standards as the general student body. Crappy colleges would win more games on average, but oh well.

Oh, and you should definitely cover these. Otherwise I'd never see Gregggg's uniquely terrible articles, and they are good for an unintentional laugh.

Mike "This Kid" Mayock said...

I don't even know where Gregg's stuff is published so I only read it when it's done here or at Bottom of the Barrel. Even though I endorse free content, I recommend you stop with him because he doesn't seem to inspire you to do your best writing. I anticipate your return to top form will begin shortly after this season's collapse by the Broncos which could happen shortly.

Chris W said...

What I do is I take the bun and I wad it up....

Anonymous said...

I can't stand the whole "4-26 streak" or "2-21 streak" thing he does. Streak as I understand it has always meant an unbroken string of something. Like a 10 game hitting streak, or a 25 games with at least 1 TD pass streak. It's always driven me nuts. That and the "touts" thing. BUT...I enjoy the meta-hate read thing of reading your hate reads of his godawfulness. I vote you keep going!

Chris W said...

a non-coward would take on Jeff Pearlman's piece on Oklahoma State. However, as we all know, Larry B is a COWARD

Adam said...

So Division I football is testosterone fueled but the NFL is not? I'm confused.

That idea led me to a Gregg article about how "Eric Fisher is just like you and me because he went to Central Michigan not Michigan or Michigan State!!!" BARFFFF

http://espn.go.com/espn/playbook/story/_/id/9222713/tmq-celebrates-everyman-epic-eric-fisher-rise-no-1-nfl-draft

ZidaneValor said...

Buck-Buck-Brawkkkkkk: The Bills entered their opener on an incredibly lame 3-25 streak versus New England. Trailing the Patriots 10-0, home crowd roaring, Buffalo reached fourth-and-2 on the Flying Elvii 44 -- and punted. You don't need to know anything else about the game.

Except for the facts that the Bills took the lead 21-17 and Gostkowski had to kick a FG to win the game with five seconds left. These facts also sound important.

I understand the argument for not punting in that spot (and I even agree with it), but the way TMR off-handedly dismisses the Bills' comeback just reeks of arrogance.

Ben said...

Wait, why was that the whitest sentence ever? Because only white people talk about science? I believe that would be called, in the parlance of angry sports journalism criticism, "vaguely racist".

Chris W said...

you cracked the code ben! i'm going to have to scold Larry for oppressing you like he did.

Adam said...

Neil deGrasse Tyson and Hakeem Oluseyi are offended.

SOB in TO said...

Denver punted in opposition territory against the Ravens. 1st Q, 4th and 4 at the BAL 39.
Look it up.

Anonymous said...

Even The Economist thinks he sucks:

"Facts such as these are infuriating, but a compelling book must be more than an agglomeration of facts, and Mr Easterbrook’s work is strikingly uneven. He is given to spluttering fits of moral outrage that lead him to contradict himself. Regarding university alumni who donate to their alma maters’ football programmes, he loftily pronounces, “Money given to sports does not serve a larger social purpose,” whereas later in the book he waxes lyrical about how football can “bring Americans together for civic celebration”.

The writing is also annoying. Mr Easterbrook makes flat jokes and can be oddly lazy. “Perhaps in some ineffable way the too-big nature of football helps stimulate American freedom and affluence.” Yes, perhaps. Those are the questions one might want to ponder—in a book about American football, for instance."

dan-bob said...

Is Gregg implying that Division 1 players are more likely to use steroids than D2 players?