SLAG-91

For posterity... Rock on, Cleveland.

Their individual TV network is the first thing that comes to mind re: special treatment.

Full disclosure, I did postgraduate work at A&M, so I am not impartial here. The A&M move to the SEC really ratcheted the genuine dislike up a lot, well beyond the typical rivalry stuff. The 1999 game after the Bonfire collapse was one where the rivalry truly took a back seat. Pre-split, I would have put the A&M-Texas rivalry hatred at "medium-well", using a steak cooking scale. Texas coming into the SEC will feel a lot like a bitchy ex-spouse being invited back to the house after you thought you were rid of them. As far as the athletics part of it, that's a secondary part of the issue. They haven't played in football since 2011, but have in other sports.

They'll try something, trust me. They are the quintessential "doesn't play well with others" kid that needs a royal ass-whipping. People forget how sneeringly dismissive they were toward A&M when that move was underway. I've resigned myself to this happening, though. Bleh.

So next year teams will be playing the Cleveland Guardians... What a perfectly milquetoast nickname. Can't wait for the first Guardians-Angels game next year...😮 Groot should be their mascot. They had a golden opportunity to give a nod to their baseball history by going with Spiders (from late 1800s). Guess that would have been arachnidist.

This is a good question, sort of like "was there witness prep before going on the stand?" I figure Harsin would have been expecting a question on this topic at the bare minimum, and probably didn't need to be told that by higher-ups...but, that's above our pay grade. I would have been OK with something along the lines of "any decisions that are made regarding vaccinations and the like are a personal matter among players, their parents and medical staff, and I am not going to address that in this forum." Basically, what Leach said without the Leach "curmudgeon-ness". I'm not surprised that media folks are asking because they've probably been told to do so, but they should expect to hear a whole bunch of nothing specific. There are polite ways to tell folks to sod off.

It'$ beyond weird, it'$ flat-out disingenuou$ and borderline deceit via omi$$ion. If you've had Covid already, that should absolutely be treated as a vaccination. If I'd had it already, there's no way I would have gotten the shot. I loved Mike Leach's response to the "are you vaccinated?" question he was asked at media days. Basically, he said"It's none of your GD business."

Every last bit of this...attitudinally, they're locusts. It'd be like knowingly giving yourself herpes to add them. That's about as nicely as I can put it.

Dropping 50 in a championship clinching game...a legacy-shaping series for Giannis, to be sure, and he seems to be a good dude, too. This was good for the NBA, too, to have a "non-Superfriends" team win a title.

Yeah, I've pondered a bit about how I could have some fun with anyone who might stop by...maybe tell them that I got the BR-549 vaccine back in the '70s from Junior Samples and that it had a lifetime warranty, or that I've had south Louisiana water and multiple times recently, and if that didn't kill me, not much else would. I don't expect any visitors of that sort, though...there will clearly have been zero data collection done if I get a knock from someone with the vaccine guild.

Giannis' block on the alley-oop to Ayton is on the medal stand for all-time great blocks...it doesn't have the series-deciding impact of Lebron's in 2016, but as an athletic feat, it's probably more impressive...from showing to get in front of Booker to turn and time up that alley-oop in one smooth motion and send it back clean...goodness. Plus, without that block, the game is tied and who knows where it goes from there. The Bucks may not win this series, but they have hope now.

Doubling down on their stance, and I'll add here that Mayorkas was born in...drumroll, please... Havana, Cuba...1959, and his family fled to, oh, where did they go...wait, the UNITED STATES... after Batista was overthrown. Not going to go down the policy approach to Cuba other than to say that it needs (and needed) to be more carrot (show them what a more free environment looks like) and less stick (relax sanctions). This seems almost vindicative.

Sooo... Mexico/Central America immigrants = c'mon in. Cuban/Haitian immigrants? Sorry, no more room. A head-scratcher, this is. 🤔 It's not like we haven't taken in folks from other countries that were in upheaval (Syria, anyone?) To paraphrase a famous Cuban, Desi Arnaz, "All right, Joey, start 'splaining."

As long as wincrimson and Bamaperry stay away, we're good.

Lightning strikes twice, indeed. Glad to see teams celebrate titles with fans present again. Tampa is on quite a run in the sports world right now. They now have more "Big 4" titles (5) than Houston and Atlanta combined.

Nope...just me having an overactive imagination paired with a head full of useless information. The absurdity of my post was in keeping with Mr. Lindell's around-the-bend claim.

Three medical professionals weigh in Lots to chew on in this article, and some excellent points were made, imo, including a few things I had not really pondered on much.

No need to click that link, but I'll have a little fun with it... August 13, eh? Well, it is a Friday the 13th in the 8th month. 8 + 13 = 21, and it's 2021. 2021 is the product of two prime numbers, 43 and 47. GWB was the last Republican president prior to Trump...#43. Trump redux would make him president #47. Please tell me that the article said the announcement would be in Cleveland, which is the surname of the only man to serve two non-consecutive terms as President. It all adds (and multiplies) up...Lindell is the oracle! 😮💀😮😖 It's a gray, drippy morning here, and since it's July 7, there may be a 7&7 in my future. (No, I haven't already had one 😁)

Since this thread is in full derail now... It wasn't low key here for a good day or two. I turned the TV away from live sports for the next 48 hours or so. It was a gut-punch worse than any football loss, not even gonna pretend otherwise, I guess just because of the suddenness of it all. I almost always watch the title game, but didn't even think about watching it in 2019. I don't even think I knew anything about a missed double dribble until later, and that made it worse.

A key difference between us and China is that they're not at all concerned with outside perception of how they'll proceed. If there's any dissent from inside China, the rest of the world isn't going to hear about it. This may help them "succeed", and I use that term strictly in a tactical sense, not a moral one, where we and the Soviet Union "failed." Nothing good about any of this.

The enthusiasm is understandable. All of this kind of has a "Oklahoma land rush" feel to it right now where those who have the ability are trying to carve out their niche. The starter's pistol was fired on July 1, and it's been a blur of activity since then. I don't begrudge them any of it, but I do hope that all of the mundane, yet important, details that go with all of this (financial and interpersonal) are being handled properly by those in an athlete's inner circle. There's just a lot of unknown, and I'll be interested to see how this looks in the rear view mirror in a year or two. I'll add here that, in my view from here, the worm on Shivers' logo could use a bit of, um, re-imagining.

Phoenix and Milwaukee. I wonder how much a $10 wager in the preseason on this as your Finals matchup would have paid... Looking forward to this matchup-wise, but am wondering just how healthy Giannis will be for this series. I'd lean toward Phoenix winning right now. It's not like either team has a Finals experience advantage over the other. Stephen A and company, the flights to PHX and MKE aren't that bad. 😁 Last time Phoenix was in the Finals, 1993, the Internet was still very much a niche commodity. Last time Milwaukee was in the Finals, 1974, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was still Lew Alcindor, and the NBA was headed toward the ratings desert in a few years. It's hard to imagine NBA Finals games not being broadcast live, but that's exactly what was happening in the late 70s and early 80s. Here's a short read about it. Magic vs. Dr. J on tape delay? Yep...

My mom had a few dogs that really did not like the noise created by fireworks, so she used to slip them a bit of Benadryl in their dinner on those occasions (4th of July, New Year's Eve/Day), and would feed them early enough to have it kick in by dark. She also had a couple of Thundershirts that seemed to help with ones that were really anxious. I'm not a big fireworks guy...I get the symbolism and all, and little kids seem to like them, but it just doesn't move the needle much for me. Y'all's mileage may vary. As for the poppies, here's something I came across that explains it some. I remember doing "Buddy" Poppy drives years ago for the local VFW chapter when I was in JROTC. How the poppy became a remembrance symbol

Short answer to your question: No. Saying that they ended our playoff hopes in 2014 and 2019 is silly, as we had two conference losses entering the UGA game both of those years. Any playoff hopes we had in 2014 vanished in a barrage of self-inflicted wounds against Texas A&M. The loss at LSU in 2019 put the kibosh on playoff talk. 2016? A reach of Stretch Armstrong-ian proportions, as we also had two losses (one conference) entering the UGA game, and I don't recall a whole lot of "man, we could still make the CF playoffs!" going into that game, given how limited we were offensively at the time. Now, 2017? Absolutely. Win that rematch in Atlanta and we're in. What irritates me most is that our results against them post-2005 have been abysmal...3-13. More than a few of those losses have been non-competitive, too. Against LSU in that same time span: 5-10 Against Alabama: 6-9 They'll never eclipse Alabama as our primary rival, but we for damn sure need to start beating them more often than we have been.

So you're against photo ID requirements to vote, even if said IDs are free of charge, correct?