Since a couple of people sent this to me, and it has been going around.
Nick Rolovich out as football coach of Washington State. Also out: assistants Ricky Logo, John Richardson, Craig Stutzmann and Mark Weber.
This wasn’t a record thing: all five were fired because they refused to get the Chinese Rabies shot.
Not much to say beyond that, but this is sportsfirings.com, so I felt like I had to note it here.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Detroit
So Jacksonville managed to avoid running the streak to 21…on a desperate last second field goal.
Sigh.
I still think Urban Meyer is out before the end of the season. Possibly still this week? I mean, if I own the team, beating the Dolphins in London just isn’t enough to save your job.
Next week, Detroit plays the Rams.
Speaking of out, Ed Orgeron out as LSU head coach at the end of the season, apparently by mutual agreement.
He won a national championship in 2019, but they went 5-5 in 2020. Of course, 2020 was so screwed up that, frankly, if I were in college or pro athletics, I’d just throw any stats from that year out the window.
They’re 4-3 so far this year. And Orgeron has allegedly had problems with some of his players sexually assaulting women and NCAA investigations.
I love the fall season. Fall is a great time for philosophy.
For example, Mike Shildt out as manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.
Shildt was 252-199 in a little over three seasons, and the Cardinals have made the postseason each of the past three years. They won 17 straight games this year, made it to the wild card game, and lost to the Dodgers.
In other news, the Yankees fired Phil Nevin and Marcus Thames. Thames has been the hitting coach for four seasons, and Nevin has been the third base coach since 2018. Also out: P.J. Piliterre, assistant hitting coach.
Jon Gruden out as coach of the Las Vegas Raiders.
This is technically a resignation, but it is a “resign before he got fired” one. And in this case, it wasn’t his won-loss record that got him.
The move comes after additional offensive emails Gruden had sent containing homophobic and misogynistic language were detailed in a New York Times report.
Monday’s revelations are in addition to the racial trope he used to describe NFL Players Association chief DeMaurice Smith, which was revealed Friday.
In case you missed it:
The email was written in 2011 in an exchange between Gruden, who is white and was an analyst for ESPN at the time, and Bruce Allen, who was then the president of the Washington Football Team.
“Dumboriss Smith has lips the size of michellin tires,” Gruden wrote about Smith in the exchange.
Gruden claimed at the time that referring to “big lips” was his way of calling someone a liar.
In the new emails, which were also discovered in the same hostile workplace investigation into the Washington Football Team, Gruden called NFL commissioner Roger Goodel a “f—–” and a “clueless anti-football p—-.”
The emails were sent to friend Bruce Allen, the former president of WFT, and others.
Gruden also lamented the league’s hiring of female officials and slammed the league for what he asserts was pressure on the Rams to draft Michael Sam in 2014. Sam had come out as gay before the draft.
In one of the emails, which were sent over a seven-year period ending in 2018, Gruden voiced his opposition to his perception of the league’s influence on Rams coach Jeff Fisher to select “q—–.”
Once again, history shows: don’t put it in email if you don’t want it on the front page.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Detroit
Jacksonville
Jacksonville has now lost 20 games in a row.
The question in my mind at the moment is: when does Urban Meyer get fired?
Next Sunday, Jacksonville plays Miami in London. Miami is 1-4, so this might be Jacksonville’s best shot at a win. After Sunday’s game, Jacksonville has a bye week: it makes sense to fire Urban at the start of the bye week, to give whoever steps in two weeks to adjust.
Detroit plays the Bengals, who are 3-2.
Eddie Robinson has passed away. He was 100.
I’m not going to snark here. He was part of baseball for 60 years, as a player:
At 6 feet 2 inches and 210 pounds — good size for his era — the left-handed-hitting Robinson clubbed 16 home runs and drove in 83 runs to help the 1948 Indians capture the team’s first pennant since 1920 en route to defeating the Boston Braves in a six-game World Series. Playing in every Series game, Robinson batted .300.
He drove in more than 100 runs and played in the All-Star Game in three consecutive seasons in the early 1950s, with the Chicago White Sox and the Philadelphia Athletics, and in 1951 became the first White Sox player to drive a home run over the roof of the old Comiskey Park.
The Yankees obtained Robinson before the 1954 season in a multiplayer trade with the Athletics. He pinch-hit and played behind first basemen Joe Collins and Bill Skowron and flashed his power when 16 of his 36 hits in 1955 were home runs. He played in his second World Series when the Yankees lost to the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games that October.
As a scout:
In his memoir, “Lucky Me” (2011, with C. Paul Rogers III), Robinson wrote how the Yankee owner George Steinbrenner offered him the team’s general manager’s post in June 1982 and related that he “considered George one of my real friends in baseball.” But he decided to work as a Yankee scout and consultant instead, since he was well aware of Steinbrenner’s reputation as a difficult boss.
“It didn’t take long for George and me to get crossways,” Robinson recalled. He told how Steinbrenner had cooled to him after he agreed only reluctantly to be present for an October 1982 draft session; he and his wife had had a trip to Europe planned. He continued as a Yankee scout through 1985.
…
How long was he in baseball? This long:
Robinson played a role in a poignant baseball event in the summer of 1948.
When Babe Ruth, dying of cancer, was about to take the field at Yankee Stadium on the afternoon of June 13 for a ceremony retiring his No. 3, Robinson was in Cleveland’s dugout.
“He looked like he needed help physically, and I took a bat out of the bat rack and gave it to him,” Robinson told Major League Baseball in a 2020 interview. “He carried it up to home plate, and he used it as a kind of a crutch. When he came back, I got the bat and had him sign it.”
Nat Fein of The Herald Tribune in New York won a Pulitzer Prize for his rear view photograph depicting Ruth in Yankee pinstripes leaning on the bat, which belonged to Feller.
She also knocked around TV a bit: she was Wallis Simpson in the “Edward and Mrs. Simpson” mini series, played Dr. Asten’s wife on a couple of episodes of “Quincy”, and the mother of Paul Reiser’s character on “Mad About You”, among other roles.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Detroit
Jacksonville
So as soon as I call out both New York teams, both of them win – in overtime, no less.
Always bet against my picks. I guess that’s the moral here.
Lawrence made a point to me the other day that I had totally missed: Jacksonville is now on a 19 game losing streak. They’re playing Tennessee next week, so it isn’t impossible that they’ll run the streak to 20. The only other teams that have lost 20 straight games are the 1942-1945 Chicago Cardinals (29 straight) and the 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers (26 straight).
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Detroit
New York Football Giants
New York Jets
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Still a little early, and I apologize to Infidel de Manahatta, but I’m starting to think there’s a good chance of at least one New York team going winless this year.
Maybe both: it doesn’t look like the Jets and the Giants play against each other this year.
Lawrence sent over an obit from – I kid you not – the “Journal of Emergency Medical Services” for actor Tim Donnelly.
He only has 19 credits in IMDB. No “Mannix” but he did appear on the 1960s “Dragnet” multiple times, and also did a guest shot on the good “Hawaii 5-0”. Other credits include “Adam-12”, “Parts: The Clonus Horror”, and “Project U.F.O.”
Why the “Journal of Emergency Medical Services”, though? Mr. Donnelly’s most famous role was “Chet Kelly” in “Emergency”.
That was one of the great ‘staches in 1970s TV.
More seriously, I loved “Emergency” as a child, and I’m sad to see him go. (Kevin Tighe and Randolph Mantooth are both still alive, though.)
FotB RoadRich sent over the obit for George Holliday. Mr. Holliday was the man who filmed the Rodney King beating.
Reuben Klamer. Mr. Klamer was an inventor and toy creator: among other things, he invented “The Game of Life”.
His creations included his own version of the hula hoop and a variation on the Erector Set. He came up with a Pink Panther show car built on an Oldsmobile chassis and rode around in it to promote the “Pink Panther” cartoon series.
He also worked closely with television producers and built props for popular shows, including the Starfleet phaser rifle, which could stun or disintegrate living creatures, for the original “Star Trek” series. (He said he had an agreement for the toy rights to the rifle, but it fell apart and his toy phaser was never produced.) He made a special Napoleon Solo gun for “The Man From U.N.C.L.E.” that was so popular, the gun itself received fan mail. (He successfully created a toy version of that one.)
Anthony Johnson, “Ezal” in “Friday”.
This isn’t exactly an obit, but I think it’s worth noting.
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Atlanta
Minnesota
Detroit
New York Football Giants
New York Jets
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Still early enough in the season that I don’t have much to say yet. Perhaps by next week the picture will come into greater focus.
We’re back, baby!
NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:
Atlanta
Minnesota
Detroit
Chicago
Green Bay
Dallas
Washington
New York Football Giants
Baltimore
Cleveland
New England
Buffalo
New York Jets
Indianapolis
Jacksonville
Tennessee
Well, how about that?
We have our first college football firing, two games into the season.
Clay Helton out at the University of Southern California.
The precipitating incident seems to have been losing to Stanford on Saturday. Helton was 46-24 overall. But his record since 2018 was 19-15, and apparently the usual suspects (boosters) felt like they were consistently underperforming.
Interesting note: Ivan Jasper is going to coach quarterbacks for Navy. Why is this interesting? Jasper was fired as offensive coordinator on Saturday, but Navy’s head coach (Ken Niumatalolo) persuaded the athletic director (Chet Gladchuk) to re-instate him.
Also fired: assistant Billy Ray Stutzmann, who is being let go after his request for a religious exemption to getting the COVID vaccine was rejected.
Since many asking: no Tuesday Morning Quarterback this season either. But I haven’t forgotten how to do it! Am keeping notes (“saving string,” to writers). If my new book out in a week https://t.co/uABXN0D3L7 is a hit that will put me in a TMQ mood for ’22. pic.twitter.com/rgBwow56yP
— Gregg Easterbrook (@EasterbrookG) September 4, 2021
But that’s not going to stop TMQ:
Hell’s Sports Bar about to reopen! No curbside service, you enter all Hell’s-branded properties.
Sunday in Hell’s Sports Bar, Texas and Florida see Houston v. Jax (2020 combined record 5-27) not Steelers v. Bills (2020 combined 27-9). https://t.co/1ffz3pVh6l
— Gregg Easterbrook (@EasterbrookG) September 8, 2021
Yes. Because two teams that had bad records last year, and turnover in the off season, will automatically be playing a bad game to start off the new season.
In other news, the loser update returns Tuesday.
Damn.
— David Simon (@AoDespair) September 6, 2021
Michael K. Williams, “Omar” on “The Wire”, “Leonard” in “Hap and Leonard”, “Chalky White” on “Boardwalk Empire”, and lots of other stuff. THR.
Keith McCants. He was picked fourth overall by Tampa Bay in the 1990 draft, but turned into a bust. Tampa Bay let him go after three years, he bounced around a bit (playing with Houston and Arizona) before leaving football, and fell into addiction. He was 53, and apparently died of an overdose.
Jean-Paul Belmondo, legendary French New Wave star. (“Breathless”, among other credits.)
Tony Selby, British actor. (“Doctor Who”, “Eastenders”).