Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are dead.
Colleen Jones, curler and curling commentator.
She won two world titles and six Canadian national championships.
…
Archive for the ‘Sports’ Category
Obit watch: November 30, 2025.
Sunday, November 30th, 2025Firings watch: November 24, 2025.
Monday, November 24th, 2025Shane Bowen out as defensive coordinator of the New York Football Giants.
The Giants are 2-10, and blew a big lead to the Detroit Lions on Sunday.
Chip Kelly out as defensive coordinator of the Raiders. He’d only been with the team for 11 games, and the Raiders are 2-9 this season.
The California Golden Bears have fired head coach Justin Wilcox. 6-5 this season, 48-55 over nine seasons with the team.
Are you a pelican or a peliCAN’T?
Saturday, November 15th, 2025In some haste, because I am on the road for a wedding. But:
Willie Green out as head coach of the New Orleans Pelicans. ESPN:
The team is 2-10 to start the season. Which, sort of surprisingly, isn’t the worst record in the NBA so far this season: Brooklyn, Indiana, and Washington are all 1-11.
Firings watch.
Tuesday, November 11th, 2025Nico Harrison out as general manager of the Dallas Mavericks. ESPN.
They were 182-157 over four seasons, with three playoff appearances. But they’re 3-8 so far this season, and…
…Harrison will long be remembered as the architect of what’s been called the worst trade in NBA history. His decision last season to trade Luka Doncic to the Los Angeles Lakers in exchange for Anthony Davis and Max Christie yielded immediate backlash from fans, whose chants of “Fire Nico” became a universal swan song anytime the Mavericks found themselves in an unfortunate position.
They chanted the phrase in the team’s first home game following the trade. They rallied together and chanted it the first time Doncic returned to American Airlines Center as a member of the Lakers. Nine months later, they’ve chanted it during home games as Harrison sat from his new seats inside the arena, several rows behind the team’s broadcast booth.
Firings watch.
Monday, November 10th, 2025This is breaking, but I want to get something up now: I’m going to be out this afternoon and evening.
Brian Daboll out as head coach of the New York Football Giants, according to “sources”. ESPN.
2-8 so far this season, they lost to Chicago 24-20 on Sunday, and he was 20-40-1 overall (roughly four seasons).
Obit watch: November 10, 2025.
Monday, November 10th, 2025Robert H. Bartlett, big damn hero. He was one of the pioneers of ECMO.
An ECMO machine consists of an external circuit of tubes, a pump that functions as a heart, and a membrane that serves as an artificial lung. The device continuously pumps blood out of the body, adds oxygen, removes carbon dioxide, warms the blood and returns it to the body.
ECMO treatment can continue for days or weeks or longer, allowing the heart and lungs to rest and try to heal from traumas like acute respiratory distress, a blood clot, a heart attack or an injury from a car crash. It can also be used for patients awaiting a heart or lung transplant, and it is increasingly being used in emergencies for people experiencing cardiac arrest.
According to a registry kept by the Extracorporeal Life Support Organization, which Dr. Bartlett founded, more than 260,000 critically ill newborns, children and adults around the world have received the treatment, and roughly 800 medical centers in 66 countries offer the procedure; about 54 percent of patients treated with ECMO survive to leave the hospital, and more than 100,000 lives have been saved.
…
In 1975, while he was at the University of California, Irvine, Dr. Bartlett and his surgical team, including Dr. Alan Gazzaniga, successfully used ECMO treatment for the first time on a newborn who was experiencing lung failure and had been left at the hospital by her mother, an undocumented immigrant.
The infant — named Esperanza, or Hope, by the nurses — recovered after spending six days on the machine. Over the years she remained in touch with Dr. Bartlett, joining him at conferences and attending University of Michigan football games with him, one of his favorite activities.
Thanks to ECMO, what had once been a mortality rate of 80 percent in newborns struggling to breathe became a survival rate of 80 percent.
“If Dr. Bartlett wasn’t there that day I was born, I wouldn’t be here today,” Esperanza Pineda, who is now 50, said in an interview.
Betty Harford, actress. Other credits include “T.H.E. Cat”, “The Name of the Game”, and “Mrs. Columbo”.
Paul Tagliabue, former commissioner of the NFL. ESPN.
Your Friday loser update on Thursday: week 5, 2025.
Thursday, November 6th, 2025NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
None.
The Brooklyn Nets were the last team standing. But, sadly, they beat the Pacers last night for their first win.
Both teams are now 1-7, along with the Washington Wizards.
Obit watch: November 4, 2025.
Tuesday, November 4th, 2025Other credits include “Carnosaur”, “White Lightning”, “Then Came Bronson”, and “The Fugitive”. And the pool of living “Alice” actors gets even smaller.
Former vice president Dick Cheney. WP (archived).
Victor Conte. I’m not sure how many people will remember that name: he was the founder of Bay Area Laboratory Co-Operative (BALCO), the people who provided “performance enhancing drugs” to various athletes “including baseball stars Barry Bonds and Jason Giambi and Olympic track champion Marion Jones”.
Ice, ice, baby.
Sunday, November 2nd, 2025Hugh Freeze out at Auburn. ESPN.
15-19 in “two plus” seasons, 6-16 in the SEC, and they lost to Kentucky yesterday, 10-3. They are 4-5 this season.
And the NYPost is reporting that, with Mr. Freeze’s $15.8 millon buyout, the count is now up to $182 million owed to fired college coaches.
Firings watch.
Friday, October 31st, 2025Chris Grier out as general manager of the Miami Dolphins.
The spin on this is that it was by “mutual agreement”. But the Dolphins are 2-7, and lost last night to Baltimore. So…yeah.
ESPN.
Your Friday loser update: week 4, 2025.
Friday, October 31st, 2025NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
Indiana Pacers
Brooklyn Nets
New Orleans Pelicans
And today’s bonus firing for you: Scott Woodward fired as athletic director at Louisiana State University.
As you may recall, LSU fired Brian Kelly and owes him $54 million. This has attracted the ire of many, including Louisiana governor Jeff Landry. Gov. Landry went as far as to state that Mr. Woodward wouldn’t be picking the next football coach.
Additional coverage from ESPN.
Briefly noted.
Tuesday, October 28th, 2025…
Your NFL loser update: week 8, 2025.
Monday, October 27th, 2025They don’t call them the Cincinnati Bungles for nothing.
I apologize for being late in getting this up. I had a series of events (the good kind of event, not the bad kind) yesterday that had me out of the house until 7:30 PM. Among those events was driving down to Gruene to meet up with a relative I had not seen in at least 25 years, and maybe closer to 40. While it was fun, it’s also about 90 minutes each way in pretty heavy traffic, so I pretty much got home and went straight to bed.
Anyway, NFL teams that have a chance to go 0-17:
None.
Seriously, Cincinnati? 39-38?
Oh, well. There are still five winless teams in the NBA, and I’ll probably do an update on Friday.
Bonus firing:
Screenshot
Speaking of the war font…story here. ESPN. 34-14 over “four seasons”, but they’ve lost three out the past four games, and got beat 49-25 by Texas A&M on Saturday.
Texas A&M is 8-0. I’m wondering if there’s a chance that we might see a national champion from Texas this year…and it won’t be the one everyone expected at the start of the season.
Edited to add: also out now, LSU offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Joe Sloan. One story I saw said that the athletic director approached Brian Kelly and told him to fire Sloan. Kelly allegedly said “No, I want to fire these people instead,” and the response was to fire Kelly, then Sloan.
Your Friday loser update: week 3, 2025.
Friday, October 24th, 2025I had to go to the eye doctor this morning for a treatment, so I’m a little late getting this up. Also, my eyes are kind of messed up, so please to forgive any mistakes: if you leave a comment, I’ll fix them.
NHL teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
None.
The San Jose Sharks won their first game of the season last night, and are now 1-6. This is the same record as the Tampa Bay Lightning. Just sayin’.
One door closes, another door opens.
NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:
Boston Celtics
Detroit Pistons
Miami Heat
Indiana Pacers
Cleveland Cavaliers
Washington Wizards
Brooklyn Nets
Atlanta Hawks
New Orleans Pelicans
Denver Nuggets
Houston Rockets
Portland Trail Blazers
Sacramento Kings
Los Angeles Lakers
LA Clippers
Dallas Mavericks
“What we know about the Billups-Rozier NBA gambling cases” from ESPN.
Bonus quote of the day (well, yesterday, I think):
Firings watch (plus, bonus legal news!)
Thursday, October 23rd, 2025I know I’ve been quiet the past few days. There just hasn’t been much going on. But today is shaping up to be interesting.
ESPN is reporting the arrest of Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups. Also arrested: Terry Rozier, guard for the Miami Heat.
According to the NYPost:
Billups, an NBA Hall of Famer, has been charged with partaking in an alleged illegal poker ring tied to the Bonanno, Genovese and Colombo crime families, sources told The Post.
A total of 31 people across the country are charged with running rigged games, which took place in Manhattan, the Hamptons and Las Vegas, sources said.
The players involved were being paid by mobsters to play in card games fixed with technology and card shuffling machines to give the house the advantage, sources familiar with the case said.
The athletes were told to take a dive when they had to and win when they were told. It didn’t appear as if they were attempting to pay off any debts, sources said.
Rozier’s arrest is tied to another case.
ESPN is suggesting this might also be tied to the Jontay Porter case.
Porter pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges and admitted in court to manipulating his performance in two games during the 2023-24 season. He is awaiting sentencing in December.
Four men, including Porter, have pleaded guilty in the case. Two other men have been named as conspirators and have been in plea negotiations, according to court filings.
And I did promise a firing, didn’t I? This is a sports firing, but it’s an odd one: Ken Williamson has been “permanently suspended” as a SEC referee.
…following eleven complaints against the seasoned official and his crew during the Auburn-Georgia game on Oct. 11, sources told Yellowhammer News on Wednesday.
“According to sources, nine of those complaints were validated by conference officials,” the outlet wrote.
The game’s biggest controversy came late in the second quarter, when Auburn quarterback Jackson Arnold lost the ball near the one-yard line during a QB sneak and was recovered by Georgia cornerback Kyron Jones.
Though multiple angles from ABC’s broadcast appear to show Jackson crossing the goal line before the ball was punched out, officials ruled it a fumble — awarding the Bulldogs possession after the recovery.