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Firings and obits: November 22, 2017.

Wednesday, November 22nd, 2017

Seems like the story of my life, firings and obits. Anyway:

Ken Norton Jr. out as the defensive coordinator for the Oakland Raiders.

I don’t think this is the dumbest thing I’ve read on ESPN, but I do think it is in the top 10.

…if you are a college football player, try to avoid punching one of your assistant coaches in the head twice.
Because that behavior doesn’t just get you benched: it gets you thrown off the team and expelled from the university.

And now, it gets you charged with aggravated assault.

Bob Stitt out as Montana’s head coach.

Obits, mostly for the record: David Cassidy. Della Reese.

Posted in 1970s, Firings, Law, Music, Obits, Sports, TV | Comments Closed

Not exactly a firing, but…

Tuesday, November 21st, 2017

Former Atlanta Braves general manager John Coppolella has been placed on baseball’s permanently ineligible list and the team will lose its top prospect as part of MLB’s penalties against the team for rules violations in the international market.

This would be the third person placed on the “permanently ineligible” list by Rob Manfred, and the second one this year. (Previously. Previously.)

In addition, the Braves “must forfeit 13 international prospects”:

Atlanta must forfeit [Kevin] Maitan, Juan Contreras, Yefri del Rosario, Abrahan Gutierrez, Juan Carlos Negret, Yenci Peña, Yunior Severino, Livan Soto, Guillermo Zuniga, Brandol Mezquita, Angel Rojas, Antonio Sucre and Ji Hwan Bae.

(Kevin Maitan is described in the article as the team’s “best prospect”.)

All 13 players will become free agents and are eligible to sign with any team. Manfred also announced that the Braves have been prohibited from signing prospect Robert Puason.

Also, Gordon Blakely, who used to be a “special assistant” with the team, has been suspended for one year.

(Sorry for linking to ESPN. I would rather have linked to the Atlanta Journal-Constitution‘s coverage, but they haven’t updated their story.)

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update (plus bonus firings): week 11, 2017.

Monday, November 20th, 2017

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Cleveland

San Francisco had a bye this week, so they remain at 1-9. And shockingly, the New York Football Giants actually won another game. (Against Kansas City, in overtime, 12-9. That must have been another titanic offensive struggle.)

I think that’s going to mess up their shot at a high first-round draft choice. Sorry, Infidel.

Firings: Jim Mora fired as head coach at UCLA. After six seasons. On his birthday. “Happy birthday. Here’s your present: it’s a pink slip.”

But don’t cry too hard:

UCLA announced it would honor the terms of Mora’s contract, which included four more seasons and a buyout of roughly $12 million, using exclusively athletic department-generated funds. That money, secured in part from lucrative television deals and the recent mega-apparel contract with Under Armour, will preclude boosters from having to write a large check.

…

Mora compiled a 46-30 record at UCLA, including four bowl appearances, a Pac-12 South Division title in 2012 and 10-win seasons in 2013 and 2014. But his teams have gone 10-17 since late in the 2015 season.

Marcus Satterfield out at Tennessee Tech. 6-16 over two seasons.

Edited to add: This seems to be official now: Denver fired offensive coordinator Mike McCoy. The team is 3-7 and has lost six games in a row.

Posted in Firings, Loser, NFL, Sports | 1 Comment »

Obit watch: November 16, 2017.

Thursday, November 16th, 2017

Ferdie Pacheco, Muhammad Ali’s fight doctor and later television boxing analyst.

“When Ali wouldn’t quit the exciting world of boxing, I did,” he wrote in “Muhammad Ali: A View From the Corner” (1992), one of several books he wrote. “If a national treasure like Ali could not be saved, at least I didn’t have to be part of his undoing.”

Posted in Obits, Sports | Comments Closed

Firings watch.

Wednesday, November 15th, 2017

Jeff Long out as athletic director of the University of Arkansas. Football coach Bret Bielema seems to have a job for now, but there’s widespread speculation he will be the next to go.

The Razorbacks are 4-6 overall and 1-5 in SEC games this season and have a program-record five losses of 20 points or more.

Stretching the definition of firing a wee bit: if you are a college football player, try to avoid punching one of your assistant coaches in the head twice.

Because that behavior doesn’t just get you benched: it gets you thrown off the team and expelled from the university.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: November 14, 2017.

Wednesday, November 15th, 2017

Right at the 5,200 word mark again. It really does seem like Gregg Easterbrook has an editor. Maybe. But we’ll get into that.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 10, 2017.

Monday, November 13th, 2017

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Cleveland

I’m somewhat conflicted over this.

On the one hand, I’m disappointed that we don’t have two teams contending for the Owen-16 trophy.

On the other hand, I still think the Browns have a good chance of losing out. (The next game that I think they’re in real danger of winning is December 3rd against the Chargers.)

On the gripping hand, we could have a situation where there are three 1-15 teams contending for high first round draft picks: the New York Football Giants, the 49ers, and the Browns. I’m not sure how the NFL determines precedence in this situation, but friend of the blog Infidel should be happy that there’s at least a chance…

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | 2 Comments »

TMQ Watch: November 7, 2017.

Wednesday, November 8th, 2017

One thing we’ve noticed about new TMQ in the light of recent events: Easterbrook hasn’t had anything to say in the column about recent mass shootings, especially in regard to “reasonable gun control”. Easterbrook hasn’t been shy about this before (and we’ve called him out on his bolshie bushwa before, too), so the absence of this in his Weekly Standard TMQ columns seems unusual. Almost like someone is editing him.

Not that we’re complaining: the less time we spend pressure-testing our cerebral arteries, the better we feel.

After the jump, this week’s TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Obit watch: November 8, 2017.

Wednesday, November 8th, 2017

Roy Halladay, former pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays and Philadelphia Phillies, was killed in the crash of his small plane yesterday. Tampa Bay Times. Miami Herald.

There are a few things in these articles that are…interesting. The plane was an ICON A-5:

The A5 is a single-engine, high wing aircraft that seats two people. It’s amphibious, so it can land on solid ground or water. It’s unique in that its wings fold to allow towing.
The plane is a light sport aircraft, meaning it falls below certain weight and maximum speed thresholds. The Federal Aviation Administration mandates fewer hours of training for light sport pilots.

Here’s a run-down of the sport pilot requirements from the EAA. But this is interesting because Mr. Halladay was pretty well trained:

Halladay said last March that he had accrued about 800 hours in the air. He had received his instrument rating and multi-engine rating. He was working toward a commercial rating.

(The A-5 also has some interesting safety features: it isn’t absolutely clear to me that the $389,000 “Founders Edition” comes standard with the parachute, but for that money, I’d expect it to come with everything including a full IFR panel and Otto Pilot.)

Halladay did not file a flight plan Tuesday, according to flightaware.com, which tracks aircraft movement. The National Weather Service reported clear skies and unlimited visibility in the area at the time of the crash.

So it sounds like he was flying VFR in CAVU conditions. RoadRich or someone else with more light aircraft experience can correct me, but the way I understand it, it’s perfectly normal not to file a flight plan for VFR flights.

No recording devices were recovered in the wreckage, according to the sheriff.

Of course, light sport aircraft and small planes aren’t required by FAA regulations to have recording devices.

Halladay is not the first Major League player to die piloting a plane, joining former New York Yankees captain Thurman Munson in 1979, the Chicago Cubs’ Ken Hubbs in 1964 and most recently Yankees pitcher Cory Lidle, who crashed a small aircraft in New York City in 2006. The Pittsburgh Pirates’ Roberto Clemente also died in a plane crash, as a passenger on a mission to deliver aid to Nicaraguan earthquake victims in 1972.

I’m not sure why they threw in the reference to Roberto Clemente, since he wasn’t piloting the DC-7 that crashed, and (from what I’ve read) that was just a completely f-ed up situation.

Posted in Obits, Planes, Sports | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 9, 2017.

Monday, November 6th, 2017

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Cleveland (bye week)
San Francisco

Next week, San Francisco plays the New York Football Giants at home. The Browns play at Detroit.

Posted in Loser, NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

J’accuse!

Friday, November 3rd, 2017

The ultra-promising season of multidimensional Texans star quarterback Deshaun Watson came to a devastating end during a routine practice play Thursday when the rookie sensation tore the anterior cruciate ligament in his right knee, according to league sources not authorized to speak publicly.

I blame Gregg Easterbrook and the vertical integration of the broiler industry.

But on the bright side, this is an opening for Thick McRunFast Tom Savage the Electic Quarterback.

Posted in NFL, Sports | Comments Closed

Tweet of the day.

Thursday, November 2nd, 2017

Posted in Sports | Comments Closed

TMQ Watch: October 31, 2017.

Tuesday, October 31st, 2017

TMQ doesn’t have anything really spooky going on this week. If we had thought of it a little more in advance, we might have tried to dig up something new and amusing to use as a header.

So before we jump in, we’ll toss out a couple of kind of spooky things we casually ran across in our morning browsing:

Carl Tanzler. We’re aware this was the subject of a recent episode of “The Dollup”, but we’ve tried listening to that podcast and can’t. The Wikipedia entry should be spooky enough for you, and most of us read faster than we can listen to a podcast anyway.

Lawrence’s annual link to the FARK Scary Stories threads.

Wikipedia “Deaths by poisoning”. The “Victims of radiological poisoning” is kind of interesting: Harry Daghlian and Louis Slotin are probably well known to Los Alamos buffs, but we’d never heard of the Cecil Kelley incident.

Okay, enough spooky. After the jump, this week’s pretty much non-spooky TMQ…

(more…)

Posted in NFL, Sports, TMQ watch | Comments Closed

Your loser update: week 8, 2017.

Sunday, October 29th, 2017

NFL teams that still have a chance to go 0-16:

Cleveland
San Francisco

NBA teams that still have a chance to go 0-82:

None.

Bonus firings content:

Jim McElwain out at Florida, in what appears to be a “mutually agreed” departure. Terms are supposedly still being negotiated.

Early last week, McElwain claimed that his family and players were receiving death threats. Reports are that the university spent the week looking into those claims and was unable to substantiate them: it was widely reported yesterday that the school was looking to fire McElwain “for cause” over this.

Tony Perez and Andre Dawson have also left the Miami Marlins. Much like Jeff “Mr. Marlin” Conine, this appears to be the new ownership cleaning house.

Perez and Dawson met with Jeter a little more than a week ago, when he told them of plans for their decreased responsibilities and an expected decrease in pay — though apparently Jeter didn’t say how decreased in the meeting. After word came back that their salaries were now to be $25,000, which under different circumstances might qualify someone for food stamps, Perez and Dawson questioned how badly they were wanted. There was some discussion about what they’d be allowed to do now, and while they still would be allowed to walk through the clubhouse, apparently they were no longer to dress in there.

Posted in Firings, Loser, NFL, Sports | 2 Comments »

More firings, noted for the record.

Friday, October 27th, 2017

The Cubs fired a bunch of lower-level coaches.

Now that Derek Jeter is a part owner of the Miami Marlins, he’s cleaning house:

Jeff Conine, who served as a special assistant to former team president David Samson, said he turned down an offer from new ownership to remain with the organization in what would have been a sharply diminished role at lower pay.
…
Conine is a South Florida baseball icon, an original Marlin and member of both World Series teams.

Posted in Firings, Sports | Comments Closed

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