The regular season starts Thursday. And TMQ gets back to something closely approaching normal next Tuesday. But for now, we have one more week of filler.
After the jump, this week’s TMQ…
The NFL is about to enter a spiral of decline because of gambling.
And you can now skip the first 1,165 words of this week’s column, though there are a few things worth calling out.
There’s more to it than just clean needles, Gregg. There’s also the whole quality and purity argument: if you can get your heroin from a known source, do you have to worry about it being cut with fentanyl or something worse? And do you really believe that, if heroin becomes legal, people are going to rush right out and try it? “Oh, my God! I was waiting for this dangerous addictive drug to become legal before I decided to shoot up! Thanks, Obama Trump!”
We were under the distinct impression that this was a settled point of law, and the law does not support the NHL. If anybody knows different, please drop us a note or leave a comment.
Because only poor people go to convenience stores and liquor stores.
It is kind of interesting that, after spending almost 1,200 words condemning gambling on the NFL, TMQ runs eleven items on…which NFL team you should bet on. (Yes, it’s couched in “Which Team Should I Circle in My Office Pool?”, but isn’t that kind of a dog whistle?)
Why there are no colored fields in the pros continues to baffle TMQ.
TMQ is apparently easily baffled. The 2018 NFL rules state:
The surface of the entire Field of Play must be a League-approved shade of green.
Doesn’t it set a better example for society if players are paid based on their perceived value to the team, as determined by the team management?
Between 2003 and 2017, Oakland has had one winning season: they finished 12-4 in 2016, and lost the wild card game to the Texans. Is this really a team that can be described as “pretty good most of the time”?
da Bears.
Isn’t it kind of early for the “Weasel Coach Watch”? Nobody’s been fired yet, as far as we know. Oh, wait: this is Tuesday Morning Quarterback. The item is really a thin excuse to bash coaches Gregg Easterbrook doesn’t like.
That may sound funny, but you know, it’s probably true. There were a couple of close ones last season that they could have won…
We think we’re mostly going to stay out of this (though we are a little put off by the apparent elevation of John McCain to secular sainthood) but we do feel like noting that TMQ wrote 450 words about how awful a person Richard Brevard Russell Jr. was without once mentioning his party affiliation. (Is it relevant? We think so, when you’re talking about renaming a building named for a politician of one party to honor a politician of another party.)
1. TMQ only offers one data point (2016 vs. 2017 seasons). This would have been a more interesting item if he’d compared across other seasons: how did 2016 compare to 2015? 2015 to 2014?
2. It also would have been a more interesting item if he’d speculated on which teams won’t repeat. Off the top of our head, we’re rooting for the Rams, Steelers, Jaguars, and Bills to finish out of the playoffs.
Kind of early to call this, but we detect a TMQ trope in the making.
Gratuitous Cleveland bashing, and another item that would have been improved by even a brief discussion (or heck, even a link) explaining why Cleveland teams have been so historically bad even with so many high draft choices. But perhaps we expect too much.
a) Actually, no, because that would require information about the future, and quantum mechanics tells us information about the future can’t exist.
II) The Tissot Knicks watch appears to be one of a series of watches for each NBA team.
3) $350 seems a little high for a watch with any NBA team logo on it.
More basketball. Did TMQ suddenly decide in the off season that basketball was actually interesting?
Defense beats offense, and even more basketball.
Well, that’s an intriguing prediction.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We hope for the best for the Texans, but this whole thing of “if they manage to avoid serious injuries, they just might do well” seems like something you could say about almost any NFL team.
The 600 Club and the 800 Club are back. And that’s a wrap for this week. We’ll be back next week: we hope there will be much less basketball to deal with.