ESPN layoffs: Ryan Clark gone and more to come | (Updated: ) Tom Pelissero expected to be out at NFL Network

[sb1]

Literally the three GOATS of the 2000s and probably the 2010s. You’d be hard pressed to find many QBs better than those three.

I remember when the Dolphins passed on Brees to sign Culpepper instead.

 

[sb1]

Mahomes and his team were shut out in the 1st half of the 2018 AFC Championship game. The idea that how OT played out "wasn't fair" to Kermit and his team is moot. Play better in the first half and they wouldn't have even needed OT.

 

[Rob0729]

it's an interesting thought
I would assume that ESPN, and now the NFL/NFLnet, have done their due diligence.
I guess the deeper question would be does the bro culture check in on ESPN?
my assumption is, if they do, they do so less and less over time

There is no way to predict culture trends. The Bro-ishpere could be around for the foreseeable future or it could burn out in a year or two. Even if it does, doesn't mean MacAfee will be affected or that he cannot adapt to whatever the next trend is.

ESPN did sign MacAfee because he has a strong audience and it is an audience ESPN wants for their network in general (young men). But ESPN has been trying to add more content to attract younger views especially integrating social media. Their audience has been getting older and older and they desperately need younger viewers.

 

[TheRainMaker]

Did Ryan Clark not realize during his time with the Steelers their record vs Brady (1-3), Manning (1-3) and Brees (1-2) were 3-8?

 

[Thelonious]

Tebow was a great college QB, a very mediocre pro QB. He is also, to this very day, a profoundly moral and decent guy. The fact that the moral virtue of a human being bears no correlation with his or her merits as a pro athlete should should tell us just what despicable horseshit the old notion that "sports builds character" has become. If following pro sports is not for you a guilty pleasure, there really is something wrong with you.

 

[DoubleDeluxe]

Tebow was a great college QB, a very mediocre pro QB. He is also, to this very day, a profoundly moral and decent guy. The fact that the moral virtue of a human being bears no correlation with his or her merits as a pro athlete should should tell us just what despicable horseshit the old notion that "sports builds character" has become. If following pro sports is not for you a guilty pleasure, there really is something wrong with you.

Do you actually like sports?
Multiple posts of you talking down athletes because they don't meet your moral standard.
If they bother you that much, don't watch.
If you need to find your inspiration in athletes, perhaps there is something wrong with you.
As for Tebow, great human being, but terrible, not mediocre, terrible pro QB.

 

[Thelonious]

Do you actually like sports?
Multiple posts of you talking down athletes because they don't meet your moral standard.
If they bother you that much, don't watch.
If you need to find your inspiration in athletes, perhaps there is something wrong with you.
As for Tebow, great human being, but terrible, not mediocre, terrible pro QB.

It is, as I said, a "guilty pleasure." You may be content to abandon your morals for a little titillation. The days when I am willing to make this compromise may be approaching an end, as you imply. We shall see. The notion that athletic prowess trumps decency is despicable. I may indeed be be approaching the time when it is a compromise I am no longer willing to make. It does not seem to me that there is anything reprehensible in my reservations. Perhaps you disagree. I could not care less.

 

[DoubleDeluxe]

It is, as I said, a "guilty pleasure." You may be content to abandon your morals for a little titillation. The days when I am willing to make this compromise may be approaching an end, as you imply. We shall see. The notion that athletic prowess trumps decency is despicable. I may indeed be be approaching the time when it is a compromise I am no longer willing to make. It does not seem to me that there is anything reprehensible in my reservations. Perhaps you disagree. I could not care less.

There is absolutely nothing reprehensible in your reservations.
That said, there is moral atrocities everywhere in society.
In sports
in schools
in poitics
in every facet of entertainment
In industry
in the church
I watch sports, for the sport
I do not watch because player x is a good or bad person
Does that make me morally compromised?

 

[203Pat]

MacAfee has tapped into the bro culture that is driving the popularity of a lot of podcasters like Rogan, Kill Tony, Theo Von, Barstool, etc. If the media environment shifts away from it, I think MacAfee and a lot of these guys will be in trouble.

The question is whether the bro-isphere has staying power or just a cultural phenomenon that implodes on itself like say the grunge culture that burned out only after 3-4 years or the hipster movement that has become lukewarm. It will all depend on the generation of young men who are part of this culture grow out of it and whether the next generation of young men buy into it.

Mcafee seems to be the yin to the "ESPN is woke" yang. The screaming WWE style meathead who likes to hang out with his bros and smash beer cans on his forehead but I agree he is definitely for the bros whose manliness would otherwise never allow them to watch "Woke" Sportscenter.

ESPN is basically live sports, a bro-down podcast, and hot takes screamed at max volume. I am still convinced that half of their ratings come from barbershops and bars running their channel 12 hours a day because I don’t know how anyone could watch their programming.

 

[203Pat]

Do you actually like sports?
Multiple posts of you talking down athletes because they don't meet your moral standard.
If they bother you that much, don't watch.
If you need to find your inspiration in athletes, perhaps there is something wrong with you.
As for Tebow, great human being, but terrible, not mediocre, terrible pro QB.

I will go to my grave thinking that lispy doofus has some skeletons in his closet. Something about him always weirds me out.

 

[XLIX]

I will go to my grave thinking that lispy doofus has some skeletons in his closet. Something about him always weirds me out.

Men of poor character are often “weirded out” by men of high character. They don’t understand concepts of selflessness, charity or brotherhood so they naturally are “weirded out” by those who display such behavior.

 

[pazrul72]

100% valid points.
However, we have all seen games where both defences couldn't stop a nose bleed. Games with none, or very few punts.
In those cases, and there have been playoff games like that, I don't like that a coin toss can effectively win a game, because neither D can get off the field.
The player safety argument is not valid for me.
Owners care about money and ratings, nothing else.
Enough people (fans/owners/media) complain and thus the rule change. Player safety had nothing to do with it, and never will.
You can make arguments for either side, and I'm not going to get on a pedestal and tell you I'm right, it's just my preference.

Oh owners care about money, cash, mola, dineros, ca ching first last and everything in between only. I agree in reality player safety is a big fat non issue but it SHOULD be and as a fan I would prefer quality football over quantity and that means not asking too much of players bodies. Though I do think they've gone too far not allowing defense to hit but that's another topic for another day.

Not trying to change your mind just trying to understand in the very specific kind of game you are talking about where both offenses score at will....what difference does the each get a possession make? It still ends on the team winning the coin flip being able to end the game on a field goal. Isn't that the winner is still decided by a coin flip?

Edit: It sounds to me like you prefer college OT both teams get a possession to match as many as it takes?

 

[DoubleDeluxe]

just trying to understand in the very specific kind of game you are talking about where both offenses score at will....what difference does the each get a possession make? It still ends on the team winning the coin flip being able to end the game on a field goal. Isn't that the winner is still decided by a coin flip?

You could make that argument sure.
I prefer that is determined on the field, where both offences and both defences have had a chance to influence the outcome in OT.

 

[203Pat]

Men of poor character are often “weirded out” by men of high character. They don’t understand concepts of selflessness, charity or brotherhood so they naturally are “weirded out” by those who display such behavior.

 

[XLIX]

 

[Thelonious]

There is absolutely nothing reprehensible in your reservations.
That said, there is moral atrocities everywhere in society.
In sports
in schools
in poitics
in every facet of entertainment
In industry
in the church
I watch sports, for the sport
I do not watch because player x is a good or bad person
Does that make me morally compromised?

If I were a more puritanical (or arguably 'better" person), I would not follow and support pro athletics at all, given that athletic prowess is clearly given greater weight in that area of our culture than moral rectitude. No honest observer will contend otherwise. But I do follow football. I have followed the Pats since they were the Boston Patriots, and continue to do so, But it is, as I have said, an increasingly guilty pleasure and my fandom is without question morally hypocritical. This bothers me, as I think I have implied, and I suspect there will come a day - i reflect on this every of-season - when I will no longer be able to stomach that hypocrisy.

I reject as pernicious any argument that because immortality is tolerated in one it ought to be tolerated in all. That is simply not an honorable argument.

Sports does not, as was once an article of faith ("The Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton."), "build character." I once researched this quite thoroughly in preparation for a public debate with another faculty member. There is virtually no actual, contemporary evidence that participation in team athletics contributes to moral development, and there is significant evidence that participation in male team sports in particular somewhat degrades a "capacity for moral reflection." I no longer feel that inclusion of athletics is justified in educational settings. Students should be encouraged to exercise and should be afforded opportunities to do so, but the old argument that athletics should be part of "educational curriculum" seems to me specious nonsense. There is, again, no evidence to support its inclusion on an educational basis, and the blatant indifference of leaders of pro - and college - athletics to the moral (and ,Lod o=k now, academic) qualities of athletes - notwithstanding whatever lip service may occasionally be paid to the notion - amply demonstrates that the asserted capacity of athletics to contribute to students' moral development is specious, careerist nonsense. That it amuses the students and affords alumni an occasions for reliving their youthful enthusiasm for athletics as entertainment is not a valid argument.

I do not have children (though I have taught many). If I did, I would not, both in grounds of exposure to injury and on the basis of the growingmoral bankruptcy of the athletic ethos, allow my child to play football in particular. When iIwas younger, I was a runner, and I remember reading in Dr. Jin Fixx's renowned book on the subject of running that adullts who participated in team sports in their youth are LESS likely to be regular exercisers in their adulthood than those who did not. Whether this is becaiuse of injjury or because they are less interested in such exertions when there is no one there to applaud their efforts, I do not know, but I find this fact instructive.

You imply that if I am serious about my reservations my contiued fandom is hypocritical is a fair one. I am painfully aware that it is. I suspect and hope to a degree that one day rather soon I will have the backbone to renounce this increasingly unfortunate habit.

 

[Patriot Missile]

Did Ryan Clark not realize during his time with the Steelers their record vs Brady (1-3), Manning (1-3) and Brees (1-2) were 3-8?

Ryan Clark didn’t have the heart to win those games. I’d call him a generational loser with that 3-8 record.

 

[ahmed]

Yeah that ******* does things like throw proms for special needs kids and facilitate adoption for orphaned children. What a piece of ****.

Where did I call him anything?

 

[Bill Lee]

Oh owners care about money, cash, mola, dineros, ca ching first last and everything in between only.

To me it's still crazy that NFL thinks people are going to keep managing costly relationships with five or six different corporate entities just to watch their games.

It makes sense to them because that's what makes them the most amount of money in the short term, but IMO it'll lead to big problems in the long term.

Pigs feed at the trough, hogs get slaughtered.

 

[StockingAnarchyNumber12]

Mahomes and his team were shut out in the 1st half of the 2018 AFC Championship game. The idea that how OT played out "wasn't fair" to Kermit and his team is moot. Play better in the first half and they wouldn't have even needed OT.

People also always talk about how that Chiefs player went offsides and gifted NE the championship. Correct me if I’m wrong but the drive before, weren’t we driving to only fumble the football? Why do people not talk about this more? The Chiefs get gifted a fumble recovery and nobody mentions that