Weekly Takeaways

You readers are in for a treat. You know why? Because basketball season has started and I now have three major sports leagues to draw from when doing my weekly takeaways. (Baseball, of course, doesn’t count because you don’t want to read about it and I don’t want to pretend like I know what is happening in baseball.)

So welcome to the very first edition of weekly takeaways featuring some basketball talk!

The first thing that I took away from this weekend is that Alabama is on a whole different level than the rest of college football. Wow. I’m beginning to believe that Alabama could in fact defeat the Cleveland Browns. In the past Bama has dismantled division 2 schools and lower level division 1 schools while managing to find ways to win big games against other SEC schools and the National Championship. But now Alabama has gotten so good that they are making other SEC schools look like Delaware and Colombia. In consecutive weeks Alabama beat Ole Miss and Vanderbilt by a combined score of 125-3. While normally a defensive powerhouse, Sophomore QB Jalen Hurts has taken the Bama offense to the next level, scoring more than 40 points in five of the team’s seven games this season. While the rest of the collegiate world beast each other up, Alabama is quietly waiting for whoever is the unlucky team that has to face them in Atlanta in January.

Second, a surprise team will represent the NFC in the Super Bowl. The Green Bay Packers look like the 49ers when Aaron Rodgers doesn’t take the field, and after Rodgers underwent surgery on a broken clavicle, it appears as if the Packers are going to look like the 49ers for the rest of the season. The Cowboys can’t seem to find a way to win close games with Ezekiel Elliot and so I have little faith that they’ll win close games when Elliot is serving his 6 game suspension. The Falcons just blew a 17 point lead at home to Jay Cutler, Case Keenum isn’t taking the Vikings to the Super Bowl and the Seahawks seem incredibly inconsistent offensively. That leaves one team that I believe can get all the way to the Super Bowl. I won’t spoil the surprise for you so all I’ll say is that the team’s name rhymes with Schmiladelphia Schmeagles.

Third, basketball is the most exciting sport in the world. I owe basketball an apology. I was asked a few weeks ago what my favorite sport was and after contemplating my decision I answered “college football.” I should have never been so short sighted and foolish. At the time college football was just starting so I was caught up in the excitement of college football kickoff weekend. But now basketball is back and I realize how stupid and naive I was. I forgot how exciting it was to watch high-flying dunks like we witnessed in the Cavs-Celtics. I had forgotten how much fun it is to watch the Warriors and Rockets make a million contested threes every game. I had forgotten how interesting the back stories and underlying stories lines in the NBA are. Will Lebron and Kyrie ever be friends again? How will CP3 and James Harden gel? Can Westbrook, with the help of Melo and Paul George challenge the Warriors? Can the Cavs dethrone the Warriors? Will Joel Embiid play more than 10 minutes? Excitement is in the air and I’m breathing it all in, actually that might just be Salt Lake City’s inversion.

My fourth takeaway is that football doesn’t even know its own rules. Holy Cow. Each week I become more dumbfounded at the calls that are made during football games. Last week it was the horrendous call on Ohio Sate’s Ward who was thrown out of the game for so-called “targeting.” This week it is the inconsistency of “ball control” calls that had me yelling at my TV. I was watching a college game on Saturday in which a call was made of an incomplete pass. The ball dragged across the ground however after replay it appeared as if the ball was secured in the player’s arms and never moved despite its contact with the turf. After a comment from the color analyst on TV that the player “did not have enough control,” the call of an incomplete pass was made. Fast forward to Sunday in a game between the Jets and Patriots. A Jets player secured a catch and while diving for the end zone he lost control of the ball. The Jets player regained control of the ball only after he had fallen out of bounds and after further review the play was ruled a fumble out of bounds in the end zone which by rule resulted in a touch-back and the Patriot’s ball. The announcers, however, deemed the call the “worst call [they had] ever seen,” and that the player had maintained enough control of the ball. So how much control is enough control? In one instance the ball never moved but it wasn’t enough control. In the other instance the ball was moving in the air but it was viewed as enough control. So as a fan, all I ask for is consistency when it comes to the rules of football.

Finally, Nike did an awful job with the new NBA jerseys. When it was announced that Nike would take over as the NBA’s sponsor in 2017 I was excited to say the least. No other sports clothing company does it better than Nike. Would you rather own a pair of Nike Hyperdunks or Adidas Cray Lights? Hyperdunks any day. So I had high hopes of what Nike would do with the new NBA uniforms. But so far they have been nothing short of disappointing. First, they created only one new and original uniform design, that of the Timberwolves. But every other team’s uniform design are either exactly the same or worse than before. Nike also got our collective hopes up when they announced each team would also have two alternate options, which were for the most part all a huge disappointment so far. Where are the mountains on the new Jazz uniforms? Why do only a small handful of teams get throwback uniforms? Not only has Nike dropped the ball on the design aspect of the uniforms, but the quality has been horrible. Tyler Ennis lost an entire number on his jersey after it was practically torn off, and in the Cavs opener against the Celtics Lebron’s jersey ripped on the center of his back. Needless to say it hasn’t quite been the best start to the Nike era of NBA uniforms that we were all hoping for.