This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
In the spirit of opening day for the MLB season, this video celebrates one of the greatest, most underrated sports movies of all time, BASEketball.
Yes, it’s a crude, late 90s comedy starring the creators of South Park.
Yes, it’s full of toilet humor, scathing satire, and fart jokes.
And yes, it’s awesome in how it celebrates and lampoons everything we love about sports. Enjoy!
Filed under baseball, Jack's World, sports, YouTube
It’s finally here!
Today is a day football fans and sports fans, in general, have been looking forward to all year!
It’s Super Bowl Sunday! And as a lifelong football fan and sports fan, I couldn’t be happier.
Now, that’s not to say I’m happy with the match-up. I’ll go on record as saying that, when the NFL playoffs began, one of the last match-ups I wanted to see was the Kansas City Chiefs against the San Francisco 49ers. Beyond just being a repeat of Super Bowl LIII, these are two teams that most NFL fans outside their respective fanbases are sick of seeing in the playoffs.
I’ll also go on record as saying that I was rooting against these teams in every NFL playoff game this year. I would’ve much rather seen my local team, the Baltimore Ravens, make it to the Super Bowl. I also wouldn’t have minded seeing the Detroit Lions, the Buffalo Bills, or even the Green Bay Packers in the Super Bowl.
But in football, you don’t have much control over how games play out or how the ball bounces. Like it or not, the 49ers and the Chiefs played better than every team they faced. They made big plays when they needed to be made. They took advantage of their opponents’ mistakes. Hate the match-up all you want, but there’s no question that these two teams earned their right to play in Super Bowl LVIII.
At this point, I’m just hoping for a good, competitive game. That’s what we got last year when the Chiefs inched out a win over the Philadelphia Eagles. I hope we get something similar this year. It’s bound to be different, given the make-up of both teams. This Chiefs team is not the same offensive powerhouse they’ve been in years past, but they have shown that they can win defensive struggles while still putting up points. And the 49ers have what might be one of the deepest rosters, in terms of skill position, as well as one of the best coaching staffs in all off football.
On top of all that, this will be the first Super Bowl to ever take place in Las Vegas. For a city that didn’t have a single professional sports team six years ago, that’s quite a moment. And having been to Las Vegas, I expect there to be a party like no other before, during, and after the game. It is what Las Vegas does best and I hope it sets a good precedent for future Super Bowls.
While I wish I could join that party, I’m perfectly content with my yearly Super Bowl setup. Later this afternoon, I’ll start cooking a large batch of chicken wings. I’ll set a table up in front of my coach, load it with snacks and beer, and turn my surround-sound speaker system to watch the game. And when kickoff finally comes, I’ll be ready!
I don’t know who will win. So long as it’s a good game, I don’t really care. It’s the Super Bowl. It’s about more than the game. It’s the culmination of everything this past NFL season has been building towards. Having followed it since the preseason, I am so ready!
Filed under NFL, sports, Uncategorized
I love football. I hope I’ve made that abundantly clear by now.
And this is one of the best times of the year to be an NFL fan. It’s the start of the NFL playoffs. The regular season is over. The best teams have set themselves apart. And now, it’s time to see who is ready to make a championship run to the Super Bowl.
As an NFL fan, these next few weeks are often among the best. But this year, we encountered an unexpected complication. One of the biggest matchups of Wild Card Weekend, the Kansas City Chiefs and the Miami Dolphins, was not available to watch on standard broadcast or basic cable. Instead, fans had to use the Peacock streaming service to watch it.
Now, let me go on record as saying I fucking hate this.
Seriously, fuck the NFL for making this kind of bullshit deal. This isn’t some random regular season game, nor is this a streaming service that most people have. This is the goddamn playoffs! These are all national games that, for over 50 years, have been available to watch on basic broadcast and cable. It seems so simple, putting a major sports event on TV in a form where most people can watch it.
But this time, the NFL decided to fuck all those loyal fans over by essentially locking a playoff game behind a goddamn paywall. And this is after they recently repackaged NFL Sunday Ticket with YouTube TV for nearly $500! I know the NFL is the biggest sports league in America by a very wide margin. I also know football is the most popular sport by an even wider margin. But this is just bullshit greed taken to a whole new level.
And, given how the NFL seems to not give a damn about fan outrage, I have a feeling this won’t be the last time. Peacock, which is owned by NBC Universal, paid the NFL a lot of money to stream that game exclusively. They don’t care if it pisses off fans. They just care if it gives them a small uptick in subscribers. And because fans have little power in wake of all that money, this is going to set a bullshit precedent that nobody outside executives likes.
Even though the outrage even drew ire from congressmen, I don’t know if that will change anything. I just know that, if this bullshit deal made both sides extra money, then they’re going to do it again and it won’t matter how pissed off fans are. That’s just the world we live in.
So, in wake of this level of hopelessness, I just want to say one more time fuck the NFL! Fuck NBC Universal! And fuck Peacock!
Filed under NFL, sports, television
Today is a wonderful, special day.
Today is the first Sunday of Week 1 of a new NFL season.
For fans of football, this is among the holiest of days. This is the equivalent of Christmas, Thanksgiving, Easter, and the 4th of July all rolled into one. There are no elaborate decorations or parades, but that just makes it even easier to celebrate and appreciate.
For me, personally, it’s one of the best days of the year. I’ve always been a football fan, going back to the days when I spent entire Sunday afternoons watching games with my dad, my brother, and my uncle. Then, the NFL gave us the wondrous creation that is NFL Redzone and that really made Sundays during NFL season an experience worth treasuring.
Seriously, I cannot overstate how much NFL Redzone has enhanced and improved the experience of watching NFL football. There’s just something magical about turning on my TV at 1:00 p.m. on a Sunday afternoon, turning up the volume, and not touching my remote for the next seven hours while commercial-free football plays out before my adoring eyes.
Today, I plan on carrying out my preferred NFL Sunday ritual that I’ve shared before, complete with a fresh pizza and a six-pack of beer. However, this season will come with an additional bonus that I hope further enhances the experience.
Earlier this summer, I decided to shop around for a new couch. The one I’ve been using has definitely showed its age. It’s not even something I bought. Shortly after I moved into my current home, I needed furniture. And the couch I ended up getting was just an old loveseat my uncle had been looking to get rid of. So, he gave it to me for free once he found out I had moved to a new place.
That loveseat served me well, but it was old even when I got it. Now, after years of sitting on it, I’m ready for an upgrade. So, a couple weeks ago, I purchased a brand new couch on which I hope to spend every Sunday afternoon in glorious comfort. This isn’t used. I didn’t get this discount as a garage sale. I actually saved money to get it and I can attest that makes a difference.
It’s been a long, arduous wait for a new NFL season. But later today, that wait will finally end! A new NFL season is here. So, for the rest of the year and most of January, my Sundays will revolve entirely around watching football. Being able to do so on a new, comfortable couch is just a hell of a bonus.
This is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World.
In this video, I make my picks and predictions for the 2022 NFL season. Last year, I made a lot of predictions that did NOT pan out. After successfully predicting the Los Angeles Rams would win the Super Bowl two years ago, it felt like everything evened out.
But now that everything is balanced once more, I’m going to try and speculate on how the 2023 season will play out. Like previous years, I’ll go division by division. Then, I’ll offer my pick for who I think will win Super Bowl LVIII. Enjoy!
Filed under Jack's World, NFL, sports, YouTube
Yesterday marked the end of an era for multiple generations of football fans (again).
Tom Brady, the greater quarterback to ever play this game in any era, announced that he was retiring from the NFL (again) after 23 season.
Granted, he made the same announcement around this time last year, only to come out of retirement in less than two months. However, this time is supposedly different. This time, Brady himself made the announcement via social media. There was nothing leaked, teased, or polished for a press release. He just said he was retiring in his own words.
Whether retirement will stick this time remains to be seen. Seeing this announcement, I genuinely believe he’s sincere. Brady had a rough season in 2022. Age, it seems, has finally caught up with him. And unlike last time, he already has a job waiting for him as an analyst that promises to pay him millions for years to come. That would imply that this time, it’s for real. He’s going to stay retired.
However, we’ve seen this sort of thing happen before. Brett Favre famously retired multiple times and came back multiple times. He believed he could still play at a high level and take his team to a Super Bowl. Will Brady pull the same stunt? I don’t know. I just know that once the 2023 season draws near, those competitive juices that every great athlete has are going to fester. Will Brady be able to resist the call? Will he be able to walk away after doing this for 23 seasons?
Only time will tell. We probably won’t know for sure until kickoff of the new season later this years.
In the meantime, I’ll just take a moment to thank Tom Brady for everything he’s done for the NFL and the sport. Unless you follow the NFL closely, it’s impossible to overstate just how dominant Brady has been in this most competitive of sports. Some have compared him to Michael Jordan. I honestly think Brady has exceeded Michael Jordan. He has more championship, greater longevity, and more records that will likely never be broken.
If you just run down every meaningful stat for a quarterback, Tom Brady is number one in pretty much every category. He has seven Super Bowl rings, nearly double that of his idol, Joe Montana. He’s thrown for more yards than Brett Favre. He’s thrown more completions than any quarterback to ever play at this level. And his records in the playoffs are almost too numerous for me to list.
Love him or hate him, Tom Brady is the greatest quarterback of all time. He has set records that will likely never be broken. I was still in grade school when Brady was a rookie. He’s been a starting QB in the NFL for the entirety of my adult life. The NFL will be very different without him.
But his time has come. Even the greatest must eventually retire and Tom Brady has more than earned it. So once again, thank you Tom Brady. Thank you for everything you did for the NFL and the sport.
Now please, go enjoy your retirement.
It’s official!
Championship Sunday is over and the match-up for Super Bowl LVII is set. This year, it’ll be the Kansas City Chiefs versus the Philadelphia Eagles. Having followed every week of the NFL since pre-season back in August, I can’t say I’m too surprised. I can also formally apologize for my pre-season predictions. I was off in terms of who I thought would make it to the Super Bowl, but not by much.
Many of the teams I picked did make the playoffs. Some were huge disappointments. See the Denver Broncos. But by record and by ranking, the Chiefs and the Eagles were the best teams in the NFL.
Patrick Mahomes was the best quarterback by most measures.
Jalen Hurts was the most dynamic in terms of running an offense.
The Eagles had a great defense that kept games close and allowed the offense to work.
The Chiefs didn’t need much defense because their offense was such a powerhouse.
Neither of these teams played one another at any point in the season. Both also had their ups and downs throughout the year. The Chiefs lost to the Bills in the regular season early on. And the Eagles suffered a major upset against Washington on a Monday Night game. But in football, it’s not how you start the season. It’s how you finish.
Both teams finished strong.
Both earned a right to compete for a championship.
Now, they’ll get their chance on February 12, 2023.
I think I speak for all NFL fans and football fans in general when I am so ready!
Firstly, and most importantly, fuck everyone who would exploit a situation like what happened on Monday Night Football between the Buffalo Bills and the Cincinnati Bengals.
Seriously, fuck you to the ends of the multiverse.
I apologize for my crude choice of words, but that’s just something I just had to get out. I knew as soon as it happened on live TV that there were going to be assholes who used this grim situation to push a bullshit agenda. I could even surmise the main details of that agenda and accurately predict how they probably voted in the last Presidential Election. I won’t name names, but it doesn’t take much to surmise who I’m talking about.
Here’s a clue. Most of these same assholes still won’t admit who won that last Presidential Election I just mentioned.
Since this situation is still ongoing, I’ll just relay what is known at the moment I’m writing this. In the first quarter of the Bills/Bengals game, Bills safety Damar Hamlin suffered a major blow to the chest. After getting up initially, he fell back to the ground and suffered what appeared to be a serious cardiac episode. It was so bad and so serious that the medical staff had to perform CPR and AED before sending him off to a nearby hospital for further treatment.
As a result, the NFL opted to suspend the game. As someone who has been watching football all his life, I cannot overstate just how serious a situation has to be for the league to stop a game in the first quarter. Absent a serious weather event, this is quite unprecedented. There have been serious injuries during games in the past. In fact, one Lions player famously died on the field in the middle of a game due to an undiagnosed heart condition.
For now, we don’t know how serious Hamlin’s injury is or what his prognosis is. At the very least, please keep the man and his family in your thoughts. Also, consider donating to Hamlin’s charity. That’s the most anyone can do right now. It’s entirely up to Hamlin and the doctors treating him now.
But not surprisingly, it didn’t take long for those assholes I mentioned earlier to derail this terrible situation for their own benefit. They basically used Hamlin as an excuse to push their insane, bullshit anti-vaccine conspiracies. Their terrible logic is that Hamlin was likely vaccinated. As a result, it is the likely culprit of is condition and the “mainstream media,” also known as media that says things they don’t like, is hiding the truth.
Again, that’s total bullshit.
And again, fuck every person pushing that agenda.
Damar Hamlin is a human being in a life-threatening situation. He’s not a prop for your political agenda or your bullshit anti-vaccine agenda. And if you in any way use what happened to him to propagate your own bullshit, then you are beyond despicable. Just calling you an asshole is the nicest label I can use. There are plenty of other words I would love to use, but I’d rather not draw the ire of the FCC.
Right now, the most likely cause of Hamlin’s condition is something called Commotio Cordis. It’s not common, but it’s not unknown either. It’s basically a perfect storm of events that happens when someone, such as an athlete playing a contact sport, suffers just the right kind of trauma to the chest area while the heart is in a certain part of its rhythm. It’s akin to two bullets hitting one another in mid-air. It’s extremely rare, but it does happen.
That diagnosis could change as more information emerges over the course of the next few days. Hopefully, Hamlin makes a full recovery. At that point, I don’t doubt the same assholes who used his experience for their own end will move onto their next bullshit grift regarding vaccines, elections, or anything the media says that they don’t like.
To those same people, I have one final message.
Fuck you.
Fuck you and fuck all the way off.
Filed under Current Events, NFL
The following is a video from my YouTube channel, Jack’s World. This video covers my picks and predictions for the 2022 NFL season. Last year, something remarkable happened in that I actually picked the winner of Super Bowl LVI, the Los Angeles Rams.
Now, I consider that to be a lucky fluke.
But I still hope that gives extra weight to my picks this year. Like previous years, I’ll go division by division. Then, I’ll offer my pick for who I think will win Super Bowl LVII. Enjoy!
Filed under Jack's World, NFL, YouTube
It’s finally here, football fans!
The most holy of days for lovers of all things football, NFL, and sports spectacles!
It’s Super Bowl Sunday and later today, Super Bowl LVI will kickoff in Los Angeles between the Los Angeles Rams and the Cincinnati Bengals. The wait is almost over and words cannot describe how great it feels.
Now, I hope I’ve made my love of football clear. I also hope someone acknowledges that my preseason predictions for this season were a lot more accurate than usual. I managed to predict the Rams making it to the Super Bowl this year. Given how off my predictions usually are, that only makes the Super Bowl this year that much more satisfying.
I hope everyone is doing something special to enjoy this day. Even if you’re not, I hope you can still appreciate what an amazing spectacle this is. By nearly every measure, the Super Bowl is one of the biggest events in all of sports. It’s something hundreds of millions of people tune in to watch. Regardless of how you feel about sports, it’s a big deal.
Every year, I build my entire weekend around it. This year is no exception. I’ve stocked up on chicken wings. I plan on making a couple dozen just an hour or so before kickoff. I’ve also stocked up on beer, chips, and premium dip. It will likely be the least healthy meal I’ll have all year, but I’ll make up for it at the gym tomorrow. Today, it’s all about football.
Now, I’m not a huge fan of either team, but this is one year where the stories behind these teams are such that you can root for both. The Rams haven’t won a Super Bowl since 1999 and their quarterback, Matthew Stafford, hadn’t even won a playoff game until this year.
The Bengals are an even more remarkable story. Not only have they never won a Super Bowl, they hadn’t won a playoff game since 1990. They were such a bad team for so long that people used to call them the Bungles. Now, they’re in the Super Bowl, preparing to play for their first championship, having taken down the top ranked Titans and Chiefs along the way.
Only one team can win it, but both teams deserve to be here. I look forward to seeing who earns that iconic Lombardi Trophy.
So, whatever your Super Bowl ritual might be, I hope it goes smoothly. I also hope it involves plenty of friends, food, and cheering. It’s a wonderful day for football and for sports. Let’s all just enjoy it for all its worth.
Let’s go Rams!
Let’s go Bengals!
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