Sports – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

The Colors of Bears Packers Weekend

Mother Nature and football rivalries

Chicago is a football crazy town at the moment getting ready for the first meeting this season of the Chicago Bears and the enemy to the north, the Green Bay Packers. Typically that first meeting comes along earlier in the season, but not this year.

Chicago football fans and teams are used to games played in snow, ice and frigid temperatures in December. Quite frankly, I find memories of some of those games to be some of my most cherished. That’s the scene for this year, with everything still covered under blankets of the white stuff. Apparently more is on the way over night.

That said, I’ve often found it a sort of odd, cruel joke of nature that the colors of the Chicago Bears’ biggest rivals, green and gold, are the most prominent colors we see in our streetscapes once the leaves begin turning in the fall. When the Bears play the Packers earlier in a football season under canopies of green and gold something just doesn’t quite feel right watching two teams from the Black and Blue division fight it out. It almost feels like Mother Nature has chosen sides.

That’s not the case this year. Perhaps it heralds a change in the football forecast as Green Bay has had the Bears’ number for quite sometime in this rivalry, regardless of the season’s colors.

You can also find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Chicago Bears Coach Rips His Shirt Off In Hot Dog Challenge After Bears Win

Free Hot Dogs!

Chicago is one crazy town. Especially when it comes to sports. Multiply that by a very large number when it comes to the Chicago Bears. After today’s win over last year’s Super Bowl champion Philadelphia Eagles the crazy is out of this world.

So much so that new Chicago Bears head coach Ben Johnson, who has become famous for his post game chant of Good, Better, Best after the Bears have been on what once seemed like an improbable winning streak, took up a challenge today and ripped his shirt off in the locker room to lead his now famous chant.

The challenge came from another wonderfully crazy Chicago favorite, The Wieners Circle, famous not only for its Chicago hot dogs, but also it’s wonderfully witty and irreverent statements on its sign, challenged the coach to take off his shirt during one of his post-game rallying cries. And Coach Johnson did so today after a thrilling victory.

Johnson’s acceptance of the challenge means the Wieners Circle is serving up free hot dogs this week.

Meanwhile the Chicago Bears keep serving up wins to a hungry sports town heading into the stretch run before the playoffs. There’s no question Johnson has changed the culture of the Bears. It’s a far cry from a year ago on Black Friday when the Bears fired head coach Matt Eberflus the day after a huge Thanksgiving day loss at Detroit. Perhaps equally important, Johnson is also rallying the entire Chicago Metro area after all we’ve been through this late summer and fall.

Put it another way that Chicagoans understand. He’s on his way to owning this town and certainly giving new meaning to the slogan, Bear Down!

Edit: Added the photo below from The Wieners Circle later in the evening.

Sunday Morning Reading

No tricks. No treats. Just thoughts and reading worth sharing.

The frights of Halloween have passed us by, but real life horrors remain and expand. Never had more gut wrenching emotions this weekend than spending it with my grandkids costumed in their bountiful innocence, avoiding what’s out there in a life they’ll one day have to face, but in the present doesn’t exist beyond the edges of any joyful moment of wonder and exuberance they can conjure. This week’s Sunday Morning Reading won’t touch on too much of that, but then again, I think it just did.

David Todd McCarty thinks amidst it all We Can Be Heroes. Making my grandkids laugh uncontrollably makes me feels damn close.

Adam Gropnik visits the home of the poet Wislawa Szymborska and returns with How To Endure Authoritarianism.

Will Bunch says It Didn’t take A Reichstag Fire To Burn Down Congress. He’s correct. It didn’t even take a match.

Some interesting writing on Artificial Intelligence and the Internet this week that’s worth your while, first up Cory Doctorow tackles When AI Prophecy Fails.

Will Douglas Heaven explains How AGI Became The Most Consequential Theory Of Our Time.

Tim Chinenov wonders Who’s Creating The Rage Bait That’s Radicalizing You?

Decidedly not on the Internet Friday night while trick-or-treating with my grandkids, though not in my besieged town of Chicago, I witnessed not only kids howling with fun, but adults who joined in on the fun with their own costumes and decorated homes, some elaborate, some not so, all with love and honoring a tradition I’ve never seen in the communities I’ve lived in. Many families set up in their driveways, some with small fire pits, some with tents, tables full of food (and candy), welcoming all comers to their Halloween semi-tall gating front yards. I also noticed the adults who just sat in their cars and slowly followed their children down the block. The entire experience reminded me of this piece from the summer in which Joan Westenberg says every creator pays a tax while the rest stay spectators in The Unbearable Lightness of Cringe. Pay the tax.

And closing out this week, kudos to both the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays for an excellent World Series, which the Dodgers won. Both teams played a splendid series and provided an incredible Game 7 finish to one of those contests you never want to see end, but know it must. Grown men over compensated for incredible talent, playing a kid’s game like kids, thrilling and heart breaking in the same breath. Too bad we don’t have any great, or even good, baseball writers to chronicle the moment these days.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

Shocked, Shocked To See A Gambling Scandal Involving Professional Sports

Big names, big money, big busts. No big surprise.

This week’s easily awarded Claude Rains Award goes to the federal government for busting up sports gambling in the NBA that’s intertwined with the Mafia.

In case you’re not up to snuff, Claude Rains played the character in the movie Casablanca who was “shocked” to discover gambling going on at that movie’s famous nightclub. If you’re not up on that film, then I guess you’d might be shocked that there is illegal gambling in sports involving players.

Several NBA big names are involved. According to news reports so far current Miami Heat player Terry Rozier apparently was involved in a what amounts to a points shaving scheme letting sources know that he would take himself out of a game early so bettors could bet the under on the points he would score. Portland Trail Blazers coach Chauncey Billups is accused of being involved in rigged poker games, serving as a “celebrity” piece of bait to lure others to the underground games. Some of those games used some impressive technology, including an X-Ray table to cheat the suckers.

I’ve survived several vices in my life. Gambling was one I never got hooked on. Not because I’ve always known that illegal gambling was synonymous with most sports, but because I was never good at it. If I’m surprised by any of this it’s that there is actually a bust of such a wide ranging gambling operation in this current environment. Folks in the know, know. And they’ve known long before legalized sports gambling became as ubiquitous as hot dog and beer vendors at baseball games in stadiums that now house sports books on site.

As an example of that, take a look at Mike Florio’s book Big Shield, about sports gambling, mostly in the NFL, but also touching on the NBA. (FYI I don’t do affiliate links.) Parts of what we know about this current bust sounds like they are lifted right from the plot of the book.

It will be interesting to see how the NBA handles this because I’m betting the two names unveiled this morning aren’t the only athletes involved. It will also be interesting to see how the other pro and college leagues responds. There’s big money to be made on sports gambling, especially if you’re inside the scam.

Sunday Morning Reading

Things AI can’t summarize: Nostalgia and what’s worth not forgetting.

A brief breather at home before travels resume, so there’s a full plate for this week’s Sunday Morning Reading including some nostalgia that shouldn’t be, some very interesting reading on AI, a defiant Chicago, and even a bit on gambling and baseball. Enjoy.

Chicago is under threat from a madman and you can feel the tension in the crisp fall air. Dan Sinker has written an excellent Benediction for Chicago On the Eve of Occupation. You don’t hear thoughts and prayers in the check out lines at the grocery store, just a growing sense of defiant preparation.

The pendulum seems to be swinging wildly in the opinion wars about Artificial Intelligence now that some are actually able to sift through the hype bubbles and see what’s what. EmptyWheel has an excellent 4-part series that is more than worth your time. It begins with A Normal Person’s Explainer On What Generative AI Is And Does and continues with The Other Half Of The AI Relationship, Proteins, Factories, And Wicked Solutions, and concludes with LLMs Are Lead.

Follow that excellent series with The Tech Industry Has a Dirty Secret: The More People Learn About AI, The Less They Trust it by Victor Tangermann. For what it’s worth, I’m also seeing AI naysayers riding the pendulum back the other way as they find ways to make some of the tools of this tool work for them. No AI could ever sort this out with a summary.

The Power We Use and The Power We Give is a brilliant piece by Philip Bump. As he transitions from his former job with The Washington Post he’s talking about where choosing to land next and why making the right choice about where to exercise what power the words you use live. This is a complicated moment in history on so many levels, well illustrated in this one man’s piece.

Also, here’s an excellent piece from Bump on the goings on in Chicago called Trump Wants To Make War On Chicago. He Picked The Wrong Fight.

Speaking of complexity, David Todd McCarty wonders why so many men find themselves alone later in life in Boys Don’t Cry, Men Don’t Bond.

Chris Armitage says It’s Time For Americans To Start Talking About “Soft Secession.” I take the point about the term and the concept. I’m not criticizing either or Armitage’s piece when I say this, but hell, when the president of the country mockingly riles up everyone with a threat to declare war on a city, I’m not sure there’s anything “soft” about anything anymore.

NatashaMH tackles political amnesia is what I think is a timely piece worth revisiting more than once. Our capacity to forget or set aside so much, so often, is astounding. Check out Inside The Fortress, Outside The Fire. Here’s the money quote:

As often as I can, I remind them how history is a reminder of the lives we lost and of how stupid we really are. “Senseless to the core. And once we’re done with the bloodshed, we write poetry.”

To clear the palette a bit, check out Tim Newcomb’s piece about how A Remarkable Discovery of A Document Shatters One of Shakespeare’s Biggest Mysteries.

Fact checking may be a dying art, given that most of the world has decided we can each have our own facts. Zach Helfand as a wonderful long piece on The History Of The New Yorker’s Vaunted Fact-Check Department. Too damn bad we have to file this under nostalgia.

Speaking of nostalgia, check out Bettor Up by J.R. Moehringer about gambling and baseball. Yes, it’s about gambling and baseball, but it’s the closest thing I’ve seen to the good sports writing (especially about baseball) that I grew up with.

(Image from Roman Kraft on Unsplash.)

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. If you’d like more click on the Sunday Morning Reading link in the category column to check out what’s been shared on Sunday’s past. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome.

The Lack Of Intelligence In Adding AI To Pro Football And Other Sports Broadcasts

Not a smart move.

Joe Reddy for the Associated Press writes up a nice piece about Amazon’s AI on its Prime Video broadcasts of NFL Football games. While Reddy’s piece covers the what is, (that’s his job) it doesn’t talk about the what for.

Here’s the thing, the prevailing wisdom in sports coverage these days seems to be that the games themselves must not be enough to hold fans attentions long enough for them to watch the commercials, so we need to add distraction upon distraction before, during, and after the games to keep the fans interested. Certainly one can say that this season’s slate of NFL games wasn’t that terrific, at least the ones I watched. (I watched more than Chicago Bears games, because the Chicago Bears don’t play real football.)

Sports used to be a pastime. Watching a game was a luxury on TV or in person. And that was before the tremendous cost of attending a game in person went nuts. In many places, you could always catch the local games on TV, but that’s an age coming to an end sooner than we’d all like.

Certainly, these AI generated statistics do deliver an interesting factoid now and again. So this is not to say there’s not any value. It’s just not redeeming enough in my opinion.

Amazon isn’t alone, All of the networks are fumbling over each other to have the latest, greatest whiz bang graphics fill up our screens. They’re not mining data, they are mining dollars. The insertions of stat upon stat, mid-game interviews with coaches and players all come at a cost.

In my humble opinion it’s a cost that cheapens not enhances. But that’s the way we’re headed, because eventually we can tack even more sponsors and ad dollars on to each stat and distraction.I’m sure betting on what the AI will predict will soon follow.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Some festive fare, and some not quite so for this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

Christmas and Hanukkah are almost upon us. There’s that traditional feeling of magic in the air, but it’s tempered a bit by apprehension about what may come in the New Year. But it’s Sunday and it’s before all of that, so it’s time to share some Sunday Morning Reading.

First up are a couple of Christmas gifts that seem appropriate both for their historical holiday context and in today’s current one. Shannon Cudd takes on The Surprisingly Corporate Retail Origin Story Behind ‘Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.’ Feels appropriate in this approaching age of oligarchy even if that age seemed a bit more innocent.

Follow that up with Olivia Jordan’s A Christmas Carol in Context: Dickens’ Beloved Festive Fable. Having directed many a production of ‘The Carol,’ I’m always amazed that its story of goodwill and redemption is at once so popular, yet always so quickly forgotten. It’s a puzzler. But then the great messages told around Christmas typically lose their resonance once we move away from the season.

Speaking of puzzlers, Generative AI is still on everyone’s mind and Gary Marcus thinks Generative AI Still Needs To Prove It’s Usefulness. Yes, he means beyond the hype it’s generated that has made some fabulously wealthy.

Journalism is having a moment and not a good one in today’s political climate. Most of that is of its own making and a good deal of it is by the owners. Podcaster and tech journalist Kara Swisher might be fed up enough to try and do something about it. She is seeking to round up investors to fund a bid to buy The Washington Post, after Jeff Bezo’s weak capitulation to the incoming Trump regime. I hope she succeeds. Meanwhile, John Gruber has written a terrific piece on this titled Journalism Requires Owners Committed To The Cause. He’s spot on.

Meanwhile Om Malik takes a look at the just how dark things may be for traditional media in these dark days in Musings On Media In The Age of AI. Here’s a quote:

None of the media business models will work in the future — neither advertising nor paywalls. Today’s content deals, like the one The Atlantic signed with OpenAI, are akin to the sugar high you get from soda. The sugar high is followed by the inevitable crash.

Jennifer Berry Hawes, Nat Lash, and Mollie Simon for ProPublica take a look at The Story Of One Mississippi County Shows How Private Schools Are Exacerbating Segregation. Good reporting on a story that somehow feels more than a little Dickensian.

Folks seek validation in many ways. Climbing mountains and overcoming obstacles can be a part of that game. So too is recognizing that “not everything in life needs to be conquered.” Check out Ain’t No Mountain High Enough from NatashaMH.

And to close out this week’s Sunday Morning Reading with a bit of grace, check out The Laundromat On Sixth Avenue by Grace 🎶 @notesofgrace

May whatever holiday you celebrate this time of the year bring you some peace and perhaps some joy. Here’s hoping we all can find that comfort surrounded by the company of family and good friends.

If you’re interested in just what the heck Sunday Morning Reading is all about you can read more about the origins of Sunday Morning Reading here. You can also find more of my writings on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. You can also find me on social networks under my own name.

Time for Relegation in American Sports

There’s never an end to winter for Chicago Sports fans.

Being a sports fan in Chicago can be as tough as enduring a Chicago winter. Sure, there are moments when you feel like your teams can compete with the rest of their respective leagues, but there are also times when Haley’s Comet comes around. Snow and ice eventually melt, but the cold, hard reality of lovably losing lingers on.

Caleb Williams sack Colts Getty.

Chicago fans are not alone. There are other franchises in most professional sports that have also adopted losing and poor competitiveness as a business model. “Wait ‘till next year” is a plea full of promise, but mostly without a pay off.

Unless you’re making bank by being in the game. Given the ever growing revenue these franchises make from media, gambling, and given the enormous salaries these players make it should be at the least embarrassing. Tack on the ever-increasing costs of tickets to an actual game, the obviously approaching move to stream every game for some sort payment, and the ridiculous extortion that rips off taxpayers when owners demand a new stadium, it’s not just embarrassing, it feels like a straight up fleecing of the flock. Al Capone had nothing on this crowd.

Let’s take the Chicago franchises as examples.

The Chicago Cubs keep looking like they might actually find a way to contend but don’t seem to know how to spend the money to compete effectively. Nor do they know how to manage and play the game of baseball when it comes to pitching and making out a lineup. If you add up the losses from the once revered World Series year hero Kyle Hendricks alone this year, the Cubs might actually still be in contention for a Wild Card spot. Yesterday’s heroes don’t win today’s games. Toss in the losses tacked on to their record from not actually having a real closer and you’re also talking a different story.

Here’s the thing, there’s not too many Chicago Cubs fans who didn’t see every one of those losses coming once the lineups were announced and Hendricks was the starter. Sure, he won a few games, but there are other bad baseball teams with anemic lineups too. Those same fans also knew mostly what was coming when Hector Neris was trotted out to save a game.

Then there are the Chicago White Sox, you know the team that’s about to set the Major League Baseball record for the most losses in a season. Ever. As I write this they’ve tied the record and have six chances to forever dwell in that infamy. I doubt any other team will ever live down to that record. The owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, wants a new stadium. I’ve got news. No new stadium is going to fix the roster, the management, or Jerry, who also owns the Chicago Bulls, another amateur outfit picking the pockets of customers pretending to be a pro team still trying to live off Michael Jordan’s legacy.

I don’t follow hockey enough to comment on the Chicago Blackhawks, but I do know things haven’t looked great on the ice for enough time to earn a recent first round draft choice that might offer some hope. If he can survive the hype.

Speaking of hype, there are the Chicago Bears. If ever there was an example of the dangers of overhyping this year and this team is it. You’d think the Bears were a new Crypto or AI scheme or a new iPhone. But they are just a bad meme stock. Sure, every team needs to give their fans hope, hoping to sell tickets. But this year’s overhype was overripe.

The Bears may have landed a couple of good players with all of the draft capital they banked after pretending to be a pro team for so long, but they sure haven’t figured out that in professional football you need an O-line to compete.

Like with the Cubs, every fan can see the faults on the field. It doesn’t do a team any good to spend money on great skill players if you don’t provide them the coaching and the offensive line to let them use those skills. Known as the graveyard of quarterbacks and receivers I’m surprised the owners don’t open their own grave digging business as anxious as they are to break ground on a new stadium. The Bears do have what looks like a stout defense this season, but you have to play both sides of the ball. Perhaps the Bears might do better not fielding an offense.

All is not lost for Chicago sports fans. Chicago’s women’s sports teams at least play like it matters, even if they don’t get the attention or the rewards they deserve.

But that’s the thing. The rewards in the male sports world in Chicago and elsewhere are reaching levels that are beyond the scope of most to comprehend. The salaries, the media revenues, the gambling gazillions, and all the concession and parking prices just continue to spiral even for a less than mediocre team.

Perhaps we should demand a relegation system in American sports. If a team and its ownership can’t cut it, then it gets demoted to an also-ran division and a smaller cut of the pie. Field a winning team and you can move back up to play with the big boys and feast at the adult table. The Open League model is a cruel business model, but it’s less cruel than continually playing a shell game on your paying customers.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

I Don’t Think We Need A Debate

Why have a debate when we already know what’s going to happen?

The hype machines are running full tilt for next week, whipping up a frenzy of sound and fury that will eventually signify something, but in the end nothing. I’m not talking about the annual run up to Apple’s announcements of new iPhones or the kickoff to the NFL season, both of which generate enough hype to overwhelm their respectve events. I’m talking about the debate between Kamala Harris and the decaying orange convicted felon/child rapist Donald Trump. I just don’t think we need to have a debate.

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Sure debates have been a part of political campaigns since time immemorial. It’s been accepted canon that we need to see how candidates stack up side by side and face to face. But we’ve long since wrung any substance out of these beauty contests in American politics. And this one promises to continue that trend and deepen the trench our politics has fallen into.

Let’s get real. We already know the candidates positions or lack thereof. Nothing new of substance will be announced during a debate. We also already know what the candidates will say of each other. The only suspsense is how Harris will choose to respond to the bullshit Trump will spew all over the stage. We also already know the debate moderators won’t bring up the high stakes that this election is really about. They’ll dance around January 6th and Trump’s stealing of classified material. They’ll also piroutette away from asking directly if Trump wants to dismantle the constitution and serve as a dictator.

It will be left up to the candidates to “fact check” each other, a task that offers no real benefit since Trump gish-gallopped out of Reality TV into this surreal reality we all deal with now. Perhaps, and more importantly, no matter how the debate goes we already know the spin that’s going to be spun in the hours and days after the debate. God could moderate this debate and declare a winner and it wouldn’t matter to most.

What I think also doesn’t matter and I’m guessing I’m not alone. Sure, there might be a relative handful of undecided voters who tune in to see what’s what, but call me cynical, I don’t think I want those folks deciding the future of the country given what we face and what we’re living through.

The debate will happen. Apple will also announce new iPhones and the NFL will kick off another season. It will be a week. And then we’ll move on to the next big thing to over hype, over ripen, wishing it would just be over.

You can find more of my writings on a variety of topics on Medium at this link, including in the publications Ellemeno and Rome. I can also be found on social media under my name as above.

Sunday Morning Reading

Summer begins to fade into fall with this week’s Sunday Morning Reading.

It’s Labor Day weekend here in the states, which means a three-day weekend, yielding more than a little extra time for some Sunday Morning Reading during the last lake visit of the season. Kick back and enjoy.

I’m a Shakespeare geek so my senses perked up when one of my favorite writers, Natasha MH. revealed her reasons for not appreciating the bard in Much Ado About Nothing, Something, and Everything. Excellent read and I know she’s not alone. But then lots of folks are wrong about lots of things.

Jeff Jarvis tells us How Murdoch Makes a Meme (and how the rest of the media helps it spread). No real secrets here. Jarvis is correct about Rupert Murdoch’s malign influence. The single most destructive human on the planet during his lifetime of muckracking.

Preetika Rana takes a look at how the political moment is ruffling the feathers in the halls and salons of big tech in Clash of the Tech Titans: Silicon Valley Fractures Over Harris vs. Trump.

Ted Chiang explores Why A.I. Isn’t Going To Make Art. I agree with the thesis, but I’ll add that it’s going to screw up a lot while trying.

Why are software glitches and problems called bugs? Check out Matthew Wills’ The Bug in the Computer Bug Story.

Private Equity continues to gobble up everything it can get its teeth into. Apparently Private Equity Is Coming for Youth Sports according to Ira Boudway.

And to close out this week as summer begins to fade into fall, Mike Tanier gives us The Amusement Park Falls Cold and Dark.