Sports – Life on the Wicked Stage: Act 3

Yikes! Chicago Bears Caleb Williams Will Be On The Cover of Madden NFL 27

Cursed or not?

Chicago Bears football fans are gasping with excitement and stocking up on antacid today after it was announced that the team’s quarterback, Caleb Williams, has been picked to grace the 2027 cover of the popular game Madden NFL.

Promotional cover art for the video game "Madden 27" features an action shot of Chicago Bears Quarterback Caleb Williams mid-air preparing to toss a pass against a deep blue sky.

It’s certainly great recognition for the quarterback who had some amazing moments on the field last year in a surprising Bears season. He’s an exciting, if sometimes erratic player who managed to pull out last minute victories with some spectacular plays more times than not. Of course the other side of that coin is that more consistent play by the quarterback and the team should theoretically lead to less of those hair raising/pulling moments. But a win is a win.

However, the cover recognition is also believed by quite a few to be a curse for the player chosen, presaging down seasons or possible injury. According to CBS Sports 14 or the 24 players chosen between 2001 and 2024 had less than spectacular seasons after being so anointed.

Whether or not it’s a curse, who knows. But it does just add another level of anxiety for Bears fans already on edge heading into a season where we should find out what this team is made of after a season that surprised most. With the upcoming season schedule rated as the toughest in the NFL and a number of players who led the way last year lost to free agency or retirement, it was already shaping up to be nerve wracking.

It’s not easy being a Chicago sports fan.

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. This site does not use affilate links.

Streaming Services and Sports

Streaming fantasies

I have a fantasy. It’s a sports fantasy. Actually it’s a sports viewing fantasy. Perhaps it’s an entertainment streaming fantasy. Regardless, it’ll never be fulfilled.

Just about every streaming service has jumped onto the live sports streaming bandwagon. That’s understandable. Sports attracts eyeballs. Eyeballs equal money. Money makes the balls bounce.

Streaming services that I turn to insist on pushing their sports investments on to the top of their poorly designed homepages, forcing the user to scroll if they aren’t interested. Of course streaming services homepages are notoriously poor user experiences to begin with.

Like I said, I get all the reasons behind this. I get that the streaming executives have overpaid for the right to stream whatever they’re streaming and are trying to capitalize on the investment, on the way to raising prices to cover that cost, and perhaps find a few new viewers who might not already be fans. It feels very much like my grandkids screaming “watch this, watch this!”

To be fair, things have gotten better. Streaming services that feature live sports have at least reduced some top line over exposure along the way, or provided tabs for different categories that segment sports and other viewing genres. But they could go further.

So, here’s my fantasy.

Give users an option to not see sports programming so prominently displayed on the already atrociously and algorithmically designed homepages. A simple switch that says “give me more of this” or “give me less.” Trust me, as someone who likes to view sports, I’ll find a game or a match that I’m interested in if I want it. And I’m sure there are plenty of users who will want to see sports programming prominently featured. So let viewers choose. Those who run these networks should be interested in that choice.

Streaming services could also extend a give me more or less feature to other programming. How many times do you need to see the same title displayed in different categories, or after you’ve watched it, or have to scroll past a genre you have no interest in?

Whether it’s sports or any other entertainment genre it seems to me it would be better to gauge interest ahead of time, instead of waiting for viewership numbers after the fact. Who knows, it might be a good way to provide metrics that might actually be meaningful when it comes to thinking about where these services are going to spend money in the future.

Like I said, it’s a fantasy.

Baseball Is Back

Play Ball!

Baseball is back. Or so they tell me. Opening day kicks off today and the long hard march begins to whatever the season will yield.

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While I primarily root for the Chicago Cubs I’m a baseball fan and like with most sports I follow, I’m most interested in a good game more than I am rooting for a particular team or matchup. I like to see close contests and races, not runaway division races.

I follow the White Sox as well, because hey, I live in a town with both American and National League clubs. Interleague play between the American and National leagues has taken some of the specialness out of that. And since the White Sox have felt like a minor league team for so long it’s a change in the game that works in my favor.

Chicago papers used to have great baseball writers. Those days are gone. But this column from Paul Sullivan caught my eye as we head into the season. I don’t think it ranks up there with the best of years ago, but Baseball Returns After A Long, Hard Winter, And We’re Grateful To Welcome It Home, does sum up how most Chicagoans feel as we approach opening day in a game that keeps changing, but never changes.

But for much of the next seven months, a three-hour game provides a temporary respite from spiking gas prices, growing airport lines, conflicts abroad and madness at home. Any chance to ignore the real world and immerse ourselves into a fantasy world, even one with nonstop gambling ads, is most welcome.

No, the game is not as good as it used to be. Just ask your parents.

He captures the feelings, the changes, and the feelings about the changes well. When he says radio is still the best medium to enjoy the game, I agree. I listen to the radio broadcast most times I’m watching a game because TV commentators are more carnival barkers than they are baseball announcers.

It also reminds me of my younger years when that was the only way I could catch a game except for the Game of The Week on Saturdays. That always felt like a terrible Catch 22. I’d rather be out playing the game on a Saturday afternoon and would have to give that up to watch a game with my grandfather.

When cable TV game along to our neck of the woods, so too did Chicago’s WGN which brought Cubs games into my world. So I became a long suffering fan long before I moved to the Windy City in an apartment eight blocks from Wrigley Field.

The Cubs were terrible then, and if you waited until after the beginning of the third inning you could saunter into ball park and watch the rest of the game without a ticket. A friend and I did that often.

Of course living in Chicago in later years and watching the Cubs finally win a World Series a decade ago was one of the sports highlights of my life. Those were certainly different days in what seems like a different world.

But a triple is still one of the most exciting plays in sports. The games are back. Let’s hope for some good ones and a few triples along the way.

Play ball!

Sunday Morning Reading

Football, opera, dying newspapers and politics are on the menu

Somehow amidst all we’re living through in the dual state of America it’s the Sunday of the Super Bowl. A dual state that will feature dueling half time spectacles. Apparently we have nothing better to fight over. Go figure. Even so, there’s Sunday Morning Reading to share on a variety of topics amidst it all. I’m avoiding links on Artificial Intelligence this Sunday, because I shared a few in a post on that topic earlier. If you’re interested you can find that here. So, onward.

Kicking off, Jason Snell penned a post on Apple’s Long History With The Super Bowl. Call me old fashioned but when a sports contest becomes as much about the commercials and half-time shows, I don’t think anybody wins regardless of how many points anyone scores.

If football or sports aren’t your cup of tea, perhaps the arts are. Ronald Blum tells us about ‘Monster’s Paradise,’ Lampooning US President Donald Trump, Has World Premiere At Hamburg Opera. It’s inspired by Alfred Jarry’s play “Ubu Roi.” I imagine it will be quite some time, if ever, we see this on an American opera stage. Although I can dream of seeing it at the Kennedy Center, restored from Trump’s desecrations long after he’s gone. (This week’s image above is a publicity still from the Hamburg State Opera.)

Media attention on ICE atrocities may be fading at the moment, but ProPublica continues to do excellent investigative work on the subject even after the headlines fade. Check out The Real Story Behind The Midnight Immigration Raid On A Chicago Apartment Building by Melissa Sanchez and Jodi S. Cohen.

It’s tough to keep up with the avalanche of things rolling our way. That’s certainly been true with the torrent of news surrounding the partial release of the Epstein files. There’s so much information that I can’t imagine anyone trying to sum it all up, and yet, Elizabeth Lopatto might have come damn near close in her piece, How The Men In The Epstein Files Defeated #MeToo. It’s a bigger article with an even more powerful scope than the #MeToo in the headline suggests.

Also addressing the scope of that mess, Anand Giridharadas says It’s So Much Bigger Than Epstein. I agree.

JA Westenberg tackles The Coherence Premium. No real hints here beyond this quote: “When I say coherence, I mean something specific: the degree to which every part of an operation derives from the same understanding, the same model of reality and set of priorities and tradeoffs.”

Ashley Parker writes about The Murder of The Washington Post.

Meanwhile, David Todd McCarty suggests that The Return of The Local Newspaper may be the path to reclaiming power over information and securing democracy. It certainly might beat the ways we seem to be trying now

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.

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.

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.

We Have To Do Better. At What Exactly?

The time is out of joint

We’re burning up the words and phrases we use for comfort faster than out-of-control wildfires. We’re drowning meaning under flash floods of ravaging frequency. We’re dancing around sensitivities like so many angels on the head of a pin, ignoring that the pin has been smashed into smithereens by a sledge hammer. We keep looking for better angels of our nature to appear but they seem to have given up the ghost trying to reign things in. The time is out of joint.

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The meaningless phrase of the moment this morning that has gotten my goat is “we have to do better.”

What the hell does that even mean?

We pretend that everyone cares about the outrage of political violence. Not everyone does. There are those that care only enough to use it to their own advantage and want to see more of it. Yes, it’s about power. But it’s increasingly become about the money, because you can make boatloads of it preaching hate and division. You know, free speech and all of that.

We have to do better.

There’s no “better” to do when it comes to language, because language only expresses what is felt inside. About self. About others. About domination. About fear. And when the “better” is about better profits… well, that’s the world we live in and at the moment it’s what’s making the world spin faster.

Step away from politics for a second.

When a sports team loses and coaches and players say “we have to do better” or “we have to play better” it means nothing. Of course they do. They lost.

When a business doesn’t meet its sales targets, they always say “we have to do better.” Unless of course they’re spinning losses into wins hoping no one pays attention.

Shift back to political world.

The spinning happens there as well, with a speed that can burn through the surface it’s spinning on. Yet, it’s a bit late to want to do better after the bullet has struck a target so broadly painted.

We can no longer expect appeals to better angels or doing better to work. It’s a naive call to a different past that in many respects never existed, even though on the surface it seemed to. We should no longer be afraid of phrases like civil war, because in case you haven’t noticed, we’re in one. People are being killed in their homes, at rallies, in schools, just about in any place. Sad fact of history, what we want to believe is random violence by extremists always happens before someone declares that a war is on. But hey, we’ve got a deranged lunatic of a leader who wants to meme one into being, while we spend so much time trying to figure out what we know is the why of it.

You can argue that the extremists aren’t the ones with the guns, but the ones with the big mouths and the AI bots at their command. No one is going to clamp down on the rhetoric any more than they are going to clamp down on guns, and it has already bubbled over into a toxic stew. How are you going to “do better” when all sides claim their way is the better way? I don’t have an answer for that question, because I’m afraid I actually know the answer and there’s nothing “better” about it.

The only thing we have to “do better” at is recognizing the horrors of the moment we’re in and facing it for the reality that it is. You and I certainly don’t want to see and hear what we’re seeing and hearing. But we’re too far down that road to not acknowledge we’ve arrived at a terrible place.

Hamlet says:

‘The time is out of joint: O cursed spite,
That ever I was born to set it right!’

I feel like we’re all caught in Hamlet’s dilemma. Wanting to fix it, but afraid to the point of cursing what will eventually need to be done.

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.

A Nice Thanksgiving Day Tonic for Football Fans: ‘It’s In The Game’ Madden NFL

Fun behind the scenes look at the creation if the popular Madden NFL video game.

Football is, for better or worse, a Thanksgiving Day ritual. There’s always a game playing from morning until night. Before, during, and after meals. Before, during, and after naps. Sometimes the stakes don’t matter. Sometimes they do. It’s may not be the main course, but it’s that side-dish that’s shows up every Thanksgiving-loved by some, despised by some, but always a tradition.

If you’re unlucky enough to follow some of the teams playing this year, (Chicago Bears, NY Giants, Dallas Cowboys) who have put up dismal records so far, and you still need a football fix, It’s In The Game, Madden NFL might be a satisfactory substitute instead of watching the games those teams are scheduled to play. I’m not saying those games will suck, but chances are they’ll be background noise even before the tryptophan, the booze, or the gummies start to kick in

It’s In The Game Madden NFL is currently streaming on Amazon Prime and the four episodes chronicle some of the victories and defeats behind the long running and popular Madden NFL video game franchise. If you’re a fan of the sport, the video game, or just a gamer in general, it’s fascinating backstage viewing, though not the best produced documentary I’ve seen. I haven’t played the game since the 90’s, but I’ve watched cousins, nephews, and a bevy of friends love it and play it far into adulthood.

So, if you’re a football fan looking for a tonic that’s not really a palette cleanser you might want to check it out. The trailer is linked below.

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.

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.