Thursday, August 9, 2018
Slant Pattern Odds and Ends
* While I've touted most of the sports websites I like (and that I feel fly under the radar) in this column, one I don't believe I have mentioned before is CoachesHotSeat.com, a sort of stock market for the 30 college football coaches with the least job security.
They are just one man's opinion, and some I don't agree with. Kevin Sumlin has the 14th-hottest seat at Arizona? HE HASN'T COACHED A GAME THERE YET! Major Applewhite is also way too high at 9th after a single 7-5 season at Houston.
No. 1 right now is Urban Meyer. You don't need me to tell you he was not on the list two weeks ago.
Frankly, it's an embarrassing time to be a fan of Ohio State, just as it's a hard time to be a fan of the Tampa Bay Buccaneers — and I'm a diehard of both.
I don't want to support anyone who assaults women or implicitly excuses it in others, but I have that in spades right now. This is exactly why I boycotted the NFL for a couple of years.
But now, rather than turning my back on the game I love and the teams I love (and believe me, there are terrible, terrible people on whatever teams you cheer for), I've decided to take another tack.
Each month during the NFL season, I donate $20 to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, and I will do the same for college football as well now. It's my penance for rooting on these human trash bags. As a friend of mine once said, individual charitable donations help charities exponentially more than individual boycotts hurt the NFL or NCAA. So.
* Michael Kay and Yankees prospect Clint Frazier have a spat going on. The Big Lead has the details. I encourage you to listen to the clip, it's only 22 seconds.
Kay is mad that Frazier and Jacoby Ellsbury are hurt and forcing the Yankees to field a bunch of bums when they are in the middle of a pennant race. He says "shame on" Frazier and Ellsbury for not being healthy. Frazier shot back on Twitter, saying, "@RealMichaelKay facetious or not, I don't appreciate what you said today. i'm doing everything I can to get healthy so I can play symptom free ... so steer clear of publicly calling me out for not when we haven't even had one convo about my concussion this year. #ShameOnYouBro"
Kay indeed says he was being facetious, and that he takes injuries very, very seriously. I'll take him at his word on that, even though I disagree that he's obviously kidding in the clip as the writer of the piece, Kyle Koster, asserts.
But what makes this double tetchy is that Frazier is out with concussion issues, including migraines, and as Koster puts it, Kay should know better than to touch that "third rail," even as a joke.
The problem with joking about concussions is that you create the impression you do not take them seriously, which puts you just about a foot away from conspiratorial concussion truthers like Danny Kannell and Larry Fedora. Those are the flat-earthers of football. Kay is not that, but his joke is akin to jokes about having a bomb at the airport. Don't joke about concussions.
* ESPN published the most gun-jumping list of top quarterbacks heading into the college football season. Tua Tagovailoa is the fourth-best QB (and 11th best player in the nation, any position) after one great half. Khalil Tate, who should be the No. 1 quarterback, is No. 8. McKenzie Milton, who guided UCF to an undefeated season, is only No. 9. Shea Patterson, who has yet to throw a ball at Michigan, makes the list anyway.
The No. 1 quarterback is Will Grier of West Virginia, and the Mountaineers are a fashionable dark-horse team of the Big 12. Not so fast. West Virginia has a tough non-conference slate, and while TCU and Oklahoma will be coming to Morgantown, they have to travel to Oklahoma State and Texas. Will Grier's numbers are nice but not earth-shattering, nor as good as some others on the list. Grier may start the year as the No. 1 quarterback in that land, but he won't end there, as adjudged by Heisman votes. You heard it here first.