Tag: football

It’s bloody hot

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocyLeave a comment

That’s the thermometer in my back yard, at 7:37 PM, and you’ll note that thermometers don’t know what a “heat index” is, so I can only assume it’s the literal apocalypse outside right now. It’s supposed to be like this all week. I’m not excited about it.

I watched both World Cup matches this afternoon; Brazil-Japan was exciting despite ending the wrong way; Germany-Paraguay was a textbook example of Everything Americans Think is Wrong with Soccer, not only featuring a truly ludicrous amount of flopping (if I took a drink every time I said “you’re fine, get up,” I’d be dead) but ending in a shootout where the pivotal miss on the German team’s part, the kick that more or less decided the game, soared ten feet above the goal.

I don’t think I’m being unreasonable when I suggest that, given a stationary ball and no one defending, any professional soccer player should be able to hit the fucking goal. Someone out there– possibly not someone reading this, but someone— will surely disagree with me on that. I could put a ball in the goal from that distance when I was playing soccer at ten. The goalkeeper is basically relying on vibes and luck to choose which way he jumps; he’s only barely relevant. All you have to do is hit the goal. The damned thing is twenty-four feet wide and eight feet tall. 192 square feet. Come the fuck on. And he wasn’t the only player who missed the goal! He was just the worst example.

The dude who missed that shot should walk into the ocean, is what I’m saying. Imagine NBA games that ended with each team shooting free throws and one of them airballs. That’s the rough equivalent here. Maybe one player from the opposing team gets to throw a ball at the ball to account for the goalie.(*)

The third game of the day features my Netherlands; I will have to cheer for a European team against an African one, which rankles a bit, but they’re my team and that’s that. I just wish I remembered why.

(*) No, an even better example: a football (our football) game where the game was decided on five extra point attempts. Any kicker who missed that badly wouldn’t make it off the field alive, and if he did he wouldn’t be taking his kicking foot with him.

OH AND ALSO:

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Natty dread

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

I’m not watching. I’ve not watched an IU football game this year– in fact, I doubt I’ve watched an IU football game since I graduated(*)– and if I decide to start now, they’ll lose. In fact, I’m going to do my best to ignore the internet during the game so that I don’t even get any accidental score updates. Hell, it’s been years since I watched an IU basketball game, and it’s more than a little shocking to me that I can name IU football’s quarterback and coach and am no longer able to name the coach or even a single player on the basketball team.

Sadly, my lifelong dedication to being superstitious about sports is not the only reason to pay no attention to this game. I am deeply pissed at IU right now, and while it’s genuinely upsetting to be cutting ties with the university I graduated from and that I’ve loved for literally my entire life, the way IU has been conducting itself recently has been beyond the pale and I can’t accept it any longer. I’m going to start telling people I graduated from Purdue. It’s that bad.

On top of that, the more I’ve learned how college sports works now, and particularly how college football works now, the less I want to do with any of it. We basically have a good football team now because Mark Cuban bought us one. Seeing video of Fernando Mendoza showing off his new diamond Rolex earlier today was literally disgusting. I’d rather suck, frankly.

I dunno. This sort of feels like Old Man Yells at Cloud to some extent, but I’ve not been a sports guy for decades if I ever really was, and ignoring a national championship run has got to be the last of a really large number of nails in that coffin. This hasn’t been fun for a long time, and now it’s actively repulsive, and I’m out.

(*) Not true, apparently, as WordPress dug up a post from last year where I talk about watching IU play Notre Dame in the football playoffs, a game I have no recollection of at all and which we, of course, lost.

I made it!

On By Luther M. SilerIn Teaching2 Comments

Good news— I have survived the first semester of my 21st year of teaching and still haven’t gone to jail, although I almost got sent to the hospital again earlier this week. (Mental note: never admit your wrist hurts after breaking up a fight.) My students did acceptably on their final— more data to come on that later this week— and I am about to curl up in front of the television to watch, of all things, my Indiana Hoosiers play Notre Dame in the college football playoffs.

What a fuckin’ world.

Maybe time to get the ol’ meds checked

On By Luther M. SilerIn idiocy1 Comment

I have been in an absolute boiled-shit bad mood all day, and I am tired of virtually everything. In particular, I have never been more tired of the NFL in my life than I am right now; I have generally been content to ignore professional football and the legion of drunken cosplaying dweebs that follow it, but for some reason their fucking opinions keep making their way into my sight recently, and everything they think about everything is dumb.

I absolutely hate the fact that I have to have an opinion about Taylor Swift’s boyfriends again, and I’m especially peeved that this time I’m on her side. Fuck all of this; I’m exhausted.

And while I’m irritated at groups of people I’m generally content to ignore, everyone in their twenties and thirties needs to shut the fuck up about, like, everything. All of your opinions are wrong and most of them are wrong and dumb and you believe in your wrong and dumb things with your entire chests and I’m fucking exhausted over here. Off my fucking lawn, all of you, and by “my fucking lawn” I mean “planet Earth.” Even when your opinions are right you are invariably wrong about what to do about those right opinions and I just can’t any more. I’m losing my shit over here.

I swear to Christ that if I have a rage-stroke and die before the shitgibbon does I will find a way to haunt everyone, forever. Don’t test me, Goddammit.

The end.

In which I’m definitely back in schools again…

On By Luther M. SilerIn lifeLeave a comment

20180827_fbl_at_notre_dame…because my annual First Or Second Week of September Head Cold is back, after a two-year absence, just like goddamn clockwork.  I was hoping that not actually being in the classroom would allow me to avoid it this year, but no to that; it’s laying around and moaning all day for me!  Hooray!

On the plus side, there is Football tonight.  We’re in that magical nine days or so every year where I want to watch football, not because I enjoy sports in general or football in particular but because football represents summer ending and, finally, the beginning of autumn, which is my hands-down no-doubt favorite season. The hoodie months are approaching.  They’re almost here!  I can tell, there’s football on TV!

By next week I’ll be over it.  But there’s a Notre Dame game starting in about half an hour and the good thing about being basically immobile right now is that so long as I make sure I’m planted in front of the TV I’ll be able to watch the whole thing.

…uh, anybody wanna bring me dinner?

1000 words, etc.

On By Luther M. SilerIn PoliticsLeave a comment

Everything I might want to write about tonight is exhausting, so I think I’ll just put this up and let you write the post in your heads:

black-power-salute

What is this I don’t even

On By Luther M. SilerIn Uncategorized8 Comments

WHAT IS HAPPENING IN BRAZIL RIGHT NOW.

Just for the record

On By Luther M. SilerIn UncategorizedLeave a comment

I’ve talked a lot of shit about goalies over the last couple of weeks, but Jesus, if it wasn’t for Tim Howard having the game of his goddamn career we’d have just lost 16-0 instead of going into jesus why is the game still going please someone fucking score time.