The Sports Nerd Show

TIGER NEARLY DIED…

Tiger was in a car accident this morning in California.  Per the AP, his SUV crashed into a median and rolled over on its side.  He had to be pulled out of the vehicle through the windshield leading to leg surgery.  Per reports, he broke both legs and has a shattered ankle, he was responsive and per authorities, there was no indication of impairment.  I used those inferences because of what is included in the stories.  The media’s FIRST inference was to indicate he was not impaired, going back to his incident in 2009 where he ran over a fire hydrant and hit a tree.  That incident ultimately revealed his infidelity towards his wife at the time, as well as the incident a few years later where police found him asleep in his care and arrested him for being under the influence of prescription medication.  My issue isn’t with those past incidents, my issue is with the media immediately assuming that he may have been under the influence of whatever drug they feel like he was on.  To assume he was impaired is a disservice to Tiger and his fight against addiction to pain killers.  My mother always told me to never assume, and because the media is looking for clicks, views, or whatever they need to make money they immediately assume he was on something.  Tiger has a well-documented history of his failure as a husband, addict, and decent human being.  The rub here is that he has also shown, very publicly that he has done everything he can to overcome his past digressions.  The issue here is not his digressions, but the fact he was just in a car accident that could have cost him his life, and the first thing that should have been the focus of this instance is of his health, not what he could possibly have done wrong this time.  Maybe I am overreacting, but shouldn’t the first thing said about him was his condition, thoughts of his family, specifically his children, and not what he could possibly have done wrong???  I’m just saying…  it just appeared to me that the pundits from all of the cable and broadcast networks were quick to assume he was either under the influence or that he was driving erratically.  My thoughts are with Tiger, his family, and hope for a speedy recovery after surgery, and to whether or not he was high on prescription drugs at the time of the accident… the sensationalism of the main-stream media just astounds me.

that’s it..  that’s the post…

Join The Sports Nerds LIVE every Sunday night at 7 pm Eastern as we discuss the week in review of the world of sports. from NFL to the NHL, and every sport in-between. It is unfiltered, NSFW, and high energy. We do not hold anything back and you should be there to experience it LIVE.

Join me and my partners in crime:

#BillsMafia – @jongolson

Executive Producer – @SNNBigE

Former Sportswriter – @KenCostlow

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Happy Wednesday…

I start this post not knowing what it is I want to say…  But here I am because the content is important, and in order to spread my brand I need to get out there and be visible…  Football season is over, the Bucs won the Super Bowl and I find myself 10x less excited than when they won it in 2003.  The Bucs BOUGHT this championship, and to me, it feels dirty because they did not grow or build through the normal means.  They went out and got some hired guns…  specifically… Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, and Antonio Brown, to name a few… I know I sat in this chair last Sunday night wearing a brand new Bucs championship hat, but I still can’t feel good about it because I remember 2003 and what the Bucs at that time had to endure the previous 4 or 5 seasons to get there.  That was Tony dungy’s team…  they lost to the Eagles the year before in the playoffs and because of that Dungy was fired.  Gruden came in and they got over the top…  one can say that the Bucs brought in a hired gun (Gruden) to get them to a championship, but the truth of the matter is that Gruden was known as an offensive guru, and despite all of that, it wasn’t his offense that won the championship, it was the defense.  Dungy built that defense, Kiffin perfected it, and that is the reason that the Bucs won the Super Bowl in 2003…  it was Dungy’s defense.

Fast forward to 2020…  COVID is the story, with many teams in the league being affected to the point where games were postponed and the NFL set a milestone in which games were played every day of the week.  It was an unprecedented season like we have never seen before, and despite the fact there were no fans in the stands, we watched each and every week.  The Sports Nerds reveled in recapping the games each and every week, we loved that the season went off in its entirety with no games being canceled and being the only league amongst the big four that did not have a shortened season due to COVID.

WHAT DID WE LEARN

There is a lesson to be learned from all of this.  Money is king… that’s it… The NFL was able to pull this off because they have an obligation to their advertisers and they weren’t going to let them down.  To hell with player safety, to hell with scheduling and player recovery time.  They did whatever they had to do in order for the entire season to be played and it was all about the bottom line.  It had nothing to do with the fans, it had nothing to do with player health.  It was all about the almighty dollar.  COVID hit the Ravens hard…  The Titans… The Browns… but it didn’t matter because they needed to make their money… hell they even allowed the entire receiving corps of the Cleveland Browns SIT for a game vs the Jets because the show must go on.  The same can be said for the other sports as well…   MLB… NBA… NHL…  the players in those sports were placed in a bubble (Playoffs for MLB) because they felt that no matter what the show must go on because the advertisers were counting on it.  What we learned was that money drives these sports, not the entertainment, not the fan bases, not the player’s safety, just the revenue…  And for the suits in the front offices around the respective leagues that was just fine…

MY PERSPECTIVE AS A FAN AND A US CITIZEN

As a fan of all of the games, I am ok with it.  I am a realist, I am aware of the financial implications if the seasons are not played, and I am at peace with it.  2020 brought a World Series and NBA Championship to LA and Stanley Cup and Super Bowl Championship to Tampa (GO BOLTS) and I was interested and followed all of it.  I still couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty over being that into it.  In the US alone we have now lost 500,000 lives in this pandemic, the first life lost just over a year ago…  Families have lost loved ones…  people are suffering… lives have been uprooted, jobs, health care, social distancing, masks, false information, panic, political upheaval all across the country…  We finally have a vaccine and still… we won’t have enough of it to treat the entire population until July 2021.  I have been thinking about all of it for the last couple of months… wondering if we will all revert to who we were before the pandemic, if we will feel safe going out to the grocery store without a mask or continue wearing them out of habit and because we feel safer just wearing them because being over cautious.  I wonder what we will be as a country when we come out the other side…  if we feel safe going to games without a mask if we feel safe going to the grocery store or the mall, or just walking down the street.  I am not an educated man, nor do I pretend to be, but I do know that after al of this is over we will be a different society after it is over.  We as a nation… as a people… will never be the same.  We have allowed false information and fear to change us into a paranoid, critical, conspiracy theory-believing society.

WHAT’S NEXT?…

I look forward to getting back to some sense of normalcy like it was before the pandemic… But I realize that because of what has occurred in this country over the last few years that is not possible… because of that I will look to the thing that will make me feel normal again…  SPORTS… fans in the stands, no restrictions…  60,000+ roaring for their home team, for the smell of fresh-cut grass…  Arena ice freshly renewed by a Zamboni… $10 beers and $6.00 hot dogs… The roar of the patrons at Agusta National on an April weekend… I lean to sports to make me feel normal again, and until it happens, I won’t feel safe, I won’t feel normal, and I won’t feel that the worst is over.  I am optimistic that it will happen…  but until that comes…  I only ask one thing…

Take care of yourselves… and take care of each other…

Scott “The Sports Nerd”

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Join The Sports Nerds LIVE every Sunday night at 7pm Eastern as we discuss the week in review of the world of sports. from NFL to the NHL, and every sport in-between. It is unfiltered, NSFW and high energy. We do not hold anything back and you should be there to experience it LIVE.

Join me and my partners in crime:

Jon Olson – @jongolson

Eliot “Big E” Lomba – Executive Producer

Ken Costlow – @KenCostlow

FACEBOOK – https://www.facebook.com/groups/730158067790783/

AHH…  MEMORIES

Well here we go, at the time of this writing, it is 46 1/2 hours to kick off in one of the most anticipated Super Bowls in a long time.  The “Goat” vs the “Future Goat” Tampa Bay and Kansas City for football’s ultimate prize.  The Nerds and I have been talking the last two weeks leading up to this game, we all have our own opinions on how it will go down but the fact remains, this promises to be an epic game.  I remember 18 years ago when the Bucs were in the Super Bowl for the first time, I was a die-hard Bucs fan (Browns too) at the time and I actually lived across the street from Raymond James Stadium in a one-bedroom apartment that was part of an old converted military barracks paying $400.00/mo in rent.  The week before I was with my best friend at the time and we went to a local bar and watched the NFC championship game, and boy did we have a blast.  When Rhonde Barber intercepted Donovan McNabb on the 10-yard line and proceeded to take it 90 yards to the house to seal the victory we all went nuts.  Later that night he and I were standing outside the stadium as the team returned from Philadelphia…  (the plane actually did a flyover over the stadium on its way to the airport) celebrating the NFC Championship, it was cold, it was loud and I couldn’t care less. Of course, the Bucs won that Super Bowl vs the Raiders, and I was high as a kite.

THE YEARS THAT FOLLOWED

Fast forward 18 years and here we are again, The Bucs are once again one game from reaching NFL Immortality Sunday when they face probably the most prolific offense in the NFL in a decade, the Kansas City Chiefs.  Patrick Mahomes has in just three years in the league become the face of the NFL and he has shown that he is capable of pulling off magic on a football field, getting passes to receivers that any other QB in the league wouldn’t dream of attempting, along with showing Poise and composure of players 10 years older than he is.  The task is daunting for the Bucs this time around, the foe is better than what they played in 2003, and they are the defending champs.  With all of that being said, here is the Kicker…  I am no longer a Bucs fan…  the post-Super Bowl years soured me on the franchise because of the way ownership decided they no longer cared, the fact that Jon Gruden tore the roster down and tried to make it in the image he wanted it to be, while still trying to get back to the playoffs and win another ring.  Gruden destroyed the roster, he is the type of coach that declares it is his way or no way, and that he was all-knowing and no-one else knew as much about football as he did.  they went 7-9 the following year and missed the playoffs…  they had two more playoff appearances under Gruden, losing in the wildcard round both times.  They then began a stretch of 12 years and six head coaches without a playoff appearance…  until this year.  Over the course of that 12-year stretch, ownership proved time after time that they did not care about the Bucs, as they are also majority owners of Manchester United, the premier franchise in European Soccer.  The Bucs were an afterthought and my loyalty waned and I quit rooting for them because I was disgusted that they did not honor the fans or the franchise itself by not even attempting to put a decent product on the field that could compete.  The Bucs were my adopted team because I lived in Tampa and with their history as bad as it was leading up to that point, it just felt cheap that they were satisfied with just one trophy and didn’t care about going after another one.

A NEW ERA… OR IS IT?

So here we are, so many years later and the Bucs have once again found themselves in the Super Bowl,  but it feels different this time.  Why, well I have always been a fan of building a team from the ground up, not going all out in free agency to pick up what I would call “ringers” and this is how I would describe this team.  they went out and got the best QB to ever lace them up, added his favorite target from his New England days just to chance a championship.  Bruce Arians was 7-9 his first season as the Head Coach, he didn’t build anything, he brought a bit of a swagger to the franchise with his fancy hats and his unorthodox way of approaching the game.  They refused to sign the QB they drafted #1 overall after the 2019 season and let him go in free agency to the New Orleans Saints and instead went head hunting aggressively for Tom Brady and his 6 Super Bowl rings in the offseason.  In retrospect, if they win on Sunday this will be one of the greatest free-agent signings in the history of the NFL but it feels dirty, it feels cheap and I would feel guilty as being a bandwagon fan to jump on the Pirate Ship and ride the success to the end with this team.  I watched after they ran up win after win, all because of this player that I have hated for 20 years because I was tired of seeing him and hit Head Coach win 6 Super Bowls…  I HATED the Patriots, and I still do, and I could not bring myself to root for these Bucs because of how they did it in the 2019 offseason.  Then comes the kicker…  They signed Antonio Brown, a player that had burned the Browns for years when he played for the Pittsburgh Steelers in the 2010s.  Brown was a head case, he has been accused of sexual assault, he has no shame, he shows no remorse for any of his off-field shenanigans or acceptance that he is a sexual predator and a disgrace to the league.  I hated that signing and that was the final straw for me.  I made it my personal obligation to NOT root for this team because there was no route or move they would lower themselves to go after players that were hired guns or had no reason to be in the league in the first place.  I actually rooted for them to lose every game, to show that the best way was still to build off the draft and build a culture the fans could be proud of (See the 2020 Cleveland Browns).

SO HERE WE ARE…

With all of the above being said, I find myself in a difficult situation because I hate the Chiefs now more than I hate the Patriots, and believe it or not it is because of ONE PLAY.  Higgins definitely did fumble the ball through the endzone, but what burns me is that the refs missed the helmet-to-helmet hit by safety Daniel Sorensen on Higgins and erased any chance of the Browns comeback win in that game.  It was a dirty hit, he lowered his helmet and the refs missed it.  Because of that, I will once again be rooting for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers to win it all on Sunday.  As much as it hurts, I am rooting for a Tom Brady-led team to win the Super Bowl (hey Tom, how much is too much?) Sunday and even though it makes me feel dirty to the point that if they win I will need a shower afterward to get the stink off me for compromising my principles, Go Bucs…

SPECIAL EDITION

The Nerds are looking forward to this game as is most of the world, so with that being the case, The Sports Nerds will be broadcasting a special LIVE  Pre-Game edition of our show on Sunday Afternoon 5 pm Eastern time for about an hour to preview and provide our predictions for Super Bowl LV.  I hope you will all join us for trash talk, trivia, and fun shit to get you through the start of the game at 6:30 Eastern.  So fire up the Grill, fry the wings, prepare the dip, and get ready for The Sports Nerds to give you fun and information leading up to Super Bowl LV.  You can watch via Facebook, Twitch, Vimm, and Twitter at 5:00 pm eastern time on Sunday.  Join us for all the fun, I hope to see you…

Scott “The Sports Nerd”