Sammy Sportface Syndication - Sammy Sportface Blogs

45-Year-Old Document Reveals Rudyface Won No Awards on Youth Football Team

June 10, 2020

Rudyface did not win the most valuable player award. Nor did he get named the most improved player.

And he never had any chance of winning the sportsmanship award because he reeked of poor sportsmanship throughout his childhood until this moment.

This according to a 45-year-old document sent via email thread today from Bill McKie to Mike McKie to Mike DuFour to John Fleury to Mark Hartley to Sammy Sportface.

"In case anyone in the DC mafia has ever had any doubt, this document leaves the paper trail -- and is the smoking gun -- showing that Rudyface excelled at nothing in Little Flower sports," said Sammy Sportface, the visionary leader of the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood.

During the 1970s Sportface was awarded the MVP of that team and 12 others at Little Flower. Rudyface struggled as an also ran on every one of those teams.

The highest point of tension during that championship run occurred in the first meeting between Our Lady of Lourdes and the Little Flower squad, which featured Russell Lacey, Mike DuFour, Spoogface, and Joey Peabody.

Being a Renaissance man even in grade school, Sportface traveled with this family to Williamsburg, VA that weekend to absorb colonial history.

Rudyface was given the keys to the car to steer the team to the victory against the league’s toughest foe.

But with the spotlight burning bright on him, he failed miserably. To this day the plump rump kid has been universally blamed for Little Flower’s first loss of that unforgettable season.

But the schoolboy sports saga was not over.

Three weeks later in the championship game against Our Lady of Lourdes, Sportface caught a pass at his own 15 yard line and scampered 85 yards for the touchdown with under a minute to play to put his team ahead by one point.

Dashing and blazing from right sideline all the way to the left to avoid the swift Leonard Simpson, Sportface crossed the goal line thereby clinching the title and making Little Flower's cheerleaders deliriously enamored with Sportface.

“Sportface, Sportface, he’s our man, if he can’t do it nobody can,” they cheered.

"Gotta give it to Sportface -- something I rarely do," said Rudyface. "He came through big time in that game. The second fastest suburban kid in the Washington DC metropolitan area, Leonard Simpson, chased Sportface for 85 yards but never caught him. Sportface showed he was Speedface that day. Without Sportface, we never would have won that championship."

“Yeah I remember that game,” said Lacey. “No one was going to catch Sportface that day. Good thing Sportface came back and saved us. It sure wasn’t going to be Rudyface. None of us had faith in him. And that kid was a big-time punk.”

Forget Students and Classes,

College Football Must Go On This Fall

June 2, 2020

Who cares about academics, learning, classes, and the futures of students at America’s colleges and universities? What difference does it make whether any of this education happens this coming Fall?

Only one thing matters: This Fall there better be college football games played all across this great country every Saturday, from noon to midnight, from coast to coast.

Football stands taller and has taken on more importance to healthy living than “pedagogy,” – whatever that is -- intellectual curiosity and rigor, a student newspaper, a student body president, critical thinking, and preparing our next generation to solve the ever-growing list of pernicious problems such as the current pandemic.

College football entertains us. Anthropology bores us. College classes test us, make us feel stupid. They’re tedious, tormenting and tumultuous – a trifecta of terrible times. Have you ever had as much fun in an accounting class as you have watching a college football game? Was anthropology class ever as riveting as the Iron Bowl or Nick Saban swearing on the sidelines?

Of course not. Not even the nerdiest of the revenge of the nerds stars enjoys filling out balance sheets and making debit and credit journal entries as much as they like watching guys in helmets bang into each other, breathing in autumn fresh air, and wolfing down chicken wings and guzzling beer and wine at football tailgates.

Tailgates feel good. They’re pleasures of the flesh, all-day-Saturday sensational sins. College classes confound and conflate.

Heading into this Fall, colleges and universities should start thinking in more enlightened ways about how to use their sprawling campuses as habitats for no one else but college football humanity: players, coaches, trainers, and stat boys.

Consider this: The average college football team has about 80 players. And the average college campus has about 80 buildings (give or take 40-to-50).

Give each player an entire building to himself to make his crib. The star players get the biggest and most plush campus buildings such as the president’s administration building, the refurbished student union, or the football training facility. The lesser players get the wretched physics and chemistry labs and campus ministry dives.

The star players will be like royalty on campus, Greek emperors and Egyptian pharaohs in pads and helmets. The star player living in the student union will hold football watching film sessions. That building should house the campus movie theatre. If not, it should by this Fall.

The players will watch videos of upcoming games. To augment their football educations, they will tune into movies about college such as “Animal House.”

All the students at these colleges will not be allowed on campus. They won’t take online classes because they will rebel and say that learning through a computer screen is not worth the $70,000 a year in tuition payments. They will drop out and email resumes into the vaporware work force throughout the Fall and following Spring.

The campuses will be full-blown football communities and nothing else. All the buildings where the players live will have weight rooms and Peloton equipment. Each building will have 25 flat screen TVs that will broadcast college football games and feature stories on 25 different channels. Student tuition payments will cover the expenses.

Every Wednesday night the entire football team will get together and watch a quadruple feature: “North Dallas Forty,” “Remember the Titans,” “Heaven Can Wait,” and “All the Right Moves.”

There will be no professors or university presidents. No deans either for that matter. Food will be delivered carry out style from Bojangles, Wendy’s, and Kentucky Fried Chicken. Supermarkets will deliver football-shaped cupcakes every night for dessert.

The library will be packed to the ceiling with nothing but books, periodicals, and news feeds about college football The walls will have portraits of football players such as Red Grange and Jim Thorpe.

There will be football history books, anthologies, profiles, biographies, and feature stories. There will be microfiche machines to look up old articles about college football games dating back to the 1920s and even before that.

On the Internet players will be able to do long-tail keyword searches on football such as “why is football more important than learning” and “has American lost perspective about college football?”

On these campuses there will be one overriding theme: football -- football games, football practices, football films, football workout equipment, football players, football helmets, football playbooks, football economics, football finances, football marketing, football strategy, football operations, football supply chains, football entrepreneurship, football statistics, and football physics.

On Saturdays, the campus will be electrified with the sounds of football movies blaring out of dormitory windows. One of those movie soundtracks will be “The Longest Yard.”

ESPN will set up its broadcasting studio on these campuses on Saturday mornings and do the “College Game Day” show.

College football coaches will be interviewed about the declining importance of education and the growing central role that college football plays in the future prosperity of the United States.

University presidents will be dismissive of academics and intellectual pursuits. Professors will scoff at the notion of institutions of higher learning calling them “tired” and “unspired.”

They will use the ESPN platform to sound a clarion call for eradicating colleges and universities from the American landscape and reallocating more resources to college football games and more elaborate pre-game tailgates.

College football will be touted as the savior and center of the American lifestyle and consciousness, the panacea for all the planet’s problems.

Are Armstrong, Jordan, and Tiger

Bigger Winners Or Losers?

May 25, 2020

What does it cost to be the best at what you do, to be the greatest of all time at your particular sport? Is it justified to be a jerk to others, to treat them as inferior to you, because you want to dominate your sport? If you win the biggest prizes in your sport, can all of that we explained away because it’s the price people must pay to be superior?

These questions have become frequent conservation topics in the past few weeks. The 10-part documentary about Michael Jordan called “The Last Dance” raises the question as to whether Jordan was justified in humiliating his teammates and opponents to get them to play up to his standards and help him achieve his personal goals.

Last night a documentary titled “Lance” about Lance Armstrong tackled these same types of questions. (By the way, if you thought the Jordan documentary was riveting and thought-provoking, the Armstrong documentary takes those questions to an even more intense and unforgettable level).

Yesterday we saw Tiger Woods in a golf match with Phil Mickelson, Tom Brady, and Peyton Manning. He was his usual cocky self.

Like Jordan and Armstrong, Woods believes in berating his opponents to gain a psychological advantage to help himself become of the greatest golfer ever. He has said he played golf tournaments to win not to become buddies with his opponents.

These three men reached the zeniths of their respective sports. In that sense their careers followed the same trajectories. And in similar ways they treated others around them as inferiors. They were mean, short-tempered, aloof, and manipulative with their competitors and often teammates.

They wanted to crush their foes. And they used mental warfare to achieve that goal. They hurt other people to help themselves.

This is an important topic for fathers of sons who are athletes. Imagine your son happens to be a 10-year-old kid who you believe has the potential to be a professional basketball player. You decide you should teach him how to get the mental edge over the other players.

You teach him to be aloof. You tell him not be guarded around his competitors. Show him how to be distant from competitors, to reveal nothing about how he thinks or what he wants. Get him thinking these are not his friends but rather obstacles to be destroyed in his path to glory.

Have him put up pictures on his bedroom wall of his biggest competitors. Have him throw darts at those pictures every night. Teach him to want to destroy his opponents. Make them the enemy.

Encourage him make a list of the 10 best players he competes against. Make sure he studies how they play and practice and figure out ways to play and practice harder, so he ends up making the pros and the others don’t.

Spread misinformation. Have your kid convince his competitors that they will never make it to the pros. Show your son how to plant that idea in the other kids’ heads. Make them doubt themselves. Help you son gain any mental edge you can. Convince him that his competitors are his enemies.

Should you teach your kid these things?

Of course not. If your kid is destined for greatness, encourage him to practice hard at his craft. But don’t teach them to be mean to other people and play mind games with them.

In the long run, your son will need to have good relationships with people well past his playing years. If he’s a jerk to everyone as a competitor, those people won’t forget and will likely not want to hang out with your son later in life.

It’s fine to have your son aspire to greatness, but recognize that only a small percentage have that level of talent. Jordan’s basketball talents were otherworldly, maybe the most natural the game has ever seen.

Armstrong showed the uncanny ability at the age of 16 to beat 20-year-old star triathletes. A raw talent, a kid prodigy. Blessed with incredible aerobic capacity, it was innately easier for him than virtually anyone else to run, bike and swim fast for long distances. Tiger could hit a golf ball accurately and far at a young age.

These three guys are one in a hundred million type talents. Yet each of them in his own way mistreated other people.

If my son was that kind of athlete but was unkind to other people, I would not be proud of him. I would be ashamed of him and tell him so.

Nobody – no matter how gifted – has the right to belittle others. This is psychological abuse that can cause the victim to suffer from anxiety, paranoia, depression, and other sad and dangerous conditions. Not just for days or weeks but for the rest of their lives.

Superstars have no right to inflict such serious damage on other people because they believe it’s necessary to become the greatest at their crafts.

Do I admire the work ethics of Jordan, Armstrong, and Woods? Yes. I especially appreciate how much time they spent practicing when others were being less disciplined with their lives. Think about the thousands of hours Lance spent on the bike out on some lonely nowheresville road by himself training to win the Tour de France.

That takes toughness. It necessitates being away from other people enduring endless isolation. That requires the mental and physical discipline to avoid being lazy and sitting around the house on your couch doing nothing.

Well done, Lance. Awesome.

But you can’t be a jerk to people just because you train hard and spend your time alone a lot aspiring to be the greatest cyclist who has ever lived.

You turned out to be a nasty, insensitive cuss to many people. And you didn’t care. So were you, MJ. You mentally tortured your teammates because you wanted to win. Maybe they didn’t have the same ambitions as you.

You should have been more sensitive to that. But you weren’t. It’s fine to encourage teammates and try to inspire them. It’s not appropriate to berate them and make them afraid of you.

Same goes for you, Tiger. You took being a jerk to extreme levels. It’s well known that many pro golfers think you were obnoxious and surly. You treated them as if they were below you in terms of talent, ambitious, and status in life.

You were wrong to be that way.

All three of your guys were great at what you did, but you shouldn’t have treated people the way like obstacles to be swatted out of your way.

It’s possible to be great and a good person. Wayne Gretzky, the greatest hockey player of all time, wasn't rude or obnoxious to anyone. He was a classy great guy. Katie Ledecky, one of the greatest female swimmers ever, has never said a bad word about opposing swimmers. She lets her swimming do the talking.

How come they could be so great yet such good human beings?

Because they chose to be. In their hearts they knew what was right and wrong when it came to interacting with other people.

You three guys knew this also but decided to be mean anyway. And for that you’re far from the greatest human beings of all time. You’re remembered as much for how poorly you treated people as how talented you were.

Your legacies are mixed and impure. You’re admired for your competitiveness and talents but not your characters and empathy.

You are not as beloved and respected as Gretzky and Ledecky. People would rather hang out with these two cool superstars than you three. You were winners at your sports but losers in how you treated people.

But I bet the three of you don’t care. Because that’s the kind of people you are.

Winning Whereabouts of Two

Michaels -- Waltrip and Jordan

May 15, 2020

NASCAR, college football, and Michael Jordan may seem like strange blogfellows. But stay with me, portly curmudgeons.

All three became famous in the southern regions of the United States. NASCAR, college football, and Jordan conjure up whiffs of outdoor chicken barbecue tailgates, head-banging booze, and nasty cigars.

In the South winning and losing streaks abound. Nothing smacks of Americana more than who prevails and who gets humbled.

Recall – as you no doubt won’t – that from 1989 to 1998 Prairie View A&M University in Texas lost 80 straight football games, the longest winless streak in college football history.

But that turned out to be a brief downturn compared with the remarkable NASCAR losing streak of retired NASCAR driver Michael Waltrip.

The infamously slow race car driver won exactly none of his first 462 races from 1985 to 2001. You would think after the 0-462 start he might have quit to sell life insurance. Not this Mike, who nobody wanted to be Like. In his 33-year career, he won only four out of 784 races.

To put this load of losing in perspective, his NASCAR- driving brother Darrell snatched first place 84 times in 809 races. Picture Thanksgiving dinners at the Waltrip’s house: “Hey Mike, I’ve won 80 more races than you,” says Darrell. “Pass the mash potatoes.”

Richard Petty won 200 races – the most all time. That’s one hundred ninety-six more than Be Unlike Mike.

Yet this black sheep driver remains a big figure in the sport, curiously. He’s been a NASCAR broadcaster and has written articles about the sport.

The question is why? Usually the guys who get broadcasting gigs are big winners.

Hiring Michael Waltrip in the broadcast booth is like ESPN making Prairie View A&M’s coach, during the 80-game losing streak, the expert color analyst for college football games.

I am not against Michael Waltrip. I actually respect the fact that he kept racing even after not winning 462 consecutive times. Persistence impresses me especially through prolonged losing streaks.

But why so may losses? What was he doing in the car that other guys did better and faster? Was his hand-eye coordination too slow? Was he too risk averse? Did he not have the guts to accelerate at crucial times in the race in dangerous situations?

Did he just not have the natural talent, or the work ethic? Should he have sold life insurance? Seems he would have won more often selling these policies even in a business rife with rejections. Did he read “Death of Salesman” too many times?

If the reason he kept losing was he didn’t adjust his pre- and during-race preparations, that’s his mistake. No sense doing the same thing wrong over and over.

Whatever the case, as we enter this weekend’s Darlington Raceway event, the first NASCAR race since the pandemic hit, we should be pondering the life and times of Unlike Mike.

Despite winning only once every 200 races he started – a .005 winning percentage – he kept driving the car around the oval albeit slowly compared with industry averages.

Most guys wouldn’t last 33 years in a profession that resulted in so much hardship. Give him credit. He kept doing what he loved.

Even though he hardly ever won.

Is that winning? How do we define it? Should we look favorably or disparagingly on Waltrip?

The recent ESPN documentary about Be Like Mike Michael Jordan, called “The Last Dance,” zeroes in on this cosmic question about winning consists of and what price should be paid.

The winner of six NBA championships – and arguably the greatest basketball player ever -- explained how he thought about winning and why he was tough on his teammates:

"My mentality was to go out and win at any cost. If you don't want to live that regimented mentality, then you don't need to be alongside me, because I'm going to ridicule you until you get on the same level with me. And if you don't get on the same level, then it's going to be hell for you.

"Winning has a price," Jordan added. "And leadership has a price. So I pulled people along when they didn't want to be pulled. I challenged people when they didn't want to be challenged. And I earned that right because [other] teammates came after me. They didn't endure all the things that I endured. Once you joined the team, you lived at a certain standard that I played the game. And I wasn't going to take anything less."

Former teammate Jud Buechler said of Jordan: "People were afraid of him. We were his teammates, and we were afraid of him. And there was just fear. The fear factor of MJ was so, so thick."

Jordan’s words drive to the heart of the matter about what life should or should not be about, how we should we act, how we should treat people, and what price should be paid to win.

No question, Jordan won a ton more than Michael Waltrip. But his teammates feared him. To get what he wanted – not necessarily what they wanted -- he berated and humiliated them. For his own selfish reasons in the name of winning, he mistreated other people.

He punched one of his teammates. He threatened other teammates that if they passed the ball to a certain teammate Jordan didn’t want them to, he would never pass them the ball again.

Is that the right way to act? Does the fact that Jordan won, and his badgered teammates benefited financially and emotionally because he willed them to win, make what he did the right way to go about winning?

I don’t think so. There is no excuse for being mean to people just for the sake of winning. Jordan scared his teammates into playing harder and better. Scaring people is not appropriate human behavior because it makes them feel bad. No one I know enjoys feeling afraid. I’ve seen many coaches use fear on players to get them to play better. It often works. But it isn’t right.

No human being has the right to mistreat another for the sake of winning. Think of the longer-term psychological affects on the people being scared. Maybe later in life they will not be able to shake nightmares and develop paranoia.

They could wake up with images of that person who scared them. Those are serious and horrible experiences that no championship trophy can cure.

I don’t know if Waltrip treated his pit crew well. I do know that he should have. It’s the right way to get along. He didn’t win much at all. Jordan did.

While I’m impressed with Jordan’s drive, I’m turned off by his treatment of teammates. A team is about everyone. MJ made it mostly all about his needs – not theirs.

The fact that Waltrip kept pursuing his dream after losing so many times is as compelling a sports story as Jordan winning as much as he did.

Loss after loss, he kept getting in the car and racing.

In a similar way, Prairie View A&M’s football team kept putting on their helmets and cleats and playing football games even though they kept losing every Saturday for eight straight years.

In my mind Waltrip and Prairie View are winners every bit as much as Jordan is -- maybe more so.

Q & A With Big Thinker Carl Bruce Sonny

Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl

May 14, 2020

Inane blogs about narrow, simple-minded, and trivial sports topics are not worth a pinch of Skoal to Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl.

He believes the human mind should not be wasted thinking about anything other than when the world will end and how, what his role will be in that apocalypse, how many of us will end up saved, and who will be condemned to burn in Hell for eternity.

In the gospel according to Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl, Plato makes the cut. Top shelf philosophers, the ones who figure out the world and reconstruct it into their own vision, are worthy of his time when he’s not busy crafting his own vision for how the world should be transmogrified.

Religious zealots get his attention. Martyrs and revolutionaries consume him. He knows he can guide them to their Promised Lands.

But NASCAR drivers? Basketball players? Tetherball champs? Hooey. Games for idiots and dolts. You will never convince him otherwise because no one is more certain he is more intelligent than everyone else than this West Jefferson, North Carolina mad scientist genius genius scientist mad.

Smart doesn’t describe him. We’re talking one of the gigantic master minds since the time of Christ. He is arguably the smartest Southerner who has ever lived – and will tell you that right now if you were in his presence.

Northerners? They’ve never even been in his league. They won’t tackle the big issues, he argues, because they’re scared of the political repercussions. This dude is a walking and pontificating political repercussion.

Big questions demand the intellectual horsepower of bodacious brainiacs. Healthcare reform, climate change, social movements, disinfectants, Thomas Sowell, Bob Dylan, Peter Griffin, worldwide rebellions – these are material things worthy of this man’s time.

Cognizant of this man’s importance to the ultimate destiny of this tumultuous world, Sammy Sportface sat down this morning for a Q and A with this behemoth bloke. Sportface guzzled Fanta Grape Soda and Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl had his cup of Joe straight up black. Tough guys do coffee bare boned.

Sportface: So how we come out of this health crisis?

Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl: Give me a few days and I’ll draft a global plan that will solve all of this. I’m the one with the 12 master’s degrees in epidemiology, genetics, and viruses from Duke, University of North Carolina, Wake Forest, and Vanderbilt.

Sportface: Can you give us a glimpse into what that draft will conclude?

Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl: No. I need to make a big PR splash when I roll this out. Sammy Sportface will be posting it on his Baby Boomer Brotherhood Facebook page. Need to maximize my press coverage. It’s key the story gets picked up by the Winston-Salem Journal.

Sportface: What will be the big changes to the economy?

Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl: Continent-to-continent hysteria. Day and night fist fights in the streets. Businesses will stop worrying about serving customers and focus much more of their time fighting with people with their bare hands over land, values, principles, and mores.

The other sea change I foresee is Sportface receding into the background. While the sports world was shut down, there was nothing else to read so people read Sportface. Not me, but simple-minded, uneducated, unerudite sports fans. But once sports come back, Sportface will go back to being a marginalized, obscure, and low-rent has-been. Man that dude is stupid.

Sportface: What about all the blogs Sportface writes about his D.C. boys carousing around in high school?

Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl: The collective IQs of 10 of Sportface’s nitwit DC high school losers would not amount to half of mine. No wonder Sportface ended up being Sportface. He grew up with a pack of imbeciles.

Sportface: What about social distancing? How do you think that is affecting people psychologically and emotionally?

Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl: People who need interpersonal relationships are weak. I don’t need anyone. I hope social distancing becomes permanent globally and they extend the distance from six feet to one hundred and six feet.

I would be perfectly content – in fact aroused – if I became the only person left on the Earth. The rest of civilization is roadkill as far as I’m concerned.

Sportface: Why do you have eight names?

Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Massey Sonny Bruce Carl: Because Sportface is an idiot.

New NASCAR Rule Forces Drivers To Have

Two First Names and No Last Name

May 13, 2020

As NASCAR gears up for its first live race on May 17since the coronavirus hit, the organization is focusing on generating more buzz about this sport.

In that spirit, the organization has decided that all its racers need to have two first names and no last name.

Because none of them have this name arrangement now – like everybody else in society -- all of them will have to change their names before getting behind the wheels in a NASCAR race.

The sport is making this new rule to make stand out from all other sports. They want to get people talking and caring about NASCAR and generating more fan conversations even if those conversations are more bewilderment than excitement.

The thinking goes that if all the racers have two first two names and no last names, NASCAR will generate lots of press coverage about why this change has been made and what the strategic thinking was behind the decision.

“Any press is good press,” said Wally Jimmie, the organization’s executive vice president of promotions. “Sure it may be oddball press but that’s better than negative press.”

Under the new plan, one of NASCAR’s top money winners will no longer be allowed to call himself Jimmie Johnson because that’s a normal first and last name besides the Jimmie spelling (usually it’s Jimmy). He will have to concoct some other first name/first name combination such as Jimmie Sam, Jimmie Curt, Jimmie Timmy, or Jimmy Kevin.

NASCAR officials are willing to be flexible, to a point, on these name decisions. Jimmie Johnson could abandon his first and name entirely and call himself Bob Skip or Tyler Colin.

“Out of respect for the driver’s desires for independence and the freedom to do personal branding the way they see fit, NASCAR doesn’t care what names the driver choose as long the first and last names are both first names,” added Wally Jimmie. “My name used to be Neddy NASCAR. But I now have a first name and last name that are both first names. So I’m trailblazing this trend, drinking my own motor oil, and believe it’s a way to differentiate NASCAR from all other sports.

“Everybody will be talking about our new rule and wondering what the first name/first name rule has to do with winning car races,” he added. “But at least they will be talking about us. I don’t know if more fans will show up for races because the drivers all have first and last names that are first both names. But anything is worth a shot at this point to draw attention to this sport.”

Kyle Busch, also a major money winner on the NASCAR tour, received this news and immediately posted the following note his Facebook page to find out what his followers think his new name should be:

“What do you think about Kyle Chris?” he asked. “Or Kyle Hank? Or Kevin Sam? Or we could ditch Kyle altogether and go with Leonard Peter or Mark Ronald?

Since he posted this on Facebook, his fans have been weighing in with responses such as these:

“Hey Kyle, how about you go with Butch Benny or Xavier Walt? I don’t know…Leonard Peter is a huge departure from Kyle Busch. It may be a bridge too far.”

Denny Hamlin, another NASCAR star, had a different take on the new rule. He wants to keep his name Denny and have his other first name to be Dennis. But Dennis has been used as a last name so it’s not allowed.

“This rule change is so onerous and subjective,” he said. “I don’t see why becoming Denny Dennis is not allowed. Dennis is a first name more often than a last name.”

Wally Jimmie weighed in:

“No can do on Denny Dennis. The first and last name have to have been used as first names in all cases since continental drift began. There cannot be any ambiguity and no exceptions. Otherwise, we’ll be going down a slippery slope. Guys will start wanting to call themselves Bobby Stewart and stuff like that. Stewart has been used often as both a first and last name and we can’t have any loopholes that would jettison this marketing stunt.”

To make all these name changes official, the drivers will have to go to the Department of Motor Vehicles and have their names changed and obtain new drives licenses. And they will need to travel to Washington DC and have their names officially changed on their birth certificates at the United States Social Security Administration (USSSA).

“I hate big bloated bureaucracies such as the DMV and the USSSSA,” said Hamlin. “They’re so slow. I got into racing to go fast. Maybe I’ll call himself Freddie Fast.”

“No can do,” said Wally Jimmie. “Fast is not a first name nor a last name. It’s an adjective and a noun, but not a name. You better think up another first name/first name fast, Dummy Denny, or you’ll be fast-forwarded out of NASCAR.”

NASCAR’s First Race After Shutdown

To Shatter All-Time TV Viewership Record

May 12, 2020

We’re now up to 64 lost and lonely days.

We have been staying inside, keeping six feet away, wondering about our uncertain futures, thinking maybe life has been upended forever, that we need to re-skill or retire or stand on our heads or grow bushy sideburns or take up sewing or go for a drive somewhere, anywhere, just to get out of our houses.

We’ve been getting bummed out not seeing any live sports on TV. A world without sports is like a world without oxygen.

For these 64 days in social isolation, people everywhere, even casual or fleeting sports fans, have been yearning to watch a live sporting event.

We will finally get that chance this Sunday, May 17^th, when NASCAR holds a live race at the Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.

The race will be the first NASCAR race in 69 days and one of the first live sporting events anywhere in the world since the pandemic shocked and halted virtually all world activity in early March.

Expect people from all walks of life to tune in to watch this race. Everybody, everywhere, all over the place, ubiquitously. If this first live event was live badminton or curling or the Nordic Combined, hundreds of millions of people would tune in.

Even though NASCAR races are dudes driving around in circles, people will still want the rush they get watching a sport happen. They’re ready for anything instead of the 24/7 parade of historical sports documentaries from yesteryears that have cluttered the sports airways throughout this crisis.

Of course all avid NASCAR fans will be watching Sunday. But count on fans who have never seen a NASCAR race and don’t particularly like the sport, or any sports, to tune in. Boredom makes people do things they wouldn’t normally do. They need something, anything, to pass the time, to give their lives meaning and make them feel whole.

“You know people are desperate for sports if they’re willing to watch a NASCAR race,” said Wally Jimmie, an executive vice president with NASCAR. “But we’ll take the fans any way we can get them, even those who probably will never watch another NASCAR race once the other sports come back.”

Fans will be tuning in from every imaginable walk of life. Here are just a few such fans among an infinite list of examples:

· every member of the United States Department of Agriculture;

· all members of the religious clergy including Benedictine Monks;

· every person on the African continent;

· 89 percent of Alaskans;

· all Hollywood film producers;

· the entire membership of the The Boys Clubs of America;

· every barber shop quartet in the Northern Hemisphere;

· all plumbers from Eastern Europe;

· retail and commercial real estate salespeople;

· the cast and stage hands of “Mean Girls”;

· all members of the Montana Chamber of Commerce;

· everyone who has ever participated on a high school debate team;

· the entire cast of “Shrek”;

· every member of the band “10,000 Maniacs”;

· all present and former National Hockey League players plus all Canadians between the ages of six and 66;

· the Gold medal winners in the 1996, 2000, 2004, 2008, 2012, and 2016 Olympics ping pong competition;

· all owners and patrons of 7-Elevens, QuickChek, Hardees, and liquor stores on all seven continents;

· The Federal Bureau of Investigation workforce;

· Ralph Jerry Garcia;

· Jon Bon Jovi and all rock stars from the 1980s and 90s;

· the Russian Politburo;

· all current and former employees of the Natural Museum of History; and

· all nursery school students everywhere.

“The people tuning into the Darlington race will be from all walks of life, from every age demographic, from every religion, from every town, and from every far-off place you can think of plus those you’ve never even fathomed that actually exist,” added Jimmie. “The TV broadcast is likely to draw more viewers than the total number fans who have ever watched sports on TV since 1958.”

This translates to approximately 898 trillion viewers of one NASCAR race on Sunday. Advertisers are excited about all the eyeballs they will attract. But they’re concerned that Fox Sports is charging $898 trillion for a 30-second ad during the broadcast.

“We could pay $898 billion for a 30 second ad,” said the VP of advertising with Amazon. “We have that money because we’ve been the only company in the world making serious bank during the pandemic.

“But we need to see how well the NASCAR demographic fits with our strategy. For instance, we are highly skeptical that the barber shop quartet group would fork over any bucks for Amazon products and services.”

Fox Sports executive Andy Advertising said he’s excited so many people will be watching, though is a bit concerned that advertisers may not reach their target buyers because of the eclectic group of viewers.

“I don’t see how the Boy Scouts of America and Benedictine Monks will resonate with an Amazon ad, but we’ll take their money if they’re foolish enough to pay for the spot.”

NASCAR appreciates that Saturday’s gigantic TV audience is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to broaden fan interest before other sports such as major league baseball take fans away from them.

“There will never be more people watching a NASCAR race than will be on Saturday,” Advertising added. “It’s our time in the limelight and we’re going to make sure fans are not bored watching cars ride around in circles.

“We’ll be throwing confetti around, crashing air balloons in the infield, and having Tom Brady hanging out in the infield talking about how much he despises Bill Belichick,” he added. “You don’t have to be a sports fan to love these kinds of gimmicks.”

NASCAR Unveils Quirky and Controversial

Rules to Energize Fading Fans

May 7, 2020

To energize its dwindling fan base, NASCAR has unveiled a quirky and controversial set of rule changes that depart radically from the 72-year-history of the sport.

The changes range from only running races when rain falls, increasing noise levels of the cars, and awarding the largest paycheck to the actual winner of the race – rather than a contestant who finishes 10^th or 20th.

“NASCAR’s entire sport needs to be re-imagined into something more refreshing, counterintuitive and borderline off-the-wall,” said Wally Jimmie, the organization’s executive vice president. “What we’ve been doing hasn’t been engaging fans. Our ticket revenues and TV ratings are plummeting. We need to upend conventional thinking and depart from our old and tired ways.”

Driving in the Rain

Throughout its history, NASCAR has suspended races once it starts raining. But going forward, the races will only be held in rain -- and that includes torrential downpours. No races will take place while the sun shines.

By Wednesday of each week of the season, NASCAR officials will go to weather.com and ascertain in what city it is most likely to be raining the hardest at race time on the upcoming Saturday. The race will take place at a track in the city with the highest probability of rain with the most total volume of precipitation.

“It has never made sense that the best stock car drivers in the world need to stop driving when it rains,” added Jimmie. “They ought to be able to drive in the rain. It will be fascinating to see how the bald tires handle on the wet tracks. More fans will definitely tune in because it will be more exciting to see the drivers swerve down the track and battle the conditions.”

Fans can expect a significant percentage of the races to take place in Seattle because it rains in that city more than any other place in America. And drivers will not be allowed to use windshield wipers.

If they spin out into the muddy infield grass, no one will be allowed to rescue them. They will have to drive their way out or, with the car in neutral, push the car out of the muck by themselves. If they remain stuck, they will get a “Did Not Finish” (DNF) next to their names on the race scoreboard.

And fans will no longer have to waste time at the track sitting out rain delays. If it stops raining, however, the race will be delayed until the rain returns.

If the rain doesn’t re-commence, fans can leave and come back when it starts raining again to watch the race without having to pay for another ticket.

“I’m concerned about driving in the rain all the time,” said Jimmie Johnson, one of NASCAR’s top drivers. “We will need to practice our hydroplaning skills. Driving at 200 miles per hour without windshield wipers will be especially tough. But as long as no one gets wipers, at least the playing field will be level. Whatever it takes to bring fans back to the sport is what we have to do.”

Increasing Noise Levels

Anyone who has attended a NASCAR race knows the noise levels can be twice as loud as an AC/DC rock concert. But instead of lowering the noise levels, NASCAR will jack up the noise to above 1,000 decibels – the highest in the history of the sport.

“Fans get a physical rush throughout their bodies from the blaring noises at races,” added Jimmie. “We want to intensify that physical sensation they feel by boosting the noise to seriously loud levels never reached at any sporting or rock concert in world history.”

First Place Finisher Wins Most Money

Fans have become increasingly bewildered with the new rules in NASCAR. For example, the driver that crosses the line first often does not win the largest purse because team sponsorships and other incentives pay drivers depending on how they finish.

Different segments of the race have “stage winners” who may not end up finishing first overall but collect more total cash than the overall race winner.

“There will be no more of this cheesy stuff in which, say, the 17^th place finisher makes more money than the 1^st place finisher just because of some bogus team sponsorship payment deal or incentive plan,” added Jimmie. “The most money should go to the first-place finisher – period. We don’t want fans wondering about all these other rules and incentives drivers get that muddy the event and drama of the race. NASCAR is on a crusade to be less confusing.”

Tom Brady, who announced this week he would be investing in NASCAR, supports the new rules:

“As long as I get a chance to beat Belichick’s cars, I don’t care if its raining, snowing, or hailing,” he said. “And as for the noise levels being raised, that’s the right way to go. I’ve played in Super Bowls in super loud domes. The environment rocks your abdomen as the ground below you vibrates and shakes your feet and calves. Fans will get a biological thrill from those sensations.”

To be continued…

Belichick, Brady Brawl Spills

Onto NASCAR Race Tracks

May 5, 2020

The psychological feud between Tom Brady and Belichick continues to boil over beyond the worlds of football and Daytona Beach onto the tracks of NASCAR.

Less than one day after Brady announced he would be investing in a five-car NASCAR super team, Belichick issued a news release one-upping his former quarterback. The New England Patriots coach revealed he would be investing in a six-car NASCAR super team.

“Not only will I field a larger super team than Brady, I will compete with him in NASCAR on an ongoing basis to prove that I’m the smarter and more talented guy,” said Belichick. “This will prove once and for all that I am more responsible than Crybaby Brady for the Patriots winning six Super Bowls.”

Brady and Belichick parted ways acrimoniously when the quarterback signed to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on March 20^th.

Their relationship had been souring for several years as their egos clashed and the public debated which man deserved more credit for the six Super Bowls. In recent weeks tensions escalated as Brady left the Patriots to play for the XFL’s Seattle Dragons.

But the XFL went defunct, so Brady signed with the Buccaneers and had a huge party in Daytona Beach with Gronk and others. There he heckled Patriots owner Robert Kraft and blackmailed NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell to get the league’s top executive out of jail.

“Bring it on, Belch,” said Brady in reaction to his coach’s breaking news. “My cars will race against your cars at Talladega, Charlotte Motor Speedway and all other venues throughout the NASCAR circuit. We’ll see who has the smartest business sense and is the more successful competitor. No one outworks Tom Brady. And no one is a bigger winner.”

Belch’s entrance into NASCAR marks the second time an NFL head coach has invested in this car racing sport. Joe Gibbs, former coach of the Washington Redskins, has been leading Joe Gibbs Racing for many years.

“This is the spark and controversy that NASCAR needs,” said Gibbs. “The sport has been longing for incompatible people to take center stage. Fans will love watching Brady and Belch cars go at it on the track and listen to the two of them snipe at each other in the press. This acrimony is just what NASCAR needs to be jolted out of its doldrums.”

To be continued…

Tom Brady Completes Deal To Build

“TB12” Brand, Revitalize NASCAR

May 5, 2020

Tom Brady, the greatest quarterback in NFL history, has completed another forward pass by investing in NASCAR. The CEO of TB12 Racing will field a five-car super team and the logo will be emblazoned on all five vehicles.

Brady’s investment aims to promote his “TB12” brand while helping revitalize NASCAR from its difficulties entertaining and retaining fans.

The future Hall of Fame quarterback recently signed to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers after winning six Super Bowls with the New England Patriots.

TB12 instantly becomes the biggest name in racing and the only five-car team, one more than the quartet of NASCAR cars owned each by Joe Gibbs Racing, Hendrix Motorsports, and Stewart-Haas Racing.

Under this deal, TB12 Racing has reached car number agreements with Stewart-Haas Racing for the right to #4, Roush Racing for the #6, and Penske Motorsports for the #12.

Brady says he wants a #6 car to remind everybody he is the only quarterback to win six Super Bowl titles, and a #4 for the number of Super Bowls he plans to win in Tampa Bay.

“That would give me a perfect 10 Super Bowls and no doubt be more than Patriots coach Bill Belch will ever win,” he said.

In a recent exclusive interview with Sammy Sportface, Brady admitted bad blood boils between him and Belch because Belch believes he – not Brady – deserves more credit for the six titles.

The remaining two car numbers will be #87 and #420.

“87 is Rob Gronkowski’s number, and he’s going to be my favorite receiving target in helping me win more Super Bowls in Tampa Bay,” said Brady from his Tampa Bay backyard swimming pool and mansion rented from Derek Jeter.

“And 420 has become the national code word for consuming cannabis,” he added. “As a businessman and brand builder, I know cannabis is the fastest-growing consumable in America and therefore a perfect fit for generating revenues for TB12 Racing and NASCAR.”

Brady has also hired NFL pariah, and his recent new friend, Antonio Brown, to float a psychedelic air balloon above NASCAR events. The balloon will provide exciting new TV pictures and drop items to teams and fans.

Drop the Rag Racing rags, for example, will be heaved off the balloon for wiping coronavirus off the driver’s dashboards and steering wheels. Brown may also crash the air balloon in the infield when the races get monotonous.

“I learned from studying the great Humpy Wheeler that NASCAR is nothing without excited fans and that is what T12 Racing plans to deliver,” said Brady.

The TB12 balloon usurps the Goodyear Blimp, which has traditionally hovered over NASCAR events to show aerial shows of the races and fans covering their ears because the races are unbearably loud.

“The TB12 brand will bring a well-oiled winning formula to NASCAR,” said Brady. “Fans have been abandoning the sport in droves because the races are boring and ticket prices are steep. To spark more fan engagement, my branding program will deliver new and unusual things going on, and wild things to eat and drink.”

Concession stands will sell the “TBelch Burger,” the newly created fast food sandwich that ridicules Brady’s former coach, Bill Belch Belichick.

To wash down the burger, patrons will be able to order a TB12 Moonshine Milkshake, conjuring up memories of the legendary Junior Johnson and his cronies. They excelled at setting up fast cars for moonshine bootleggers to outrun the law before parlaying those same ideas to the nascent sport of stock car racing.

“Today’s announcement is a checkered flag victory for NASCAR,” said Steve O’Donnell, the organization’s executive vice president. “NASCAR gets to be associated with the sports world’s biggest star as our premier owner. Gott love Brady owning the #10 car to predict he will win four more Super Bowls, reminiscent of Joe Willie Namath predicting the New York Jets would win Super Bowl III.”

To land Brady, NASCAR had to break its rule that owners could own up to four cars but not five or more.

“NASCAR rules are in a constant state of flux and have gotten too complicated,” he said. “This organization is committed to do whatever it takes to get fans back in the seats.”

On May 17 NASCAR will hold its first race since the coronavirus shut down the sport in March. The event will take place at the Darlington Raceway in South Carolina.

To be continued...

NASCAR Races Out New Crew

of Coronavirus Sponsors

May 4, 2020

America’s leading car-racing organization, NASCAR, has released six new full-time 2020 sponsors to align with the coronavirus pandemic, energize the sport’s bored fans, and reverse widespread revenue declines.

“We’ve decided to ensure NASCAR sets the pace on the sports sponsorship front to address the new abnormal world caused by the pandemic, and to re-engage fans who are leaving us left and right,” said Steve O’Donnell, the organization’s executive vice president. “These sponsors address current safety caused by the crisis and inject some much-needed freshness and creativity into our sport.”

NASCAR is unveiling these new developments two weeks before the sport’s re-starts on May 17^th after the pandemic stopped all races in March. That first NASCAR event will be the 642-kilometer death match at Darlington Raceway --also known as “The Track Too Tough to Tame” -- with several other events to follow soon thereafter.

All races, until further notice, will be held behind closed doors with no fans allowed to attend.

New 2020 Sponsors

Speedy Swabs: These are products engineered to test drivers and crew pit members for the coronavirus at supersonic speeds. Mandatory Covid-19 driver tests will be required during all pit crew tire changes using Speedy Swabs.

Within three-fourths of a second, the cotton swabbing gets automatically executed. Then the drivers’ tests get downloaded through a wireless network in the Center for Disease Control computer database, and the rider can then get back in the race.

Drop the Rag Racing: Avid NASCAR fans know that “drop the rag” refers to dropping the green flag to start the race. Before every race, new sponsor, Drop the Rag Racing, will drop rags, decorated with “Drop the Rag Racing – Covid 19” insignia, from a mini-blimp hovering over the starting line.

Drenched with disinfectants, pit crews will catch the rags and wipe potential coronavirus germs off the driver’s hands, dashboards, and steering wheels before the drivers start their engines.

“Just like washing hands is crucial during the pandemic, so is dropping the rag on the car interiors to make sure the virus doesn’t spread inside the cars and get our drivers sick,” said the CEO of Drop the Rag Racing.

Motor Masks: To coincide with the waving of different colored flags from the flag stand throughout the race, new sponsor Motor Masks will provide different-colored Covid-19 masks for pit crews and, eventually, fans, to help signal drivers on what to do.

Black masks will be worn for individual driver penalties, yellow masks for cautions, and the rare red masks for race suspensions.

And the simultaneous action of everyone at the track donning a white mask and then checkered mask on the last lap and finish will allow fans to feel a part of the action and provide great TV images from the mini-blimp.

“We think changing masks throughout the race will make the whole event less boring to watch,” said the CEO of Motor Masks. “Our company is bored with NASCAR, and we felt we could try to save this organization by making these different types of masks. Given the declining popularity of NASCAR nationwide, we figure anything to make the sport more entertaining is worth a shot.”

Slow the Spread Shock Absorbers: This company provides social distancing shock absorbers for shoe soles that will help slow the spread of the coronavirus.

Whenever drivers, pit crew or fans get within six feet of anyone else walking at the race, the shock absorbers generate a vibration feeling in their feet. This will remind everyone that they need to keep at least six feet away to slow the spread of Covid-19.

Vinny’s Ventilators: A New Jersey-based manufacturing conglomerate, Vinny’s Ventilators, will make ventilators available for drivers and crew pit members who may have difficulty breathing due to excessive inhalation of mass quantities of gasoline and oil fumes.

“We figured NASCAR gas and oil fumes are tough on everybody’s lungs,” said the CEO of Vinny’s Ventilators. “So we found another market for all the extra ventilators we manufactured that are not being used.”

Charmin Chevrolet: This world-leading manufacturer of bathroom tissue is unspooling its promotional dollars into NASCAR. Fans watching races on TV, drivers, and pit crew members at the track will gain the peace of mind that no matter where they are, their toilet paper needs will be taken care of.

“It’s no secret that toilet paper demand has been running high in recent months,” said Charmin Chevrolet’s CEO. “Let me put all minds at ease: No one should feel angst that there is not enough toilet paper at the racetrack or in their homes. The track Port-A-Johns will be stocked to the rooftops with Charmin Chevrolet bathroom tissue and re-stocked four times a day.”

NASCAR’s top executive, O’Donnell, echoed those sentiments: “These new NASCAR sponsors align with our strategy to make the sport safe and to slow the spread of the coronavirus. Most importantly, there will be towers teeming with toilet paper for anybody and everybody day and night.”

Wake Forest Hires “Burger King All American”

To Be Hoops Coach

April 30, 2020

“In 1981 I got a job at McDonald's. Twenty years later I was recruiting McDonald's All Americans. I signed a couple. But most of my life I’ve just signed Burger King All-Americans who want to kick McDonald's All Americans asses.”

These are the refreshing and inspirational words of Steve Forbes, whom Wake Forest University has hired to be the next coach of its Hardees All Americans basketball program.

Forbes, an international renowned economics guru and magazine publisher, also excels coaching young men wearing shorts and jersey how to put a round ball in a metal ring.

The former McDonald's hamburger flipper has been devouring opponents as the head coach at East Tennessee State University. He gobbled down 130 wins while losing only 43.

After every win, he takes his Burger King All Americans out to Burger King where they gorge themselves on countless Whoppers and hang out with the Burger King character with the gold crown.

“I will be bringing a Burger King mentality to the Wake Forest program,” he said. “Carolina and Duke are the McDonald's franchises in the Atlantic Coast Conference. They’re the long-time big brand names. But Wake Forest will take Burger King All Americans to another level.

“The league will now take on a different tenor and theatrical presentation,” he added. “Tobacco Road will never be the same. It will be the new abnormal in college basketball.”

The arrival of Forbes comes after Wake Forest’s program has been riding a steady upward trajectory the past two decades. Most recently, Coach Danny Manning led the Deacs to a respectable .221 winning percentage.

The Deacs lost all the time, and every year more than half the team transferred. But you could see there was talent there. The team has been littered with a steady menu of Hardees All Americans, or in some cases Bojangles All Americans. The team has even taken a few Dairy Queen All Americans because it needed to get 12 guys to play on the team.

Danny the Manning’s tenure capitalized on the forward momentum of coach Jeff Bzdelik. Buzzkill posted a .173 winning percentage for the Deacs over his five or so years at the helm. He gets credit for reducing fan attendance at Wake home games by an average of 12,000 per contest.

Over the past decade, the Wake Forest basketball program has taken big strides in positive directions in so many important ways except winning percentages, fan interest, and keeping players in the program.

“I know the Wake Forest Hardee Boys are ready to build on recent improvements, and I’m the right guy to make it all happen,” said Forbes.

He said the program will be relying on biased and unforgettable press coverage from our sports blogger alumnus, Sammy Sportface.

“He may not always write the truth nor care if we win,” he said. “But we all know he’s a huge Burger King All American kind of guy. He writes about his fast food fetishes all the time. He’s like me and my players: He hungers to kick some McDonald's All American sports blogger asses.”

Forbes said he has already committed to doing his first interview about his new position with Sportface.

Sportface Sucks, Says Sonny, And It's Time to Tackle Geopolitical Phantasmagoria

April 27, 2020

The global situation in this world is in need of an overhaul on a scale never seen before.

We are going through seismic changes in society along the lines of the age of the Vikings, and the Renaissance painters and sculptures, and the armies and navies of all ages.

This is no time for unimportant issues such as sports and Tom Brady and who is going to be the quarterback of the New England Patriots.

That’s for small-minded people, stupid idiots. We need to think about how religion, the Bible, politics, history, and eleven other academic disciplines tie in to make this a time of intellectual reflection and deep probing of everlasting issues of momentous importance in the grand history of the world itself.

We need to sort through the nuances of ideas and thoughts to arrive at a path forward to create a new world order.

Stop the mindless meddling in football, wrestling, and Tiger and Phil. Use your minds to explore and unravel the depths of complicated concepts. Probe the big problems of our day and wrestle them to the ground.

Don’t be a superficial mental midget thinking about trivial sports blog topics. This is no time for that. Be of substance or be nowhere. Big fish need to be fried, lives need to be considered, all six billion of them, through a smarter lens.

You must think like Carl Bruce Sonny Massey. He only spends his time grappling with the nuances of life on this Earth and how it all relates to our reincarnation, where we came from, the Bible’s teachings, and his fantasies about how he is going upend civilization all by himself. Big talker he is.

Stop the stupid sophomoric blabber on this boring blog. Be an elite intellectual. Be like Sonny. Be into big things, big ideas, big changes, but never actually do anything big.

Just think about changes and how you are going to bend the world’s direction all by yourself. But don’t take action. Just tell everybody you’re going to do something supernaturally gigantic. Talk a huge game but don’t play a big game because you’re afraid your big game ideas might get you hurt. But for God’s sake stop playing stupid sports blogging games.

Get on with masterminding how you are going to fix the balance of power on all seven continents wielding your extraordinary brain power and vision alone that no one else can match. Mold yourself into a once-in-a-generation thinker with a gifted intellect that so few of us can even dream of having.

Break this world into pieces. Split conventional thinking with rational thinking into prevailing wisdom and afterlife musings that actually make sense to people, even those who aren’t able to think on your level.

At some point real soon the global conflict will escalate to a point that no one will be safe. No systems will matter anymore. Whatever was will be no more. Whatever is won’t stay that way much longer. And whatever will be won’t be what anyone would consider calm.

Widespread societal wreckage is forthcoming. Sonny says so. Listen to his grand vision, his celestrial prognostications and bawdy bravado. He is our supreme leader, the King of Intelligence, his eminence of egomaniacal masterminding.

When it all comes crashing down, he will be the only one left standing, high above us all, with sword, rifles, brilliant thinking, and genius genes all to himself.

Belichick Offers Pats QB Job to JaMarcus Russell

April 25, 2020

Bill Belichick has put to rest all speculation about who he would sign as his new “quarterback” after he cut Hall of Famer Tom Brady two weeks ago.

Belch will give the QB duties to retired 35-year-old JaMarcus Russell, who is the undisputed biggest disappointment of all #1 overall picks in NFL history -- and arguably the biggest NFL bust of all time.

Coming out of LSU in 2007, the Oakland Raiders took Russell number one overall. He played in 25 games for the team over three seasons. Along the way he accomplished virtually nothing before being released and never playing another football game.

Russell never really liked football, or never wanted to work at getting better at it, and completely lost interest in the game even though he was paid millions of dollars to sign with the Raiders.

His career stands alone as the most puzzling, disappointing, bewildering, and strange NFL careers of all time.

“It’s impossible to overstate how bodacious a bust JaMarcus Russell turned out to be after coming out as the top player in the 2007 draft,” said NFL draft expert Mel Kiper Jr. “Some players just aren’t as good as expected. Some aren’t motivated. Some don’t like football. Some lack character and heart. Russell had all of these destructive traits and so many more.

“It’s still mind-boggling to contemplate how fast he went from the best player in the draft to the biggest bust the NFL has ever seen,” he added. “He’s the worst #1 pick in NFL history and that’s saying a whole lot.”

Reached in his Louisiana home, Russell said: “I still don’t like football and have no intentions of practicing hard for Belch. I don’t know why he offered me this job. I wasn’t seeking it. This strikes me as absurd and out of the blue.”

Ever the innovative thinker, Belichick had a different take on Russell and why he wants him to be the QB of his team:

“I’m planning to use Russell as a decoy and not have a quarterback this season,” he said. “My running backs, wide receivers, and tight ends will take the shot gun and butt-hike snaps but not function as quarterbacks. We won’t have huddles or call plays. We’ll be the first NFL team to run and offense without a true quarterback and ad lib every single play.”

He said Russell will be used to play quarterback in practices against his starting offense. And once in a while he’ll put him in the game in the shot gun. But before the snap they will shift him to line up as a tight end, tackle, guard or center depending on the down and distance for a first down. Russell will also be the team’s punter.

“The key is I’m only going to pay Russell $23 per game so I pocket a lot of money and keep way under the salary cap. That way I can buy another huge boat for me and my girlfriend to ride around in in the Atlantic on Nantucket,” he said.

“No one thinks of new ways to win football games and confuse opponents the way I do. I have to give myself credit: This concept of an NFL team without a quarterback is beyond brilliant. Plus, I can use that extra money to pay for my rapidly intensifying weed habit.”

A reporter with the Boston Globe asked Belch why Russell will be the punter:

“So I don’t have to pay someone else to be the punter. Punters are only worth about $23 per game – if that.”

Brady On House Mishap:

“Wrong Home, Wrong Guy, Wrong Time”

April 24, 2020

Tom Brady said he went to the “wrong home” and ran into the “wrong guy” at the “wrong time” this week. He had intended to enter the home of the Tampa Bay Dragons offensive coordinator but went into another suburban residence.

“I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “I walked into the house and there he was, Stephan A., yelling at me before I could get one step inside his door. I can’t imagine a worse house to walk into accidentally when you were intending to walk into another house.”

Stephen A.’s, ESPN emperor, said:

“What the hell is it with you and the sophomoric and silly-mindedly Sammy Sportface?” he asked. “I had to come all the way here to Tampa Bay and buy a humungous house near the Dragons training camp cuz’ I gotta have the most salacious and incendiary inside scoops that Sportface keeps breaking and not me.

“I tell you right now, that dude is making me look spectacularly slow and slackerly, and Stephen A. can’t be havin’ that,” he added. “It’s plain and simple, and I ain’t foolin’ around with nobody. I’ve got zero tolerance for this nonsensical nonsense. Answer my question, damnit. ANSWER MY QUESTION.”

“You’re never gonna get the big TB stories from me, Stephen A.,” said Brady. “Sportface is my guy.”

“Does he have a huge house in Tampa Bay like the wonderfully wealthy Stephen A?”

“Of course not. He can’t afford to live here. Sportface is a small-timer who used to date Hottie until she fell in love with seven of his friends while they were dating.”

“Then why the hell are you giving him all the NFL scoops about you and the Dragons before anyone else? Damnit, I’m serious. This is uncannily uncanny. The dude had me put in a soundproof room at the gruesome golf match. Nobody could hear me screaming and yelling. I have no tolerance for that whatsoever. Barkley was no help whatsoever. Told me he ain’t no role model.”

Brady took a look around the house. There were already dozens of six-by-eight-foot photos of Stephen A.s mug on all the walls on every floor – even though he only moved into the house two days earlier.

In his home office were piles of newspaper clippings with Sammy Sportface’s bylines. Over the past several weeks the stories had been posted on the Baby Boomer Brotherhood Facebook page that no one reads except DJ and Ripley.

The stories consist of an eclectic collection of yarns such as a balloon ride with Ricky Williams; a delectable Daytona Beach bash with Frankie Avalon; Belch offering Bledsoe the QB job for $27,000; Roger Goodell getting arrested for smoking weed with Roach Clip Ricky; and so much more that all has unfolded over the past five weeks.

“See this Sportface stuff? See me seething? See what’s goin’ on here? My ESPN emperor-ship is evaporating and I am mad at everybody, the whole world. You better tell me, Tom Brady, what the hell in the name of high hellaciousness is going on round here?”

“We just picked up Gronk,” he said.

“Everybody knows that, damnit. All the idiotic idiots in the media have reported that. I wanna know why you left the Patriots. Answer my question right now, damnit.”

“I told Sportface the real reason,” he said. “And I’m not telling you. Me and Sportface are soulmates.”

“Get the hell outta my house right now,” said Stephen A. “I always knew you were not to be trusted, Tommy Boy. You better watch yourself this season. I’m coming after you. Ain’t goin’ nowhere. Gonna live right here in Tampa Bay all season long no matter what the ESPN suits say. I’m gonna take you down. The whole lot of you. Will expose Gronk for being the thong-toting goon that he is. The entire Tampa Bay town is goin’ down, terrifyingly.”

Brady left the house. He walked down the stairs and into his car.

“Stephen A. is not happy with you, Sportface.”

Sportface sat in the front-side passenger seat typing a blog revealing the real reason Brady left the Patriots.

To be continued...

Gronk Will Wear Number “420” for Tampa Bay

To Celebrate Dope Smoking Day

April 22, 2020

A month after Sammy Sportface broke the story, the national news media revealed yesterday that Rob Gronkowski has rejoined the Tampa Bay Dragons.

Gronk will come out of a year-long retirement to catch passes with his former New England Patriots quarterback, Tom “TB” Brady.

Gronk will wear the number “420” in honor of April 20^th, the national dope smoking day. He will be the first NFL player ever allowed to wear a three-digit number on his jersey.

In the first 24 hours since the news broke, the Gronk 420 jersey has outsold all other NFL player jerseys combined.

At this Fall’s Dragons games, Ricky Williams will be wearing the 420 Gronk jersey in the pirate ship in the stadium endzone. After every touchdown he will do a bong hit for the crowd.

Pirate fanatic Mike Leach, head coach of Mississippi State’s football team, will hang out with Roach Clip Ricky for every game sporting a pirate’s outfit and holding up a pirate sign.

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell signed off on this 420 number because he has started to smoke pot in recent weeks. Supportive of the mythological vibes emanating from the number 420, Goodell believes it’s a gas to get high.

“How could I not allow Gronk to wear 420?” he asked. “Over the past few weeks I have smoked weed with Ricky Williams, Tom Brady, Antonio Brown, Drew Bledsoe, Robert Kraft, and Bill Belch. And that got me thrown in jail, which was kind of cool until it wasn’t.

“The 420 number will pull the hippie demographic into the NFL family,” added. “Brady and his Dragons are free to do whatever they want because he got me out of the Daytona Beach jail. I also derive pleasure sticking it to Belch and Kraft who have been serial cheaters in this league.”

Elsewhere in Tampa Bay yesterday, TB got busted throwing passes at a local recreational park, which was against the law because of the pandemic’s stay-at-home rules.

When the police officer confronted TB, he noticed the quarterback was smoking a joint.

“I am celebrating because Gronk is coming to catch passes for me in Tampa Bay,” he said. “Gronk will help us win the Super Bowl this season. I engineered the trade so Belch and Kraft no longer can have Gronk on their team.

Brady told the cop he plans to recruit and acquire all the good players on the Patriots roster.

“None of them want to play for Belch,” he said. “They want to join me. I’ve been talking to a bunch of those guys and it’s just a matter of time before they join the Dragons dynasty.”

The police officer didn’t charge Brady with anything even though he was breaking the stay at home and public pot smoking laws.

“I don’t care what laws he breaks as long as he wins us a Super Bowl,” the officer said. “I think it sounds awesome that he’s going to get more good Patriots players to play for Tampa Bay.”

Meanwhile, Sammy Sportface reported that this Gronk move to Tampa Bay has been a done deal for a month. The sports blogger has been on a coast-to-coast odyssey chronicling this Brady/Belch death match.

A month ago he ran into Gronk. At that time the tight end sported a thong while at a TB-sponsored party on Daytona Beach during Spring Break.

“I want to announce to the world right now that I’m coming out of retirement to play with Tom Brady for Tampa Bay,” said Gronk.

To be continued…

NFL Unleashes Full Contact

Tetherball for All League’s Half Time Shows

--Tom Brady Bankrolls New League

Leveraging “TB” Brand

April 21, 2020

The NFL has announced it will sponsor full contact tetherball games during half-time of all the league’s games this season.

These games will feature players from the newly formed Full Contact Tetherball League (FCTBL). The league’s poster boy is Rob Gronkowski, who yesterday reunited with his quarterback, Tom Brady, by signing with the Tampa Bay Dragons.

The games will be played on a big stage like the ones created for the Super Bowl half-time shows. The 48 players will smack the ball around. Once someone catches the ball, all the other players will spear and physically assault that player, who will emulate a running back in football but get hit much harder and often and by a lot more guys.

There will be no pads nor helmets. No penalties will be called. Horse collars will be legal, as well as hits below the belts and squarely on the knees.

“This sport will be more vicious than regular football and I’m totally stoked to start popping people,” said Gronk. “We will go full speed and be allowed to ram into each other in more reckless, entertaining, and mindless ways than the NFL allows. It will be more dangerous and destructive than smash up derby car racing and mixed martial arts kickboxing. Guys can also crush each other regardless of who has the ball.”

The players will include some of the largest guys who have ever played in the NFL such as William “The Refrigerator” Perry. It will also feature professional wrestling super-sized heroes such as Hulk Hogan, Andre the Giant, and Ric Flair.

The mascot and cheerleader for these matches will be Napoleon Dynamite, who starred in a movie in which he played tetherball with his girlfriend.

“I’m glad to see the tetherball craze I started in that movie being elevated to a much higher level of prominence and intensity,” said Dynamite. “It will be great to see this sport played with full contact and no pads so the guys can pulverize each other without any inhibitions. The fans are going to love watching this wild ass rough-housing with no restrictions on how hard they can hit, or where, or whom, or how.”

The FCTBL will also hold league games during the week around the United States in high school gyms and YMCAs.

The league is being bankrolled by Tom Brady, who has been promoting his “TB” initials on all sorts of products including the T-Belch Burger to dishonor his former coach, Bill Belichick. Brady and the NFL wanted a current NFL player to be the face of the FCTBL, and Gronk was the obvious choice.

All the FCTBL players will wear emerald green coaching shorts with a Times Roman TB on the right buttocks cheek.

“The FCTBL has the potential to become much more popular with the fans than NFL games,” said TB. “As I move towards retirement, my interest is in promoting myself more than ever. A sports league that doesn’t have rules and allows full-on collisions non-stop provides compelling and unpredictable theater.

“I can see this league becoming bigger than the NFL within a few years,” he added. “When that happens, I’m going to make a huge return on my investment. Screw the NFL. Full contact tetherball is the next big American sports craze.”

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell is an avid supporter of this league being showcased during NFL games.

“The NFL needs something to excite the fans because our current product is boring,” he said. “In fact, I will be investing serious cash in this tetherball league because I believe it’s got more upside than the NFL. Bring on the full contact and ditch all the rules. That’s what America needs.”

TV Ratings Soar for WWE Wrestling at NFL Games, Plummet for Football Action

April 16, 2020

It’s the Fall of 2020. Due to the pandemic, NFL stadiums remain empty except for the two teams scheduled to play in each one on Sundays.

TV ratings are abysmal, the worst in league history. This is stark and alarming because the NFL has for many years been America’s most popular sport to watch.

Most disconcerting is that at half-times of these games people tune in by the tens of millions. All they want to see is the half-time show in a squared ring hovering over the 50-yard line.

Fans are mesmerized and excited watching the entertaining and bizarre actions of the charismatic and colorfully clad professional wrestlers who used to be part of the Worldwide Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) and Wrestlemania.

These performers are the ones who lost their jobs this Spring when the WWE layed them off for cost-cutting reasons tied to the pandemic’s economic standstill.

In the ring on the NFL field, No Way Jose rocks his lime green dreadlocks hanging down to his shoulders as he stands atop the ring ropes in one corner. Here it comes, you can feel it. He’s about to land his entire body on Hurricane Helms, who sports his black cape and skull T-shirt. A classic pile driver move. So much raw pain. It’s palpable and believable.

Bamb, right to the mat goes Helms. Is he injured? Can he get up? Should he? This looks dangerous.

On no, here comes Summer Rae and Sasha Banks to join the action. The pro wrestling women first start throwing each other around on the ground, which is compelling theatre. Then they focus their attention on No Way Jose and Hurricane. Will it be two men versus two women? Or will the match turn into co-ed teams?

What a circus. So much intrigue. So much to wonder about. So much libido and estrogen to take in. Is this fake? Are these people really trying to hurt each other? When they pounce on each other, does it hurt them? Who are these people? Where do they come from? Do they take acting lessons? Are they athletes? How did they get so muscular? How prevalent are steroids in this profession?

Who cares? It’s fun to watch.

Americans are riveted to their screens. It’s clear, based on TV ratings, they like this more than the NFL games. Once the second half starts, the TVs go off. Who needs to watch the NFL pump 30 minutes of commercials at you every hour? And who needs to sit around wasting our lives away while the refs go “under the hood” for 27 minutes to figure out if the officials made the right call?

Why can’t they watch the replay once and make a decision? That should take about 20 seconds.

Real football has been upended by fake wrestling. The truth no longer intrigues. Lies are in vogue. Untruths fly around society like flocks of birds. Do we even know what’s real anymore?

We’re so used to not being told the truth that the world of make believe has become what we believe, what turns us on, what feels normal. So professional wrestling has become America’s favorite spectator sport.

Fans tune in for the half-time wrestling entertaining but tune out the NFL games. There’s more drama in watching characters do things that aren’t legitimate and staged (or are they?) than watching players do boring things that are real (or is it?).

We have entered the realm of the post-pandemic new abnormal. Fake is in; real is out. Both have become blurry.

“I can’t believe how popular the WWE half-time shows are compared with the actual games,” said NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell. “How do we get NFL fans watching the actual games again? The truth is I get it. I would rather watch No Way Jose bounce around with Summer Rae than an NFL game. Three yards and a cloud of dust. Seven commercials. Time out. Commercials. Commercials. Under the hood. Back to commercials.”

How did this happen? Was it the pandemic that changed what Americans value? Is fake really more interesting than real? Or is football fake and professional wrestling real?

What is the truth? What is a lie?

What does this mean for other traditionally popular sports such as football and baseball? Are fans more interested in pro wrestling? If the NBA has these wrestling matches at half-times in empty stadiums, will fans only tune in for the wrestling and not watch the games?

A pandemic hit. Sports shut down. People stayed in their houses for many weeks and remained six feet from each other. And now this – a rise in popularity of things that aren’t real. Are we escaping from reality?

Football was supposed to give us an escape. But not that’s not enough. We need more. We need to burrow deeper into the world of fantasy. Was the pandemic so real we can’t take reality anymore?

Will Fantasy Football become bigger than NFL football? Will Fantasy Football be threatened by pro wrestling? Is Fantasy Football actually real and “real” NFL football is the actual fantasy?

The sports world has reached an inflection point. We are a changed nation. We are confused and yearning sports fans. But for what? We’re grasping for something.

We’ve wrapped our arms and hearts around professional wrestling. Is there any turning back? Or have we reached the point of no return?

To be continued…

TB-ABalloon Nose-Dives Into Sand Trap During Brady/Belch Grudge Golf Match, Foursome Quits and Gets Stoned

April 16, 2020

Peyton Manning, feeling jilted that Bill Belchichick kicked him out of the god-awful golf foursome and relegated him to his caddy, guzzles Guinness steins in the club house at 9 am EDT.

The mood among the golfing foursome – Belch, TB, Tiger, and Wagering Phil -- remains foul, juvenile, and petty. Rampant cheating persists. Bickering abounds. And the group moves to the second tee.

Some 200 feet above that second green looms a psychedelic air balloon. Adorned in red, orange and emerald green colors of the new-uniformed Tampa Bay Dragons, the balloon has replaced The Good Year Blimp. Prior to this day, the Blimp had been providing aerial shots at golf tourneys since the early 1970s.

“That’s the air balloon I floated across the United States with partying with Antonio Brown and Ricky Williams,” said TB. “Bet that’s AB and Roach Clip Ricky in there right now. Check out my new branding logo all over the balloon: TB-ABalloon. My brand is getting huge as I near retirement making tens of millions on my famous name. Bet that makes you wanna belch, Belch.”

TB’s instincts were spot on just like his quarterbacking instincts used to be. Like two commercial jet airline pilots, AB and Ricky operate the air balloon. Because Ricky got NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell stoned during the recent coast-to-coast car ride, Goodell felt obligated to return the favor.

So he wielded his sports executive clout to pull strings with the PGA Tour officials to get AB, who was kicked out of the NFL last year, the golf tourney air balloon gig. This put the Goodyear Blimp out of the blimp business.

Pulling off this branding coup took some maneuvering. Goodell had to slip Goodyear under the table money to go away quietly, but who cares because he makes, undeservingly, $20 million per annum.

AB, a licensed air balloon pilot, captains the balloon’s course just as he did from Walla Walla, Washington to Daytona Beach Florida for one hellacious beach bash celebrating TB’s signing with the Dragons.

Roach Clip operates the TNT TV camera taking aerial shots. TV watchers grow agitated because many of the shots on their screens focus on the cloud computing cirrus clouds, tree branches, sand traps, muddy lakes, robin birds, and other sights that enrapture the Roach Clip Rebel.

Because he got high in the balloon -- as he does everywhere he goes since quitting the NFL -- Ricky doesn’t realize, or doesn’t care, or both, that his primary job is to keep the camera on the golf competition.

TNT’s Twitter account blows up with irate viewers bitching they can’t see the golf. One Tweet reads: “Who’s the high TNT cameraman giving us views of the random birds in the trees, ducks in the lakes, and wasps in the sand traps? #dopesmokingcameraman Sad.”

“This is turrible TV,” said Charles Barkley, TNT’s lead color man. “Get Roach Clip to show Belch and TBliss bickering with each other on the golf course. A bunch of insecure, shallow guys insulting each other makes for great TV, jacks up the ratings, and sets me up to score a bigger contract extension with TNT so I can entertain, say whatever I want, and not have to do any research about sports that I talk about.”

At the second hole green, Phil Mickelson floats air balloon bets. “I say we wager $20 million that the balloon crashes before our round ends. What do you say we bet $10 million it happens before the 9th hole? And I bet $40 million they crash in a lake, double or nothing if it makes land fall in a sand trap. And $80 million if they crash into the club house and destroy the bar.”

Belichick riffs of Wagering’s idea: “I think we should take bets on the odds that we will all be smoking weed with Roach Clip Ricky before the round ends. That guy always has great weed. And I bet you $10 Sir Charles Barkley joins us. Chuck likes to party.”

The balloon nose-dives and lands in the second-hole sand trap.

“Hey TB, we’re back on the sand like we were in Daytona Beach,” said Ricky. “And you know what we do when we’re on the sand?”

“We smoke weed,” said TB. “Got a stash, Ricky?”

“Of course.”

“So glad you made it,” said Belch. “I haven’t been high since we drove to Bledsoe’s house. Been having dope withdrawals. Hunting for a new quarterback is stressing me out.”

While operating the TNT cameras, Roach Clip had rolled four bones rolled in anticipation of the crash and encounter with a gaggle of guys who would want to get high. He lights all four at once.

All four members of the foursome take hits off of Ricky’s joints and pass them around. A communal feeling crystallizes.

Ten minutes into this dope smoking, Tiger starts feeling relaxed with this foursome, the same group of blokes he felt antipathy for just moments earlier.

“I haven’t felt this relaxed since I dated 300 women at the same time I was married to a Swedish bombshell,” he said. “I don’t even care about breaking Jack Nicklaus’ record of 18 Majors anymore even though it’s been my obsession, along with chicks, since I was four years old. All I want to do is take another hit off Ricky’s joint. All my troubles have drifted away like a psychedelic air balloon floating far away into the sky.”

Barkley fumes in the TNT booth.

“What happened to our aerial shots of the golf match? This is turrible.”

“The air balloon crashed,” said TNT anchor Ernie Johnson. “It’s all busted up in the sand trap next to the second green.”

TNT’s Twitter blow up again. “What the hell is going on with the aerial shots of this golf tournament? All we see is sand on our screens. Is he cameraman high? #TNTblows”

All four players lose interest in playing golf.

“Let’s go the club house and guzzle alcohol,” said Phil. “I’ll bet $100 million I will drink more than every one of you.”

They enter the club house. Each feels different. They’re seeing stars, and wondering where they are, and not knowing what’s going on, but oddly, not caring.

Barkley shows up.

“You guys are turrible,” he said. “Ricky’s got the whole world mad at TNT. But who cares? I’ve won a bunch of Emmys. Still gonna get paid my millions. People love me no matter if see the golf or not. The main reason they tune is to listen to me say controversial and ridikalus things. I ain’t no role model. And I hate Shaq.”

At the club house bar, the crew runs into Peyton Manning. Manning sits at a table with a “Saturday Night Live” cameraman and creative director.

Drinks flow for hours and hours. More weed gets smoked. Manning partakes.

Tiger feels empathy for his fellow golfers. He cares about them, an emotion he has never felt before about anyone.

To be continued…

Brady Broadens “TB” Branding Campaign To Bikinis, Air Balloons and Belch Burgers

April 15, 2020

New Tampa Bay Dragons quarterback Tom Brady has broadened his much ballyhooed “TB” branding campaign to encompass bikinis, air balloons, and belch burgers.

Today at a swanky beach club in Tampa Bay, the six-time Super Bowl champion unveiled the TBundchen bikini line. Named in honor of his supermodel wife, Gisele Bundchen, the TB logo will appear on the back left and right cheeks of the bikini bottoms.

The top part of the bikinis will match the new colors of the the Tampa Bay Dragons, orange and blue. The lower part will be emerald city green.

“Emerald city green is that shining place on the hill sort of like the lower part of the TBundchen,” said Brady. “As part of this deal, I am making it mandatory that the TBundchen be worn by all women to all the home games and all the hundreds of miles of beaches along Florida’s Gulf Coast.”

TBUGGs

A second branding initiative builds on a questionable trend TB ignited several years ago when he wore women’s UGG boots. He’s building on that momentum with a new line of these boots called the “TBUGG.” The fugly boots will be sold with bugs inside the shoes such as slugs and cockroaches.

“TBUGGs will be a big hit with the Tampa Bay crowd that likes to deep sea fish,” said Brady. “They can use the bugs as bait on their fishing lines.”

TB-ABalloon

Readers of this Sportface blog will recall that over the past several weeks Brady has been flying around the United States on an air balloon piloted by Antonio Brown.

The balloon crashed into the Daytona Beach ocean during Spring Break. Brady, Brown, Roger Goodell, Ricky Williams, and Drew Bledsoe swam from the crash site to the shore and partied for several days to celebrate Brady’s signing with Tampa Bay to play QB this Fall.

During this unthinkable odyssey, Brady has become close to AB, who played on his Patriots team for a week last season. TB grew so intrigued by air balloons that he has cut a deal to include the TB-ABalloon logo on all air balloons that AB creates in his newfound entrepreneurial venture.

“AB’s got a flair for piloting and crashing air balloons in the Atlantic Ocean,” said TB. “This logo should jumpstart AB’s business much better than his attempts to play in the NFL. My bad boy AB alienated the entire league last season.”

TBelch Burger

Still bitter at Belichick for cutting him from the Patriots, TB has found a way to leverage his brand while sticking it to his former coach. Brady is branding the TBelch Burger that will be sold at all Dragons games.

“Fans will be encouraged to belch after eating these burgers as a gesture of disrespect to Belichick,” said Brady. “I would have to say of all these new branding initiatives, my favorite is the TBelch Burger because it encapsulates my true feelings about Belichick.

“It will fill me with TBliss to see and hear this ongoing, stadium-wide belch that he has to listen and hear about the rest of his career. Good riddance, TBelchicheck.”

Belichick, Brady Brawl at Charity

Golf Event, Ruin Spirit of Day

April 14, 2020

Not even for one afternoon. Not for one charity golf match not supposed to be about them.

Not on a day that was supposed to provide fans with much-needed, live, and light-hearted sports to watch during the pandemic, could Bill Belichick and Tom Brady put aside their hatred for each other.

The two egomaniacs brawled and bickered throughout 18 holes of golf today. This combative confrontation turned south early on when Belichick, who recently cut Brady from the Patriots, showed up abruptly and unexpectedly right before the first hole.

He proceeded to inject himself into a foursome that was supposed to be Brady, Peyton Manning, Tiger Woods, and Phil Mickelson.

He told the group he was happy to pay off the event organizers to get his late slot so he could whip Brady. He stuck the knife in deeper by noting that he paid off with organizers with the money he saved by not having to waste money on a huge salary for Brady to stay with the Patriots.

The coach gave $23 to Peyton Manning to be his caddy. As a result of Belichick’s rudeness, the pairings turned out to be Belichick and Mickelson vs. Brady and Tiger.

“We’re playing for $50 million a hole,” said Mickelson. “Plus we will wager $10 million on every aspect of this round including longest tee-shot on each hole, longest one- two- and three- putts made on each hole, how many times Belichick and Brady insult each other, and how many whizzes we take and for how long.”

No one said anything to this. But they each thought to themselves how amazingly addicted Phil was and still is to all things gambling

Belichick grabbed his driver and said he should tee off first.

“I’m hitting first because I deserve the most respect among the group because I’m the biggest reason the Patriots won six Super Bowls and not Brady.”

As he took his backswing, he heard a chorus of ear-popping and fermenting belches from the three other players and gallery fans.

“What was that? Damn it smells around here.”

“That was everybody letting loose my T-Belch Burger,” said Brady. “I can’t think of a sound that sums up how I feel about you more succinctly and accurately than a crowd of people belching, especially when you’re trying to concentrate on hitting your sorry golf shot.”

After gathering himself and his thoughts and feeling relieved to have unleashed a from the bottom of the belly belch, Woods had to speak his mind:

“Brady and Belichick can’t carry my Tiger-logoed jockstrap. I’m the greatest athlete of this generation. You guys go on and one about who’s the GOAT, you or Brady. The truth is I’m the GOAT of the entire sports world. My 14 Major Golf titles far surpasses six Super Bowl wins.”

“Let’s add another bet to our round,” said Mickelson. “Let’s put odds on how many times Tiger will argue with Belichick and Brady about who’s the GOAT during the round, and on which holes he will curse at them. And we should wager on how many times Tiger brags about the number of women he has been with, and on which holes he will name at least one of those women by name.”

Dismissive of Tiger and Phil’s antics – much like he is of all reporters during press conferences -- Belichick regains his composure and whacks at his tee shot. A wild left hook disappears rapidly into the deep dark woods.

“Nice shank, Belch Boy,” said Brady.

Brady takes his driver and cranks a cruddy shot into the same undesirable and thicketed area.

“You’ve lost all your athletic ability, you logo-mongering walking billboard for your TB self,” said Belch Boy. “I can see why you would be so anxious to cash in on your fame before it’s too late because you know you suck at quarterback. That’s why I cut you.”

When the two arrive at their balls, they start kicking them around to better positions where they give themselves better lies and can avoid hitting trees.

“You gangsters cheat at everything,” said Manning. “You cheated when I played you in the AFC title games. You deflated footballs and spied on other teams. And you keep cheating even now on the golf course. Your six Super Bowls were undeserved. I ain’t your caddy no more, Belch Boy.”

Manning heaves Belch Boy’s clubs into the forest and stammers back to the cloud to guzzle four pints of Guinness. Then he calls a “Saturday Night Live” producer. He tells him he has a provocative idea for an upcoming episode involving a god-awful golf foursome.

To be continued…

At Bucs Game, Vinny’s Social Distancing Hot Dog Stand Devolves Into Ketchup Feud

April 10, 2020

You’re one of 12 people on Earth given a ticket to attend the Tampa Bay Buccaneers home opener in September 2020. No one is in the stands watching the game. All 12 stand in line at the hot dog stand.

You notice every person in line sports two, three, and in some cases four stupid-looking bandanas covering their faces. You can’t tell what sex they are unless you study their chests and hips, and sometimes even that doesn’t clarify.

You stand ten feet apart per NFL guidelines drawn up by Roger Goodell, who recently spent a few days in the Daytona Beach clink for smoking weed with Ricky Williams.

“I’ll have a dog with sauerkraut,” you say.

Vinny the Vendor chucks you a frankfurter from distance. The kraut flies into the air and some lands on your Sammy Sportface-bandana-laced face. A dozen or more droplets splatter on your Gisele Bundchen, light blue bikini T-shirt you bought on sale at Dick’s Sporting Goods the day before.

“Damn, dude, why did you throw me the dog?”

“Social distancing, dude,” said Vinny. “Next in line.”

Disconcerted by Vinny’s attitude but still jones-ing for your dog, you walk over to the ketchup stand. You are careful not to talk with anyone or be near them because that would be fun and engaging and going to NFL games is no longer about that. The dude in front of you, Kerry Ketchup, stands ten feet away spraying ketchup on his dog.

“Dude, you don’t have to stay 10 feet away from your own dog,” you say. “It’s only other people.”

He turns around and sprays the ketchup on you like someone in a horror movie splattering blood indiscriminately.

“Get the hell away from me,” said Kerry. “Don’t you understand social distancing?”

“Dude, don’t you listen to Dr. Fauci? He says it’s fine to get near your own hot dog to put ketchup on it. It’s only other peoples’ dogs you need to be concerned about.”

You notice Kerry’s bandana looks odd.

“Is your bandana an image of you spraying ketchup on people at an NFL social distancing home opener? What kind of a creep are you?”

Ricky Williams walks right up to within a foot of you.

“Ricky, don’t you understand social distancing? You’re too close to me.”

“I’m stoned, dude. What’s social distancing? Is that a new type of cannabis?”

Ricky walks up to Kerry.

“Get away from me. Don’t you get social distancing?”

“Not me, dude. I get high.”

Kerry sprays Ricky’s face with the blood-like condiment.

“Oh, dude, spray me some more. That feels good.”

Gronk shows up in his thong.

“Spray that ketchup on my thong, Kerry Ketchup.”

Kerry sprays. Gronk looks pleased and yet a little sheepish. The people standing in line for dogs have all lost interest in orderings dogs. They’re rubbernecking this scene at the ketchup stand.

Everybody keeps their social distance except Ricky who views this like a refreshing rain shower on a boiling hot summer day in Tampa Bay.

You grab the French’s mustard and start spraying Kerry Ketchup from ten feet away. None of it lands but you feel proud of yourself for seeking revenge.

“Dude, it’s hard to hit you from 10 feet away,” you say. “Come closer so I can splurt this ketchup in your eyes. But don’t touch your eyes afterward.”

“Spray that cat soup all over me,” says Ricky.

Ricky is oblivious to social distancing rules. His shirt, face, and chest are drenched in mustard and ketchup. He strolls to the front of the hot dog line two feet away from Vinny.

Overcome by the munchies, Ricky orders 8 dogs for himself. The other people in line, who are 10 feet apart, grow infuriated.

“How come that guy with all the mustard and ketchup on him gets to cut us in line and stand only two feet away from Vinny?”

“He’s stoned,” you say. “He’s Ricky Williams. He doesn’t play by society’s rules. He was a star running back in the NFL and quit to go smoke pot in Timbuktu.”

“How do you know?”

“I’m Sammy Sportface. I went on a car and air balloon trip with Ricky recently.”

Vinny gets ticked but also feels playful.

“Stand back feet, Ricky,” he said. “I’ll throw your eight dogs to you all at once. See if you can catch all of them. You were once an athlete. I bet you can catch at least three. The five that go on the ground will be yours to enjoy also.”

“Cool dude, but be sure to pour extra ketchup and mustard so when the dogs fly through the air I get lots of condiments on my clothes. It will add to the current ketchup and mustard designs I’m creating during this social distancing hot dog trip. It’s my new wardrobe trend.”

Everybody in line grows impatient. They all simultaneously feel an overwhelming desire to smoke dope. While holding his eight dogs, he rolls eight joints and passes one to each person in line. Incredible that Ricky.

They all get high. Vinny notices a new trend. His customers start ordering at least four dogs for themselves. Business is back. The economy is rolling again.

“Let’s have a condiment shower,” said Ricky. “And then a condiment bubble bath.”

Everybody grabs all the ketchup, mustard, and sauerkraut. They start spraying each others’ facemasks and stuffing each other’s hot dogs down each others’ throats. Social distancing becomes ancient history.

Vinny comes out of his hot dog stand in a ketchup-colored thong and starts breakdancing with Gronk.

“Wait,” says Gronk. “I’m supposed to be on the field catching passes for Tom Brady.”

To be continued…

Baseball In Arizona:

A Trip to the Twilight Zone

April 8, 2020

Baseball may return. But when it does it will be something far different than America’s national past-time.

Yesterday news broke that Major League Baseball teams are thinking about holding games in Arizona. They would arrive at the park – six feet apart. They will sit in the grandstands – six feet apart.

Why does everything – even baseball – have to be so damned six feet apart from everything else? Staying six feet apart will go down as one of the least pleasant directives in the history of world civilization.

All the games could be played in close by Arizona stadiums. There will be no fans in the stands. There will be no cheers. There will be no beers.

Go ahead, shed a few tears.

Mike Trout, the game’s best player, will be interviewed about this funky situation and say something like. “Yeah, this is definitely weird. When we sit six feet part in the stands, it doesn’t seem like we are teammates. It doesn’t even feel like we’re friends. This isn’t baseball. This is the Twilight Zone.”

Across the rest of the country, gigantic baseball stadiums remain empty: Yankee Stadium, Fenway Park, Dodger Stadium, and on and on. Maybe they’ll be converted into hospitals. Seems like every building is becoming a potential hospital.

The world has been rattled to its core. Baseball has been relegated to a sideshow to be played, maybe, in one state only. The pandemic has shrunk the game into a minimalist freak show.

Just Arizona baseball. Every day, all day, but no where else. Until who knows when.

The extraordinarily bright sun in Arizona will make the ball games feel like you’re watching people melt. We will wonder: What happened? How did it all come to this?

The pandemic. Two months ago most of us didn’t know what that word meant. Now everyone does from Alaska to the Philippines to Australia. Some 180 countries have people infected with the coronavirus.

Deaths by the day. Deaths at night. Deaths all day long. Deaths happening so fast, every two minutes or so, that’s it’s disturbing to contemplate. Deaths coming at us like they never have in our lives.

What went wrong?

Something cataclysmic happened. No, cataclysmic isn’t a strong enough word. It’s worse than that.

Maybe a virus-infected bat bit an animal and a human ate the animal. Then a virus attacked the world’s insides, causing tens of thousands of people to stop breathing.

Their lungs couldn’t fend off this virulent, wicked, and totally ruthless virus from hell. So, they succumb, day after day. People stopped working. Not some people. Virtually all people. No exaggeration. America shut down its entire economy for the first time ever. What?

If three months ago you told someone this would happen, they would have laughed at you for being mentally deranged. If you handed this storyline to a Hollywood movie producer, they would tell you your story is absurd and would never happen.

But it did. It sure did. We all wish it didn’t. The damage is enough to make you delusional just thinking about it.

So we stopped our frenetic lives. We sit. We don’t go anywhere. We don’t touch. We don’t hug. We keep clear of other people which, of course, is not good because people need to interact with each other.

All of us are staying apart, deliberately not getting close even though that’s what people need most.

Really?

Really.

This is no game. This is bigger than the power of Mike Trout’s bat. This is bigger than baseball. This is bigger than Arizona. This is bigger than the sun.

This isn’t about keeping six feet apart. This is about a mind-boggling number of people who are going to be buried six feet underground.

Stephen A. Rips Dr. Fauci

for Shortage of Toilet Paper

April 6, 2020

Stephen A: So what’s with this toilet paper disaster? I mean, I go to the supermarket and go down the paper products aisle and it’s unbelievably bare where the toilet paper used to be? It’s the epitome of emptiness. I am not messing around. I am going to tear somebody up if I don’t get my toilet paper right now. Plain and simple.

Fauci: We’re in a global pandemic. People are stocking up on supplies.

Stephen A: This is insanely insane. Plain and simple. Can’t you do anything about this toilet paper paradigm shifting predicament? You’ve got to find the answer. Stephen A. has got to have his TP.

Fauci: People can buy whatever they want at the super market. I have no control over the that. My job is to flatten the curve.

Stephen A: So what am I supposed to do at home without toilet paper? I mean, this is utterly utter nonsense.

Fauci: You could use paper towels or napkins.

Stephen A: That is utter nonsense. Plain and simple. I need toilet paper and there’s none of it anywherely. I thought about using leaves from my yard. What a travesty of tremendously tormenting proportions.

Fauci: You could do that but be sure to keep your social distance from your neighbor when you gather the leaves. We need to slow the spread.

Stephen A. Let’s move on from this maddening madness. I hear the new Dr. Fauci bobblehead has become more popular than the Stephen A. bobblehead. This is blasphemously and ridiculously and inexplicably wrong, flat out unjust. Let me explain something to you. I used to the king of the bobblehead kingdom and for good reason: Because I get ratings above all the other absurdly absurdists on TV. I rule with unruliness the ESPN network, those spectacularly stupid suits.

Fauci: I have a Stephen A. bobblehead. I got one because I like sports. You know I played high school basketball.

Stephen A: Bet they called you Tiny Tony. You can hardly see above the podium in the daily White House briefings. Bet you were a sorry ass player. Bet you played in some preppy prep school prep league with a bunch of bodacious bums. I mean, give me a break.

Fauci: I was actually pretty good. The president announced that during the presser last week. I hear you didn’t even start on your high school team. Well I did. So no wonder my bobblehead is selling more than yours. It’s also because I’m the most important person on Earth right now leading the fight against the coronavirus. You, Stephen A., have been rendered irrelevant. No one’s watching you right now, and it’s eating you alive. I can tell. I’m a doctor and can tell when people are not feeling well. You’re battling psychological demons.

Stephen A: Demons? Demons? I am the demon. I am everybody’s demon. I specialize in demoness. Better than me? Than me? It’s preposterous for your to suggest you were in any way a better high school basketball player than I was. I didn’t start, true, and I had a big mouth that repelled my coach and teammates. But I was on a much better team than you. I played in the inner city in the hood. You played in the suburbs with all the prep school guys who were slow and couldn’t jump. That’s not real basketball, suburban, slow-man boring-as-hell babyface basketball. You went to some school where they train you to be an epistemologist or whatever you are.

Fauci: You’re just jealous. Face facts, Stephen A. Come to terms with your demons. I started for my high school team and you didn’t. My bobblehead is a bigger seller than yours. And I’m the guy everybody’s listening to on TV every night on CNN, MSNBC, and Newsy. No one’s watching “First Take,” your daily TV show. Why would they? The sports world doesn’t exist. Your world is dead.

Stephen A: That’s utterly ridiculous. I’ve never been in any way or under any circumstances jealous of an epistomologist or any other scientists of any type whatsoever. To me, the only science of any substance in this world is the sweet science of Stephen A. and his historically and phantasmagorically technique of screaming at people such as Max Kellerman and my radio show listeners. Hey Fauch, answer my question. ANSWER MY QUESTION, DAMNIT.

Fauci: What’s your question?

Stephen A.: Where’s all the damn toilet paper? Damnit, I’m not messing around. I need my toilet paper. This is utterly absurd.

Stephen A. hangs up on Dr. Fauci. He stomps out to his yard and collects a handful of leaves.

To be continued…

Predictions for Sports World After Pandemic

April 5, 2020

Seismic and cataclysmic changes to the sports world will be marching towards us full throttle after the worldwide pandemic starts to fade away.

In an online survey of 643,900,992 sports experts yesterday, NGSCSports finds that the most popular sports are likely to be those that can be played in close quarters with minimal human touching and allow for easy access to bathroom tissue.

The most popular sports are going to be tetherball, paper football, and bubble hockey. Following are more details about these winners:

Tetherball

Tetherball is an unsuspenseful game in which one or two people stand a few feet from each other near a thin silver pole not unlike Rob Gronkowski’s stripper pole. They tie a rope at the top and leather ball of roughly the same soft texture as a rugby ball but less bulbous and bumpy.

One player swings at the ball and both players watch it go around the pole a few times. Then the other person gets a whack and they watch the ball twirl around a few times.

It’s mesmerizing to watch the players smack the ball and track it flying around. This can have a hypnotic effect on both the players and fans. Tetherball can also be a romantic sport to play on a date such as in his scene in “Napoleon Dynamite”:

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+and+napoleon+dynamite+and+tetherball+scene&docid=608037141058682914&mid=A0B262A6AC513B84BDD9A0B262A6AC513B84BDD9&view=detail&FORM=VIRE

Paper Football

Go to YouTube and watch the tutorial on how to make the triangular paper football. It’s too tedious to explain in prose here.

https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=youtube+and+how+to+make+a+paper+football&docid=608031205366761211&mid=DB55E8770C75DC276AA2DB55E8770C75DC276AA2&view=detail&FORM=VIREHT

Once you have your ball, which isn’t round as most balls are but shaped like a triangle, go to your kitchen table and cajole some sucker friend of yours to sit on the other side. Your pal is likely to be a loser if he agrees to play this stupid game with you.

You push the paper to one side. If any part of the triangular football hovers over the edge of the table but does not fall off, that’s a touchdown equaling six points, just like NFL scoring. This gives the game a feeling of authenticity.

You can also kick field goals by standing up the triangle on the table and flicking it with your forefinger. The motion is quite a bit like when you flick a bugar off your finger after picking your nose.

Your opponent provides you with the goal posts with his thumbs representing the goal posts. The players help each other by providing goal posts for each other, taking much of the competitive juice out of the event.

Bubble Hockey

This game will kind of remind you of this little glass balls you see at Christmas. You shake the ball filled with water and snowflakes fly around inside the glass.

Bubble hockey looks like this except there are no snowflakes or Christmas characters standing around such as the Jesus as a baby. Instead there are plastic replicas of hockey players holding their sticks.

Players never have to touch each other because they stand on opposite sides of the bubble. They manipulate their players using handles and generally find it difficult to control their players and the shots because the game is not engineered well.

You will see a boring game of hockey but at least the contestants are not shaking hands with each other nor touching their own faces or each other’s, the latter of which would be disturbing anyway.

Because of these drastic changes to the world of sports, ESPN sports analyst Stephen A. Smith has been notified by his ESPN bosses that he will have to comment about these sports on his show, “First Take,” instead of football, basketball, and baseball.

These three major sports have been sidelined indefinitely and may never return because these sports involve people touching each other. Dr. Fauci says people won’t be allowed to touch each other anymore so we avoid future pandemics, even though that means the world will stop procreating and no more babies will be born.

“I’m furiously flabbergasted and fed up,” said Stephen A. “Are you kidding me? Tetherball? What the hell is that? That’s incredibly asinine, plain and simple. And so was that movie, ‘Napoleon Dynamite.’ How damn ridiculous. I’d never vote for pathetically pathetic Pedro.

“And Paper Football? Are you seriously serious? I am not kidding around. That’s not a sport? That’s a gigantic joke. That’s the bottom line.

“And Bubble Hockey? PU-LEASE. What on Earth am I supposed to say about Bubble Hockey? It’s a spectacularly stupid game. Hockey played within a bubble on a field the size of a desert tray. Why can’t they play football, basketball and baseball again? My sports world is crumbling. Time for me to retire. I’m out. Plain and simple. This the death of Stephen A. as a spellbinding sports superhero.”

Other sports that will become more popular include competitive eating, fueled by Joey Chestnut, who can shove 65 hot dogs down his throat in three minutes; and the Electronic Sports League, which features online video game competitions that are mind-numbingly inane and played by computer nerds rather than real athletes.

“We think tetherball shows the most promise for taking off,” said Ralph Garcia of NGSCSports. “It’s got the best of both worlds: You use a ball and you can play it with your girlfriend. Guys love games with balls and love playing with girlfriends.”

Golf Enemies Tiger and Phil to Play TV

Match at Myrtle Beach Putt-Putt Course

April 4, 2020

The golf enemies for life, Tiger Woods and Phil Michelson, have agreed to play a putt-putt golf match on TV in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina next weekend.

Michelson said he and Tiger will bet each other $45 million per hole.

“I love to gamble and this putt-putt event will give me another chance to scratch that itch during this prolonged coronavirus epidemic,” said Phil. “I’ve been doing online gambling 24/7 throughout the crisis and need to get some fresh air and gamble outside.”

The two players will be wearing scarves covering their mouths and noses to protect them from getting respiratory droplets on each other.

“The last way I want to die is catching the coronavirus from Phil,” said Tiger. “I’ve never hit it off with him. I hate him and he hates me. It’s mutual hatred. I’m only doing this event to prove I’m better at putt-putt than him, take his money which he has lots of, and raise funds to pay alimony to my former Swedish wife.”

The course will have an eclectic set of holes.

Hole One will feature a fire hydrant of the same shape and size as the one Tiger crashed into in his driveway as he was trying to get away from his former wife. Seconds earlier, he had confessed to having had sex with millions of women.

The second through 18 holes will be life-size cardboard statues of all the European golfers who have smoked Tiger and Phil in Ryder Cup events such as Rory McIlroy, Lee Westwood and on and on.

“You always choke in the Ryder Cup,” said Tiger to Phil. “You throw your matches to make gambling money.”

“You’re the one who gives the team our negative vibe and causes us to blow it every time,” said Phil. “No American players like being your teammate. There’s dissension every time you’re on the Ryder Cup and that’s the reason we get crushed every time.”

In a pre-match interview to build anticipation for the event, Tiger and Phil sat down with their scarves on to speak with Sammy Sportface.

“Why do you guys hate each other?” asked Sportface.

"Phil is jealous of my greatness and winning 14 Major titles,” said Phil. “I hate him because he’s a pretty boy and chokes under pressure. Can’t stand chokers.”

Said Phil: “Tiger’s a fraud and phony and everybody knows it.”

“So what’s your rationale for doing this putt-putt event?” asked Sportface.

"Can’t stop gambling on golf and everything else,” said Phil. “It gives me such a rush of adrenaline to bet millions of dollars playing putt-putt. Win or lose, I get a tremendous tingle up my leg every time I gamble.”

“Can’t wait to fillet Phil,” said Tiger. “Nothing gives me a bigger rush than embarrassing Phil on national TV. Tiger loves to gamble because he needs that rush that he so often has not been able to get because he watches me win golf tournaments that he loses.

“I can relate,” added Tiger. “He’s got addiction issues. Everybody knows I’ve got addiction issues. We’re both addicts. That’s the real reason everybody should tune in for this putt-putt event.”

Infuriated Working At Home,

Stephen A. Annihilates Antonio Brown

April 3rd, 2020

“What the hell is this Zoom thing?” yells Stephen A. in his home office where he has been forced to work because of the pandemic. “I ought to Zoom everybody right out of my palatial home office and send them into some spectacularized stratosphere of stupidity.”

Stephen A. can’t get Zoom to work. He can’t figure out how to Skype. He doesn’t know what Slack is nor Instachat. Most concerning, he can’t get on his daily sports talk show, “First Take.”

“Damnit, I need to get on the air and scream at everybody. These damn zoomifications and working from home harassment and habitualities are making me madder than I’ve ever been. I fired Kellerman yesterday and that felt pretty damn good. Kellerman was a colossal kid compared with the supernaturally Stephen A. Little blonde boy should go back to his babyhood boxing. I

“I showed the damn ESPN slime bag sadly suits who’s in charge of that network. Them boys need Stephen A for survival especially now that there are no sports anywhere in the world anywhere whatsoever. Don’t matter. Stephen A. still gets the ratings. But now this work-at-home situation for cryin’ out loud. Computer confusion confuses me and I’m Stephen A. Nothing never confuses me.

“Five the damn computers someone super swiftly so I can get on ‘First Take’ and yell about Antonio Brown. I am so incredible angry today. I’ll tell you totally and completely right now. I am not messing around with anybody and am not talking with nobody. Not today. Not today.”

Ryan Fitzpatrick knocks on the door. He’s the smartest NFL player of all time. He graduated from Harvard, has as IQ of 298, and has played quarterback for 17 different teams in 11 seasons because he learns offenses faster than any quarterback ever has.

“What the hell are you doing here?” yells Stephen A.

“Heard you’re having some computer problems and need to get on ‘First Take’ to yell at and about people like you always do. I can do a rubik cube in three minutes. Check out my YouTube video. I’m a certified genius. Maybe I can help.”

“Get the hell outta here. I don’t need no geniusness. I’m smarter than everybody and everybody else enormously. Don’t need some scrub quarterback getting in my business. I simply can’t have that. Not today. Not tomorrow. Not ever.”

“But I’m really smart.”

“Not nearly as scintillatingly smart at the spectacular Stephen A. Get outta here, Fitz. Go do your ridiculously ridiculous Rubik cube.”

After he slams the door on Fitz, his phone rings. It’s Antonio Brown.

“What’s this with you saying the Ravens shouldn’t take me as wide receiver? You’re a scrub, Stephen A. I’m the greatest wide receiver in the NFL.”

“Let me tell you something right here and now at this moment momentously,” said Stephen A. “You need to totally and fully stop flying air balloons all over the country continuously. That’s the bottom line. You look like a crazy brother doing that stuff. I recognize you flew that balloon into the Raiders camp, but that, my brother, didn’t make any sense whatsoever. I’m not buying into your act, this whole thing with you and Tom Brady and fantastically flying into the Patriots Stadium before the games this Fall. You, my brother, need to straighten up your act accordingly. That’s the bottom line, plain and simple.”

“You’re just jealous of Sportface,” said AB. “He scooped you on the air balloon story.”

“How the hell did spectacularly stupid Sportface get that story? Nobody scoops Stephen A. I simply can’t have that. I don’t wanna talk to you or anybody else. I’m fed up with Sportface, plain and simple. He can’t be trusted. That’s the bottom line.”

He takes his computer and throws it out the window.

“I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let a computer get in the way of me screaming at people. Get out my life. Get out of my house. Get out of Stephen A.’s way.”

To be continued…

Gunman Presses Pistol Against

Sportface’s Head As Rudyface Cheers Gunman On

April 2nd, 2020

On Halloween night in 1976, a dozen co-ed private school Trick or Treaters including Sammy Sportface cross a residential street.

Two 30-year-old men approach them. One pulls out a gun, wrestles Sportface to the middle of the road, forces him to lie flat on his back, and presses a black pistol to his head.

Rudyface scurries away into nearby bushes with Cathy and Stacey. This is the dream scenario Rudyface had been fantasizing about throughout his childhood.

You see, Sportface swept up all the most valuable player trophies in football, basketball, and baseball from third through seventh grade. Rudyface was on all those teams and never could break through and get even one MVP. Not with Sportface on the team.

If they blow Sportface’s brains up, I will get more MVP awards, thought Rudyface. I’ve always hated Sportface and been jealous of his natural talent and ruggedly handsome looks.

Rudyface gets infuriated as his recalls all his disappointments and embarrassments at having never been the MVP of any sports team he played on. He brings back to his mind all those years when he was not good enough to be considered the best on his team – not once. He had come to terms with the truth that he would never the MVP of any team that Sportface was on.

As Sportface lay motionless on the brink of being assassinated, Rudyface fantasizes about how all the seventh-grade girls, including the two in the bushes with him. With Sportface dead, Rudyface would get all the grade school chicks to finally pay more attention to him, to appreciate his talents and charisma and even become enchanted with his unbelievable obnoxiousness.

All my life I’ve been waiting for this moment, thought Rudyface. Isn’t this beautiful for me? Sportface will get shot in the head. I’ll win the MVPs. And all the girls will come rushing after me finally.

“Shoot his sorry ass already,” yelled Rudyface. “Fire that bullet into his skull and end it all right now. I need him gone. Sportface is nothing but a big pain in my big fat ass.”

The gunman gazes over into the bushes. Rudfyface has already tried to start smooching both girls in the bushes. But they push him away saying their hearts were still with Sportface.

The gunman sprints towards the bushes. Terrified, Rudyface scampers into the woods. The cowardly kid runs into his house on Ontario Circle. The gunman bangs on the door.

“Hey Mel (Rudyface’s father). I’m here to shoot your punk kid.”

“Sweet. I hate that kid. He’s got a big mouth.”

Rudy had gone upstairs in the bedroom of his older brother, Spread Fingers. That’s his name because every day he spreads wide all the fingers on Rudyface’s hand until he screams in agony, then he spreads them further.

Every day.

The gunman opens the bedroom door. Rudyface has a weggie and is hanging on the closet room door hook. Spread Fingers lodged him there.

“Shoot his ass,” said Spread Fingers.

“Wait,” cries Rudyface. “Don’t do it. I’m a loser and big fat baby who just has a huge mouth that I can’t control. I need to live longer. I need to mess with Sportface’s mind for the next 44 years and get him to launch a blog that nobody reads and push him to write stuff that gets him banned from Facebook and sued by people. I have so much more psychological damage to do to him.”

“Everyone I’ve spoken with says you’re the biggest punk I in the history of the universe including Sportface’s older brother,” the gunman said. “Your old man told me the story about you and that curly haired woman in his house after the wedding. How dare you disrespect your old man like that.”

He pulls the trigger. The bullet enters the forehead in the slit area where Kenny Cassidy split open Rudyface’s head in a pick-up hoops game in Kenny’s driveway in sixth grade.

Rudyface wails. He whimpers as he utters his last words: “Buddha Pis, I thought I had Sportface this time. You were supposed to shoot him. He beat me again. That’s the story of my life – losing to Sportface. I’ll never beat him at anything.”

Stephen A. Crashes In On Newton and

Sportface at Bojangles Amid Contract Talks

April 1st, 2020

At Bojangles in North Carolina, Cam Newton and Sammy Sportface discuss how much money Newton should demand the Patriots pay him to be the quarterback.

Stephen A. barges in.

“What the hell is going on? This must be Sportface? What a fabulously fat and oddly odd old man. You are going to be sorry you ever messed with the spectacularly special Stephen A. Now Cam, why are you hanging out with this has been lap doggedly lousy loser? You should be astronomically ashamed of yourself.”

Cam shoves Stephen A. away from the table.

“Get away from me and Sportface. We were having Bo Berry Biscuits scheming on how much money to force Kraft pay me to join the Patriots. And you come barging in like I owe you something. Don’t owe you nothin’, Stephen A. And stop whining all the time and blabbering avalanches of redundantly redundant adjectives and adverbs.”

Shaq strolls in.

“So this is Sportface. Dumb Dumb, name. I came out with hundreds of nicknames for myself more than creative than that. When I went to Phoenix, I came up with Shaqtus. With Boston I called myself the Great Shamrock. And with the Magic I was the Great Aristotle. That didn’t have anything to do with Orlando but Aristotle sounded like a cool name. Maybe that one should have been the Micky Shaq.”

Stephen A. shoves Cam and Shaq.

“You guys are killing me. I am having a very terrible and tumultuous day. You guys are not paying attention to me, the one and only Stephen A. You’re fascinated with this fraudulently fraudulent, spectacularly spineless Sammy Sportface.”

“I didn’t say I was fascinated with him,” said Shaq. “I just told him his nickname stinks. His blogs are pretty interesting though. Did you read that one about Ricky Williams smoking weed with Roger Goodell, Bill Belichick and Robert Kraft? Man, everybody’s sharing that one on the Internet.”

“PU – LEASE stop this nonsensical nonsense right now. I tell you right now, plain and simple, that didn’t happen. Sportface made that whole thing up. I have never been more angry. I don’t want to speak with anyone today or any day. This is so incredibly incredulous.”

“Sportface is keeping us informed of what’s going on in sports,” said Shaq. “He’s filling that void in our lives. You have been arguing every day on First Take with Max Kellerman about where Brady is going and where Cam will go. That’s all talk. But Sportface is telling us in real time what’s really going down.

“He told us Bledsoe got an offer from the Bucs for $27,113. What precision in his reporting, down to the specific dollars, no rough estimates. He reported Cam is going to the Patriots. You had him going to the Chargers. Given his track record, I gotta believe Sportface. Why else would Cam be here at Bojangles with Sportface if Sportface didn’t have the goods?”

“Oh my goodly goodness God,” said Stephen A. “The sports world has gone wildly wild. I can’t take it anymore. I simply, plain and simple, have no patience for this whatsoever never.”

Stephen A. stormed out of Bojangles. He got on his phone and called Kellerman.

“You’re fired,” he said. “Sportface is taking your position on ‘First Take.’ I need to show indisputably and personally and professionally that I’m the one and only officially and outstandingly when it comes to sports. I need Sportface to be splattered to smitherines spectacularly. I want Sportface. You go back to babbling and blustering about boxing. I need to slam the door shut on Sportface supersonically and superlatively.”

“Who’s Sportface?”

“He’s the guy posting all that credulously incredulous crap about air balloons and wine festivals and Brady’s beach party with Eric Von Zipper.”

“Read that. Sounded like a trip. Wish I was on whatever Sportface is on.”

“Move out monetarily and momentously right now. Clean out our cluttered and calamitous office.”

“You’re not in charge of firing me.”

“Damn straight I am. I run everything enormously at ESPN.”

Shaq, Cam and Sportface order another round of Bo-Berry Biscuits.

“So which of my nicknames do you think is the cleverest?”

“I like the Great Aristotle because it made no sense whatsoever,” said Sportface.

“But what about my contract with the Patriots?”

“I’ve got Kraft in my hip pocket,” said Sportface. “He smoked weed with Ricky Williams and I have that secret I can tell the world if he doesn’t meet your demands.”

Sportface calls Kraft.

“Cam wants $35 million a year for three years, $50 million guaranteed.”

“Steep, Sportface. I’ve already offered Antonio Brown $29 million to drop his air balloon, and $29 million for Ricky Williams to give out weed to all Patriot fans.”

“You still need a quarterback,” said Sportface.

“Are you a sports reporter or a sports agent?”

“Neither. I’m the visionary leader, sort of like Tony Robbins, of the Baby Boomer Brotherhood. I galvanize, inspire and amuse men in the 55-to-75-year-old age group.”

“Can I join?”

“Sure. Google Sammy Sportface. The Baby Boomer Blog and join the Group.”

“Can we get on with my contract?” said Cam.

“OK we’ll give Cam $35 million for three years. But don’t tell Belichick. He wants to get by paying Bledsoe $27,113.”

“Old news,” said Shaq. “Sportface reported that already. Get up to speed on your own football team’s news, Bob.”

“My memory is going,” he said. “Must be that wacky weed Ricky Williams turned us onto.”

The call ends.

Shaq, Cam, and Sportface order another round of Bo Berry Biscuits.

“Damn, Sportface, how many of these biscuits can you eat?” asked Cam.

“27,113”

“What’s with you and the number 27,113?”

“That’s a great question for the Great Aristotle.”

“The Great Aristotle was a nickname I pulled out of my rear end,” said Shaq. “Don’t take that to mean I have in-depth knowledge of obscure, highly specific, football contract numbers made up by a Tony Robbins Wanna-Bee, Baby Boomer Brotherhood Visionary.”

To be continued…

Sportface Scoops Stephen A., Reports

Cam Newton Will Sign With Patriots

March 31, 2020

Stephen A. has been spouting off that Cam Newton will play quarterback next season for the Los Angeles Chargers.

But Sammy Sportface believes otherwise. Sportface today breaks the news that Newton will replace Tom Brady as the quarterback of New England Patriots.

“Nobody outworks me,” said Stephen A. “I get radio numbers and TV numbers. I know incredibly more than anybody about sports and that’s the bottom line. No way some lightweight named Sportyface has the inside scoop about where Cam Newton is going.”

He calls Newton.

“You lie to me, bro? You told me you were headed to the Chargers. What’s this about the Patriots?”

“Sportface and me hang out together in our hometown at Bojangles,” said Newton. “We’re boys. He’s the guy I go to now for big inside sports scoops. Sportface is in the know, bro.”

“You actually believe Spitface?” asked Stephen A. “I’m incredulous and this is incredibly incredulous. Who is this corny cat? Nobody knows who he is. Everybody knows who Stephen A. is, truly and indisputably. I’m mad at everybody. I’m not messing around.”

He calls Robert Kraft.

“What’s this about Cam signing with the Pats? Answer the question. ANSWER THE QUESTION.”

“I can’t confirm or deny, Stephen A,” said Kraft. “But I can tell you I have bonded with Sportface over the past few weeks. He’s been writing about our drive across the country to get Brady, picking up Ricky Williams, partying in the car, flying around in air balloons with Antonio Brown.”

“I’ve read all about that trip of a trip on Sammy Sportface,” said Stephen A. “That’s fictionalized fiction of ridiculous proportionality. You actually believe Slimeface Sportface? I’m agonizingly angry at everybody and anybody totally and comprehensively.”

“The truth is, Stephen A., that the sports world is now turning to Sportface for the most exclusive and important sports stories. Your empire is being threatened. Sportface makes the news, immerses himself in the stories, and reports it all as it happens. He was on that the ride with us across the country. He rode on the air balloons and watched Belichick and I jump out because we lost Brady.

“He set up his Sammy Sportface Syndication Network on the Daytona Beach boardwalk next to a greasy fries place to report on the beach party celebrating Brady’s move to Tampa. He gets involved in the stories. He gets to know us and learns what makes us tick, and doesn’t let anyone know when we smoke weed with Ricky Williams. He’s trustworthy. He’s revolutionizing sports journalism. You’ve become old news in the sports news world, Stephen A.”

“You mean to tell me you believe his reporting over mine, the great Stephen A., the Muhammed Ali of sports broadcasting, the greatest of all time? You actually and truly think some nobody named Sammy Spitface has credibility and sustainability and reliability? I’m mad at everybody truly.

“This can’t be happening. Not to Stephen A. Stephen A. is tyrannically tenacious and bodaciously ambitious and the sports world is dreadfully dead. And now some fictionally fictitious Spitface makes up a bunch of fake stories of fantastical magnitude and you guys believe this incredibly stupendous stupidity?”

“We’ve entered the new abnormal,” said Kraft. “The sports world will never be the same.”

“So is Cam gonna be your quarterback?”

“All I will say is Sportface knows his stuff. You’re in tremendous trouble, Stephen A.”

To be continued…

STEPHEN A. IN FOUL MOOD

WITH SPORTS WORLD SHUT DOWN

March 30th, 2020

Stephen A is not in the mood to play around with anybody. His sports world has evaporated. He’s at home, having a horrendously horrendous day, beside himself because he doesn’t know what to do.

“I’m pissed off,” he said. “I am suffering. What am I supposed to do with myself? All I know how to do is yell about sports while other people are talking and wail about the Knicks. All I care about are yelling about sports and listening to myself yell. All I wanna do is get irate about sports and rant about my nothingly New York Knicks.”

His phone rings.

“Stephen A., it’s Kyrie Irving.”

“Answer my question, damnit.”

“What question?”

“You and K are crazier than I am. KD can’t stop sending out insane Tweets. You called yourself a basketball genius but ruin every team and coach you play with.”

“What’s your question?”

“Why are you and KD insane? Please, please, PU -LEASE answer my question right now would you PU-LEASE?”

“KD and I want to win the NBA title. We need more players than the other scrubs on our team.”

“Scrubs? Scrubs? You wanna talks about scrubs? That’s been my Knicks for the past forty years. This is the worst day I’ve had in a long time. My Knicks are terrible. The sports world is dead. This whole pandemic situation makes me want to yell even louder but nobody’s listening and that really infuriates me. I need millions of people to hear me yelling over other people talking.”

“What are you doing to kill time?”

“I can’t figure out what to do. All I know or care about are sports. I spend time yelling at people in my house, my wife, my kids. I have to keep yelling and going crazy and being ridiculous. It’s a skill I’ve honed. I just yell and scream and get mad at everybody. Because I was bored, today I called my agent and told him ESPN needs to double my contract even though I already make more money than any of those ESPN on-air scrubs.

“I’m the king of the network now and they need to pay me what I’m worth. You know it. I know it. Max Kellerman know. And let me tell you definitively that that dude absolutely does not know much certainly. Without me, ESPN is NGSCSports or some other absurdly terrible organization. I’m the rainmaker of the entire business. Pay me what I’m worth, ESPN suits. Pay me now. Pay me everything you’ve got or you’re guilty of blasphemy. Did you hear me? I said pay me. I’m in no mood for messing around. Don’t test me. I’ll leave the network and build my own supremely superior sports empire with supreme greatness.”

Kyrie hangs up. Another call comes in for Stephen A.

“Why the hell did you go to the Nets and not my beloved Knicks?” asked Stephen A. “Why, KD, did you do this to me? I was going to pay you my own salary to play for my team. You killed me. It was inexcusable what you did. It was blasphemy. I thought you would listen to your boy Stephen A. Why? Why? Why, KD, did you do something so indisputably destructible to the city of New York?”

“The Knicks suck,” said KD. “So I went with the Nets.”

“I know they suck. That’s so ridiculously obvious and indisputably indisputable. But I am suffering, KD. You made a tragicly tragic decision. I am not playing around. Plain and simple. Which direction would you like me to go in? I can’t yell about sports because there are no sports. I can’t be excited about my Knicks because they didn’t get you, KD.

“Answer my question, KD. Answer my question. My question. Not your question, Stephen A.’s question. Come back to me to tomorrow when you have the answer. And you better have your answer ready and be ready to tell it in a readifulness way. I don’t wanna talk to anybody. I only want to yell at everybody. This staying at home and not yelling about sports is undeniably the most undeniable travesty in the superbly successful historicalness of Stephen A.”

To be continued…

Coronavirus Deaths Remind Us

to Follow Our Hearts

March 29, 2020

This morning I had to get out of the house. Went for a walk. Usually I see dozens of people. Not this morning. Only about five or six.

You know why: the pandemic. Our country is in lock down. Our streets have never been quieter. Oddness prevails.

I started thinking about a graduation speech that Steve Jobs gave at Stanford University in 2005 in which he said this:

Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.

Knowing this, we should feel liberated and energized to do whatever it is we want to do.

The coronavirus pandemic reminds us that we are all going to die. How could it not? The TV sets reminds us of the numbers every day.

So many already have died. And those of us who haven’t want to avoid catching the virus so we don’t die.

We fear death, I think. So we hang on to life as long as we can in any way we can.

It’s too bad that we must be reminded about death as often as we are. I wish it would be more like once every five years instead of, seemingly, once every week or month.

Basketball star Kobe Bryant died several weeks ago. No one saw that coming. But it happened. Weird and shocking deaths happen like this way too often for us to feel comfortable about our own ability to avoid death. These incidents remind us that we could be next. These ongoing deaths wear us down and disturb us.

One death haunts more than all the others I’ve heard about and lived through. It was my high school baseball teammate, a star pitcher who led us to the championship, who died in a car accident at age 16.

Since then many other people I have known well have died. But that high school friend was the first one. I knew that guy. I spoke with him, laughed with him, competed with him, and celebrated with him. The last thing I thought about when he was alive was his death.

His passing pounded into my mind that, yes, death is for real and can happen. Kids could die, and I was a kid so I could die.

I could go on about many other deaths that have shaken me to my core or shocked me. Len Bias, the Maryland basketball star, is one. A 22-year-old superstar basketball player who was on the verge of achieving his dream, being a pro, dozed off into death after snorting cocaine.

There have been dozens of others. It’s like a parade you watch as people in your life die and you wonder if you’re in the parade or watching it.

These reflections are not meant to pull you down. I don’t believe that’s my purpose nor worthwhile. These thoughts are meant to make you think about your life and what you are doing with it and check on whether you think there is anything you can do today, tonight, tomorrow and the next day to make your life and others around you more fulfilling.

Are you fulfilled? Do you have something you want to get done today or tonight that you would like to if tomorrow morning your life ends? What is it that moves you? What do you, in the end, truly care about? Who do you really care about? Why do you care about this?

I think it’s time for all of us, this esteemed Baby Boomer Brotherhood, to take a moment as our lives our on pause to think about what else you feel needs to get done and will require your effort to do so.

I think it’s time to stop wishing for something to happen and start making sure it happens.

I think it’s time for your heart to lead you where it wants you to go. It’s time for you to be open, to free yourself of inhibitions and insecurities and just lay it all on the line right now.

Celebrate this realization and uplift the people in your world. Do what’s in your heart.

Kraft Offers Ricky Williams $29 Million

to Supply Weed to Patriots Fans

March 29, 2020

From his Daytona Beach towel, Brady places a call to the local police department.

“Let Roger Goodell out of jail.”

“Who is this?”

“Tom Brady.”

“Tom who?”

“THE Tom Brady. The guy who won six Super Bowls with the Patriots and who this week signed for $30 million to play QB for the Tampa Bay Bucs. You should also know the Bucs will be renamed the Tampa Bay Dragons because I have a thing for the dragon in the movie “Shrek.”

“That donkey really hit it off with the Eddie Murphy-talking donkey, didn’t she?” asked the police officer rhetorically. “And when Shrek needed help whipping some bad actors, the dragon pulled her weight. And those colorful and loving dragon eyes were something to behold. What’s your second favorite movie?”

“I liked Fantasia,” said Brady. “Great animation, compelling story.”

“Ok, cool. We’ll let Roger out.”

Roger calls Bucs coach Bruce Arians.

“Bruce, Tom Brady agreed to get me out of jail for smoking pot if you agree to his demands.”

“Wait, you were smoking pot? With whom?”

“Ricky Williams, AB, Bledsoe, Brady, Kraft, and Belichick.”

“Dude, why didn’t you invite me to the party?” asked Arians.

“You were busy strategizing to get Brady.”

“Yeah, we lied and cheated our butts off to get him.”

“Brady wants Ricky Williams to get a free seat in the endzone pirate ship and after every touchdown Ricky will blow a bong hit into the sky.”

“Cool. Done.”

“What else does he want?”

“He wants Mike Leach to be at all the home games dressed as a pirate because Leach has a fetish for pirates. And AB and Leach will go for an air balloon ride above the stadium at the end of each game.”

“Sounds reasonable.”

The call ends.

Gronk calls Brady.

“Hey, what color is my stripper pole going to be?”

“Gold.”

“Sweet.”

Call ends.

The Daytona Beach party rocks on. Brady does the rumba with Annette Funicello. Frankie Avalon sings “Beauty School Dropout” to Frenchy.

Olivia Newton John shows up on the sand in the black outfit she wore in the scene from “Grease” when she and Travolta sang “You’re the One That I Want.”

You would think she would be hot in the long black leather pants, and you would be right.

AB goes to the air balloon store to shop for a new one. He’s torn between a psychedelic one like the last one that crashed in the ocean; or the classic black and silver with a Raiders white and fierce skull.

That’s the team he was going to be paid $29 million to play for but got released due to various sensible reasons such as not liking his helmet size and freezing his feet.

Near a greasy fries joint on the beach boardwalk, Ricky stumbled upon the Sammy Sportface Syndication Network. Sportface’s head is down typing a blog about Brady blackmailing Goodell to meet his Dragons demands in return for getting Roger out of jail.

“What are you writing about, Sportface?”

“You. AB. Weed. Brady. Idaho. Air balloons.”

“You forget Eric Von Zipper, Annette Funicello, Joe Burrow, Michael Wilbon, T.O. and Bod Derek. I dig Bo Derek.”

“Everyone digs Bo Derek. Question for you, Ricky. Why did you quit your starting running back position in the NFL to go smoke weed in Timbuktu?”

“It was simple, Sportface. I liked smoking weed more than playing football.”

Ricky’s phone rings.

“Ricky, it’s Robert Kraft. I want to make you a proposition. For $29 million a year I will pay you to come to all our Patriots home games and pass out weed to all the fans. They’re morose about Brady leaving. We need a way to get them excited about the upcoming season. Weed will win them over, catapult their moods, make them forget their troubles especially that the Patriots will never win the Super Bowl again.”

“But I’m all set to be in the pirate’s ship with Mike Leach for Dragons games.”

“How much are they paying you?”

“It’s not about the money, Bob. It’s about the weed.”

“I know. FedEx me a stash today. Belichick and I have to get high in order to deal with the fact that Brady is no longer our quarterback.”

“Sportface reported that Belichick offered the job to Bledsoe for $27,113,” said Ricky.

“Bledsoe wants more. We even offered him an overnight stay at Ramada Inn on Martha’s Vineyard because he likes vineyards. That dog didn’t hunt.”

“I know all this. Guess who I’m with right now?”

“Sportface?”

“How did you know?” asked Ricky.

“That cat is everywhere. He’s a global sports phenomenon during a global pandemic when sports don’t exist. He’s breaking sports stories left and right and nobody knows how or why.”

To be continued…

5 Ambitious Actions Baby Boomer

Brotherhood Must Take Now

March 28, 2020

With all that’s engulfing the world right now, The Baby Boomer Brotherhood needs to dial up its enthusiasm, energy level, and raise expectations for itself and everyone else.

We are society’s leaders. It’s our moment.

It’s high time we all take these five actions:

Action One: Embrace the mindset to take massive action now. Not tomorrow. Not the next day. Not ten minutes from now. Now.

By massive action, what do we mean? Give Sammy Sportface the floor so he can elaborate.

Volunteer your services. Give what you have to give. Share your talents. Go to your local Rotary Club. Tell them you are there to share all you’ve got. Offer your muscles, brainpower, and mature perspective on life.

Call up the Knights of Columbus in your areas. And the Salvation Armies. And the Kiwanis Clubs. Call them all. Visit them all. Show up at their doors. Give them the clothes off your back and legs.

Dance in the streets. Sing from your front porch. Raise your arms and show your sweaty underarm pits.

Action Two: Go to the supermarket and buy every sugar cereal they offer: Lucky Charms, Sugar Pops, Super Sugar Crisp, Quisp, Boo Berry, Count Cholula, Captain Crunch, Frosted Flakes, Frosted Mini-Wheats, Honeycomb, Cocoa Puffs, Trix, Fruit Loops, Golden Grahams, Cocoa Crispies. Get all of them.

Go home. Eat them all. Celebrate your cool self.

Then burp.

Action Three: Go to the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood Facebook Group Page. Whale on every one of the blogs posted there – and there are many. Vent what you really think. Unload your true thoughts. We must lead this world to truth. Our sworn enemy is lying.

Do this as an intellectual exercise. Stretch your brain tissues. Get that noggin’ cranking. Scorch Sportface. He deserves it. Everybody thinks so.

Action Four: Take every book in your house and put them in a tall pile on your desk. All of them including those that don’t belong to you but your wife or kids or some you still have under your bed overdue at your library.

Pile all of them up. Start reading the first book on page 1. Don’t skip any pages or paragraphs or books. Read all of them. Then write a short blog capturing the key ideas of all of them. Condense it all into one blog, everything you learn from what you read. And post that summary on the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood Facebook Group Page.

This project will take you several months. Keep at it. You have time. Do all of this. Right now.

No one will read your blog. But don’t worry about it.

Action Five: Take an inventory of your life. Get out a notebook. Start from your first memory. Write that down. Then write down your second memory. Don’t forget anything. Remember your whole life, every detail, and write all of them down. Keep writing. Don’t stop until you’ve got everything on the paper. If you’re concerned you forgot something, think hard. Strain your brain.

Remember everything. Give us details we don’t care about. Give us everything. Take massive recollective action.

Bore us out of our skulls.

Final Thoughts

Your time is now. Our time is now. We must strive for greatness. We are nothing if not extraordinary do-ers.

Start now.

Before the world ends.

Spellbinding Sammy Sportface Stories

March 27, 2020

As a swashbuckling seventh grader, Sammy Sportface was stoked up to sing songs with his classmates at the annual school recital.

His job was to sing a solo verse of Barry Manilow’s “I Write The Songs” in front of hundreds of people including the principal of the school, teachers, moms, dads, brothers and sisters.

His solo consisted of a four-line stanza. The first one was:

“My home lies deep within you…”

But then Sportface forgot the three other lines. There was silence in the auditorium. Did Sportface forget the lines? Or was there supposed to be silence for forty seconds? Is this kid Sportface on something?

Sportface blanked. The whole performance spiraled downward from there. For months the class had been rehearsing. This was their big moment. But when the bright lights came on, Sportface darkened the whole room.

Here’s the whole song:

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=youtube+and+i+write+the+songs#id=1&vid=774b3a97be157a90530b9e1b383c0afb&action=click

Four years later, Sportface stood at the foul line in Panama in a high school basketball game. It was tied with only two seconds left.

To ice Sportface, the Panamanian team called time out.

“Sportface chokes all the time,” said the Panamanian coach to his players. “It’s national news in the U.S. I’ve been reading about how this kid chokes in big spots like you would not believe.”

On the bench Sportface’s coach grabbed a towel and waved it in front of his player’s face. Sportface missed big free throws throughout his high school career.

Coach knew Sportface was going to choke, so he figured he would try reverse psychology that might make Sportface surprise everybody by getting clutch for once in his life.

As he sat there, Sportface felt supremely confident he was going to miss both chances to win the game. His teammates felt the same way.

So what happened? The first one, brick; the second, a cinderblock. The game went into overtime and his team lost.

Sportface’s vision became reality.

Everybody saw it coming. His teammates were mad at him. Still are.

Check out the photo with this blog. The hoops bucket looks like the one that Sportface made history with by missing those big free throws.

Four years later as a college senior, Sportface landed a cameo role in Noel Coward’s “We Were Dancing” play. The aspiring actor entered stage right and was supposed to say four lines. He said the first line then forget. The snafu was eerily similar to the Barry Manilow choke. Four lines, got the first one, fumbled everything else.

An uncomfortable silence engulfed the ring theatre, where Sportface’s friends watched with glee.

“Perhaps it’s time for you to go,” said the lead actress wanting to get Sportface off the stage.

“Sounds good,” said Sportface. And off he went knowing his acting career had been jettisoned in an instant.

Here’s some filler about the play.

https://video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?fr=mcafee&p=noel+coward+and+we+were+dancing#id=2&vid=de912c0d9d1f9f12ef31aa766c8d0e50&action=click

Belichick Offers Patriots QB Job

to Bledsoe for $27,113

March 27, 2020

After hitchhiking all the way from Montana to Foxboro, Massachusetts, New England Patriots football coach Bill Belichick immediately held a meeting to find the team a new quarterback.

Around a boardroom table sat all the former quarterbacks of the team including Butch Songin, who led the first squad in 1960; Tom Green; Babe Parilli; Heisman Trophy winner Jim Plunkett; Steve Grogan; Matt Cavanaugh; and Drew Bledsoe.

Tom Brady, who Belichick cut last week despite Brady’s having won six Super Bowls for the team, was eerily missing.

“Now that that twerp Tom Brady is gone, I’m going to show the world I can win a Super Bowl with any Joe Schmo at quarterback,” he said. “I brought you older guys here because I wanted to see if you looked like you could still play quarterback in the NFL. Looks like Butch, Tom, Babe, Jim, Grogan and Cavanaugh are way too ancient. Geez – you guys look like corpses.”

“That leaves you, Drew,” the coach added. “I’ll give you what you’ve always wanted that I’ve kept from you for two decades, the starting quarterback job with the New England Patriots. This would be the ultimate bookend storyline to a football career. Play for us for eight seasons and don’t win anything, get traded as we go on a pile of Super Bowl runs, and then return 20 years later as a wine expert.”

“How much?”

“$27,113 a year.”

“That’s way below the league minimum,” said Bledsoe.

“Yeah but you’re not worth the league minimum. I’ll throw in some perks. I learned while drinking gallons of wine at your house that you have a vineyard and are passionate about wines. I’ll give a weekend’s stay at a Ramada Inn at Martha’s Vineyard one weekend a season.”

“I want to make wine, Bill. A trip to Martha’s Vineyard for a weekend won’t satisfying my craving.”

“You want the job or not?”

“I made tens of millions as a back-up long ago. And now you’re asking me to take $27,113?”

“The Patriots are a business. We have to adjust and manage our payroll, and cut good players mercilessly including my latest victim, Brady.”

“Do you have faith in my quarterbacking abilities?”

“Not at all. I have faith in my coaching abilities. I don’t need Brady and, truth be told, I could win with anyone as my quarterback.”

Bledsoe mulls over the offer.

Owner Robert Kraft walks in.

“Hey Bill, we got Antonio Brown to agree to land his air balloon at the 50-yard line of our field before the national anthem of every one of our home games. That will jazz up our fan base which is irate you let Brady go. I told AB we would pay him $29 million, the amount he walked away from when the Raiders released him last year.”

“I figured Brady wanted AB to do the air balloon stunt at the Tampa Bay Dragons games?”

“I stuck it to Brady, that arrogant unappreciative cuss,” said Kraft. “I beat him to the punch.”

“What about Ricky Williams?” asked Belichick. “We need Ricky to bring his wacky weed to all our games so we can all smoke it.”

“Great call,” said Kraft. “I’ll make Ricky an offer he can’t refuse.”

“Wait a minute,” said Bledsoe. “You’re going to fork over $29 million to AB to land his air balloon at our stadium and pay me $27,113 to be the quarterback? And you’re going make Ricky Williams an offer he can’t refuse when he quit football to smoke more pot? Sounds like you don’t value me.”

“I value me,” said Belichick. “Take the offer or I’ll get any one of these has-beens to be our quarterback. It won’t matter. We’ll still win the Super Bowl this coming season.”

To be continued…

Brady Blackmails Goodell to

Get His Bucs Demands Met

March 26, 2020

From his jail cell, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell calls Tom Brady, who reclines on his beach towel during the Daytona Beach rally featuring Gronk, Gisele Bundchen and Frankie Avalon.

“Get me out of jail, Tom,” said Roger. “It stinks in here and I need to get back to my office in New York City so I can do some social distancing.”

“Only if you help meet my demands for playing for the Buccaneers,” said Brady.

“Anything you want, TB.”

Brady conveys his list of demands.

First, he wants the Bucs to change the team name to the Dragons because he loved the dragon character in the movie “Shrek.”

Second, he wants a 12-year-old boy to be assigned to deflate his footballs before every game.

Third, he needs a slick, cylindrical, gold pole in the basement of Gronk’s house.

Fourth, he needs Ricky Williams to get a front row seat in the pirate’s ship in the endzone of Raymond James Stadium where the Dragons will play home games. Every time the Dragons score, Ricky gets to take a bong hit.

Fifth, Mississippi football coach Mike Leach, a renowned pirate fanatic, gets to sit next to Ricky and Antonio Brown. After each game, the three of them, with Leach dressed as a pirate, get to climb into AB’s air balloon and float up high above the stadium singing pirate songs.

Sixth, a dragon needs to be built of the same size and scale as the skull in the endzone.

“What’s the pole in Gronk’s house for?” asked Goodell.

“Entertainment,” said Brady.

“What about Leach? He lives in Mississippi. Tampa’s a long way for him to travel every week.”

“He’s a freak about pirates,” said Brady. “Make it happen, Roger. Or stay in jail while I party with my pals in Daytona.”

“I’ll call the Bucs front office today and have them meet all your demands,” said Roger. “What do I care what changes the Bucs have to make as long as I get out of the clink. It’s not good for my image being here.”

“Sho ain’t,” said Brady. “Sammy Sportface has been writing about your situation every day and he’s got 15 followers.”

Brady hangs up. Gronk, in his thong, has just finished gyrating to “Rebel Yell” by Billy Idol in front of 32,456 screaming college girls.

“Did you get Roger to agree to a pole in my house in Tampa?” he asked.

“You got your pole,” said Brady.

Mike Leach calls Brady.

“How about we call the Bucs the Pirates?” he asks.

“Has to be the Dragons,” said Brady.

“How about we propose the Tampa Bay Pirates and Dragons?” asked Leach

“Sort of wordy,” said Brady.

“How about the Pirgons?” asked Leach. “We’ve got to get Pirates in there somehow. I love pirates. I think pirates are cooler than people.”

To be continued…

Can Americans Cope In a World Without Sports?

March 24, 2020

When 9/11 happened some 19 years ago, I wrote about how my family, including my kids, turned to sports as a way to cope. As a parent I found relief and pleasure watching my kids play football, basketball, baseball and swimming.

As a writer, I wrote about sporting events and people as a therapeutic way to deal with the mind-chilling images and disturbances that 9/11 generated.

Now we have the coronavirus, a cataclysmic event like 9/11 but different in many ways. One difference is that sports have been postponed or cancelled for what appears to be a much longer time than the short interruption of sports after 9/11.

These tough realities we know and must come to terms with. We will be without the NBA for an entire season and Major League Baseball for at least another month.

What really stings is that the 2019 Summer Olympics have been postponed. This one hurts me especially.

There are few things I find more moving them watching American swimmers compete in the Games after having spent practically their whole lives practicing to get there. In pools constantly and mostly in obscurity, they have been preparing to get one moment of glory in front of the world on the medal stand.

The sacrifices swimmers make, with their heads underwater for vast chunks of their childhoods, are beyond awesome. It’s an irrational undertaking in many respects. I would go so far as to say it’s sad because so much of their lives must be set aside, including friendships, to become world-class swimmers. It will be tough to have to wait to see America’s swimmers in the Olympics in 2021.

The one sports treat we won’t get that hits the hardest for many Americans is undoubtedly the cancellation of the March Madness basketball tournament.

Right around this time every year, we would normally be talking about the brackets, upsets, buzzer beaters, and Cinderella teams. Husbands, wives, kids, coworkers – just about everybody – would be engaged in the bracket discussions.

Right about now we would be unified as a country around this one national sports treasure: the college basketball tournament.

Right about now we would be interacting often with our friends and family talking about how many of the teams we picked to advance in the tournament were still alive to win the whole thing.

This is the one sporting event we could always count on, every year, to deliver drama, unexpected results, and fun conversations. So many sports get built up but, in the end, don’t deliver the excitement.

March Madness always came through, every year, without fail. Delivering something to be surprised at, every year, the tournament spawned compelling storylines that engage us and make us hope that some team out of nowhere would cut down the championship nets.

What I miss is that feeling of hope you get that some team could shock the world. In March Madness, it has happened over and over for decades. I miss that hopeful feeling, dreaming big for some team from a small college.

This year, sadly, we won’t get that hope.

I miss dreaming big for some team from a small college. The country’s annual opportunity to unite around the TV sets has been taken away by a wicked virus beyond anyone’s control.

These are melancholic days, for sure. But it’s not the end of the world. When 9/11 hit, I thought the world would be changed forever. In a sense, it was. But in a sense, it wasn’t.

Sports didn’t really change. We still loved sports after 9/11. Sports continued to give our lives richness. We could get away from the daily and mundane concerns, such as how to pay the bills, by tuning into sports, thinking about something else besides how difficult life can sometimes be.

In America sports provides an oasis. It’s warm water from a showerhead on a stiff neck. It’s a root beer float. It’s a beautiful painting. It’s a wonderful wonder, a thing to wrap your arms around.

Sports are a place to go relax, to ease your mind, to interact with other people, the get excited, to forget about what’s irritating us, to halt interpersonal conflicts. Sports bring us together. Sports slow us down, enable us to think that life is good and really believe that in our hearts.

Ironically, because of the pandemic we are being told we cannot be together. And we cannot enjoy live sports. We can’t go watch them, we can’t play them, we can’t count on them happening anytime soon.

Our kids are now being deprived of Spring sports. My heart hurts especially for Little League baseball players, who have been deprived of one of the most precious experiences a young boy will ever have. Those kids didn’t do anything wrong. But the truth is they’ll never get this season back.

Viewed more philosophically, it’s a good thing, I suppose, to spend some time without sports. It gets us to think about other things, to maybe read a book about something else, make a phone call, take in some TedTalks about psychology or inspiration or how civilization became what it is today.

We are now in situations where we are talking with each other about other subjects we probably never would have had this crisis not happened. We are learning different things about the people in our lives, and that’s good.

Without sports, we are learning that we can explore more than being sports fans and athletes. Without sports, we are being forced to explore other aspects of life we may never have. Without sports, we are gaining a deeper understanding of what it means to be human beings.

But I don’t want this to go on for too long. Sports is deeply ingrained in my spirit and, I believe, the American spirit. It’s where many of us have enjoyed some of our best moments in life.

You know what totally rocks? Winning championships, scoring the winning bucket, hitting the game-winning homerun or – even better – watching your children do these things. These experiences enrich the human experience in ways few things can.

The rest of our lives often make more sense in the context of sports. We learn that be practicing diligently in sports we get better and can achieve goals and success. That lesson applies in various other avenues of life. Yes, sports events rank among life’s best laboratories for learning how to persist, to get along, and to lose.

And that’s why we need sports to come back.

The question is when.

Will you be back soon, Sports?

We can be sure of this. Life will be better when You return. We will probably appreciate You more than we ever have. We will savor the moments You give more than ever.

We will never take for granted how fortunate we are to have Sports in our lives.

We need You.

We love You.

Lochte Proposes Olympic Swimming Go On This

Summer Using Alcohol-Laced Hand-Sanitizer

March 23, 2020

American swimming star Ryan Lochte has offered up an outside-the-box idea today that would make it possible for this summer’s Olympic swimming events in Tokyo to start as planned in July.

The controversial swimmer’s idea hit the airwaves only hours after the International Olympic Committee (IOC) announced it has postponed the Tokyo Games indefinitely because of the global coronavirus pandemic.

Lochte, who has come out of retirement to try to qualify for these summer games, sent a Tweet to USA Swimming today with a clever workaround idea. In that message he proposed filling the racing pools with alcohol-laced hand sanitizer lotion so the athletes would not get infected with the virus. His Tweet read:

“I saw on Facebook that hand sanitizers laced with alcohol kill 60 percent of germs and bacteria, and it’s better and faster at doing this than soap and water. If used in these Olympic pools, the athletes would have no risk of catching the virus. I think we should go ahead with the swimming events. I’m getting old and can’t wait indefinitely to try to win another Olympic Gold Medal. I urge USA Swimming not to postpone this summer Olympic swimming. It’s not necessary. My idea would work.”

#alcohol #gasstationdrinking #handsanitizer #coronavirus

Lochte’s Tweet has gained support from at least one member of Congress, Rand Paul (R-Kentucky). Yesterday Paul swam in the Capitol Hill swimming pool only to find out the same day he had tested positive for the coronavirus.

“I think Lochte’s idea has merit and I see no reason to postpone the swimming events at the Olympics,” he said. “Although the pool I swam in did not have hand sanitizer in it, making it far more likely that I infected other members of Congress, Lochte’s really on to something. If the Olympic pools are full of alcohol, there’s no way the swimmers can catch the disease.”

Paul said he be would be writing legislation today for the Senate and House to pass that would allow the swimming events to go on. And then Congress would send that passed bill to the IOC, which would then consider Lochte’s brilliant concept.

This scenario would mark the first time the U.S. Congress would have passed legislation based on an idea from a maligned Olympic swimmer that they then used to try to persuade the IOC to reverse a decision.

“I am so psyched Lochte has stepped up to make sure we still have swimming this summer in Tokyo,” said Caeleb Dressel, the best male swimmer in the world. “I know the virus is very contagious, but if the water is full of alcohol, the swimmers will be safe.”

IOC officials are already mulling over the concept. Their current thinking is that if everybody has to swim in the alcohol-laced pool water, then it’s a level playing field – and that upholds the Olympic spirit.

“Early research tells us that swimming in alcohol will likely slow down the swimmers, so we are less likely to see a lot of world records,” said the president of the IOC. “And it may cause them to choke or get sick if they swallow any of the water. But we need to do more testing.”

Best Apocalyptic Songs of All Time

March 22, 2020

Sure we all have our list of the best apocalyptic songs, those about the destruction of the world and widespread unfathomable damage.

In these pandemic times, it’s high time we do a refresh on that list so you can listen to them as you sit around in your houses with nothing to do.

Let’s start with the Honorable Mentions:

“Stairway to Heaven” by Led Zeppelin

It’s supposedly about Heaven, but it sounds like a song about the end of civilization and actually feels like a nose-dive into Hell. So don’t be fooled by song titles. And the tune gets scarier and makes you feel more uneasy as it progresses, a telltale sign of an impending apocalypse.

The insanely long length of this musical masterpiece also smacks of an apocalypse, which tend to be drawn out so as to maximize suffering.

“Inagodadovida” by Iron Butterfly

Have a listen to this tune. If it doesn’t make you feel that the world is in big trouble, I’ll buy you lunch at KFC. Just look at the title. The word itself, Inagodadovida, looks like a giant, intractable problem impacting billions of people.

“Point Me in the Direction” by the Partridge Family

In arguably the most riveting Partridge Family episode, the clan cruises through New Mexico on the colorful bus. They encounter a sullen runaway girl. She’s afraid and keeps hiding from the family. She’s as lost as anyone has ever been.

They can’t find her. They try to help. But there’s so much desperation and fear. Not only is one of the best apocalyptic creations of all time, it’s the best sitcom song ever.

Check this out: Point Me in the Direction

And now for the Top Five All Time

Number Five: “Horse With No Name” by America

Think about it. You’ve got a horse that doesn’t have a name. It’s out in the desert. It’s blazing hot. Nobody’s around. Everything seems awry. The song reeks of the apocalypse.

Number Four: “Ground Control to Major Tom” By David Bowie

This song is about outer space and never coming back. It’s the netherworld, the unknown. Desperation, despair and hopelessness ooze from this tune. You just know Major Tom’s number is up. In every stanza, he’s writhing in the apocalypse.

Number Three: “It’s Over” by Boz Scaggs

When a guy tells a girl, or a girl tells a guy, that “it’s over,” this can be the worst moment in the lives of those individuals and for everyone else around them: brothers, sisters, basketball coaches.

When romantic relationships are definitely over, someone’s heart breaks. Psychiatrists benefit but no one else. The ending of romantic relationships and thereby broken hearts are apocalyptic, and this song makes that abundantly clear.

Number Two: “Blister in the Sun” by the Violent Femmes

There are many unknowns about this song. In fact, it’s best that we don’t delve too deep into it because we would find more twisted logic and dire circumstances.

Picture that burning sensation of a honkin’ totally exposed blister. Then compound that pain with the sun torching what already stings. It crushes the human mind to even contemplate.

But it’s more than just that agony. It’s the metaphor of we as humans being the blister and the sun, life, burning us, stinging us, causing us endless damage.

The sun, of course, has all sorts of apocalyptic characteristics and connotations.

Number One: “Shannon” by Henry Gross

We all know people like dogs more than other people. So when a person’s dog floats out to sea never to be retrieved, it’s an apocalyptic event. It’s bad enough for a dog to die. It breaks the owner’s heart.

But in the vast ocean? With all those sharks circulating?

No song in world history is more apocalyptic.

Have a listen: Shannon.

With Brady Bolting to Bucs,

The World Ends in New England

March 21, 2020

God came. God left. God will never come again.

New England had him. For six Super Bowls.

Now their savior has left them lurching, writhing in agony. Nausea knots up New England.

Hanging on their cavalcade of crosses – from Sturbridge to Harvard to Fenway Park -- they wail in unison: “Tom, oh Tom, why have you abandoned us?”

Boston burns. Foxboro frets. All those Super Bowls they will never forget. It’s all they’ll ever get.

But now what do they do? For the rest of time they will never have a quarterback as great as Tom Brady. Blissful lives have been obliterated. Babies were born in Boston who never have known life without Tommy B.

They’re all adrift at sea. Wails reverberate all over Massachusetts. Sobs soak the entire scene. The end of the world has come. Tom Brady is gone.

With their faiths shaken, where can they turn for guidance, a spiritual lighthouse? There will be no more Sunday masses in Foxboro to watch their savior perform his miracles.

“Scripture didn’t predict the world would end this way,” said a Boston priest. “Some predicted lightning bolts, others balls of fire, still others an explosion sort of like the big bang that started the world, still others a tidal wave that would swallow us up. Turns out the end of our world is a guy saying he wants to leave us to play for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. I pray for the souls of all those on Boston who must now live the rest of their lives without someone they can believe in. It’s a wretched way to live in a world with no God.”

Fans riot in the downtown streets of Boston.

“Belichick blows,” they chant, “Belichick blows.”

T-shirts with “Belichick Blows” are worn all over town by kids, mothers, fathers, and the entire New England Patriots team.

Boston flags fly at half-mast. Dogs stop licking themselves. The Massachusetts Turnpike has turned into Ghost Way. Families binge-watch horror movies day and night.

“We had Brady for 20 years but now we’ve lost him,” said Julian Edelman, the Patriots star wide receiver. “We thought he would be with us forever. I blame all of this on Belichick. His big fat ego wouldn’t allow him to pay Brady what he deserved. I can’t wait to quit this team and play for TB in TB.”

Kids forlornly walk down the street in their Number 12 jerseys. Night has fallen. Darkness bedevils Boston. The apocalyptic avalanche has arrived.

Death devours them all.

“This is all overblown,” said Larry Bird. “I was the greatest athlete in Boston history. Just ask Sammy Sportface.”

Derek, Bundchen, Gronk, and Von Zipper Crash in Air Balloon off Daytona, Spark Beach Boys Concert

March 21, 2020

With Roger Goodell headed to jail, and Ricky stocked up on weed, the crew headed for the Daytona Beach sand.

“Hey look,” said AB. “There’s another air balloon about to crash in the ocean.”

“Two air balloon crashes off the same beach in two consecutive days,” said Bledsoe. “We must be hallucinating. Good thing I brought my stash of wine bottles so can drink on the beach all day long. That will help us make more sense of all this.”

The balloon crashed. Six people swam towards the shore.

Three emerged from the water on the shore wearing bikinis: Bo Derek, Gisele Bundchen, and Annette Funicello. Bo wore the red one she rocked in the movie “10.” Gisele sported the Tampa Bay Bucs colors, maroon and dark gray. Annette wore a red white and blue bikini worn in the 1950s, which covered more skin.

The three dudes were Frankie Avalon, who starred with Annette in “Beach Blanket Bingo”; Eric Von Zipper, the clumsy biker in that same mediocre movie; and Rob Gronkowski.

Gronk wore a thong with the Bucs colors.

“I’m coming out of retirement to play for the Bucs with my boy Tommy B.,” said Gronk. “Give me a hit off that joint, Ricky.”

“Is that one in the Bucs bikini your wife, Tommy?” asked AB.

“Sho is,” said TB.

“Damn,” said AB.

“And who’s the one in red?” asked Ricky.

“Bo Derek.”

“Damn,” said Ricky.

The group passed the joint around. And they each took big swigs out of Bledsoe’s wine bottles.

It was 8:13 am.

Suddenly they all heard music 20 feet away on the beach. These were the lyrics:

Don't be afraid to try the greatest sport around

(Catch a wave, catch a wave)

Those who don't just have to put it down

You paddle out, turn around and raise

And baby that's all there is to the coastline craze.

Everybody started dancing right there on the beach. Gronk gyrated in his Bucs-colored thong. Annette grooved with Frankie. Von Zipper and Bledsoe bumped with each other. Ricky danced with Bo, AB with Gisele. Brady rolled around in the sand.

Surfers took to the waves.

Brady’s phone rings.

“Tom, it’s Robert Kraft. Bill Belichick and I are still stuck in Montana. I can’t get my private plane to come pick us up. All airports are closed. There are no limo services. We don’t have a car. And you guys crashed the air balloon. We’re mired in Montana.”

“Hey listen, Robbie” said Brady. “You hear the Beach Boys playing ‘Catch a Wave’? It’s rockin’ here in Daytona. We’ve got Bo Derek dancing. Gronk has come out of retirement to play with me for the Bucs. And most importantly, you and Belichick aren’t here. The party is just gettin’ started. Have a nice life.”

Gronk is now up on stage with the Beach Boys gyrating in his thong. This is making all the college girls nuts.

“Go Gronk go,” they scream. “Gyrate, you are great, be my date, yeah.”

Then Gronk takes the microphone.

“I want to announce to the world right now that I’m coming out of retirement to play with Tom Brady for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers,” he said.

From his news stand on the beach, Sammy Sportface posts this news on NGSCSports.com.

The beach party loses control and all sense of purpose. Von Zipper strips off his biker jacket and jeans. Nude, he shows off his tattoos of guys riding motorcycles. Then he races into the ocean and takes a whiz.

Bo Derek and Giselle start cuddling in the sand. AB and Ricky watch them.

“Damn,” said AB. “How about we join them?”

So Ricky and AB cuddle with the two super models in the sand.

“Gronk is coming back,” yells Brady. “That’s all I care about. The Tampa Bay Buccaneers are going to win the Super Bowl. And I will prove to everybody once and for all that I’m the reason the Patriots won six Super Bowls.”

Frankie Avalon doesn’t quite know what to make of all this.

“I was a star in 1960s beach movies,” he thought to himself. “We didn’t drink or smoke weed and no one wore thongs. And supermodels didn’t cuddle on the beach with ex-NFL players. Give me some pot. Once I’m high this will make more sense.”

Gronk starts singing another tune, “Rebel Yell,” by Billy Idol:

Last night a little dancer, came dancin' to my door

Last night a little angel, came pumping on my floor

She said come on baby, you got a license for love

And if it expires, pray help from above.

College girls throw piles of cash at Gronk. They’re screaming.

Brady notices his wife Gisele is one of them.

“Hey TB, aren’t you concerned Gisele is fawning all over Gronk?” asked Ricky.

“Nah, she’s been doing that for years,” said Brady. “In fact, the real reason Gronk is coming to the Bucs is to be with Gisele.”

Brady Rebuffs Kraft’s Plea for

Help, Police Arrest Goodell

March 20th, 2020

As the sun rises, Brady, Goodell, Antonio Brown, Ricky Williams, and Drew Bledsoe come out the door of The Wild Thing Bar on the Daytona Beach strip.

It’s been a long night in there dancing and hollering and whatnot. Tom Brady is a Tampa Bay Buccaneer.

His phone rings.

“Hey Tom, it’s Jameis Winston. I’m getting a vibe that your signing for $30 million a year with my team means I am no longer the starting quarterback of the Bucs.”

“You’re perceptive,” Jameis. “I’ve won six Super Bowls. Last time I checked you’ve won none. So that would mean I’m the starter.”

“You think they’re gonna trade me?” asked Winston.

“I couldn’t care less,” said Brady. “But if I were you I would be looking around for another job on another team.”

“Do you think this has to do with me stealing those crab legs and crawfish from the supermarket in 2014?”

“No I think it has to do with breaking the NFL record for most interceptions thrown in a single season. You can’t throw pics in this league and expect to stick around. Good luck finding a new job when no one in the country is working.”

Brady hangs up. His phone rings again. It’s Robert Kraft.

“Hey Tom, Bill and I just go out of the hospital for the broken bones and bruises we suffered falling out of the air balloon. We’re still in Montana. Can AB come get us in the balloon and fly us back to Foxboro?”

“No can do. We crashed the balloon off of Daytona Beach then swam ashore. Then the balloon drifted out to sea.”

“Is there any weed in Daytona?” asked Kraft.

“Tons but we smoked it all last night.”

“So how are supposed to get home? There’s a pandemic. All airports are closed. All car dealerships are closed. We’re hobbled. Bill needs to get back to Foxboro and start figuring out ways to cheat next season because he won’t have you to pull out games for him in the last second.”

“Start walking,” said Brady. “Or stay there forever for all I care. The world doesn’t really need you guys. You may think they do. But they don’t.”

“Come on, Tom,” said Kraft. “After you announced you’re leaving the Patriots this week, Bill and I both wrote in our Tweets that we loved you.”

“Nobody believes that. If you loved me you would have paid me for the six Super Bowls I won for you. For all I care, you guys can rot in Montana forever.”

Click. Brady hangs up.

“So where’s the party this morning?” he said.

“I scored some weed,” said Ricky. “We can hang out on the beach and burn some joints.”

Suddenly two police officers come towards the group.

“Are you Roger Goodell?” they ask.

“That’s me,” said Roger.

“Come with us. We’ve been reading on Sammy Sportface that you’ve been smoking weed with former and current NFL players. You can’t do that as the Commissioner of the league.”

They put handcuffs on Goodell and stuff him in the backseat of the patrol car.

“The rest of you guys go ahead and get stoned on the beach,” the officer said. “We’re psyched to have Brady down in Florida. He’ll make us a winner. Welcome to the Sunshine State.”

Brady Plunges Balloon In Daytona Beach

to Celebrate New Florida Home

March 18, 2020

Robert Kraft and Bill Belichick dove out of the balloon. They were in despair because Tom Brady would no longer be their quarterback.

They landed somewhere in Montana.

Five crusaders remained on the balloon: Antonio Brown, Ricky Williams, Tom Brady, Drew Bledsoe, and Roger Goodell. Propelled by the jet stream from west to east, the Iron Five have been partying for several days all the way across the United States.

Destination: Daytona Beach, Florida. It’s Spring Break time.

“Can’t wait to get to Florida, my new hometown,” said Brady, who announced he will be playing for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers this coming season. “Need to let loose. I’ve been stressed out in New England for all 20 seasons playing for Belichick. So glad we found Ricky to give us the weed we needed to endure this balloon ride across America.”

Steered by AB, the balloon hovers over the ocean about a hundred feet from the Daytona Beach shore. Thousands of college kids are laying around on the beach, diving in the water, and drinking.

“Look at that scene,” said Ricky. “That’s what I call a party. Wonder if we get some weed from those kids.”

“Hey guys,” said Goodell. “I’m not feeling comfortable with this. I shouldn’t be seen with you guys on a balloon plunging into the ocean off Daytona Beach to party with the maniacal college students.”

“Let your greasy blonde hair down, Rog,” said Brady. “You’ll probably lose your $20 million a year job as NFL Commissioner, but what’s money?”

“You’re going to get paid $30 million a year by the Buccaneers,” said Goodell. “You obviously care about money.”

“Sure do, Roger,” said Brady. “And I’m worth it. And everybody knows you’re not worth $20 million.”

“That’s insulting, Tom,” said Goodell.

“Life is difficult, Roger,” said Brady.

“OK guys, get ready,” said AB. “We’re going to land this thing in the ocean, and when we do we’re going to swim to shore.”

“Why not jump out before we land?” asked Ricky.

“Because it will be more dramatic for the college kids to see,” said AB. “They want to see us crash into the water. I’m a wide receiver and a lunatic. I know how to create drama that grabs attention.”

So the balloon crashes into the ocean. The five guys swim ashore. Waiting for them are thousands of college kids in bathing suits.

One guy says: “Hey, that’s Tom Brady. He just signed with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. Makes sense that he’s here visiting Florida. But I don’t understand what’s going on with the other guys.”

Another college guy says: “Dude, haven’t you been reading Sammy Sportface. He’s been reporting about these guys flying around in a balloon across the country all week. It’s quite an amazing story. Dope, wine, rundowns, Kraft, Belichick, double-crossing, Bledsoe sneezing on Kraft on purpose.”

Twenty-five women go up and start touching Tommy B. They fondle his arms and legs and touch his face.

One says: “Hey Tommy, welcome to Florida. Let’s party.”

“Hey, I’m married to Gisele Bundchen, a supermodel” he said.

The girl responds: “But I’m younger and have more energy. And I look like a supermodel, don’t I?”

“That’s a good point,” said Brady. “Go ahead, keep fondling me.”

“Where’s the weed?” asks Ricky. “We smoked all the weed I had left on the balloon ride.”

“We’ve got plenty,” said a college kid. “Everybody in college smokes weed.”

“Who’s the old man?” a college woman asks.

“That’s Roger Goodell, the Commissions of the NFL,” a college man says.

“Why is he with these younger guys? He seems out of place?”

“I wanted to be here,” said Roger. “I’m getting close in age to being a at high risk if I catch the coronavirus. And I figured I would come hang out with you kids at the beach because you’re low-risk. Besides, I really like getting high. Ricky’s weed is wonderful.”

The throngs of people walk to a nearby bar called The Wild Thing. On the way a reporter from the Daytona Beach Sun asks Brady. “Hey Tom, how come you gave this whole story to Sammy Sportface? Everybody else in the sports reporting world has been scooped by this obscure sports blogger no one has ever heard of. This has been going on for weeks, the whole scheme you pulled off to double-cross Belichick, all of it. Sportface had the whole story before any of us.”

“Sammy Sportface is my exclusive storyteller,” said Brady. “He and I hatched this plot to get me out of New England, mess up Belichick’s life, and crash the balloon driven by AB into off the coast of Daytona Beach. From now on, Sportface will be my go-to guy for sports news.”

The crowd enters the bar. Loud music blares by Elvis Costello. His band fires up “Pump It Up.”

Everybody gets really pumped up. The party lasts until sunrise the next day.

To be continued…

Coronavirus Career Advice for

Baby Boomer Brotherhood

March 18th, 2020

You’re tired. Your career is winding down. The younger people in the office have more energy, are more digitally savvy, and have been running circles around your Baby Boomer bummed out beefaroni buttocks. And the coronavirus has you flummoxed and bewildered and wondering if the world is ending.

Still, it’s time to act. This is your last chance, with the working world on pause, to re-skill and reinvent yourself, to come out on the other side worth something to someone. You can get ahead of the professional curve while the pandemic rolls on.

Return to school and take courses that are relevant and in demand in the workplace. That means you need to get a bachelor’s degree in computer science with a concentration in software programming.

Then you need to get a master’s in that. Then you need to build on that by getting a Ph.D in data analytics. Every company in the world needs people who have butcher-knife-sharp data analytics critical thinking skills. And you need cybersecurity skills.

The business world is all about one thing now: Organization and manipulation of data so you can generate better insights from that data to make smarter business decisions to make more money so everybody can retire rich and happy.

Go back to high school and take Algebra I

If you didn’t take enough math classes in high school, you need to start there first. Go back to high school. Think of it as High School 2.0.

Enroll at your local high school and sign up for Algebra I. You will learn about how to do factoring (the FOIL method—first, outside, inside, last), and add together polynomials with lots of x’s and y’s mixed in.

After Algebra I you will need to take Algebra II. This will get hard to understand and remain disciplined about. Homework assignments will get more difficult to finish and you won’t often have time because you’ll prefer to watch ESPN, which is showing re-runs of every sporting event that happened in the past thirty years because sports are on hold due to the global pandemic. Bag the documentaries.

To become a software programmer, you must crush Algebra I.

Once you master this – it will probably take you five-to-seven years – you need to take Calculus. You may have skipped this onerous and mind-twisting subject in high school and college because you didn’t want to think or work so hard because you were young and wanted to have fun instead.

But now – some 40 or so years later -- you need to confront Calculus. It may take you several years before you even get to the point when you know what the point of Calculus is, but you must persist. No one becomes a computer software programmer without mastering Calculus.

Enroll in college and take Calculus again

After about 10 years, you may if you’re lucky and work your tail off wake up from that mathematical nightmare. Then enroll in college. There you will have to take Calculus again because the college won’t believe you really learned it in high school.

You will struggle with Calculus, but anyone who wants to make tons of money in the workforce these days as a software computer programmer needs to know what struggling feels like. Big payoffs begin with big problems to solve.

Overcome time constraints

Keep going. You will be 65 or 70 years old and getting more tired. Your joints will be more sore. You may have a few grandkids to compete with your study time. But you must move on. Don’t lose sight of your end game, which is to redefine yourself, to upskill everything about you, so you become more valuable to corporate employers.

Employers want computer software programmers and data analytics savants more than they want interpersonal relationships. This will remain true for the next 100 years.

A side benefit to this intellectual and professional odyssey is you will get written about on the Sammy Sportface -- Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog as the hombre from the Brotherhood who went back to school to re-skill and become a computer software programmer because you wanted to make a lot of money so you could retire comfortably and be able to watch sports on a huge flatscreen TV in your retirement home.

Family and friends will talk about you

You will be able to share the news clips with your family and friends. They will be inspired by your story but will talk about you when you’re not around about why you are going back to school as a Baby Boomer to become a computer software programmer. But they will understand that you’re doing it for the sexy salary you would get paid by doing so.

They will try to talk you out of this unrealistic ambition. They will warn you you are being unrealistic to think employers would want to hire a 70-year-old computer software programmer when they can choose among hundreds of thousands in the their twenties and thirties who are healthier and are lower risks for eating away at their health insurance costs and thereby eating into their profits and irking off Wall Street investors.

But you will have none of it. As a card-carrying member of the Baby Brother Brotherhood, you must abide by your oath to ensure your best years are in front of you. Your calling is to call on your strengths to achieve what no one believes you can, to do unthinkable things, to pursue unconventional passions, because there is no rule that says a 70 year old computer software programmer/data analytics expert can’t get the job done well.

You will prove you have value. You will have up-skilled as a sign of maturity and audacity. You will have broken the mold.

And you will make yourself very, very rich. And you will have a great, high resolution flat screen in your retirement room.

The Baby Boomer Brotherhood will salute you. But by then you will have lost your mental marbles. You will no longer be a productive citizen.

And the coronavirus will have changed the world forever -- and not in your favor. Because you will be in the high-risk age group.

Brady Leaving Patriots, Kraft and

Belichick Jump Off Air Balloon

March 17th, 2020

When we left off last, the seven musketeers were on a balloon floating around wondering where they were going. They were Tom Brady, Bill Belichick, Robert Kraft, Drew Bledsoe, Ricky Williams, and Antonio Brown.

In that last sequence, Brady and Belichick revealed the big secret that Brady was never going to leave the Patriots. The car ride to get him back from the Seattle Dragons was a big head-fake the two of them had concocted to get the rest of the NFL teams spending time trying to get Brady to play for them.

But it turns out there’s more to the story.

Today Brady announced he will no longer play for the Patriots. Belichick is confused because he thought he had a deal with Brady to come back and they were in the con job together.

“Sammy Sportface is reporting you’re not coming back,” said Belichick. “That’s not the scheme we set up. You’re supposed to be returning to the Patriots.”

“I double-crossed you,” said Brady. “I pretended to be in on your scheme, but I never had any intention of returning to your team. You believed me when I said I would return. But this is not a business where people tell the truth to each other. You know that better than anyone, Bill. You fell for it. You’ve been had – by the guy who is most responsible for winning six Super Bowls for the Patriots. I’ve been waiting to get back at you a long time, and your comeuppance is now.”

“Are you serious, Tom?” he asked. “Have you really double-crossed me?”

“Read Sammy Sportface’s Facebook page,” said Brady. “He’ll tell you all about this. He’s been my go-to exclusive blogger setting up this whole situation with you driving across the country to get me and you thinking I agreed to return. Yet there’s no way that’s happening.”

“But I wrote so many nice things to you on my Tweet today,” he said. “I said I loved you. Doesn’t that mean anything?”

“You never loved anybody but yourself.”

Kraft can’t take this any longer.

“I need to jump off this balloon,” he said. “Brady is gone. My life is over.”

Antonio Brown grabs the old man who is climbing over the side ready to plummet thousands of feet to the ground.

“Hold on, old man,” said AB. “Let’s give you a parachute. I learned how to parachute in air balloon training school.”

“I don’t want a parachute,” Kraft said. “I want to die.”

“So do I,” said Belichick.

“But that’s not what your Tweets said about me,” said Brady. “You both told me you loved me. If you love me so much, I would think you would wish me well.”

“To hell with wishing you well,” said Belichick. “I can’t win anymore Super Bowls without you at quarterback. But I have to get back to Foxboro to start planning for next season. I’ve already lost time and can’t waste anymore.”

“You got that right,” said Brady. “Have fun finding a quarterback as good as me.”

“Who are you going to play for?” asked AB.

“I don’t know AB,” said Brady. “Maybe the Chargers or the Bucs. It’s not so important where I am going as where I left. I left the Patriots in the lurch and they’re going to regret not re-signing me. They’re done this to themselves.”

Goodell feels the need for clarification: “So Belichick, you thought you had a scheme to distract the NFL by us driving across the country to get Brady but you acted like you didn’t want him. But in reality you wanted him and Brady agreed to the distraction to get those teams wasting time chasing Brady. But then Brady turned on you in the end. He really is leaving your team and made you drive across the country for nothing?”

“You don’t have to rub it in, Roger,” Belichick said.

“I have news for you,” said Goodell. “I was in on this scheme with Brady. I’ve been waiting to get back at you and Kraft for years. You lied about Deflategate and have been messing with my mind as NFL Commissioner for years. Now you’ve lost Brady and that’s what you deserve. I will be rooting for Tom to win the Super Bowl this season.”

“That’s it,” said Kraft. “I’m out.”

“Me too,” said Belichick.

AB straps the two men into their parachutes. They hold each other’s hands despite the global pandemic. And jump.

The five dudes remaining in the balloon watch as Robert Kraft and Belichick float away down to towards Earth.

“Let’s get high,” said Ricky. “This is reason to celebrate. The old men got screwed and Brady is here with us to party, a free man at last.”

“I feel high already,” said Brady. “But give me that bone anyway. It’s party time for the fellas.”

To be continued...

Belichick Reveals Car Ride Scheme

As Air Balloon Floats Up and Away

March 16, 2020

Up up and way the seven men float in the psychedelic air balloon: Tom Brady, Antonio Brown, Ricky Williams, Drew Bledsoe, Roger Goodell, and Robert Kraft.

“Who’s driving this thing?” asks Kraft.

“I am,” said AB. “I had to get a balloon flying license last summer so I could fly that air balloon into Raiders camp.”

“Cool, so AB’s in charge. He’s demonstrated responsible behavior in the past so we can trust him,” said Goodell. “I mean, really. We’re trusting this guy? He was such a malcontent and distraction he talked himself off the Pittsburgh Steelers. Then he went to the Raiders, showed up at camp in an air balloon the same color as one with frozen feet and missed several weeks or practice.

“Then on the first day of practice he said the helmet didn’t fit him and refused to play,” he added. “The Raiders cut him when he was under contract for $29 million. So the Patriots picked him up a day later for $9 million.”

“Damn,” said AB. “I lost $20 million in one day but I was happy because I got to play with Tom Brady.”

“But we only kept you for nine days because of your off the field issues,” said Kraft.

“Damn I know,” said AB. “That sucks. Now I make no bank.”

“Guys relax,” said Ricky Williams. “Sure it’s true AB has a checkered past. But he’s the only one with a balloon license so we have to depend on him getting us where we want to go.”

“Where do we want to go?” asked Goodell.

“We’re headed back to Foxboro where Tom will play for the Patriots next season,” said Belichick.

“What, I thought you didn’t want him and he didn’t want you?” asked Goodell.

“That’s all a big scam we’re playing on the entire NFL,” said Belichick. “Brady and I have been acting like we don’t like each other and don’t want him on the team in the Fall.”

The Patriots coach explained that this scheme has made a bunch of teams in the league spend tons of time trying to figure out how to get Brady instead of spending time preparing for other things they need to be doing for next season.

“Meanwhile, Tom and I have been secretly planning for next season knowing full well he would sign again with the Patriots,” said Belichick. “This league has fallen for this whole drive across the country balloon ride thing. It has all been a big set up.”

“Is Sammy Sportface in on this?” asked Goodell.

“Of course he is,” said Belichick. “He’s been writing all the stuff about our trip to distract everybody in the NFL into thinking Brady and I don’t like each other and have parted ways. The Patriots hired Sportface to tell this story so the rest of the NFL would read about it and think of ways to sign Brady.”

“Why did you hire Sportface?” asked Goodell.

“Because he’s believable,” said Belichick. “People trust him. What he writes is golden. You can take his words to the bank.”

Ricky Williams finds this whole story intriguing. But he doesn’t understand how he got involved.

“Was it part of your plan to pick me up in the tumbleweeds in Idaho?” asked Ricky.

“No Ricky,” said Belichick. “That was just coincidence. How could any of us have known where you might be? You’re elusive. We just happened to see you and pick you up.”

“What about the dope smoking?” asked Ricky. “Was that part of the plan you and Brady thought up?”

“No, that was just a case of us being bored driving across the country, living amid a pandemic, and wanting to get stoned,” said Belichick.

Bledsoe doesn’t like what he’s hearing. He’s feeling he got used. These guys showed up at his house and drank a bunch of his wine and were not on the up and up about what they were up to. And it was all cooked up so Brady could continue to be the quarterback of the Patriots.

“Why does everything in my life have to be about Tom Brady being the Patriots quarterback?” asked Bledsoe. “Here I was enjoying my life in Walla Walla, Washington not seeing any of your guys, forgetting my greatest disappointment in life: getting replaced by Brady as the starting quarterback. And then my worst nightmare happens: You all end up at my house, lie about your motives, drink all my wine, and Brady is still the quarterback of the Patriots and I’m not.”

The balloon ride goes quiet. It’s all feeling weird to all of them. So they’re on this balloon and the story was made up and Belichick and Brady did it to mess with the minds of the other NFL teams.

And the dope and wine and McDonalds and the coronavirus – what did it all mean? Was this a dream? Where was the balloon headed? Were they really headed East towards Foxboro, Mass.? Did AB know how to steer the balloon? How could any of them trust AB to do anything?

Why didn’t Bledsoe just stay at his house if he is so mad at everybody? Was Ricky going to stop smoking weed? Or would the weed be the only thing that would enable them to get along?

And what about social distancing? They were having to be within two feet of each other – four feet further than the Center for Disease Control said was best to avoid infecting each other with the virus.

Would they all get the virus on the balloon? And would it happen at the same time? Would the fact that they were outside in the fresh air give them a better chance to survive the illness rather than being back at Bledsoe’s house indoors?

Were the Patriots going to win yet another Super Bowl?

To be continued…

Brady, Antonio Brown Land Psychedelic

Air Balloon in Bledsoe’s Vineyard

March 15th, 2020

Bledsoe’s house reeked of the smell of marijuana.

Robert Kraft didn’t care that Drew had sneezed on his face. Like a deflated football, hope for him had lost its air.

All potted up, Ricky Williams lounged in Bledsoe’s master bedroom. He stared out a large window.

“Am I hallucinating?” he thought to himself. “Or is that a multi-colored air balloon about to land in Bledsoe’s vineyard?”

He stood and took a closer look. Yep, two guys were in the balloon sprinkled with all sort of 1960s psychedelic colors.

He left the room, walked downstairs, and shouted around the house. “Hey fellas, come check this out. Two guys just landed an air balloon in the vineyard.”

“You must be high, Ricky,” said Bledsoe. “That’s never happened before.”

“You are high, Drew, so how would you know any better?”

More pot in the vineyard?

“Did you say there’s more pot out in the vineyard?” asked Kraft as he strolled near the front door. “We need to smoke more weed.”

Roger Goodell joins the group.

Out in the vineyard the four wasted men strolled to within 30 feet of the balloon.

“Keep our social distancing at full tilt,” said Belichick. “Stay far away and yell at these guys.”

There was a tall white guy and a shorter African American guy. Both looked like athletes.

“Hey, it’s Tom Brady and Antonio Brown,” said Kraft. “This makes sense. Antonio entered the Raiders training camp last year riding the same air balloon. Now he’s come here on a balloon with Brady. What a circle of life moment.”

“Hey, we’ve been reading about you guys day after day on the Sammy Sportface blog as you have driving across America to come get me to play for the Patriots,” said Brady. “You guys are idiots. First of all, I want everybody here to know that I am the one most responsible for the Patriots winning six Super Bowls, not Belichick. Second, the XFL season is over because of the pandemic, so I won’t be playing in that league. And third, I will never play for the Patriots again.”

But we drove all this way?

“But Tom, we drove all this way to convince you that we need you on the Patriots,” said Kraft. “You would not believe what we’ve been through: rubdowns, social distancing at McDonalds, smoking a ton of pot with Ricky Williams, and drinking gallons of wine here at Bledsoe’s. The sacrifices we have made should show you how much you mean to me, personally, and the Patriots.”

“Speak for yourself, Bobbie,” said Belichick. “I am the most responsible for the Patriots winning the six Super Bowls. And I cut Brady because he stinks now. He’s of no value to me anymore so I threw him out. He’s roadkill as far as I’m concerned.”

Ricky pulls out a joint.

“Hey, what do you say we all get high and talk this over in a calmer manner. Things are getting a little tense.”

AB takes the joint and does a big hit.

Brady says pandemic has him leaning towards retirement

“With this pandemic thing going on,” said Brady, “I’ve been thinking of retiring. Maybe this is a sign that I should stop playing football. I think maybe it’s time to start getting high a lot.”

Brady takes a hit off the joint.

“Hey, do you guys realize that I’m the commissioner of the NFL and you shouldn’t be smoking dope with me around? There are rules against you guys smoking pot?”

“This pandemic is a game changer, Roger” said AB, who is starting to feel high. “The world’s previous rules no longer apply. All that matters is getting high.”

Bledsoe’s getting irritated with this whole dynamic.

“I should have been the starting quarterback for all those Super Bowls and not you, Tom,” said Bledsoe.

“BS,” said Tom. “I was better than you. Just ask Bill.”

“Not anymore you aren’t,” said Belichick. “You’re no better than Drew now, and all he does is drink wine all day.”

Conversation to nowhere

The conversation is going nowhere. No one side will give in. They’ve reached an impasse. That’s what pandemics do. They cause you to reach impasses.

All of them realize that whatever psychological games they had been playing with each other the past several weeks are petty compared with the existential threat now tormenting the world.

The NFL and XFL have been rendered moot. Their lives once so filled with glory, glamour, riches, and selfishness have been crushed like grapes to make wine in Wall Walla, Washington.

“I’ve got an idea,” said Ricky. “Let’s all take a ride on the balloon and get even higher. It will be like a metaphor. Fly high in the air and fly high in our minds.”

“What about the social distancing?” asked Belichick. “We need to stay far away from each other, but on that balloon, we will have to be close together.”

“We’re all doomed,” said Ricky. “Social distancing doesn’t matter anymore. The NFL and XFL are over. So, our lives are over.”

“Where will we go?” asked Kraft.

“Once we get high in the air, we need to read what Sammy Sportface has to say,” said Ricky. “He will guide us the rest of the way, into our uncertain futures, into the Baby Boomer Brotherhood abyss.”

Five Things You Should Do to Track

Sports During Pandemic

March 14th, 2020

So you’re bored. You have no idea what to do today. No games are on. You hate reading books. You need a sports fix.

But how can do to stay on top of sports while there are no sports?

Take these five actions now. They are the only hope you have for weeks and months and probably years.

Step One: Find Sammy Sportface

Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Website

Wherever you are, whatever social media you are on, whichever device you’re using, regardless of time zone, religion, or where you went to high school, find Sammy Sportface.

This guy doesn’t live in the real sports world. When there are no sports, it’s just another day in paradise for him. Sporting events that aren’t happening are immaterial to Sportface. He is all about sports that don’t exist, conversations that never take place, outcomes that never materialized.

In Sportface Land, sports smack of surrealism sometimes. They’re a state of mind, a vague and mysterious place, a concoction of strange and semi-true sports stories and odd innuendos. Just ride the train.

Step Two: Go to Google.

Type in “Sammy Sportface.”

Read the tens of millions of blogs this cat has written. Start with any of them and read in whatever sequence you want. But be sure to read them all. It’s the only way you’ll gain insight into the story he has been telling the world but nobody has been reading.

All this reading will take your dozens of hours. But what else do you have to do?

Step Three: Go to YouTube.

Watch every Larry Bird video. There are a lot.

Step Four: Unsubscribe to all other sports blogs besides Sammy Sportface.

Shut them all down. Tell them you no longer need them because there are no sports in the world and you only need Sammy Sportface because he’s not in the real world. You need unreal sports content. He’s the only guy for that. It’s his unique selling point, logo, and sweet spot.

And cancel your subscription to ESPN. They’re done. They’re going to be showing you evergreen sports documentaries 24-7 for the next month.

You don’t need to wallow in the past. You need to focus on what’s happening now and what the future holds for you. Only Sportface can deliver you that calming and concise content in this time of crisis.

Sportface is the only one who can lift you out of your sports funk, take you into the netherworlds of sports, and ignite your coconuts.

Step Five: Join the Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood.

Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog -- Facebook Page

If you don’t do that, you won’t get the full experience that Sportface offers. This is a package deal, a movement afloat, a moment in time when all else falls by the wayside and Sammy Sportface takes you to your happy place, the promised land, nowhere definable but somehow enjoyable.

With the world contemplating an existential threat, you have one option to stay abreast of sports. You have one go-to guy who can suspend your disbelief and share spectacular, strange, and sordid stories.

You only have one lifeline left: Sammy Sportface.

With Football Dead, Highlander Crew Stops

at Bledsoe’s Wine Vineyard

to Drown Their Sorrows

March 14th, 2020

Four grown men, high as kites, in a germ-infested car, and the pandemic rolls on.

“Where the hell are we?” asks Kraft.

“Cody, Wyoming,” said Goodell.

“No we aren’t,” said Belichick. “We went through there several hours ago. Don’t you remember, we picked up Ricky in Idaho and smoked a bone. I think we got so high we haven’t said anything to each other in 480 miles. We’re been off in our own mental chambers pondering the end of the world.

Stop to drink wine at Bledsoe’s

“I have a plan for our next stop,” he added. “We’re going to Walla Walla, Washington to Drew Bledsoe’s house. He’s got wine vineyards galore. We’ll go there and drink a bunch of wine and get hammered.”

“But Bill, you broke the guy’s heart when you wouldn’t give him his starting job back and kept Brady as the starter,” said Belichick. “Bledsoe is not going to want to see you.”

“I don’t want to see him either, but I want to drink a bunch of wine because I’m finding that the only way to cope with this insane situation is to either get high or drunk. Besides, Walla Walla is on the way to Seattle so we won’t have to deviate from our path much, not that we have cared about that this entire trip.”

Ricky’s up for anything including drinking wine.

“And while we’re drinking wine we can get more high and get Drew to get high with us,” he said.

Walla Walla or bust

And off they went, bent on Walla Walla or bust.

“Don’t you think we should call Drew before we just drop on him?” asked Kraft.

“No because Drew hates me and won’t allow us to come,” said Belichick. “We need to just barge in.”

The Highlander pulls into Bledsoe’s driveway. Wine vineyards galore surround his house.

Belichick knocks on the door. Bledsoe answers.

“Hey Drew. We’re all high and figured we would like to get drunk while we’re at it. So can we come in and drink a bunch of bottles of your wine?”

“You didn’t give me my starting job back, Bill,” said Bledsoe. “I’m still angry about that. I could have won six Super Bowls.”

“Drew, let’s move on and just get hammered,” said Belichick.

Is that you, Ricky?

“Wait a minute. Why are you four guys together? Are you Ricky Williams, the guy who quit football to go to Timbuktu to smoke pot?”

“Yes, Drew, and I’ve been wasted every day since. In fact, I got all these guys high after they picked me up in the tumbleweeds near a highway in Idaho.”

“I read about that on the Sammy Sportface blog,” Bledsoe said. “Without Sammy, no one in the sports world would know anything going on. Why are you guys together?”

“We’re on our way to get Tom Brady back to the NFL?”

“Oh, Jesus, it’s all about Brady again. Brady, Brady, Brady. I moved to nowhere Washington to get away from ever hearing his name again. And now I have to hear about you guys sucking up to get him back. Sportface also broke the story that Brady is going to the XFL and has recruited Julian Edelman and Antonio Brown to play with him. But none of this matters because the coronavirus ended sports forever. There will be no more XFL, NFL, or football.”

“Right, and that’s why we got high and want to guzzle your wine,” said Belichick. “But one condition: We have to practice social distancing as we drink. Each of us will spread out around your house in different rooms and take a bottle with us. We will drink alone. And we won’t talk to each other. Just drinking. I like to do everything without other people around.”

“Makes a lot of sense, Bill,” said Bledsoe. “This coronavirus is ruining civilization. And we humans should never touch each other or be near each other ever again. Interpersonal relationships should never be tolerated anymore. But we can drink. And that will save us.”

“And I’ll give each of you a joint to smoke by yourselves,” said Ricky. “Let me know if you need more than one. I have enough pot to roll us 47 joints without leaving Bledsoe’s crib.”

Men spread out

Bledsoe directs each of the four men to a different room: Belichick in the basement; Kraft in the den; Goodell in the TV room; and Ricky in the master bedroom.

“Go to those rooms and I’ll bring you the wine bottles,” he said. “I’ll drink in my kitchen.”

The men spread out with their booze and dope. They think about what they’re doing and wonder how it came to this. But they don’t care. Nothing matters. Their worlds have crashed into oblivion.

But they don’t even realize it. They’re gone, in outer space, floating in the clouds somewhere.

Bledsoe smokes his joint. Fifteen minutes later, he starts thinking about what’s going on and finds the whole thing disconcerting.

Sneeze coming on

He feels a sneeze coming on. He rushes to Kraft’s room. And then sneeze’s all over Kraft’s face, a torrential downpour of germ-laced respiratory droplets.

“Take that, old man,” he says. “I’ve been waiting to sneeze on you for years. And now is the perfect time.”

“Go ahead and sneeze on me some more,” said Kraft. “My empire has fallen. Brady is gone. Football is history. But it sure feels good to be high.”

To be continued…

Belichick Shares Tips with Kraft and

Goodell on Social Distancing

March 13, 2020

As Belichick, Kraft, and Goodell continue their time-consuming trek across America to convince Tom Brady to return to the NFL, the rest of the world is focused on the coronavirus.

As they cruise through Idaho on their way to Seattle, there are hardly any cars on the road in the United States.

And because all sports everywhere have been cancelled indefinitely, the three men start to talk about what the virus could mean to them, whether it makes sense to chase Brady given the NFL and XFL seasons are probably toast.

Kraft says: “I’ve been reading on my phone all about this thing called ‘social distancing,’ Bill. It seems like you would know a thing or two about what this concept is all about.”

Belichick: “Perfecting the art of social distancing”

“Of course,” said Belichick. “I’ve been perfecting the art of social distancing my whole life. The key is to never be too close to anyone physically – or emotionally for that matter. You stay far apart from people at all times. You don’t give off any warm vibes. When you cut guys, you need to make sure you’re behind your desk and the player is at least 20 feet away so you can rudely shout at him “hey, dude, you’re cut, get out of my office.’ Never get close. Never touch. Never be nice. Be anti-social. Don’t talk to people at parties.

“If you can avoid it, don’t go to parties,” he adds. “Don’t go to large gatherings. Don’t go to small gatherings. Don’t go anywhere where there are people unless you absolutely have to.”

“Damn, Bill,” said Kraft. “Is that why when you have met me in my office you have sat so far away from me and acted rude and like you would rather be anywhere else in the world?”

“Yep. That’s been me being my social distancing sly self.”

Kraft: “Is that why you never attend the bigwig parties I throw for the Patriots biggest donors?”

Belichick: “I can’t stand those events. I keep my social distance from them.”

Goodell asks: “Is that why you wear that cut-off ugly sweatshirt when I’ve told you repeatedly that NFL coaches should dress more formally than that?”

Passive aggressive social distancing

“Yep, Rog. That’s my passive aggressive form of social distancing. There are many different types of social distancing and I excel at all of them. There is the ‘I don’t like you and don’t want to be around you’ social distancing. There’s the “I don’t respect you and don’t have time for you’ social distancing. There’s the ‘you’re cut so get out of office’ my social distancing’. I’ve got an arsenal of social distancing tools and skills as my disposal and use them in various ways depending on the situation and how much I dislike the person I am social distancing with.”

Kraft and Goodell think this over. It occurs to them they’re riding in a car to pick up a football player with a guy who excels at social distancing, while the coronavirus spreads across the United States, when all football everywhere has been shut down potentially forever.

The whole drive is making less and less sense to them.

“What are we doing?” asked Kraft. “Football is over. All sports have ended. The XFL and NFL are irrelevant. That means we’re going to go out of business. That means we won’t be able to afford our big mansions anymore.”

“You’re right, Bob,” said Goodell. “This is serious stuff. And it’s also senseless. I say we turn around and all go home.”

“And do what, practice our social distancing skills?” said Kraft. “That’s all anybody’s doing. It’s a worldwide social distancing extravaganza. What kind of way is that to live is that? We might as well keep driving. At least out on the road we can practice our social distancing skills with each other. So, for instance, when we go to McDonalds, let’s each sit at different tables.”

Social distancing at McDonalds

“Great idea,” said Belichick. “And when we order our food let’s stand in different lines and stay 20 feet from the cashier. And when we sit at tables, each of us will have to make sure we’re 30 feet from anyone else. It will be some serious social distancing, and I’m always up for that. If I need some of your ketchup, Roger, I will yell across the restaurant ‘Hey Roger, give me some of your ketchup’.”

“But then what, Bill?” asks Kraft.

“When we get to Brady in Seattle, we can rock our social distancing skills with him. We will go to the field where he’s working out with Antonio Brown. We will stand at least 20 feet away from him.”

“But the idea is to win him over, to convince him to come back to the Patriots,” said Kraft.

Belichick: “Don’t you get it, Bob? The new normal is social distancing 24/7, not Tom Brady or the NFL or the XFL. Football doesn’t matter anymore. All that matters is that people don’t get near each other ever again.”

The three men wolf down piles of Big Macs and large fries. Then they return to the car.

Kraft gets seat full of trash and germs

“We need to continue this social distancing in the car,” said Belichick. “I’ll keep driving. Robbie, you get in the back seat. And Roger, you get in the way back seat.”

“That back seat has tons up McDonalds trash in it,” said Kraft. “There are germs all over that trash and that seat. I might get the coronavirus if I sit there.”

“Perfect,” said Belichick. “Then we could keep doing our social distancing with each other indefinitely.”

Sportface Brotherhood Splintering, Dissenting Views Flying About Content Decisions

March 7th, 2020

It’s all falling apart – and so quickly.

What one month ago started with such promise, a grand idea to unite 32 million men in the Baby Boomer Brotherhood, has deteriorated into a full-on massive revolt against Sammy Sportface and his editorial mission and vision.

Various sectarian groups within the Brotherhood have voiced their displeasure with Sportface’s blog topics.

“Make us laugh, Sportface, or we will turn on you,” said Rudyface, the biggest jerk and most shallow member of the Brotherhood.

The heart of this heated disagreement centers on D.C. guys wanting Sportface to trash everyone he ever knew in the Washington, D.C. area while growing up. Sportface wants to lift up the Brotherhood all over the world with helpful insights from inspirational leaders such as Tony Robbins, Wayne Dyer, and Joel Osteen.

“My vision is about looking forward, the art of the possible, not wading through those turbulent waters of my childhood,” he said. “I refuse to be manipulated by the base needs and desires of shallow men who have skin in this game Sammy Sportface is playing.”

It’s not just the shallow D.C. crowd that has been voicing displeasure with Sportface. Members of the brotherhood across the country are sending him text messages that they want out if Sportface continues to write about his desperate and delusional days in DC.

“I never get through a Sportface blog about DC,” said one Midwesterner who tracks Sportface who spoke on conditions of anonymity but whose name is Pistol Pete. “They bore me.”

Another Bro from NYC piled on: “You lied about your editorial mission. Why is everything always about YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU, YOU?”

So what is Sportface supposed to do? He’s got a revolt on his hands. He’s trying to do good for his fellow men and none of them want that. So he’s stuck ruining his relationships with DC people, making himself a pariah, and alienating the rest of his readership.

That doesn’t translate to building an audience, attracting advertisers, making money, and selling his company to Google so he can be powerful and rich enough to buy his way into the St. John’s Athletic Hall of Fame.

“Damn the torpedoes,” said Sportface. “Carpe diem. Wait ‘til the Brotherhood gets a load of what’s next. It’s gonna be killer.”

The next two blogs will be book reports about two new books he read titled “Focus on the Good Stuff” and “How Full is Your Bucket?”

“Jesus was criticized for what he said and did,” said Sportface. “It comes with the territory when you’re a pioneer and counter-revolutionary. I will give the Brotherhood what I think the Brotherhood needs whether they say they want it or not.

“Sammy Sportface must stick by his convictions, act according to his vision, and adhere to his carefully crafted mission statement,” he added. “Nothing will get in his way. Not naysayers. Not critics. Not editorial feedback. This emerging empire will prevail over everything and everyone.”

Belichick and Brady Bicker on Phone Call Today

March 4th, 2020

Tom Brady dials the same number he’s been calling for years.

“Hi Coach, it’s Tom Brady.”

“Tom who?”

“Say I was wondering about my free agency situation. Do you want me to be the quarterback of the Patriots next season?”

“Well I dunno, Tom. We might be moving on to Cincinnati.”

“But coach, I’ve led the Patriots to six Super Bowl Titles. I’m the greatest quarterback of all time. I want to retire with the Patriots.”

“You know, Tom, I like to cut guys before their skills diminish too much. Your skills diminished this season just like Bernie Kosar’s did with the Browns when I coached him. You’ve been around long enough to see me cut hundreds of guys. I cut guys who have been loyal to me. I cut guys who played their hearts out for me. I cut guys who were on multiple Super Bowl winning teams. I cut guys sometimes just because I get a kick out of it. I think I’m the best cutter of players in the history of the game of football.”

“But I’m different, coach. I’ve been the quarterback for all of those Super Bowl wins. I thought you would handle my situation differently. I thought you would show more loyalty to me because I have been so instrumental in making you the greatest football coach of all time.”

“I see it differently, Tom. I made you the great player that you used to be. It has been my coaching that has guided you to greatness. You see, I don’t think this organization needs you as much as it needs me. Nobody is saying my skills as a coach have fallen off. The only reason we didn’t win the Super Bowl last season is because you didn’t play as well as you had in previous seasons.”

“But coach, you didn’t give me enough good wide receivers to throw to. No quarterback would have won the Super Bowl with those guys. I mean, Julien Edelman is still really good, but I needed more than that. You can’t expect me to just keep throwing six-yard passes over the middle to Edelman and win a title. I need guys on the outside who can take the top off the defense, guys like Randy Moss.”

“We won several Super Bowl titles with you throwing six-yard passes constantly to Edelman.”

“But that’s not sustainable.”

“No, Tom. You’re not sustainable. That’s the point.”

Belichick pauses for a few seconds then says:

“Wasn’t that shrewd of me, Tom, signing Moss when the rest of the league thought he had a bad attitude and didn’t want to bring him onto their teams?”

“But what about this season, coach? You thought bringing Antonio Brown onto the team would do the trick and get us to the Super Bowl. But he wasn’t on our team more 10 days. What kind of judge of character are you? Couldn’t you see this guy was trouble?”

“As I recall that situation, Tom, you begged me to sign Brown. I was wary but did it reluctantly. As the quarterback, you are the leader on the field. You should have been able to handle Brown so he would have stayed on the team.”

“That dude was a nutjob, coach. Nobody would have been able to handle him. Yes, I wanted him because I was desperate to have someone to throw the long pass to.”

“He was a nutjob. You’re right about that. But that doesn’t’ change the fact that we’re moving on to Cincinnati, Tom.”

“Am I going to Cincinnati with you guys, Coach?”

“Apparently not. Like everybody else in the sports world, I read that recent Sammy Sportface blog that revealed you want to play for the Seattle Dragons because you became fascinated with the dragon’s relationship with the dog donkey in the movie Shrek.”

“You actually believe Sammy Sportface? Nobody believes that guy.”

“Sportface’s story sounded plausible to me. One thing we can agree on today: That relationship between the dragon and the donkey was quite odd yet it somehow was functional. I think that relationship reminds a lot of people of the relationships you and I have had. We’re different guys, yet we have this weird kind of chemistry.”

“If you think we have a weird kind of chemistry, why won’t you sign me for one more year?”

“Because Shrek is a fictional movie, Tom. It’s not real. No dragon has ever fallen in love with a donkey.”

One Big Idea to Boost the

Baby Boomer Brotherhood

March 2nd, 2020

You’re a Baby Boomer Brother, so what are you supposed to do with the rest of your life? Should you exercise more or sit around and watch TV?

We need to get out of our chairs and walk around the house and think about what remains to be done. Some of it can wait for tomorrow. Some never needs to get done. The trick is figuring out which is which.

Accomplish something meaningful

You can accomplish something meaningful. This would be commendable.

Do that. Focus on doing something meaningful with the rest of your lives. What matters to you? How can you help other people? How can you lift someone up?

Whatever that is, do it. Starting things is harder than doing them. Get going. Write down a simple goal, one goal. Not five or six. The latter may overwhelm you as it does many people.

Just write down one thing you want to get done today on a piece of paper that you think has meaning and start doing it. Take the first step, which is usually the one people never get to.

You’re different

Unlike all the other older men out there thinking about doing things but not actually doing them, you take action. You’ve got energy left and you’re the kind of guy who has always fought through the default position of not doing things. You have always been a do-er.

Start doing again. Do something. Write it down and do it. Don’t let any negative thoughts get it your way. Don’t second-guess yourself. Be certain about your decision and execute.

Action provides the key to life. When you act, you feel empowered. You know this. You’ve been living for quite a while. In your life there have been times when you have taken action and have felt the most alive and fulfilled.

Even when those actions failed or didn’t turn out the way you had hoped, you were better offer taking the action. You learned something. Learning spawns a fulfilling life. When we learn, we gain a deeper understanding of the world, other people, and ourselves.

Never stop learning

Keep learning. Continue to act one step at a time. You can’t do two things at once well. Don’t try. Just concentrate on one activity, one action, one phone call, one email.

In my case that one action is this blog. A short while ago today I wrote that I would write one blog. That’s it. Nothing else on the piece of paper. A big “to do” list would have been too intimidating, and I may have run away and given up because it would have seemed too hard.

But because I only wrote one thing on the piece of paper, it looked manageable. And as you can see, it is.

This blog means something

Why am I doing this? Because I believe doing so has meaning. I believe Baby Boomer Brotherhood members who read this who will be inspired by this idea of writing one thing on a piece of paper so that they will actually do the same thing.

Your life still has profound meaning. You have a purpose and a mission and a calling. You have all of that, indeed. You’re here today for a reason. You’re reading this blog with a purpose. You have an opportunity to do something great today. You can help someone. Write a thank you note. Call a friend.

Start your own business. Do whatever you want to do. It’s all in your mind. Your mind can be controlled -- by you.

You are the master of your life

Be the master of your life. You exist for a reason. This is part of a plan. Your life has purpose. What is your purpose today? What do you want to do right now? What really jazzes you? What is the best way you can add value to the word today?

Whatever that is, write it down. And go do it right now.

Sammy Sportface Releases

March Madness Field of 64

February 29, 2020

Several weeks ahead of ESPN and CBS, The Sammy Sportface Syndicated Network has released the 64 people, teams and things that have been selected to compete for a national championship in the March Madness basketball tournament.

This year the field of 64 will be a little different than in past years. Some entrants will be single individuals, some are teams, some are members of the Sammy Sportface – Baby Boomer Brotherhood, some are airports, and some are random people from the respective regions.

Some play basketball. Most don’t.

This is March Madness.

Dive in. Fill out your brackets. Wager your hard-earned money.

Feel special that you have the brackets before anyone else exclusively here on Facebook. Insider trade on this advanced information.

East Region (regionals to be played in Blessed Sacrament gym in Chevy Chase, Maryland)

Ci Ci Allen

Gil

Joe Glea

JBalls

Dan Hogan’s Heroes

Phil Brennan

Naves

Wolford

Dankos

Jimmy Cardaci – St. Raphael’s Academy

Hawkeye Whitney

TR

Rudy

Stoney

Spoog

Play in Game:

Moose vs. Jo Jo Hunter

South Region (regionals to be played at the Bojangles Coliseum in Charlotte, NC)

Troy Jackson

Darden J.

Brods

J. Parshall

Vinny Scanlon

Jim Hodgson

The Houston Astros

Elvis Presley

Frank Ryan

Dollie Parton

Carl Bruce Sonny Massey Bruce Carl Sonny Bruce Carl

Willie Bower

Matty Fitz

Fats Domino

Richard Petty

Play In Game:

Sammy Sportface vs. Jim Parshall

Midwest Region (regionals to be played at Larry Bird’s house in French Lick, Indiana)

Ripley

Robin Yount

Steve Stricker

Steve Potter

Head

J. Ricca

Larry Scheinberg

Brad Shaw

Bryan Cullen

Brian Andrews

Larry Bird

Oprah

John Cameron Swazey

Joan Jet

Chicago’s O’Hare Airport

Joe Mauer

Robin Yount

Play In Game

Rudyface vs. Mike Wallerstedt

West Region (regionals to be played on Venice Beach in southern California)

The Beach Boys

Paul Littell

Frank Thompson

UCLA volleyball team

Ed Parrot

Greg Frisby

Toulian

Peach

Pete Littell

Mission Viejo High School

Billy Shockley

Rumby

Dead

Blockhead

Jason Kidd

San Diego State

Play In Game

Dead vs. Blockhead

The Greatest Unheard-of Hooper of All Time

February 27th, 2020

The Washington, D.C., area has been a basketball crazy mecca for at least five decades.

Really good hoopers have been playing all over that area. High school all Americans, guys who made it to the pros, guys who became sports bloggers, you name it.

If you ask any of the guys who know that scene and understand basketball talent who the best of them all was, they would tell you one guy that few people have heard of.

That guy is Moose.

Moose is the only guy I know who did not play one second of high school basketball who was offered a full scholarship to play in college. True to his character, he turned it down. Moose did his own thing in his own way. He played basketball that way too, and man did he whip guys on the court.

Moose dropped 68 in a single Spring League game

In a Spring league game at Blessed Sacrament in DC one night, he dropped in 68 points.

From outside Moose schooled everybody. His shot was a stroke of genius. Bamb. Bucket. All the time. All night long. Accurate, smooth, and consistent, Moose would drop long range jumpers on anybody, anywhere, anytime.

He was the ultimate playground legend. Star high school players would take on Moose on the playgrounds and get destroyed and humbled. It was tough for them to come to terms with the fact that a guy who wasn’t even playing high school hoops was so much better.

Down low Moose was unstoppable

When Moose took you down low, you had no chance of stopping him. He knew exactly how to position himself and use his shoulders so you could never block his shot. And he scored at will inside. Ridiculously proficient and skilled, Moose was a basketball savant, a prodigy, seriously dominant.

My friends and I have had earnest discussions about whether Moose is the greatest basketball player who has ever lived. Yes, we have compared him to Michael Jordan.

Moose could shoot as well and was as unstoppable around the hoop. His basketball IQ was that of a genius, sort of like Rick Barry. He knew every nuance of the game, who to pass to -- though that wasn’t his strength because he shot a lot – and who he could take to the hole. That was everyone.

So good he made us uneasy

Moose was so good it made us uneasy and made us feel devalued. Ask any member of the Baby Boomer Brotherhood who grew up in the D.C. area who the best player from that basketball-crazy city was, and you would get answers such as these: Adrian Dantley, Dave Bing, Kevin Durant, Johnny Dawkins, Hawkeye Whitney, Jo Jo Hunter, and Sammy Sportface.

Go ahead. Name a hundred more guys. Or a thousand. I don’t care who you come up with. Guys who went pro, college All-Americas, it doesn’t matter.

If you think any of them is better than Moose, you never saw Moose play or competed against him.

He was better than all of them.

He was the greatest unheard-of hooper of all time.

Sportface Shares Three Speed

Networking Success Stories

February 23rd, 2020

When Sammy Sportface arrived in his new town a year a half ago, he felt the need to get out there and meet people, re-build his network, and polish his personal brand.

So, one night he attended a speed networking event in a cramped upstairs side room of a second-rate restaurant. There he encountered 11 people of various walks of life, seeking to speed network themselves, but not realizing that some cat named Sammy Sportface would be there.

The way these things work is you sit down at a small table with one other person and tell them about your career aspirations and vision for the world for 45 seconds, and the other person does the same. You trade a few insults.

After that, you move to the next table and meet with someone else and do the same drill. And so on until you’ve met everyone else in the group.

Three memorable meetings

Sportface met three people of particular note. The first guy had a face three feet high and four inches wide with glasses and a dirty mustache. He was sure of himself and didn’t seem to be aware of how ridiculous long his head was. Sammy rocked the uniform he always does when closing business deals: his Sammy Sportface jersey and hat.

Before Sammy could catch his breath, Skinny Head plopped down on the table several different business cards of businesses he was running. He explained what the businesses were, but none of them made sense to Sportface, who is nothing if not sensible.

Skinny Head destined for greatness

“I believe I am destined for greatness,” Skinny Head said.

Sportface was skeptical. If this guy was going to be great, he wouldn’t have to be telling Sportface about it. That’s now how greatness happens.

“So, what do you do?” asked Skinny Head

“I’m Sammy Sportface. I write the Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog. I write about grade school basketball games, guys and girlfriends who bugged me in high school, and Larry Bird.”

Skinny Head looked confused. But time was up.

Buffalo Belinda works for the man upstairs

At the next table Sportface sat across from a middle-aged woman who had just moved from Buffalo, New York. To protect her identity, let’s call her Buffalo Belinda.

“Who do you work for?” Sportface asked.

“I work for the man upstairs.”

“You mean God?”

“What other man upstairs is there?”

“How much does he pay an hour?”

Time was up.

Sammy Sportface calls Sammy Software’s bluff

At the next table Sportface found himself being sold to by a guy who said his company has a software that can help companies -- with 98 percent accuracy -- identify the best person to hire for their companies.

Sportface called out Sammy Software: “If that’s true, dude, why you are at this speed networking event? You should have investors paying you money and you should be very rich right now.”

“And what do you do?”

“I’m Sammy Sportface. I galvanize, inspire, and amuse the Baby Boomer Brotherhood on Facebook.”

“Why are you doing that?”

“Because Rudyface wants me to.”

“Who’s Rudyface?”

“A jerk I grew up with.”

Time was up.

The speed networking journey continued along this productive path.

Months later, Sportface wrote a blog about the experience and posted it on Facebook.

Three Guys Born 57 Years Ago Who

Changed Basketball Forever

February 21, 2020

Fifty-seven years ago, three babies popped into this world, right around this time of year, who changed the course of basketball history forever.

The first, born on February 17^th, was Michael Jordan. He entered the world in Brooklyn, NY and eventually attended high school in Wilmington, North Carolina.

We all know what happened after that.

His stardom kicked into high gear when he drained the game-winning shot for North Carolina in the national championship game to beat Georgetown.

Next, “Air Jordan” snatched six NBA championships and became universally recognized as the greatest basketball player of all time.

Barkley born in Leeds, Alabama

Three days later in that same year, on February 20th 1963, Charles Barkley made his first appearance in this world in Leeds, Alabama.

The “Round Mound of Rebound” lifted Auburn to a nationally respected team and went on to become a star player on the 1992 US Olympics Dream Team.

An NBA Hall of Famer, Barkley has also capitalized on his charismatic personality to become an award-winning NBA analyst on TNT.

Third Guy Born in Bethesda, Maryland

Two days after Sir Charles entered this world, on February 22, yet another mega-star in the basketball world came into our lives. A native of Bethesda, Maryland, he dominated CYO basketball leagues from third through eighth grade.

In one year alone, 1977, he won the MVP Awards in the St. John’s, Georgetown Prep, Good Counsel, and Knights of Columbus basketball tournaments.

In high school he continued to raise his game on the basketball court. As a freshman, he led the St. John’s JV team in scoring and rebounding.

During his junior and senior years he led St. John’s to victories over the nation’s best high school team, DeMatha. Along the way he worked as a scorer and timer, referee, and coach at Morgan Wootten’s summer basketball camps.

Beat the Eps

In 1981, he hauled in 17 rebounds and popped in 10 points in a classic college victory over the Sig Ep fraternity.

In his own way, the “Bethesda Bomber” became as famous a basketball player as Michael Jordan and Charles Barkley. The mark he left on the game remains as undeniable and indelible as anything Jordan and Barkley ever accomplished.

Who is this guy?

Sammy Sportface

College Basketball World Mourns

North Carolina’s Woes

February 19^th, 2020

The entire college basketball world mourns. We can’t sleep at night. Our favorite team and program, the North Carolina Tar Heels, has fallen from the top of college basketball into a baby blue abyss.

When March Madness starts next month, our favorite team, America’s team, won’t make the field of 64. It seems unfathomable.

How could this have happened to our national college basketball team, the squad we can always count on to make it to the Sweet 16 at least and often the Final Four on a much more regular basis than almost every other college basketball program -- except Duke, of course?

We won three national titles with “Ole Roy”

With “Ole Roy” leading us, we’ve won three national titles. The parties on Franklin Street have lasted for weeks. In fact, life in Chapel Hill feels like one non-stop basketball celebration on Franklin Street. At Carolina they deserve to win national championships. The world owes it to them.

They deserve to get five McDonalds All-Americans coming out of high school every year to join their squad. This school has college basketball pouring through its baby blue veins. The DNA of North Carolina, James Naismith, and the game of basketball itself permeates the 19,000-seat shrine of baby blue seats known as the Dean Dome.

What happened to our national college basketball program? They keep losing games. They’re record is 10 and 16. That’s unthinkable. “Ole Roy” is getting testy in post-game interviews. He’s usually such an affable guy. Everybody loves “Ole Roy.”

He’s so used to winning. He’s a first ballot Hall of Fame coach. It’s so hard to watch him get this upset. It’s so disconcerting, so wrong. And yet it’s reassuring to us that next season he has the nation’s best recruiting class coming in. That’s what we’re used to.

What happened in the Duke game?

But what about that recent Duke game? They had the Blue Devils by 10 points in the second half. But somehow, they managed to lose the game. Duke always seems to figure out a way to hurt the Heels’ feelings. Their comeback against us this season will sting for decades.

We are all so hurt by this. We think Tar Heels basketball is the epicenter of this entire state and country. When people think North Carolina, their minds immediately go to Dean Smith, Michael Jordan, and Roy Williams. Everything else, including the Research Triangle Park, NASCAR, and Bojangles, comes second.

But how are we supposed to deal with a team that can’t win basketball games anymore? Over the past five decades they’re been one of the top five programs in the country. We know Duke has been better than us, but we hate admitting that so much.

Like biscuits and gravy

Winning and North Carolina basketball have been like biscuits and gravy, barbecue and cole slaw, James Taylor and “Carolina On My Mind.”

It all feels so odd, so strange, so wrong. We are all just besides ourselves about this. We can’t concentrate like we used to. Our days are non-stop basketball bummers. America’s team stinks.

Carolina basketball is about winning and yet this team is all about losing. It’s even making us question our favorite saying: “If God is not a Tar Heel, then why is the sky Carolina blue?”

The sky sure isn’t Carolina blue right now. Will it ever be again? Surely we have faith that “Ole Roy” can bring us back to glory, to his fourth national championship, to more frivolity on Franklin Street? We deserve this.

We’re Carolina basketball fans. It’s our right to have a massive party on Franklin Street every few years.

Tar Heel basketball is a religion in this country. And our faith has been shaken. Make us believe again.

Go Tar Heels. Win a basketball game. Shock the world and win the ACC Tournament. Steal that automatic bid into the field of 64 for March Madness. Make a deep run.

Go to the Final Four. Win the national title. Cut down the nets on Monday night. Get us back to another party on Franklin Street.

We all deserve this.

News Release

Astros Offering Sign-Stealing Seminars

at Spring Training Facility

DATELINE – West Palm Beach, Florida -- For Immediate Release: February 18, 2020 -- The Houston Astros, a maverick Major League Baseball franchise, will be holding innovative sign-stealing and cheating rationalization seminars this Spring at the team’s preseason training facility here in West Palm Beach, Florida.

The team will hold seminars for high school and Little League coaches and players across America on how to steal signs in a way that cannot be detected and can ensure your team gains an unfair advantage in games. The team will charge each child and coach $20,000 per seminar.

The first two-week seminar will show coaches and players how to position video equipment in locations near the dugout that cannot be detected with the naked eye yet can discern which pitch the opposing hurler will deliver to the plate next.

“When we swiped the World Series championship in 2017 using this video strategy, we were able to hide the cameras in such a way that no one could tell they were there,” said Astros owner James Crane.

“In our seminars we will show these players and coaches that you really can get away with this tactic if you are clever enough with how you position the cameras and where. We prefer the camouflage technique.”

Second seminar focuses on tools for hitting trash cans

The second two-week seminar will focus on how to coordinate the timing between what the video camera detects with how low long and how many times to hit the cans, and with what tool, to tip off the hitter on which pitch is coming next.

“We will be demonstrating how to bang on the cans using regular wooden bats, long-necked fungos, and even buckets of Double Bubble Chewing Gum,” Craned added. “Each of these tools makes a slightly different sound so it’s important that we teach how these sounds differ along with how many times to bang on the cans.

“This cheating scheme has to be a highly coordinated process with everyone involved working in unison like a well-trained symphony orchestra. High school and Little League baseball organizations need to be willing to put in the time and effort to cheat effectively. It takes discipline.”

Seminar on why cheating is justifiable

The Astros will then hold a two-week seminar on why cheating is justifiable and should be done whenever you can get away with it.

“This is about winning championships and making lots of extra money,” added Crane. “Winning cures all ills and justifies all cheating. The Astros won the World Series by cheating and we haven’t even had to suspend any players or give back our trophy. The championship glory is ours forever and, in the end, that’s all that counts.”

###

Astros Players Who Cheated Should

be Suspended for An Entire Season

February 18th, 2020

When I was in college, two students broke into an economics professor’s office and stole copies of the final exam several days before it was to be administered to the class.

They got caught.

Both students got kicked out of the school. Their punishment was swift and absolute.

Just think what would have happened had they not been caught. They probably would have done well on the exam. Meanwhile, the other students who didn’t have a copy of the test questions would have been at a disadvantage.

These students would have had to study more thoroughly and for longer hours, coped with more pre-exam anxiety, and probably gotten a lower grade than the guys who secured questions in advance.

The thieves with the high grades may have leveraged that good exam grade to land a higher-paying job or gain admittance to a more prestigious graduate school.

Now think of the Houston Astros

Now think of the Houston Astros. They set up a system in which they informed their baseball teammates about which pitches the opposing pitchers were about to throw them.

So instead of having to be ready for any number of different pitches and react quickly to whatever came in – such as a curve, slider, or fast ball – the hitters knew that, say, a fastball was coming.

They could rid their minds of any concerns about the curve or slider and how to hit those and just relax and get ready to rip the fast ball.

Knowing what pitch is coming is a serious advantage for a hitter especially when the other team’s hitters don’t have the good fortune of knowing what pitches will be thrown next. It’s more of an advantage than taking steroids to help a hitter hit a ball farther.

We’ve all cheated in some way

It’s easy to be judgmental about this and say the Astros were wrong to cheat as they did – and there’s no doubt they flagrantly cheated.

But let’s remember. All of us in one way or another have cheated in some way in some aspect of our lives. Maybe not like the Astros did, maybe not as egregiously, but in some way.

So while I hesitate to beat up too much on this team and its players, I do wonder how a bunch of guys who were already millionaires could have cheated so they could make even more money and gain more glory by being World Series champions.

I wonder what it was like for those who have kids to come home and have their kids ask “Dad, you already make millions of dollars to play baseball. Why did you have to cheat to make more or to win a World Series?

Didn’t you think that winning by cheating wouldn’t be satisfying, or did you not care if you cheated as long as you won? You’re been teaching me not to cheat when I play Little League baseball. I’m confused.”

Are baseball players relatively unsophisticated?

I wonder if maybe these guys are just not that sophisticated. I wonder if baseball players such as these don’t get particularly strong educations because they dedicate enormous amounts of time playing baseball, which does not allow much time to spend in the library reading great books or perhaps not much time to learn about the importance of integrity. The truth is many don’t attend college.

I wonder if they ever learned anything about playing sports on an equal footing with opponents. I wonder how many pro baseball players learn about morals.

Bone-headed decision

It all seems so bone headed. The Astros already had a talented bunch of players. They may have won the World Series without cheating. But they did it anyway. Maybe there was pressure from the coaches to keep doing this junk.

I don’t know. But I do know this. It was stupid. It’s as if no one was really thinking through the repercussions of cheating.

Is it really possible the Astros players who were getting advanced notices of what pitches were coming really didn’t think about how unfair that was to the other team’s players who were not? Did it ever occur to them that it wouldn’t be as satisfying to win a World Series if they cheated?

Didn’t it dawn on them that cheating to win wouldn’t be fulfilling, in the end, and if they got caught, as they did, their reputations would be damaged and that people would trust them less, which is never a good thing for the untrusted person?

Normal sophisticated people do think about these things and often make smart decisions to avoid getting themselves into such messes.

They would say to themselves “I won’t want to win the World Series this way. I’ll never feel good about having an unfair advantage against the opponents. I want to win the World Series when both teams compete on a level playing field.”

Can’t believe not one player tried to stop the madness

I can’t believe these players didn’t think about this and stop the madness. But apparently if they did think about it, they weren’t bothered enough to speak up and say “hey, I don’t want to win the World Series by cheating. That’s not how I want to be remembered. I don’t want my kids knowing I was willing to cheat to win. That’s not the kind of father I want to be.”

But they didn’t do that. And that’s sad for them, their kids, and all of us.

Suspend all the players for an entire season

I think all the Astros players should be suspended for at least an entire season. I don’t care about any of the politics involved or power of the Major League Baseball Players Union or the lawsuits fans might file against the Astros for the tickets they bought to those World Series games that were fraudulent events.

Money will be lost. So be it. There’s a bigger issue here that needs to be remedied.

Right is right and wrong is wrong. What they did was just wrong in so many ways on so many levels.

The baseball world – and the world overall – needs these suspensions to happen. Otherwise, kids will grow up thinking if they cheat and win a World Series it will be OK, even if they caught.

We don’t want our kids to grow up thinking this way about baseball and every other aspect of their lives.

On any playing field, in any work situation, in any walk of life, cheating should not be tolerated. It wrecks societies and peoples’ lives. Our American system is built on the ideal of fairness in competition. We must revere this always.

Baby Boomer Boys Blast Sammy Sportface’s Blogs, Brotherhood Vision, and Business Model

February 15th, 2020

The Baby Boomer Brotherhood has been blasting Sammy Sportface’s blogs and business model ever since the business enterprise took off on February 5^th. Here’s is the feedback so far:

· “That Larry Bird blog was dumb. You need to write a blog in which Larry Bird says Sportface is an idiot.”

· “I don’t care what Sammy Sportface thinks or does.”

· “No offense, but you are not a good writer.”

· “You’re not writing novels. You’re writing blogs.”

· “I don’t go around recommending sports blogs to my friends all the time. When I do, and you don’t deliver, it makes me look bad.”

· “Blah, blah, blah.”

· “That blog was not nearly weird enough. Get your weird on.”

· “You need to break news, man. Sammy is behind the times. He’s making the Baby Boomer Brotherhood look slow.”

· “I thought this blog was supposed to inspire me. I haven’t read anything inspirational yet.”

· “You need to rethink your business model. This business won’t scale.”

· “How are you going to make money at this?”

· “How can I remember Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog when I can’t even say it?”

· “You have 20 guys reading this stuff and they’re going to bolt on you soon. And then what will you have?”

· “Stop writing about Rudyface.”

Sammy Sportface Releases Best 10

Nicknames of His Buddies

February 13th, 2020

When you were growing up, I bet some of your buddies had nicknames something like Dirtface or Blotto or Nerky.

Sammy Sportface ran with some dudes growing up who also had nicknames. For the first time ever, he will be releasing the top 10 list in this blog. But before we get to those, he needs to hit you with an eclectic smattering of Honorable Mentions:

· Teeth, who had big front teeth and would knock anybody’s Teeth out who messed with him;

· Tooth, Teeth’s younger brother;

· Athlete, who was not a gifted athlete but decades later dated Katie Couric;

· Dead because he went to a few hundred Grateful Dead concerts in college;

· Meat Head, who didn’t learn concepts quickly nor easily but could stick guys at middle linebacker in high school;

· Muscle Head, who had such big biceps that you were convinced those same size biceps wrapped around inside his skull;

· Walls: we called him Walls because one day in high school he got his hair cut and the barber cut his sideburns so he had “whitewalls” where his sideburns used to be.

But these didn’t make the Top 10. The following did:

Number 10: Glum

I never even knew Glum very well but knew him well enough to wonder and notice that he was always glum. A male version of a Debbie Downer, there was no pleasing Glum.

In high school when the rest of us were having fun and being irresponsible, glum took everything more seriously. Yet we could never figure out why he was so glum and none of us really probed him about it. We just let him be Glum. He was so good at it. He wasn’t seriously studying or serious about anything other than being glum about everything.

Life just wasn’t great as far as he could tell. No matter what it was – homework, the upcoming prom, the lunch food – everything made Glum glum.

It may have been his schtick, his unique value proposition. Maybe he was carving out his niche in our social circles. Maybe he was ahead of his time in creating his personal brand. But Glum was never going to tell you that. He didn’t like to share his thoughts -- except glum ones.

Number Nine: Earthdog

When I heard about Earthdog being Earthdog, I didn’t really know the guy. This was in college. I asked why he was called Earthdog and I always got the same answer: “Have you looked at him? His face looks like a dog’s face.”

So I checked out Earthdog. Yep, Earthdog’s face looked like a dog’s face. Lots of different dogs such as bulldogs, golden retrievers, and poodles. His was a mutt face. I can’t think of anyone I’ve ever met whose face was more like a dog’s than Earthdog’s. And because Earthdog was on Earth, the name fit.

Number Eight: Rudy/Rudyface

Rudy’s real name was something else more mainstream. But as soon as one of us caught wind that he had some cousins named Rudy when he was 13, we called him Rudy forever after. Never by his real name.

He deserved to be called Rudy and now as a star player on the SS - BBBB (Sammy Sportface – The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog), he’s Rudyface.

Rudyface deserved whatever name we wanted to give him because he dished out mud piles of verbal abuse and perpetuated all sorts of mean nicknames that we didn’t like to be called. He would have called us Rudy if he thought it would have bothered us.

Rudy may not sound like a Top 10 name, but it is. You have to know this guy to know why it’s on the list. But you really don’t want to know Rudy. That’s why he’s called Rudy.

Number Seven: Blockhead

Blockhead was a guy who hung out with my buddies at another college. Every time I saw them, they would tell me Blockhead stories.

Usually Blockhead would be causing mayhem around the campus, being a Blockhead. He liked fisticuffs and bar brawls. He beat up guys. I never heard the fellas discuss what Blockhead liked to study in college. His major was never even mentioned.

Number Six: Mono Man

For the preponderance of his entire freshman, sophomore, and junior years of college, Mono Man had mononucleosis. I don’t remember a time when he didn’t.

This was around the time that “Macho Man” was a hit song so I suppose we gave him the “Mono Man” nickname based on that. But nobody ever told me, and I never asked.

All I knew was that Mono Man was Mono Man, and everybody called him that. Having mono was how Mono Man rolled.

Number Five: Slapman

Easily the wildest and craziest and most difficult to understand dude on his list was The Slapman. He went to a nearby college to ours and we road tripped to see him one weekend at his fraternity house.

In the college frat pictures each year he rocked radically different hairdos, so much so that you couldn’t even tell he was the same guy in different years. When I met him, he had a huge clump of black curly hair that made no sense and was completely unkempt and ridiculous.

Slapman was cooler than anyone else any of us had ever met. Whomever we had ever met whom we thought was the coolest guy ever was no longer the coolest after we met The Slapman. No one -- no one -- I mean no one -- was cooler than The Slapman, not even “The Fonz.”

We also called him “Happy Slappy.”

Number Four: QTip

QTip got his name because of the shape of his body. In the middle he was as thin as a pencil. But his head bobbed like an oblong hot mess of dirty blonde curls. It almost seemed as if he might tip over because of the weight of his head and the inability of his body frame to keep him balanced.

For the Q-Tip analogy to fit perfectly, he would have had to have gigantic, round and fuzzy feet. But I never got around to checking out QTip’s feet because his body and head were such a fascinating contrast and yet disconcerting.

Number Three: Sausage Fingers

This guy’s fingers were as fat, thick, and ugly as a dirty and smelly rhinoceros with the flu on the verge of death. We used to sit around and wonder how Sausage Fingers could have evolved with fingers as he did. He used his Sausage Fingers to grip a bat and rip line drives all over campus for our softball team.

Number Two: Head

Have you never seen a 5-foot 3 guy with a head the size of Texas? Now you have a sense of what Head looks like. Everybody called him Head -- girls, guys, parents, teachers, doctors, dentists, cousins, convenience store managers.

The dude was totally a Head. He had a big smile and he often cut his hair short. It was charcoal black. And the Head. Man, that head. It just went and went, this way and that, over the river and through the woods to grandmother’s house we go.

If you were with Head, you were with his Head. Everything about Head boiled down to one thing: his Head.

Number One: Bullet

One day during his sophomore year of high school, one of our friends went to the school cafeteria to get a snack. When there, he learned that the cafeteria was being robbed by a guy who came in the door with a pistol. The burglar shot our friend several times in the chest and abdomen. He went to the intensive care unit.

Once he got out and we heard he was going to be OK, we started calling him Bullet. From that day on, Bullet has been Bullet to everyone and anyone. Bullet got shot. Bullet took on bullets.

What are the top 3 nicknames of your buds growing up?

Bieniemy’s Name Tortured,

Interview for Colorado Football Job Stalled

February 13, 2020

When Eric Bieniemy contacted the University of Colorado football office yesterday expressing his interest in the head football coaching job, he got stalled in his conversation with the administrative assistant.

“Wait a minute, sir,” the assistant said. “Did you say your name is B. Enemy?”

“No, my name is Bieniemy,” said the current offensive coordinator for the Kansas City Chiefs.

“Oh, that’s Be Enemy,” said the assistant. “So you spell that Be Enemy?”

“No,” the coach said.

“Oh so you mean B. E. Enemy?”

“No,” the coach said. “My name rhymes with frenemy.”

“Oh, so it’s Be Frenemy? Maybe it should be Be More Friendly.”

“No, it rhymes with enemy but is spelled differently? So it’s spelled Enemee like Eminem the rap star?

“No, it’s spelled Bieniemy.”

“But what, that second “e” in your name is silent. It doesn’t need to be there. Why is it there? Why isn’t your name simply Bienimy?

“University should know how to spell my name”

“Hey, the University of Colorado should know how to spell my name. I am the school’s all-time leading rusher with 3,940 yards.”

“Well that’s what the Greek Freak said when he got drafted by the Milwaukee Bucks,” said the assistant. “But no one in that organization can spell his last name and he’s been on the team for several years. It’s Antetokounmpo, by the way. The second m is silent just like the second e in your name.”

“The Greek Freak is not my frenemy. My name is Eric Bieniemy. Can we get past this so I can do the job interview?”

“Sure Mr. Antetokounmpo. You will be interviewing with Eminem.”

Tiger Joining Premier Golf League Akin to

Bruce Jenner Becoming Caitlyn Jenner

February 12th, 2020

If Tiger Woods joins the Premier Golf League and defects from the PGA tour, it would be as mind-boggling as when Bruce Jenner became Caitlyn Jenner.

It will be as emotional as that wrenching day in the 1970s when Donny Osmond left his brothers' band to go solo and sing with his sister, Marie.

This newfangled league, now being seriously considered by Woods and other top golfers, could be launched as early as 2022. The organization would hold 18 annual tournaments for the world’s top 48 players – and pay $10 million in prize money for each tournament. That’s big bank, Bobby.

If Tiger goes this route, where will that leave the PGA? Will it become a second-tier golf league sort of like putt-putt at the beach? Will the best players abandon the PGA tourneys and chase the Premier Golf League golf carts packed with green cash? Is this a big money grab?

Given that Brooks Koepka gets bored playing golf, will this new league jumpstart his interest in the sport?

How will this affect Tommy Fleetwood Mac?

In which tournaments will Tommy Fleetwood Mac play? Will the new league require him to cut his Mick Fleetwood /MLB relief pitcher hair?

It’s so distressing.

However this saga unfolds, we have this weekend’s Genesis Invitational Tournament in Los Angeles to worry about. Tiger is scheduled to compete in this event.

Phil Collins to rejoin Genesis and play at this weekend’s tourney

Rock star Phil Collins will be there, rejoining the band he bolted from 22 years ago after drumming and singing for them for 26 years.

As Tiger swats through his rounds, the 48-year-old band will crank out the misunderstood Genesis hit “Misunderstanding” in the short rough surrounding the 18^th green.

The galleries will be full of spectators dismayed that The Premier Golf League could cause a paradigm shift, and raise all sorts of practical and logistical questions, about the game of golf as we have come to know it.

During every Tiger shot takes, the course will reverberate with sounds of fans wailing in unison: “there must be some misunderstanding.”

The Sammy Sportface 11 Rules of the Game

February 12th, 2020

In the game of life, there are 11 rules. Here they are:

One: Climb aboard the Sammy Sportface freight train before it’s too late

Climb aboard this runaway Sammy Sportface freight train. Every Baby Boomer bloke will be riding on it eventually, so you might as well get on now while seats are still available. You have never seen a movement like one. The world hasn’t either. It will be uncommon, historic, and bumpy. But you will have missed the greatest glory ride of your life if you don’t get on board this locomotive now.

Two: Don’t listen to Rudyface – he won’t help you

Don’t listen to Rudyface. His interests are not yours. They’re his. It’s his gig to throw you off your game. Don’t let him. Get inside his head. Be bigger than Rudyface, a diminutive dude.

Three: Hang out at the beach

Go to the beach and hang out. Sit by the water. Sip Coronas with limes. While sitting there, remember that many people made their biggest contributions to the world in their sixties and seventies. Your life starts now. Take a dip. Let the water rinse your body.

Cleanse yourself of all thoughts of why you can’t do whatever it is you want to do. Fixate on what you can do with the rest of your life. Break out your bucket list and start checking them off, one by one day by day. Lather up with some Coppertone. You don’t want to get sunburn.

Four: Skydive and don’t worry about the parachute

According to Pew Research, your demographic has a thing for skydiving. Sign up for a time when you go up in a plane, strap a parachute around you, and dive into the thin air all by yourself dropping at 32 feet per second squared. Let yourself fall. Sing Tom Petty’s “Free Falling.”

Sense the danger. But relish and mustard the thrill. You’re flying in the air. The parachute will save you. You’ve got this. Don’t worry about might what happen if the parachute doesn’t release. Ditch those details.

Five: Question whether listening to Sammy Sportface is in your best interest

Call up some fellas and tell them it’s time for a golf weekend, fellas only. A good place to go would be Myrtle Beach, because after playing a few holes you guys could bag golf and go to the wide-open beaches, hang out, and drink Coronas with a lime.

Go in the ocean. Wonder to yourself if listening to Sammy Sportface is really in your best interest. Think hard about this. Then reach the conclusion that, yes, Sammy Sportface knows what he’s talking about. Accept the truth. Sammy Sportface slices the onions.

Six: Read The Blue Ocean Strategy

Read some books. The best one to read right away is The Tender Bar. Sammy Sportface read this one a few years ago, and it’s the best he’s read in fifteen years.

You also need to read The Blue Ocean Strategy, Tuesdays With Morrie, From Orphans to Champions, On Writing Well, Cat On a Hot Tin Roof, The Road Less Traveled, and Seven Habits of Highly Effective People.

Seven: Drink Apple Gatorade

Change your drinking habits. The best tasting beverage is Apple-flavored Gatorade. It’s as delicious as a Double-Stacked Oatmeal Cream Pie. Go buy a lot of that Apple stuff. It’s sweet, refreshing, and makes you feel glad you’re alive.

Don’t drink too much, though, because it can give you a stomachache. Sammy Sportface has done this too many times and it affects his ability to carry out his mission. One time he had to stop writing a blog in mid-sentence because of an Apple Gatorade abdominal tirade.

Eight: Don’t jump to pass

Don’t jump to pass. You see guys in basketball drive the lane, jump, and then pass the ball. You should never do this because when you jump you lose your ability to maneuver.

You have committed yourself and before you hit the ground you must pass the ball or it’s a travel. If you keep two feet on the ground, you leave more options open and lower the risk of throwing a bad pass. Don’t give defenses any advantages. They want you to jump to pass. So don’t.

Nine: Don’t let anyone stop you

Think about your future. Envision what could be, what you really want out of life. Don’t let anyone tell you you can’t do something, that you’re too old or slow-moving. This is your life. It’s your gig. Play the game on your terms. Or take your ball and go home.

Ten: Watch Larry Bird videos

Watch Larry Bird videos. There are tons of them on the Internet. There has never been a more fascinating human being than Larry Bird. You know it. I know it. Everybody knows it.

We have lived during the time when Larry Bird played basketball. We saw him throw passes over his head without looking at his teammate and hit them in the hands for an easy basket.

We saw Larry score 60 points in a game. We saw Larry Legend get in fights with opposing players. We saw him tell guys defending him that they couldn’t guard him and that he was going to go to a specific spot on the court and drain the game winning shot. Then he would go do that.

Eleven: No need to be skeptical of Sammy Sportface

Rid yourself of the nagging concern that Sammy Sportface is a fraud. He’s as real as a lamp on a table. He’s here to help you, to see you make your mark on the world in a more profound way over the next several years than you ever have.

Don’t be afraid.

Drink the Sammy Sportface Kook-Aide.

Is Drew Bledsoe Cooler Than Tom Brady?

February 10, 2020

One of the most fascinating ESPN documentaries I’ve seen in years, updating the life of Drew Bledsoe, aired last night.

Before Tom Brady became king of the football world, Bledsoe started at quarterback for the New England Patriots. In the second game of the 2001 season, he took a big hit that almost killed him. His back-up, Brady, replaced him.

Even though Bledsoe recovered from the injury, Brady never let Bledsoe be the starter again. He went on to win six Super Bowls. Bledsoe, a star NFL quarterback in his own right, won none as a starting quarterback.

Documentary focuses on Bledsoe’s current life

The documentary focuses on what Bledsoe does now and his reflections on how it felt to be a top quarterback, get hurt, and never get a chance to win his starting job back.

The show reminded me of how classy Bledsoe had been when Brady took his position. In the film he said he could have made a big stink and messed up the whole team. He decided instead to be a classy guy, help Brady, prepare as well as he could in case he was called on, and stay out of the way.

His decision helped the team win the Super Bowl that season, and because he stayed ready, he made a key TD pass in the AFC title game when Brady got hurt.

Many people wouldn’t have handled the situation well

Many people would have had great difficulty handling this kind of personal emotional blow. They may have quit or just not been able to handle it.

But Bledsoe showed he had the strong character and selflessness to be quiet and let his dreams of being a Super Bowl quarterback fade away.

How painful this must have been for him. In the documentary he admits it was tough especially going to the Super Bowl and standing on the sidelines while Brady won the game and got all the glory.

But Bledsoe deserves to be glorified for how he handled this. Just think of how proud his kids are of how their Dad handled a tough situation. He showed them how to live life and handle adversity, and nothing is more important than that.

Many people get told they’re not good enough

In work situations and many other walks of life, people get told they’re not good enough, that someone is better and more valued. Other people get promoted ahead of others. It’s painful for those left behind and passed over. It’s a fact of life. It’s raw. It cuts at the soul. The pain can be excruciating.

Became winemaker in Washington

What makes the documentary make you admire Bledsoe even more is that it tells the story of him moving back to his hometown of Walla Walla, Washington where he has built a huge wine-making business. He takes great pride in how he creates the wine from the fruit grown in the enormous fields he owns.

The man has moved on and is bringing joy to other peoples’ lives by making good-tasting wine for them to consume. It’s not about football anymore for him. He found a new way to contribute to the world. His passion is wine now, and he has thrown himself into this profession, learning all he can, striving to be the best he can be.

He’s not stuck in his past but, rather, living in the present and preparing for the future. So many of us don’t do that too well.

Every bit as cool as Brady – if not cooler

What a compelling life story. What a cool guy you are, Drew Bledsoe. You have taught so many people who have been frustrated or told they weren’t good enough that they if they keep striving to be their best, they can become an even better person. It’s not about superstardom. It’s about character and being selfless.

No matter how cool you may think Tom Brady is, Drew Bledsoe is every bit as cool – if not cooler.

Baby Boomer Brotherhood Bloviates on

Top Five Songs Ever

February 9th, 2020

A Sammy Sportface Syndication survey of 17,000 new members of The Baby Boomer Brotherhood reveals the group’s top 5 songs of all time.

Number Five: “Wish You Were Here”

Stop reading this blog. Go listen to Pink Floyd’s “Miss You Were Here.” The tune asks great questions and offers no answers.

Number Four: “Summer lovin’, had me a blast”

Remember Danny Zuco dancing and struttin’ with his boys on the football grandstands during lunch period singing “Summer Lovin’, Had Me a Blast”? He was letting his boys in on the story of the girl he had met over the summer, Sandra Dee.

In an uncanny coincidence, during that same lunch period in the same outdoor area, she sang and danced with her girlfriends. “We stayed out ‘til ten o’clock.”

Number Three: “Smokin’ In the Boys Room”

When Brownsville Station hit us with “Smokin’ in the Boys Room,”our innocent days ended. How and macho a concept, going to school and hanging out in the bathroom puffing on cig butts.

It was a rebellious tune during a rowdy time. It took on the establishment and rebuffed the status quo, values Sammy Sportface reveres.

Number Four: “The Joker”

You remember “The Joker” by the Steve Miller Band: “I’m a joker, I’m a smoker.” Enough said.

No way

I know what you’re thinking: No way, the Stones, Beatles, Crosby Stills & Nash, Lynyrd Skynyrd and a bunch of other bands had more hit songs on one album than that Steve Miller one featuring “The Joker.”

You are wrong.

Number Two: “We’ve got ourselves a convoy”

Second on this list has to be “Convoy.” You know, the song about the truckers and “Breaker 1 9, we’ve got ourselves a convoy.” Truck images galore.

Number One: “Love Shack”

Plenty of 70s and 80s tunes blew our minds. But nothing did like “Love Shack.” When you first heard “Love Shack,” you started groovin’. Everybody started groovin’.

No matter where you were -- the high school prom, the college formal, a frat party -- you were groovin’ to Love Shack.

Fonzie and Potsie

The creators? The B-52s. In one “Happy Days” episode Fonzie got upset with Potsie and said: “How would you like a B-52 up your nose?” On a B-52 your sitcom and music worlds collided.

What are your top five tunes of 70s and 80s?

What are your top 3 favorite songs of the 1970s and 1980s? Submit in the comment section of the Sammy Sportface Facebook page and the Baby Boomer Brotherhood will tell you if you’re on to something.

No “Horse With No Name”

You can’t have “A Horse With No Name” in your top three. Although a huge hit in the 70s, the more you listen to it the more you wonder why.

Who Shot the Sheriff?

It wouldn’t surprise me if you said you chose Eric Clapton’s “I Shot the Sheriff” is in your top three because it’s odd. Who shoots the sheriff and/or writes a song about it, but makes the point over and over that he didn’t shoot the deputy?

“Spiders and Snakes”

It would surprise me if you included “Spiders and Snakes” in your top three. Why was the guy singing about not liking spiders and snakes when what he was really trying to do was get a woman to love him? “But that ain’t what it takes to love me, ooo ooo.”

You’re a Disgrace, Sammy Sportface

February 8th, 2020

You’re a disgrace, Sammy Sportface.

You had your chance to do some good. But instead you squandered it. You’re from the hood. You’re a phony and a profiteer. You’re an opportunist and a huckster. You’ve gone commercial. You’re an infomercial.

You’re a vile reptile. But you’ve got style. You beguile. You pitch like Sparky Lyle. Been no one like you in quite a while.

You’re a prank. Your ship has sunk. You make no bank.

What are you up to? What’s your deal? You aren’t real. You’re a cartoon. You’re a buffoon. Your gig will be up real soon.

Look at you typing. Look at you hyping. Why are you always stereotyping?

Why are you friends with Leon Hess?

You’re a mess. You are less. Why are you friends with Leon Hess?

What a messy guy you are. And that Deflate-gate football? Cute. You’re no Tom Brady. You’re not his lady. You’re friends with guys named Grady.

You’re just a relevance-seeking sports blowhard blogger. There are billions of those. Try a different pose. Maybe enlarge your nose.

You’re no better than the rest of them. You don’t have a unique selling point. Where’s your value proposition? What makes you stand out? You haven’t thought this through, have you?

Why should we buy what you’re selling? What exactly are you selling? The fact we don’t know is telling. Would you please stop yelling?

Why two numbers on your football jersey?

Your football jersey, it’s got two numbers. Are you two faced, Sammy Sportface?

Why is that, Sammy Sportface? Trying to throw us off, get us to wonder about you, ask ourselves “what’s up with Sammy Sportface”? Why are you bent on being different? Are you an exhibitionist? An abolitionist? A contortionist? A ventriloquist? Bobby Unser?

Need for authenticity

The Baby Boomer Brotherhood needs an authentic soul, a guy who rolls, bowls, sets goals, and rigamaroles. We need a real leader, someone who catapults us forward, changes the narrative, thinks unconventional thoughts, upends the status quo, overhauls previously conceived notions, quashes groupthink, and drinks Fanta Grape Soda.

Speak in ways we understand. Take a stand. Orchestrate our band. Play “Love Shack.” Dance to “Baby Come Back.” Sing “The Battle Hymm of the Republic.” Play the piano. Read Kurt Vonnegut’s “Player Piano.”

Practice your yo-yo. Find our mojo. Strum our banjo.

Speak so we will know the way. Don’t worry what others say. They’re unsure, anyway. Speak to us, Sammy Sportface. Save your face. Galvanize the human race.

Speak to The Baby Boomer Brotherhood, Sammy Sportface. Make us stronger. Hold us back no longer. Be disgraceful. We don’t care. We’ll go with you anywhere.

Speak loud. Speak proud. Speak from the clouds. Channel cloud computing. Buy blockchain stocks. Study quantum computing. Stop all the looting.

What’s with your face, Sammy Sportface?

You’re a disgrace, Sammy Sportface. Tell us how to win the race. Show us how to keep pace while saving face. What’s with your face, Sammy Sportface? Your cheesy goatee makes you look like a schmuck. Lose your whiskers, pluck by pluck.

Your smile annoys. It makes bad noise. It irritates the Baby Boomer Brotherhood boys.

Your blog bores. Close your doors. Nobody buying you at the stores.

You’re a disgrace, Sammy Sportface. Tell us what needs to be known. We can handle it, we’re all grown. Lead our ship. Be our captain. Steer us clear. Draw us near. Guzzle beer. Never veer. Hear them cheer.

You’re a disgrace, Sammy Sportface. The Baby Boomer Brotherhood needs you now. Take the stage. Take a bow. Jazz us somehow.

Write some blogs, post some stuff

You’re a disgrace, Sammy Sportface. Write some blogs. Post some stuff. Let it fly. Don’t ask why. Post it rough. Be tough.

Show us the way to joy. Make us do things we enjoy. Find us the path, take us there. We don’t care. Go anywhere.

Write a poem. Use alliteration. Eat Lucky Charms all day long even though it’s wrong.

Remember the band Kiss?

Are you up to this? You can’t miss. Fall in the abyss. Remember the band Kiss?

Your time is now, your mission set. How much you wanna bet? What are we gonna get?

It’s all on you, Sammy Sportface. We’re counting on you. Whatcha gonna do?

Wipe that smile off your face, Sammy Sportface.

Fix your face. Be a disgrace.

Lead us all, the human race.

Whiffing Hoops Immortality, Sportface,

Rudyface, and Spoogface Choke It All Away

February 6th, 2020

Everything was setting up nicely. Glory was going to be ours. We were going to be legends forever.

Our 1977 eighth-grade basketball team, led by Sammy Sportface, Rudyface, and Spoogface, had been dominant all season. Already champions of three tournaments, we also won our way to the city championship game against powerhouse St. Paul & Augustine.

We played for Little Flower School in suburban Maryland while our opponents’ cribs were in downtown Washington, D.C.

Neighborhood differences notwithstanding, we had no reason to be afraid. Rocking a 27 and 2 record, Las Vegas oddsmakers bet on Little Flower taking home the title, cutting down the nets, and stamping ourselves as immortals in Washington, D.C. schoolboy basketball history. The prodigious talents of Sammy Sportface differentiated Little Flower’s squad.

But then something untoward happened. We were doing layup lines to warm up. My big-reared and big-mouthed teammate, Rudyface, shot a half-hearted right-handed layup then trotted back into the opposite line where I stood. Sporting my fire engine red paints and white jersey (#15), I minded my own business and prepared to haul in a rebound.

“If we lose, it’s your fault”

“I just want you to know, Sportface,” said Rudyface. “If we win this game, it’s your fault. If we lose this game, it’s your fault.”

Not only was this disconcerting for Sportface. It perplexed him. Rudyface blurted a brainteaser. If we won, how could it be his fault? You don’t get faulted when you win. But for some reason that was the word Rudyface chose.

Rudyface felt nervous about the game he was about to play. Turns out it was the seminal moment of his brief and busted career because he got worse in high school.

With all the seventh and eighth grade girls in attendance plus the school’s priests and nuns, the moment mushroomed into something too big for him to process. Panicked that he would not play well and embarrass himself, he off-loaded his nervousness on Sportface.

Think about the exquisite timing. We were teammates. We were about to play in the biggest game of our lives. And he decided he wanted to play head games with his teammate who was, according to ESPN’s Mel Kiper, a much better player than he was.

Coming out of 8^th grade, Sportface found himself blazing along the HOV lane to be an ESPN Top 20 recruit. He had realistic visions of being a one-and-doner later at Kentucky, and eventually playing alongside Larry Bird for the Boston Celtics.

Rudyface figured it was more important to worry Sportface about how he would play, to feel immense pressure, than to encourage him to play well.

Rudyface chose to say something that would help us lose

In other words, instead of saying something that would help his team win, Rudyface decided to say something that increased the chances the team would lose.

Several hundred fans showed up for this sure-to-be instant classic. Visions of a parish parade down Little Flower lane coalesced. The team was the big story in the school and around the D.C. area.

But none of them could appreciate then the trajectory or acceleration of the downward spiral that would crystallize once Rudyface said what he said to Sammy Sportface during lay-up line drills before the biggest hoops game of their lives and, as it would turn out, their entire basketball careers.

Early in the game, Rudyface dribbled wildly down the middle of the lane and heaved some Barnum and Bailey’s Circus shot from his hip that went in.

But from that moment on, Hell had its way.

Rudyface got the assignment to defend Linwood Davis. Man did he get schooled. Linwood made his first 17 shots from the field. He went on to be a star for the Roosevelt Rough Riders in high school and then the University of Oklahoma coached by the incomparable, big-toothed Billy Tubbs.

Sportface felt pressured to match Linwood’s torrid scoring pace. So, he started shooting and shooting, and shooting, and shooting, and shooting, and shooting, and shooting, and shooting.

He missed his first 37 shots.

If you were to ask him, or even if you didn’t, Rudyface would share with you that Sportface made four of 64 shots in that game. Ten years ago, he told everybody Sportface connected on four of 44 shots; five years ago, Sportface popped in a putrid four of 54 shots.

As the decades have marched on unabated, the number of shots he made in that game totaled four while the number he missed increases. History doesn’t change. But Rudyface’s recollections of it always do.

Rudyface ripped Sportface after the game: “You tried to shoot yourself out of a slump.” In the ensuing 42 years, Rudyface has repeated this criticism tirelessly, endlessly, and incessantly. He feels it’s his duty to remind Sportface that the whole travesty of a basketball game falls at his feet.

Panicked, Johnnyface tells Sportface to “listen for once in your life”

During a time-out the team’s coach, it became clear that normally cool-headed Johnnyface had become agitated watching Linwood score on Rudyface and Sportface’s shots do not go in.

To change the game’s momentum, the coach concocted some lame-brained strategy. This was new and disconcerting at the time and remains so. We didn’t have any strategies throughout the season other than give the ball to Sportface and get the out hell out of his way.

Sportface wasn’t listening to Johnnyface. He was thinking about how many more shots he needed to take to break out of his slump.

Perturbed that his star player wasn’t tracking with the new game plan, Johnyface asked him rhetorically, “Why don’t you listen for once in your life?”

Spiraling towards the abyss

Team dissension percolated and escalated. Panic paralyzed the entire squad. Unimpressed with how poorly their once-beloved team represented their parish, Little Flower’s priests and nuns got restless and thought about leaving early. The school was being publicly embarrassed.

Rudyface never could do anything to stop Linwood from lighting up the nation’s capital like the White House Christmas Tree. Big data analytics algorithms couldn’t keep track of all the points Linwood rained on Rudyface.

Rudyface blamed everybody but himself. This was his way, is his way, and always will be his way. But there was no getting around the fact that he was guarding Linwood and Linwood broke out big time that day.

Sportface never broke out of his slump

Sportface never did find his way out of his shooting slump. Part of his never-to-be-disclosed-until-now rationale was he became mesmerized by all the points Linwood poured on Rudyface. It was spellbinding – in fact borderline barbaric -- to witness one kid dominate another like that.

Spoogface didn’t help

Spoogface offered no help. He just ran around and looked muscular because he had started lifting weights so he could be strong and play football at the tony Georgetown Prep in high school. Spoogface cared more about that than winning a massive basketball title that would have made even him immortal just for being on the team.

Little Flower got annihilated, humiliated, embarrassed, and whipped. Sure, they may have won three tournaments and won 97 percent of their 30 games. But none of that mattered. In the big game when the lights burned the brightest, they blew a fuse. They choked. They up Chucked.

Rudyface dumped all the blame on Sportface. He had warned him in advance that if Little Flower lost, it would be Sportface’s fault.

Rudyface never took accountability

Rudyface never took any accountability for the full-on damage Linwood inflicted on the entire Little Flower community. In his mind, that was irrelevant. Sportface couldn’t make a shot, so his team lost and, in Rudyface’s mind, Sammy Sportface deserved to take the fall.

You would think after a few weeks or months all his would have been forgotten. You know, baseball season starts, people move, go to college, get married, have kids. They mature and let time heal their wounds.

But Rudy doesn’t know the meaning of “turning the page.” Every time Rudyface and Sportface see each other -- which is rarely because they’re incompatible -- Rudyface reminds Sportface about his paltry shooting percentage in the biggest game of their lives. The blame game never changes in Rudyface’s telling of this terrible tale. Sportface choked under pressure.

Over four decades later, the discussion never deviates.

Sportface launches blog to cope

Time plowed ahead. Kids came, misbehaved, then went off to college and misbehaved much more. Empty nest syndrome left Sportface and Rudyface forced to grapple with each other’s demons again.

Sportface found a way to cope with Rudfyface. He launched a blog called Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog. It’s a catchy and memorable acronym: SS BBBB.

For his own selfish reasons Rudyface encouraged Sammy Sportface to unleash this blog. It gives him perverse pleasure to watch Sammy Sportface put himself out there for ridicule, just like in that championship basketball game. It’s a cheap thrill for him to watch Sportface walk off the edge.

“What a stupid idea”

“What a stupid idea,” Rudy told Sportface once the blog went live yesterday. “What’s this Baby Boomer Brotherhood stuff? You don’t inspire people, Sportface. Stop trying. This idea will go down in flames just like you did that day in eighth grade. All your projects bomb.”

But this time things were going to be different. Sportface new it. He felt it in his gut. He was being called to lead a mission, a movement, a cause bigger than himself -- to galvanize the The Baby Boomer Brotherhood to make seismic contributions to the world over the next several years. Deep in his bones he believes in the foundational underpinnings of SS BBBB.

“This Baby Boomer Brotherhood movement is happening, Rudyface,” he said. “Climb aboard this Sammy Sportface high-speed locomotive. Or get out of the way.”

Rudyface wasn’t buy it. “Your blog acronym should be changed to SS BBBBB, which stands for Sammy Sportface Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog Bust. I just want you to know, Sportface. If this blog goes big-time, it’s your fault. If it busts, it’s your fault.”

Larry Bird: The Greatest Thing That Has Ever Happened in World History

February 5th, 2020

Al Gore didn’t invent the Internet. Larry Bird did. Steve Jobs didn’t invent the iPhone. Larry pulled off that feat. Google and Facebook and Amazon go to Larry when they need software code to be written to change how everyone lives and works.

Larry Bird embodies the sun, the moon, and the stars. Larry Bird's sphere of influence extends throughout all of the world's seven continents. Larry's impact spans all the oceans, rivers, and mountains everywhere.

Larry Bird surrounds and envelopes Jupiter and Mars and Pluto and Saturn. Larry Bird equals the solar system. Larry Bird epitomizes life beyond what we will ever know.

Atoms and molecules

You've heard about the atom and molecule? Larry Bird created both of them. Larry Bird split the atom.

Astrophysics, medicine, nanoscience, law, and Big Data – Larry conceptualized these curiosities and made them manifest.

Larry Bird taught Albert Einstein and Galileo everything they knew. He wrote Plato’s Republic. Larry’s life encapsulates all that is known about the world and human existence dating back to the dinosaurs and before when the Big Bang happened. He defined human history and is the sum total of human history.

Great movies? Larry made all of them: “The Sound of Music,” “The Godfather,” “Rocky.” "Napoleon Dynamite." Remember Mrs. Robinson’s allure in “The Graduate”? Larry created that allure and the way she looked and acted.

The Grand Canyon? Credit Larry.

Put all these people in a blender -- Michael Jordan, Usain Bolt, Michael Phelps, Katie Ledecky, Tom Brady, LeBron James, Jack Nicklaus, and Wayne Gretzky. Your concoction will spit out a delicious Larry Bird cocktail.

Crayola makes a pack of crayons with 64 colors. Larry created all of them while practicing three-pointers.

Avogadro’s Number and e = mc squared

Remember math and science -- Avogadro’s Number, e = mc2, and The Theory of Relativity? All this Larry invented. The great mathematicians and scientists theorized endlessly about Larry’s theories.

Ever sipped a Corona with a Lime or a Bailey’s Irish Cream? You drank from the Fountains of Larry.

Think of Larry Bird as an old friend who calls just to say hello, the birth of a beautiful baby, and the reason people cry tears of joy.

Larry Bird created the songs “Let it Be,” “Sweet Home Alabama,” and “Sweet Caroline.” Harmony and rhapsody? Larry. Sweet lullaby? All music and all musical instruments equate to Larry. Larry Bird taught Gene Kelly how to dance.

Picasso, Renoir, and the Mona Lisa

Artists? Yep. Larry. Equate him to an exquisite amalgamation of Picasso, Renoir, and Michelangelo. Larry Bird not only represents all renaissance painters; he is all renaissance painters. Ever wondered who the Mona Lisa was staring at? She was digging Larry.

A sculpture he is. A carpenter he is and a plumber, electrician, drummer, doctor, teacher, anthropologist, and mountaineer.

He is Mount Everest. Alaska and California and Texas on Chamber of Commerce days. They're all Larry.

Larry Bird dominates the animal kingdom. He's as a panther, shark, lion , bear and a barracuda. All wildlife are Larry. All of everything is Larry.

A signal, a moment, a phenomenon, and a juggernaut Larry is. He consists of reason itself. To all your questions he provides all your answers.

Kojak, James Bond and Steve McQueen

Larry Bird’s blood streams through Kojak, James Bond, Steve McQueen, and Clint Eastwood..

Larry was the first person to conceive of time and space. Air is Larry. He thought up oxygen and hydrogen on his own. Your atmosphere marinates in Larry Bird.

The human embodiment of the hard, soft, and social sciences, Larry is all learning and learned. Larry Bird is a perfect score on the SAT. Larry Bird is incisive critical thinking and a photographic memory.

Larry penned The Gettysburg Address and JFK’s Inaugural Address. Mother Theresa had a crush on Larry. Abraham Lincoln and Winston Churchill sought advice from Larry.

Larry Bird is hope and dreams and optimism. Larry Bird is an Apollo Spacecraft landing on the moon. Larry landed on the Moon. Moxie, grit, and guile, Larry Bird wrote Jim Valvano’s ESPY Speech.

Well-combed hair, the radiance of a pregnant woman, beguiling eye shadow on a prom queen -- all are Larry.

Word, sentence and paragraph

Larry Bird is the word, the sentence, the paragraph, and the sports blog. Larry Bird is the chapter, short story, and novel -- in all languages. Larry Bird is the essay, the personal profile, the write-up that says it all.

Larry Bird encompasses New Zealand, San Diego, the Florida Keys, and Bermuda.

Larry Bird is an airplane, commuter train, taxicab, bus, and Uber. Uber was his idea. All transportation rides through Larry. All movements humans have ever made have been steered by Larry.

iPhone and Information Age

Larry envisioned and single-handedly drove the technological revolution and the Information Age. At the center of the blockchain is Larry Bird. He mind-melded the concept of artificial intelligence. As we read this blog Larry is writing the software code that will ignite quantum computing around the world.

His influence extends far beyond than contemporary times. He alone was the Renaissance Period. During the Middle Ages Larry ruled the world. All apes adored him.

Larry Bird is nourishment: a Double-Stuffed Oreo, lasagna, slab of steak with A1 Sauce, maple syrup, pumpkin sauce. Larry invented Honeycomb Cereal.

Larry Bird exudes victory over defeat, overcoming obstacles, losing and then winning.

Larry Bird marks the beginning, the middle, and the end. He is the destination and entire round trip. Destiny for all of us begins and ends with Larry.

Jesus worships Larry. When God created Man, that Man was Larry Bird.

But none of this is important.

All that matters is that Larry the Legend spawned Sammy Sportface.

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