My weekly roundup and perspect...

13 September 2022

Another week, another mountain of sports topics that garnered our attention. Week 2 in college football, and the much-anticipated week 1 in The NFL. The range of emotions ranged from the very highs to the very lows depending on who you followed, what team you root for and whether or not you are going to let week 1 of a 4 months season get to you. The choice between your emotional happiness can be pretty much your own.

Let’s take a moment to remember the life of Queen Elizabeth the Second of Great Britain. May she Rest In Peace. She was a lifelong patron of many, many sports not only in England but all over the world. Additionally, she was a massive supporter and fan of horse racing, owning her own stables and training grounds where there were raised over 25 Ascot Race winners, pretty much the English version of The Kentucky Derby. Imagine raising and training 25 Kentucky Derby winners! Her death and the subsequent national mourning period has put the English Premiere League on hold for at least a week, perhaps, until her State Funeral. Huge implications for not only the league itself but also for the World Cup which starts in Qatar in about 2 months speaking of which I’ll be talking more and more about The World Cup in my blogs in the weeks ahead. Stay tuned.

Another great weekend of college football. I have to admit that some of the stronger programs were up against what I would label as “Cream Puffs”, however, beware the Cream Puff programs as they can be dangerous. Appalachian State beating #6 Texas A&M and Marshall beating #8 Notre Dame pretty much makes my case for the dangers.

The Key College match up of the weekend was Texas vs. Alabama, and it lived up to the hype. Hats off to the Texas students who filled most of the stadium in Austin 4 hours before kick off by the way. They were treated to a great game where Alabama, shockingly, had to play catch up until the last few minutes. In the end, it came down to last years Heisman Trophy winner, Bryce Young, and about 1 minute and 40 seconds, to put Alabama in field goal range and win it by one point 20-19. I had Alabama giving up 19 points to Texas, so for me it was a defeat but for college fans everywhere it was a resounding victory.

Personally I feel that Alabama is not as good as we originally thought and Texas is actually better then most analysts made them out to be, but it’s early so we’ll have to see.

Two things I will say are these: The college football transfer portal has changed the landscape of the game. It’s the one thing that The NCAA may have gotten right in the last twenty years. Also, NIL agreements don’t mean squat. Texas A&M has a 30 million dollar NIL war chest for their players. Appalachian State has an NIL budget of ZERO. Let’s think about that, interesting.

After months of waiting, drama, speculation and roster changes, The NFL finally kicked off the 2022 season. I could literally spend hours writing about the events, so for now, realizing we have 16 more weeks of games left, I’ll try and condense my thoughts into something a bit more manageable than a few hours of reading.

The first week of the season was tough on injuries. I also saw ALOT of soft defenses, sloppy play, missed tackles, and disorganized offenses. My conclusion? It’s early and teams will get better, hopefully.

The Dallas Cowboys, who seem to be the owners of some kind of morbid jinx, lost their starting Dak Prescott for several weeks to a broken thumb. Not nearly 24 hours into the season and Jerry Jones is scrambling for a QB. Tough times Jerry. TJ Watt of The Pittsburgh Steelers, last years defensive player of the year and the mainstay of the Steelers defense, suffered a partial tear of his peck muscle and will be out an undetermined amount of time. Another tough loss with several more high profile players undetermined as of Tuesday morning.

Other notables include The Cincinnati Bengal offensive line, who try as they might, can’t seem to keep Joe Burrow from ending up on his back side. If you count last year’s season ending Super Bowl, the Cincinnati Quarterback has been sacked 12 times in the last 2 games. Ouch! Additionally, there were several games that saw the return of former players/quarterbacks either with or with cheers. Baker Mayfield returning to Cleveland (and loosing) and Russel Wilson returning to Seattle (and also loosing) gave their former fans something to both cheer and boo about. Go figure right?

All in all, it was a predictable start to the season. Though my personal Sportsbook stuff Pick-Em pool picks did not reflect any genius on my part, LOL. In the end the better teams were seemingly victorious over the lesser teams. Tom Brady, who has never ever lost to The Dallas Cowboys, is still ripping up defenses as usual. The Dolphins actually look strong as do the Ravens, Seahawks, Giants and Buccaneers. The Packers, Patriots, Panthers and Jaguars, not so strong.

It remined me of our opening statement here on the SportsBook Stuff website “We’re not trying to be ESPN or Yahoo Sports. We don’t know it all. We want to share some sports smarts by engaging local fans. So, Remember, it’s early, we have 16 more weeks of this! I promise to pick-em better next week, good luck with yours.

Kev