Well…there have been a few surprises in the world cup so far so I thought I’d talk about it a bit…first, the US played well but only came up with a draw against Wales and that means the England match Friday is a must win and I just don’t see the US winning after England won their first match 6-2 and looked good doing it…yesterday there was a huge surprise when Argentina lost to Saudi Arabia and no one saw that one coming…and this morning, Japan beat Germany when Germany was a clear favorite to win the tournament…so they will need to win their next one as does Argentina…if they don’t, they could be out by the weekend and that would be a huge shock…it’s been an interesting tournament so far and Spain/Costa Rica is up next in a few minutes and I have to root for the team from our hemisphere….more later…
Category Archives: Sports
World Cup…part 1
Well…the World cup really got started this morning with England beating Iran 6-1 and the Netherlands playing Senegal right now and that looks like it’s going to be a good one, too…but the big one is the US vs Wales at 2 this afternoon and I really don’t have a good feeling about the US team this time…they are so inconsistent but at least they made this tournament after missing it 4 years ago…this group looks like a tough one with England, Wales, the US, and Iran and we need to finish in the top two to move on to the knockout stage…and that will take at least one win and probably a draw to go with it…this is Wales’s first time making it in quite a while so they are going to be tough but I have my fingers crossed we can get on the front foot with a win today…not going to do much else but watch soccer for the next two weeks…but I did get a ride in today and my back doesn’t hurt so that’s cool…more later…
I’m conflicted…
Well…with the world cup starting today, I’m conflicted about watching it knowing what I know about Qatar…the country is one of the biggest human rights abusers on the globe and it should not be rewarded for it…and they bribed their way to getting the tournament in well known corruption that FIFA always seems to be involved in…but the biggest reason that gives me pause is the fact that over 6,000 laborers died constructing the venues and infrastructure needed to support the games….and many, many more went unpaid like slaves so the rulers could make money from the games….so, will I watch the tournament…yeah, probably, but I’m not sure how much I’ll enjoy it…especially since the rulers there have put strict rules on the broadcasts so they get only good propaganda out of it…no criticism is allowed at all…still don’t think these games should have even been awarded to what is a dictatorship that abuses it’s people…but FIFA equals corruption so what can you do?
Still looking for a topic…
Well…have been reading the news since I got back from the second ride trying to find a topic but it’s all trump, all the time and I don’t want to write about that today…so I need to write about something else…not sure what the will be yet….how about sports? Manchester United won their third game in a row after losing the first two and that puts them in the top five from last place…that means I can watch them again…and I should anyway since they have changed so many players that I don’t know the team yet…and their wins have been only by one goal so they are not dominating by any means…but they did beat Liverpool so I guess that’s something….watching Michigan right now and even though they are ahead, they don’t look very good….but I guess it’s just background right now and I can’t be disappointed yet, can I? Could be…but I don’t want to be….okay, that’s it for now…I’ll try to come back later for another one if I can find a topic…more later….
Miggy just got #3,000…
Well…not sure if you follow baseball at all but today was a historic day for Miguel Cabrera who was chasing his 3,000th hit, a feat that very few players have accomplished in the history of baseball…when I remembered it may happen, I changed the channel over to the Tigers and Miggy was just coming up to bat…and he did it! Sliced a grounder through between first and second and Comerica park just erupted with a huge standing ovation for him…and the cool part is that Miggy is one of those nice guys who can be a role model for any young kid growing up a fan of baseball….the strange part for me is that the last Tiger to hit that milestone was Al Kaline in 1974…and I was watching that game, too…48 years ago..man, time flies…congrats Miggy!
I do like how the new F1 cars look….
Well…I finally got the F1 channel to work this morning and with that, I got to see the new F1 cars on the track for the first time…and I like what I see…these new cars are much cleaner looking than last year’s cars with no barge boards or all of the damn little add ons that made them look so strange….they look like race cars again and it hit me watching practice that they look like cars from the early two thousands like the Brawn that was a pretty good looking car…the team that I root for, Mercedes, doesn’t look like they have the speed yet but they normally sandbag during testing so we’ll see when the races start in a couple of weeks…I really can’t wait to see how they race in big packs and whether the huge changes they made to make the racing better actually worked…one thing I don’t like is that once these practices are over, the engines are frozen and no changes can take place for a couple of years…now, F1 is supposed to be the pinnacle of innovation in racing and to tell the best engineers in the world they can’t do anything to make their car better seems to go against that innovation…the same thing happened in NASCAR when they implemented so many rules that your car can be disqualified for a 32nd of an inch in body measurements and everything else is now standard so creativity is gone and the racing is no better for it…in fact, I liked it a lot better when someone could come up with something world beating new that would allow them to dominate until the other teams caught up….I mean do the few people who run nascar have more creativity than a hundred engineers from the teams? No, and the purpose of the team engineers have been ruined by the “parity” that is the goal of nascar….I for one don’t want parity that makes for boring racing…I want people thinking and innovating in both nascar and F1 that gives us something new occasionally that keeps me interested and looking forward to something new…not cookie cutter cars that by rule can’t change over the course of the season…
Good on ya, Formula 1…
Well..just finished up the kitchen work and shoveling the snow and have settled in to have the rest of the coffee and read a little news…and that news made me smile a little about the world of sports…with the announcement yesterday from UEFA that they are pulling the Champions League final from Russia after Putin’s illegal invasion of Ukraine…today brought another welcome bit of news when Formula 1 announced that the Russian Grand Prix, scheduled for later in the year, has been cancelled for the same reason, that Putin can’t be rewarded for his thuggish behavior and has also forced one of Putin’s favorite cronies, Mazepin, to get the hell out of Formula 1 and stop sponsoring the Haas F1 team…with the additional good result that his son, Nikita, the worst driver that F1 has ever seen is out of a drive that should go to Piero Fittipaldi now…a vastly better driver and he didn’t get there just because his daddy had deep pockets…now, I’m looking toward the Premier league in England to sanction Roman Abramovich and throw him out of the league and find someone else to own Chelsea…and any other Russian that has anything else to do with the league needs to be gone permanently….and the thing that pisses me off is that everyone knew that Abramovich was a Putin crony and got his wealth by stealing it from the Russian people but nothing was done about that…it’s about time that everyone that has anything to do with Russia who hasn’t disavowed Putin pay for being toadies to this asshole…now is the time…geez…
Greed is why the ratings for the Olympics were down…
Well….jeez, everyone is shaking their heads and speculating why the ratings for the Olympics were down 42% from the last games…damn, these people are dense or they are trying to make themselves look deep or informed by parsing all of the data but it’s too damn simple for that..it’s all because of greed…greed by NBC for moving a lot of it over to their pay service Peacock where they give you a little bit without extra cash out of your pocket but, like with the series they offer, they give you one or two episodes and then hide the rest of it behind an extra cost paywall…just like they do with the English Premiere League or Dale Jr.s series about lost speedways across this country…all of this cynical bit of bullshit from NBC is the classic bait and switch that these people pull all the time…it isn’t enough for them to get paid because most people get their tv from cable or dish, but they have to get greedy and charge even more and that turns people off…and once you try to access something on Peacock and they always try to charge you more, you just get tired of the bullshit and never use that service again…just like me…and I’ll never use it again…so, it’s pretty damn simple…greed has priced the Olympics out of the reach of most people and once you lose them, they are gone forever and that includes crap on NBC since they are they ones playing the games…I don’t feel bad for them even if they lose a billion dollars…they deserve it…geez…
The Olympics sucked…
Well…with the Olympics ending today, all I can say is meh….really didn’t care much for the games being held in a country that is actively slaughtering minorities there and trying to whitewash their actions by trotting out some of those same people just to give the games a veneer of acceptability….for the first time in almost forever, I didn’t even watch the games once in primetime and really didn’t know a thing about any of the US athletes…or really care….and with the IOC allowing the Russian skater to participate even with testing positive for a banned substance, you could see that the IOC is just as damn corrupt as they have ever been and why watch any sporting event when it could be fixed by the people who are supposed to be upholding the rules? I wonder why the Russians were even allowed to compete after the doping scandal a few years back where over 80% of their athletes were in on the cheating? All they had to do was change the name of the organization they compete for to the Russian Olympic committee and everything is swept under the rug and is okay to the IOC. The ideals of the Olympics were violated so severely by the trainers of the 15 year old Russian skater when they berated her unmercifully after she fell during her routine that they should get a lifelong ban for the abuse they heaped on her and the rest of the skaters they train…is this the Olympic ideal? It was so painful to watch the end of the women’s single skate that I won’t ever watch again…and that’s how I felt throughout the games…it just isn’t worth it anymore…and with the ratings the games got, it looks like the rest of the world is feeling the same way…geez…
Michigan won!
Well…yeah, you probably already know this but Michigan won the Big Ten title game last night and for the first time since the playoffs were instituted, they are the champs…when I went to bed last night it was still a close game but they ended up winning by 42-3 so I guess that last quarter must have been a doozy….and now they go into the National Championship playoffs where I don’t think they have much of a chance but it will still be cool to see them play…I wonder what the schedule is going to be? Have to look that up today so I can plan for it….