February 8, 2021

Super Bowl LV was like New Years Eve. It was weeks of hype, but ended up being a gigantic letdown. Nevertheless, congratulations to Tom Brady and the Tampa Bay Buccaneers on their Super Bowl Championship. Brady is undoubtedly the greatest quarterback of all-time, in case you weren’t already convinced. Meanwhile, it was a rough night for the Chiefs. It turns out offensive lineman are pretty important, and the Chiefs didn’t have a chance when they were missing those key players. On top of that, Abraham Lincoln could finish a play better than Kansas City could last night. Their defense also looked worse than the Capitol’s on January 6th. Leonard Fournette and Gronk were out here just grown-manning the Chiefs on play after play. If it was ever possible for a defensive coordinator to win MVP, it should have gone to Todd Bowles for the scheme he put together. The Bucs d was so dominant that the fan who ran onto the field had an easier time getting near the endzone than the Chiefs did. Brady now has as many rings as JPP has fingers. As for Patrick Mahomes, he’s still great and he’ll be back. Even three of his incomplete passes were the most spectacular we’ve ever seen. I’m sure we’ll see plenty more of him on this stage in the coming years.

As for the other theatrics in the broadcast and the commercials, everything was rather underwhelming. The DoorDash commercial? Just wait until Big Bird finds out it costs $27 to get those groceries delivered from DoorDash. How much weight did Matthew McConaughey lose for that Doritos commercial? Logitech might as well have lit $5.6 million on fire instead of air that commercial. Hey Chipotle, spare me your serious commercials. Make us laugh or save your cash clowns. Someone is going to have to explain to Gen Z’ers that Bud Light commercial. Who was suddenly in the mood to go slam some 2% milk after that Oatly commercial? Rocket Mortgage had to be the only commercial I laughed at. I feel like Super Bowl ads are targeted exclusively at people who clap when celebrities show up unannounced on SNL. Drake really delayed his album drop so he could shoot an insurance commercial. I guess even Jake from State Farm needs a break. I like how Robinhood tried to sneak in an ad during the blowout like we forgot what happened two weeks ago. Meanwhile, the halftime show with The Weekend was average at best. The Weekend had me looking forward to Monday. I had motion sickness when he went into his little fun house. It was like FaceTiming with my dad. Plus his backup singers looked like a cross between a skin you unlock when you play Warzone, and the Whisperers from The Walking Dead. Here’s some of the better commercials, and that’s not saying much.

To the NBA, where it was a pretty good week for the Lakers, collecting another three straight wins. However, if the Lakers had to play the Pistons in the playoffs, they are clearly in trouble. Not sure why the Lake Show doesn’t show up against Detroit every time they play. It was like both teams bet on the Pistons to cover on Saturday night. Despite being uninterested in playing hard in that game, they were extremely impressive a couple of nights earlier against the Nuggets. Lebron dominated and THT is getting better and better every game he plays. When it’s all said and done, Talen Horton-Tucker will have to be the GOAT on the all-time hyphenated name list. As for Lebron, he told everyone on Saturday night that he can’t eat “fun food” anymore during the Super Bowl because he’s too old and pays the price for it. Never before have I felt so close to Lebron James. Also, good thing that incident with “Courtside Karen” happened in Atlanta instead of Utah. If it were in Utah, Lebron probably would have had to deal with 7 “Courtside Karens” because all those Jazz season ticket holders usually bring their 7 wives to the game.

Meanwhile, it was not such a great week for the Clippers. I’m not talking about the losses to the Nets, Celtics, and Kings. I’m talking about the fact that Paul George is going to be out for a while with a toe injury. This is a huge problem for both the Clips and Jock Talk LA. How am I supposed to keep making fun of PG when he’s sidelined with an injury? For the Clippers, he was playing at an all-NBA level, and they were leaning heavily on him and Kawhi Leonard. When Ty Lue was asked how long George would be out for, it was like he was searching WebMD at the time trying to figure it out. He probably got distracted at that point, thinking he was going to die, as most of us do reading that site. Nobody knows for sure on George’s timetable, other than knowing that Otto Porter missed most of the season last year, when he suffered a similar injury. In the meantime, this would be a good time for guys like Luke Kennard and Marcus Morris to start earning their paychecks.

In baseball, the Dodgers dropped a bomb on the rest of the MLB by signing Trevor Bauer over the weekend. That’s right folks. The defending World Series Champions just added last season’s NL Cy Young Award winner. The Dodgers didn’t need to add Bauer, but you’ve gotta appreciate the fact Andrew Friedman was able to lure him to LA on short-term deal, and aggressively keep this championship contending window open. Bauer is a loose cannon, a social media troll, and simply a weird guy, but he can pitch. More importantly, by adding him to the staff, the Dodgers can use one of their stud young pitchers like Julio Urias, Dustin May, or Tony Gonsolin out of the bullpen, which still needed to be strengthened. To finish things off though, the Boys in Blue really need to re-sign Justin Turner. He’s not only still a productive 3rd baseman, but he’s a big part of their clubhouse culture. You need leadership like that to absorb weird guys like Bauer getting added to the mix. Hopefully Andrew Friedman’s computer understands this when it tells him what to do.

Then there’s the Angels. You thought Trump’s first 100 days in office were bad? Perry Minasian said “hold my beer”. This guy managed to increase the payroll by $25 million this season, and the only impact pitchers he has to show for it are Alex Cobb and Jose Quintana. Minasian said they are in a “decent” position with their pitching. “Decent”? Picking up a couple of pitching rejects from terrible teams isn’t exactly what everyone had in mind for making this a playoff team. Oh, and how could I forget about the extremely mediocre acquisition of Dexter Fowler? That guy is the definition of “league average”. Also, nice background check on Mickey Callaway. I’m sure the league would consider punishing the Halos, but then they probably saw the moves Minasian was making as punishment enough. Callaway is sure to be fired soon, because Arte Moreno would never allow anybody other than himself to be the source of negative press for the team.

That was one very disappointing showdown between UCLA and USC hoops on Saturday night. The Bruins had a week to prepare, but they were missing both Cody Riley and Jalen Hill. That meant they got crushed on the boards and dominated in the paint. I actually felt like the Trojans should have won by more, but they didn’t shoot a whole lot better than the Bruins anyway. UCLA is scrappy, but they aren’t going to beat any good teams when Tyger Campbell is off his game, while missing those two big men. There’s still plenty of time left to win the conference, and considering ranked teams are falling faster than the stock price of GameStop, UCLA might even have a fighting chance in the tournament.

Speaking of USC, their football recruiting class was ranked 8th in the country after National Signing Day last week. Although this is much improved from last year’s 64th ranked class, it really doesn’t mean that much. Recruiting has never been a problem at USC, it’s coaching and development. Some recruiting classes are better than expected, like in 2020, and others are worse than expected, like in 2016. As long as Clay Helton is the head coach of this program, while running the air raid, this program is going nowhere. The Trojans should win 75% of their games next year just because of their athleticism, but they’ll lose to teams like Notre Dame and Oregon because of that lack of coaching and development. Those of you that claim winning the PAC-12 and the Rose Bowl is enough are fooling yourselves. You know your expectation for this team is National Championship. Isn’t it that way with every college and pro sports team in LA? No reason to suddenly settle for less, because the USC administration is trying to fool you into that while they get their crap together.

Finally, the Bachelor is back on ABC tonight, and we had another explosive episode last week. ABC needs to give Katie a good size check. She’s out here playing therapist and being a contestant at the same time. Victoria handled getting sent home the same way Trump handled losing the election. She says she’s never dating a guy named Matt again. I hope they put her in Paradise, and cast only guys named Matt during that season. Once we found out how racist Rachael is, it made that whole shopping spree date a big bummer. I’ll leave it to you guys to Google that one. Who does the background check for these contestants? The Angels HR department? Imagine seeing someone come back from a shopping spree one-on-one date, while you get to go on some group date digging ditches and dressing like Little House on the Prairie. The spirit of Victoria really never left after her departure. It just entered a new host who is more evil in MJ. There’s nothing quite like seeing multiple toxic villains get sent home in one episode. MJ vs Jessenia was fabulous television though. It was like Burr vs Hamilton, Bachelor style. The limo ride was especially uncomfortable. It was like when your mom makes you carpool with the popular mean girl at school. Matt looked like he was ready to send himself home after that. Looking forward to seeing more fireworks tonight.