August 25, 2025

I don’t even know who the Dodgers are anymore. Yesterday, they looked like the powerhouse World Series Contender we thought they were. Many times in the last two weeks though, they looked more like one of the dumbest teams out there, especially for an organization that is typically more savvy than others. They have been screwing around all season with Teoscar Hernandez in right field instead of left, with Mookie Betts at shortstop instead of right field,. and Michael Conforto consistently in the lineup when he should instead be consistently delivering your Door Dash. They’ve also been consistently using Tanner Scott as their closer, when instead he should be put into lower leverage situations until he’s right. All this screwing around and experimenting has eliminated the Dodgers 9 game lead over the Padres in the division, reduce their likelihood of having a 1st round bye in the playoffs, and ultimately slimmed their margin of error to repeat as World Series Champions. The Dodgers know the sensible things they need to do to win games. For some reason, they insist on being stubborn and not doing it. I sure hope that changes quickly, or else they can forget about defending World Series title.

Meanwhile, the Angels got swept by the Cubs, and have lost 7 of their last 10 games. They are now 8.5 games out of the Wild Card, and 10.5 behind the Astros in the AL West. Their pitching got completely destroyed over the weekend, which was previously a strength. The Cubs now look like they are waking up after a two month long slumber. The Angels? Well, their slumber has lasted two decades: “Rip Van Winklesque”. Angels baseball is really just the Stanford Experiment for how long people will continue to put up with losing if you give them enough bobbleheads.

To the Rams, where there are some signs of good news. Matt Stafford went through practice last week, and also looked sharp. That’s very positive and a step in the right direction. There is still a lot to be uneasy about though. Sean McVay wouldn’t exactly commit to Stafford being ready for week 1 when he was asked about it. Clearly, he wants to see more reps, and feel more confident in his QB’s health before determining if he would be ready to go. On a different note, I really like the fact the Rams extended Kyren Williams on a 3-year $33 million deal. It’s not a crazy number, he’s proven his value at running back, and I think it’s a very fair deal for both sides. Suddenly, running backs getting paid might be coming back into fashion.

Then there’s the Chargers who have some interesting training camp battles going on. Tomorrow is the day to get down to a 53-man roster. The biggest question is who will be the #2 quarterback: Trey Lance or Taylor Heinicke. Heinicke has a slightly better career resume. Lance however, has outperformed him in camp, and has much more upside given where he was drafted. I think the sensible move here would be to carry all 3 QB’s but have Lance as the backup, assuming Heinicke wouldn’t want to go elsewhere. Given that the Chargers might have some offensive line problems and thus protecting their QB, this might be a season where unfortunately they need all 3 quarterbacks! There’s also a lot of uncertainty around Najee Harris, who has yet to do anything in training camp, and that means he’s got a few running backs breathing down his neck for the #2 running back role: Hassan Haskins, Kimani Vidal and rookie Raheim Sanders. Harris only has 11 days to figure it out, because the Bolts are opening the season on Friday September 4th against the Chiefs!

We’ve also go the start of College Football this weekend! That means USC is going to open the season against Missouri State at the Coliseum on Saturday. The Trojans are going into the season unranked, which shouldn’t surprise anybody. The team has some talent, but they are still going to have very stiff competition in the Big Ten this year, and needs to prove it. I expect improvement from their 7-6 record last year. However, the real talent will arrive in 2026, which is when expectations should be sky high. Jayden Maiava will be good, not great, but the team will be shuffling it’s offensive line all year, and that won’t offset the 3 1st round picks they will have going to the NFL next year. Lincoln Riley needs to get to the playoffs this year to give himself more credibility with everyone, and take some of the heat off before the big recruiting class gets here. I’m not so confident that will happen, but we’ll find out soon.

On the other hand, I don’t expect UCLA to be a whole lot better than last year, but I do think they could be exciting. QB Nico Iamaleava is the obvious one here that I think will put up some numbers, and will probably be the best player they’ve had at the position since Brett Hundley. The same goes for RB Jaivian Thomas, who will reprise that role with the Bruins as part of a deep group of running backs that also includes Jalen Berger, Anthony Woods, Anthony Frias II and Karson Cox. While each of those players holds promise, Thomas appears to have the biggest upside given his speed, patience and vision. If the Bruins can find a way to win 7 games, that would be a huge accomplishment.

Finally, it’s that time of year where not only football is starting, but fantasy football! That means you women all need to be prepared to lose your husbands and significant others to what will basically be their side piece for the next 4 months. Don’t expect your man to be doing the dishes, taking out the trash, and folding the laundry like they usually do. You may also have to deal with frequent yelling at the TV and the dog on Sunday, while your European immigrant neighbor rushes over and wonders what all the commotion is all about. Your husband will try to explain, but your neighbor will just walk away thinking that’s why this country is going straight to hell.

August 18, 2025

The Dodgers have stabilized things for the time being after sweeping the Padres over the weekend. That is the most baseball thing in the world. The Dodgers get swept by the Angels, then turn around and sweep the Padres, who have been on fire. The talent is there, but the consistency is not. When they hit they can’t pitch. When they pitch they can’t hit. It’s really good to see the top 6 producing again, especially Mookie and Teo, who finally seemed to get going. The starting pitching has been outstanding for a while, but the bullpen is very up and down. The Dodgers closer is basically the whatever flavor of the day Andrew Friedman’s computer chooses. Hopefully getting some of their injured relievers will help this, however, they will still need to be more consistent. At the moment, those types of inconsistencies make it hard to imagine that come October, they can put together a run to defend their World Series Title.

Meanwhile, the Angels are still the Angels. They sweep the Dodgers, and you think they are going to rocket up the standings, but then they follow it up by losing 2 of 3 to the last place A’s. The Halos pitching got rocked this weekend, and they fall to 7 games out of the wild card chase with only 6 weeks left of the regular season. In case you had any hopes of this team making the playoffs, they have a -71 run differential, which is not great. Arte Moreno doesn’t care though. As long as he can put butts in the seats in August and September for the big games, he could care less if this team is actually winning or not.

It’s time to officially start worrying about Matt Stafford. Dude has a back injury and can’t workout. Dude starts to workout, then can’t workout. The media starts asking if he worked out, and the answer seems like a resounding no, judging by how irritated the staff was at the questions the media was asking. Now there is word this morning that he is working out and throwing. We’ll see how his back reacts. If in fact Stafford has to be shut down for any significant period of time, that is going to torpedo the Rams chances of going to the Super Bowl. At best, I could see this team being held together by 5-6 games by Jimmy G. He’s a capable backup, but he’s not going to put this team in the upper echelon of the NFC.

The Chargers have their own injury issues to deal with as well. Quentin Johnston got knocked out on Saturday against the Rams. This comes after Rashawn Slater suffered a season ending knee injury, which is going to be a big problem in a competitive AFC West with fierce pass rushes. Everybody seems to love the Denver Broncos, but they are also dismissing the Chiefs, while the Raiders are also much improved too. The Bolts will be in the mix because they are well coached and have a great QB, but it’s going to be stiff competition just getting to the playoffs.

Speaking of injury scares, the Lakers got their own with Luka Doncic in the FIBA competition while playing for Slovenia. Doncic suffered a bone bruise while competing. Fortunately he appears to be ok. If Doncic got severely injured, that would in fact create a real conversation of whether or not Lebron would want out of LA for what may very well be the last season of his career. However, Doncic is like an NHL player, wanting to represent his country with pride in these international competitions, even if his team has very little chance of winning anything. That probably doesn’t sit well with a lot of us, since the Lakers have obviously made a huge investment in making him the face of the franchise. There’s really nothing they can do about it though.

Finally, these idiots that are calling for 2028 Olympics to be move from LA are truly nothing more than social media morons. The Olympics aren’t getting moved from LA people. LA could be ready for the Olympics in 5 minutes if necessary. Other countries and cities, with far less infrastructure and resources, have pulled it off in a few months. I can tell you that Paris did exactly that, when they weren’t ready about 8 weeks beforehand. The Olympics are something that California really needs for it’s economy, because well, its a state that is currently being run by people that shouldn’t be running a hot dog stand. Just because someone says something on social media doesn’t give it any credibility, so pay no attention to it.

August 11, 2025

Things are suddenly looking up for Matt Stafford’s health! Stafford threw 60 passes during a workout before Saturday night’s preseason game against the Cowboys, and had no limitations. Sean McVay says that he is hopeful that Stafford will continue to progress into practices beginning next week. That should give Rams fans a slight sigh of relief to that point where they can at least put the bottle of tequila down, although maybe not put it back in the cabinet yet. The new concern that has come up is the health of edge rusher Jared Verse, who bumped knees with one of his teammates, and had to be helped off the field by two trainers. As for Kyren Williams, his 3-year $33 million extension is actually pretty good value for his production. We may be reaching the point where the running back is now making a bit of a comeback, and they are beginning to get paid again.

Meanwhile, the Chargers have had an interesting start to training camp. Early on they learned that Mike Williams retired, which was a little bit of a surprise since he’s only 30 years old and seemed excited to return to the team. He probably got tired of having to deal with injuries, and go through the rehab process, which you can’t blame him for. That opened the door for the Bolts to sign Keenan Allen lasts week, who may be old, but can still be productive for this squad. I still don’t love the Chargers wide receiver core outside of Ladd McConkey, but you do have to love the potential of Omarion Hampton, who could be an electric rookie running back for them. His teammates don’t even like tackling him in practice, so I’m sure the opponents won’t either. I’m also intrigued by the preseason production of Trey Lance, has looked really good early on and probably has the edge right now to be the #2 QB. It’s not like I see him taking Justin Herbert’s job, but he could be a very nice backup to have, and eventually revive his NFL career as a starter after this year.

I feel sorry for all the NFL fans out there now that ESPN has acquired the rights to NFL Red Zone. So much for “7 hours of commercial free football”. Everything ESPN touches turns to crap, and I expect this to be no different. Plus all those WWE fans have to be upset as well, because they now have to go from watching their content nearly for free, to have to pay for a $30 subscription.

Although the Dodgers lost yesterday and Dave Roberts seemed frustrated, I’m not as down as many of you are. All of a sudden, the Dodgers offense might be waking up. They still took 2 of 3 against a very good Toronto Blue Jays team, with some great pitching to complement Shohei Ohtani, Max Muncy, and even Mookie Betts coming alive at the plate. This team was bound to turn it around at some point at the plate because the talent is just too good. Ok, so they did leave a lot of runners in scoring position yesterday, Michael Conforto still stinks, Blake Treinen needs to figure things out, and Alex Vesia had a bad game. However, I see more reasons to be optimistic today than a week ago. The Padres won’t go away, and are still trying to chase them down for the division title, but many of you wanted to play meaningful games down the stretch to them prepared for October! You can’t complain now! The Padres will actually be facing the Dodgers later in the week, in some high stakes game. Still his roster is good and is a force to be reckoned with, and if the team is clicking like we saw this weekend, it will be fun to watch. We’ll see if they can continue the momentum this week.

Then there’s the Angels, who are doing exactly what we thought they would do after the trade deadline: floundering. Who could have looked at this team and thought they were 1 or 2 pieces away? They are now 6 games out of the Wild Card with tons of teams to jump over, and 10 games out of the division lead. Their playoff odds plummeted to a whoping 0.5% via Fangraphs, and their odds of winning the World Series are 0.0%. You would have a better chance of winning the Power Ball! The Twins are 5.5 games back of the same Wild Card chase the Angels are in, and they sold off about half their Major League roster. One team is run by complete buffoons and the other is run by sensible executives.

These people that are throwing sex toys on to the floor of a WNBA game have completely lost their mind. Look on one hand, these WNBA players have acted like complete fools the last 18 months with their mistreatment of Caitlin Clark, and the delusional opinion of what they are worth. However, I’m not going to sit here like some of you and say they are getting what they deserve, because you should never throw anything on the field of play when attending a sporting event. It was funny for about 5 seconds people, but can we all just grow up now? On the bright side though, the WNBA is actually going to get more ratings out of this because people are betting on colors of sex toys that will appear in certain games. We live in sick world don’t we?

August 4, 2025

The Lakers got some exciting news over the weekend. Luka Doncic has signed a 3-year extension for $165 million. The Lakers have their next face of their franchise locked up. I don’t care about the nonsense you Pelinka haters and Lebron fan boys are spewing. The Lakers have had a good offseason, especially now that they can plan around their next franchise player. It’s amazing how quickly you can get into shape and how good you can look with a few weeks of cutting back on the beers and fried food. If Luka can take his team to the finals being fat and out of shape, imagine how good he is going to be the next 3 years in shape and pushing for a $400 million contract with the Lakers! Nobody leaves the lakers in their prime when they are in the face of the franchise so you’re a fool if you think he was ever leaving. I still think that despite all the talk about the Lakers next star like Giannis or Joker, the Lakers are unlikely to acquire a player as good as Lebron now over the next two years. For that reason, they shouldn’t be conservative in their approach to try and approve their roster now with the right depth pieces, if the opportunity presents itself. Don’t get it twisted: the Lakers have arguably the best big 3 in the NBA, so they should take advantage of it before Lebron retires.

To baseball, where the MLB Trade Deadline came and went last Thursday. You can’t be mad at the Dodgers approach. They added the depth they needed in the bullpen with Brock Stewart, and in the outfield with Alex Call. Ok, I didn’t love that the Dodgers traded Dustin May for a ham sandwich, but they really did it out of respect for him and the fact he’s going to be a free agent. I would have preferred that they keep him and potentially use him out of the bullpen if necessary. I still have a hard time believing that all 6 of these Dodgers pitchers are going to be healthy and effective come postseason time, so I still think there was an opportunity for him anyway to be a starter in October. At the end of the day, if the Dodgers are to successfully defend their title, it’s going to come down to them not hitting like Little Leaguers, which they have been for the last couple of weeks. They took 2 of 3 from Tampa, but the offense has been brutal. Shohei Ohtani is eventually going to stop striking out, but Mookie Betts needs to figure it out. I’m not convinced he’s fully healthy, but either way, he’s way too good of a player to not turn it around at some point.

As for the Angels, there is not an organization in sports that is more foolish than them. Sure the Taylor Ward walk off was nice yesterday, but they are still 5.5 games back in the wild card after losing 2 of 3 to lowly White Sox. They somehow decided it was a good idea to be buyers at the trade deadline. They should have traded Kenley Jansen, Taylor Ward, and others to replenish their farm system. And why didn’t they? So they can sell some tickets in August and September? I would argue fans want to see a young team that is showing some promise. The Angels have one of the worst run differentials in baseball at -67. They aren’t fooling anybody to think they are going to contend for the playoff spot. Plus the Perry Minasian comments to the media were even more ridiculous. He said it’s important that the team plays meaningful games in August and September. You can’t fool anybody, even your players into thinking they are playing meaningful games late in the year. What a complete joke, and every Angel fan should be completely livid with Arte Moreno, as if they weren’t already.

Well now we’re a week into training camp and the Rams are still looking for answers on Matthew Stafford’s back. Stafford is going to miss the joint practice with the Cowboys that is coming up and he’s going to see a back specialist. Ultimately, he needs to just be ready for week 1 of the regular season in September, but when I hear week-to-week, and that he is not practicing, I’m concerned this may be more serious than we think. Matt Stafford is as tough as they come, but back injuries can be very tricky, and can take people down for a while. Here’s to hoping we don’t have much to be concerned about.

We just learned last week that Shannon Sharpe was fired by ESPN. In this case, two things can be true at the same time. First of all, Shannon was a fool to be messing around with a woman who is 20 years old, even if she is trying to extort him. Poor judgement. However, it’s also true that Shannon Sharp is so talented, in the long run, he doesn’t actually need ESPN and is way better off without them. ESPN on the other hand has become a crappy woke network for sports, that is hanging on for dear life to stay relevant in a consumer media era that is transitioning.

Finally, for those of you who have seen Happy Gilmore 2 and are complaining about what it was, what did you expect? Some Oscar Winning production? It was a funny movie for what it was. A typical Adam Sandler movie, and one that was a lot of fun with celebrity cameos. By the end of it, you can always feel good about a movie like that, and just take it for the entertainment value it provides. This is also a perfect example of why they don’t make a lot of great new content anymore in Hollywood. It’s way too easy for a movie to flop when it’s not an established franchise. When you have a name like Happy Gilmore, or even a Jurassic World, Top Gun, Star Wars, and the list goes on, you will get enough people that come to see the movie for name recognition alone. It’s a safe way to be successful in the industry, but unfortunate that it has put a cap on creativity in that space.