Monday Morning Coffee

February 5, 2018

Congratulations to the Philadelphia Eagles and their fans for winning Super Bowl LII.  By the time you’re reading this the fans probably just finished celebrating by burning their city down and running naked through what’s left of the streets.  Isn’t that how The Walking Dead started?  The Patriots didn’t even punt, Tom Brady threw for over 500 yards and they lost.  I’ve seen better defense played in the XFL.  It couldn’t be any more fitting that the NFL season ended with a game where we still have no idea what a catch is.  Unlike Tom Brady, Nick Foles can catch a pass, and he also played out of his mind.  I’m beginning to think that was Eli Manning wearing a Nick Foles mask all along.  This Super Bowl win was long overdue for a much improved Eagles team, and just goes to show you how quickly you can turn it around.  I’m sure Tom Brady and the Patriots will be fine despite the loss, and you can expect to be rooting against them again this time next year.

I thought the best commercial of the game was Rocket Mortgage.  Keegan Michael-Key is absolutely hilarious.  I thought the dumbest commercial was Dodge, which felt the need to use Martin Luther King’s speech in its ad.  In fact, it probably offended people in the process.  I’d like to know what that marketing meeting was like.  As for the halftime show, Justin Timberlake put on a great show.  Many of you haters are missing the point.  The halftime show isn’t a concert.  It’s an entire entertainment show, and if you weren’t entertained, it’s probably just because you hate JT’s music in general.  You’re also missing the fact that the Super Bowl draws an audience of more than just football fans.  The halftime show caters to them as well.  Either that, or you’re just angry you didn’t get to see Janet Jackson’s nipple again.

I feel terrible for Blake Griffin.  He’s going from living in LA to living in Detroit, just six months after the Clippers begged him to stay and be a Clipper forever.  That has to suck.  On the bright side, he can probably buy the entire city of Detroit given what the Pistons are going to be paying him for the next four years.  This move couldn’t be any more “Clipper-esque”.  I don’t have a problem trading Blake if you think you need to rebuild, but the Clips just became more mediocre.  Not a playoff team, not bad enough to tank, and no exciting young players to build with.  We should expect DeAndre and Lou to be traded in the next week for a packet of Taco Bell hot sauce and a can of Coke.  Also, the idea of the Clippers having a shot at Lebron is like you breaking up with your girlfriend in hopes of having a shot at Jennifer Aniston.  There’s a rumor that Jerry West is working for the Clippers to sabotage them.  They are perfectly capable of sabotaging themselves.

As for the Lakers, with just a few days to go before the trade deadline, they need to be especially careful.  We keep hearing names like Jordan Clarkson, Julius Randle, and Larry Nance Jr. mentioned in trade talks, just to open up salary cap space.  Unless the Lakers know for a fact Lebron James is signing with them, there’s really no point to trading any of those players, even come July.  You have to be careful with players coming off their rookie contracts.  Just ask how the Magic feel about trading Victor Oladipo, or how glad the Wizards are they didn’t trade Bradley Beal.  Randle may be on the verge of becoming a 20-10 player, and Clarkson is a productive young player on a reasonable NBA contract.  I’d like to think the new Laker front office is smarter than to dump these guys for a couple of nickels and a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Here’s my new conspiracy theory: The Oklahoma City Thunder don’t even want to re-sign Paul George.  Doing so would put them in repeater tax territory.  The Thunder have the most conservative ownership in the league, and Clay Bennett is a cheapskate.  Eric Pincus wrote a fantastic article for Basketball Insider on this last week, and this theory is further supported by the fact that the Thunder reportedly rejected the Clippers proposal of trading Griffin for George.  Why would they reject that? Blake is under contract for the next 4 years, and they had interest in him last summer.  It’s because they know they would be repeat tax offenders.  If Clay Bennett wouldn’t pay the luxury tax for one of the best young teams in the NBA that just went to the finals a few years ago, no way is he doing it for a team that is going to lose in the 1st or 2nd round of the playoffs.  This is great news for the Lakers.

That was a great basketball game on Saturday afternoon game between UCLA and USC.  Horrible play calling by SC though at the end of the game.  It was almost like Steve Alford was in the huddle drawing up the plays for them.  Bill Walton is a crazy old man who might be doing every broadcast on acid, but the entertainment value he is bringing to the table is second to none.  You can’t hate it.  It’s like listening to Norm McDonald broadcast, but without the impression.  Alford said that the Bruins are a much different team with Aaron Holiday off the court.  Funny because they’d also be an even better team with Alford off the bench.  The Bruins desperately need to beat Arizona and Arizona State and have a deep run in the conference tournament if they hope to be participating in March Madness.

Some large corporations are really benefitting from the new tax laws.  Many are giving employees raises.  United Airlines on the other hand might as well be lighting a stack of cash on fire.  Well that’s just about the same thing as buying naming rights to the LA Coliseum for $69 million.  The Coliseum has been around for nearly 100 years.  Nobody in their right mind is going to start calling the place “The United Airlines Memorial Coliseum”.  I’m sure as part of the deal, the usher’s at the Coliseum will now start dragging fans out of their seats and beating them senselessly before kicking them out of the stadium.

For years I always thought the funniest SNL skit was Celebrity Jeopardy.  For those of you unfamiliar with it, I highly recommend finding it on YouTube.  However, last week Jeopardy had the closest thing you will find to Celebrity Jeopardy on the actual show.  The best part about is was that Alex Trebek was savagely trolling the contestants.  Check it out for yourself…..

Finally, another interesting episode of The Bachelor went down on ABC last Monday.  For those of you wanting to see more age appropriate dates for Arie, you got your wish but we see the problem with it: the dates are totally boring.  That was the case on his date with Chelsea.  I love how the girls could actually see the one-on-one dates from the balcony, and got an up close view with a telescope of Chelsea straddling Arie on a jet ski.  What hotel has a telescope on it’s balcony anyway? Nice little addition by the producers there.  Krystal is definitely the biggest Bachelor super villain of all-time.  I think that keeps her on the show for at least a couple of more weeks, even though Arie is probably done with her.  Everything she’s done has backfired, and she always gets outsmarted by the other girls, yet somehow she is still in the running.  I love her empty threat that she had her stuff packed.  Doesn’t everybody always have their stuff packed on this show?  Bowling dates and cocktail parties in the hotel lobby? I guess the ABC producers blew this season’s budget on hookers and blow to keep their sanity.   Arie must be the first person in history to wear Toms shoes to a swamp.  The gators were definitely laughing at him.

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