Though not the deepest sports book, Ted Kluck’s Three Week Professionals tells the story of the 1987 NFL replacement players with humor and the right tone. On one hand, the players had more of a justification for striking than was often the case given the lack of free agency and the sport being incredibly harsh. On the other, it was poorly handled and working-class people even at the time thought little of it.
As both a time capsule and a short breezy history, this book is good. Not deep, but it’s not supposed to be. It is fun and that’s what matters.
With the Super Bowl just around the corner, I figure I’d make my thoughts on an NFL all-time-all-star team. Just the offense in this case, using the modern pro “1 RB- 3WR- 1TE” standard.
Quarterback
Ok, the most crucial decision. As someone of modern sensibilities, I want a quarterback with legs. But as someone who appreciates context, I also want someone who thrived in a pass-unfriendly era. Now is there someone who fits both those categories?
Why yes there is!
Fran Tarkenton, who can stretch defenses with his legs and be good with his arm. If I have to pick a traditional pocket QB, I’d go with Joe Montana.
Running Back
Jim Brown. I don’t think I have to explain this.
Wide Receivers
Jerry Rice as my first wide receiver, for reasons I don’t have to explain. Randy Moss as the second, likewise. For my modern representation, my third will be Justin Jefferson.
Tight End
Rob Gronkowski. Enough said.
Offensive Line
Tackles: Antony Munoz, Forrest Gregg. The Bengal Immovable Object will be the main QB protector. One architect of the Packers Sweep will be good.
Center: Mike Webster, the center-piece of the Steel Curtain
Guards: Bruce Matthews, Jerry Kramer: Matthews is an all-around lineman who could and did play any position there. Between him and another Packers Sweeper, it’s hard to go wrong.
Interception: The Secrets of Modern Sports Betting
Ed Miller and Matthew Davidow are two of the sharpest (word choice deliberate) and most experienced minds in sports betting. This made me have very high expectations for Interception, their most recent book on the sports betting ecosystem. I’m delighted to say that it only took a few pages for it to outright exceed them.
For me specifically, it was a little less of an experience in that I already knew most of the plain facts stated within (the tricks you think will work will not, sportsbooks offer far more markets than they can realistically handicap so they use restrictions to ‘counter’, etc…) But I still found it enlightening and illuminating. And for a newcomer it’d be vastly more so. The one thing I had against it was how its tone was a little snarky for my taste, but that’s a mild stylistic complaint.
Anyway, you need to read this to understand sports betting and how it’s going. This book has also made me ever-more convinced that a modest minimum bet liability law would be extremely beneficial to the sports betting ecosystem, but that’s a topic for another post. As it stands, it’s the best sports betting book I’ve read.
The words “Sports Alternate History” got me interested in the new Sea Lion Press anthology If We’d Just Got That Penalty. I read it-and the result was sadly as disappointing as the New York Jets season. (Which Jets season? Answer is “Everything since 1968 is valid”). So in the interest of fair and honest criticism, I’m giving an honest and (hopefully) fair review.
I’ll start out by saying that sports AH and short stories are an uphill climb. Sporting AH tends to be fairly trinketized due to the end result often plausibly nothing more than different results on a trophy or standings chart and the divergences just “if the ball only moved three inches to the left.” That being said, at best this has middling short stories.
At worst, there’s ones like a really convoluted pure exposition “tale” involving changes to both Haiti and various forms of “football”. It’s a sincerely well thought out and well-researched premise that ends up being executed in the worst possible manner. Others have the impression of being benchmarked against internet alternate history, which is kind of like benchmarking your isekai story against jumpchains or your basketball team against the Washington Generals.
SLP has made some good alternate history, but this unfortunately isn’t it.
Many people don’t know that sports reporting was one of the first big ways that “modern AI” as we know it came into public view. Basically, if you had a box score for a game where you couldn’t or decided it wasn’t worth it to send an actual reporter, an AI could (and still can) extrapolate a game story based on it. Sure, you don’t get the “yes they sportsed but we sportsed harder” quotes from the participants, but is that really a big deal?
Of course, that assumes one admits to using it. In the case of once-great Sports Illustrated magazine, they tried to sneak AI in. With presumably machine-generated (and if not machine-assisted) articles and “reporters” who were the sportswriter equivalent of Aimi Eguchi , the institution that once gave us Rick Riley’s reports was reduced to the algorithm gaming self-publisher.
Now I have no problems with AI in creative endeavors, but if you want to make something completely with it, it should be labeled as such. (I’ll leave other legal concerns aside for now). I can think of ways to make an openly fake (for lack of a better word) recapper. But any technology can be used for bottom feeding, and this is no exception.
I’ve had a dream in my mind for how I wanted the GEC Dome, a fictional football stadium, to look. It was to have a sort of pseudo-castle exterior. While attempts with prompts alone to make it in Stable Diffusion failed, making a reference image and careful controlnetting succeeded in making several far closer concepts.
So in Action PC Football, I decided to simulate one of the classic Madden moments. Up by multiple touchdowns with one second left in the game and somehow almost in their own end-zone, the Packers naturally try a pass play with the quarterback in the shotgun formation (standing some distance behind the center when he snaps the ball).
Rodgers throws the ball to wide receiver Greg Jennings, who catches it and runs. With a broken leg. He makes it across the field to score and avoids Darren Sharper, one of the most hardest hitting safeties in the league.
So under a far more grounded simulation, I used the play analysis tool, running 10,000 repeats of the epic play.
It was a traditional pro set of 2 running backs, a tight end, and two wide receivers, including Jennings.
The pass was a medium fly route. “QB Must Pass” was set on, because otherwise the ball would often get thrown to someone else and that wouldn’t be Jennings putting the team on his back now, would it?
Wide Receiver and Running Back wear and tear was set to the highest level to simulate the effect on Jennings’ leg.
Otherwise no special plans were done.
Jennings reached the end zone and scored 21 times out of the 10,000 plays.
51.7% of the passes were complete. The average distance Jennings made it after catching the ball was 10.3 yards.
7.4% of the passes were intercepted by the Saints.
In the chaotic time of late 2020, Carver College stepped up to the basketball court to… lose. A lot. A tiny religious college, it was perhaps the most blatant of the tomato cans that appear in all kinds of sports. With no illusions, it stepped up to play multiple Division 1 schools as a kind of fill-in, getting badly needed money and experience.
Plenty of other colleges have done the “face a much stronger opponent for prestige and cash” before, but it’s interesting to see it going to this level. It’s one of those 2020 sports footnotes alongside things like Eastern European table tennis, the Belarusian Premier League being the most engaged one in the world, and the Denver Broncos running out of quarterbacks.
It’s no secret that Super Bowl halftime shows prior to Michael Jackson’s historic 1993 one were rightfully regarded as throwaway novelty acts. But one in particular stands out for its “questionable” judgement. That would be 1989’s Elvis Presto.
Now there wasn’t a successful Elvis impersonator thirteen years after the death of the real one known as “Elvis Presto” already. Nor was it someone famous already doing an Elvis impression. No, this was just an Elvis impersonator doing silly magic tricks and music. Ok, that’s still in the ballpark of what old halftime shows were like, except for the small problem of that, save for one snippet of Burning Love…
NONE OF THE SONGS HE SANG WERE ACTUAL ELVIS PRESLEY ONES
It’s like “why?” It’s not like he was known as the “king of rock and roll”? I’m sure they could, with difficulty, find fifteen minutes of worthy Elvis songs to play. I mean, he was one of those artists who didn’t really record much mater-oh wait.
Yeah, there’s a reason why halftime shows are now filled with star power.
Freezing Cold Takes: Football Media’s Most Inaccurate Predictions and the Fascinating Stories Behind Them
With both the college and pro football seasons having started, it’s time to look at Fred Segal’s Freezing Cold Takes, a compilation of football media predictions that ended up being extremely wrong as well as the context surrounding them. It’s not the deepest book, but it’s certainly deeper than the fired-off hot takes concerning sports that long predate the internet.
As a fun bit of NFL history, this book is worth a read. You’ll laugh and you just might learn something. While it shouldn’t be the last word, its good as a first one.
Fuldapocalypse Fiction 