As my real job is in sports coverage, I know enough people who went to 49ers practice every week last season, and to most of the games. As a result, they know most of the assistant coaches by sight, even if they didn’t talk to them. They’re able to recognize nearly all of them. I say “nearly” because nobody I know who regularly went to 49ers practice had any idea who Nick Sorensen is. And he’s the guy who’s their new defensive coordinator. Now, in every business there is somebody behind the scenes who may not have the most important job title or is known to outsiders who is actually incredibly important to making that business be successful. It appears Nick Sorensen was that guy for the 49ers, and now he has been elevated to a very prominent role that will involve a level of scrutiny he has never faced outside a team facility a day in his life. To go from unrecognizable to the leader of an NFL Super Bowl caliber defense is quite a jump. Kyle Shanahan and John Lynch would not have made this move if they didn’t think he could handle it, but jeez, you’d think regular practice observers would have least heard of the guy in passing…
TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN DEPARTMENT: Our “controversy” we have been following is the recent supreme disconnect between the AP Poll rankings of the men’s Gonzaga basketball team and their standing in the recent Bracketology polls for March Madness. You may recall they have been ranked in the polls the last week or two while the so-called expert Bracketologists (namely, ESPN’s Joe Lunardi) were continually having them as an 11-seed in the tournament, one of the “last four in” and even had them as part of the play-in games in Dayton…
I found those suggestions of the Zags barely making the tournament to be extremely silly. In fact, in Saturday’s edition I suggested that instead of being an 11-seed, the Zags were easily worthy of a 7-seed, a leap that resulted in pushback from people who buy into the bracketologist cult…
Well, in the latest poll, the Zags are up to 19th. As for the new bracketology predictions, Lunardi has Gonzaga as… a 7-seed. Jumping a team four spots on the seed line is unheard of. For instance, no team goes from a 4-seed to a 1-seed in four days. And yet here is Gonzaga, jumping four spots from a questionable 11-seed to a solid 7-seed, and with plenty of chances to rise even higher if they win the WCC Tournament, just as I said would happen. In the most recent edition of the Bracket Matrix, the Zags- who on Friday were still an 11-seed across the board- are as high as a 5-seed and only a few untrustworthy scallywags still have them in the double-digits. The bottom line: you people need to learn to listen to me…
The still-in-Oakland A’s released new renderings for their Las Vegas ballpark today. Others have noted that it doesn’t seem to include bullpens, or lights, and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Sydney Opera House. My issue is that they claimed the design is based on a “spherical armadillo.” Aside from the fact that I have never seen a spherical armadillo, I don’t want to have anything in my life that is based on what an armadillo looks like. I have nothing against armadillos, but their body shape is not what I’m looking for in the architectural inspiration department…
TOLD YOU THIS WOULD HAPPEN DEPARTMENT, PART II: When the Denver Broncos signed Russell Wilson and gave him that huge deal two years ago, I was one of the few who said, “This is going to be awful.” (and reiterated that early on this season.) He looked done to me at the end of his Seattle tenure, and I did not think he was going to be any good in Denver. (Again, you need to listen to me.) For all the national loudness about how Cleveland can’t find a good franchise QB, the Broncos have struggled mightily since John Elway retired, except for three years with an on-the-decline Peyton Manning- when they lost to Wilson in the Super Bowl, ironically. To me most of the problem stems from Elway himself, who constantly said he never wanted to work in a football front office and yet became their GM for a decade. Never seemed like he really wanted to be there. And then they have never truly bothered to go all-in on a top young QB. And here they are, again, and the Wilson deal has set them back several more years because in order to release him they have to eat $84 million dollars that counts against their cap space for the next three years…
If you enjoy good old American whiskey, you have probably perused a bottle at some point and seen the phrase “Bottled In Bond.” It’s basically the government seal of approval that the whiskey was made properly, with proper ingredients and aging in the right barrels and all that. It came to be in 1897 because unscrupulous whiskey makers would not only make awful moonshine and try to pass it off as a quality beverage, but they would also color their “whiskey” with stuff like iodine or even tobacco to make it look that wonderful brown color, and it would make people sick, or worse. Lots of whiskeys don’t have it on the label nowadays because there are other safeguards for process and manufacturing. Plus, it requires any whiskey with the label to be produced entirely by one distillery, from grain growth to aging, and most distilleries buy their grain from somebody else or outsource the distilling or something like that. The “Bottled in Bond” purists say it shows off a distillery’s full abilities, even if it is sometimes the cheapest whiskey on the shelf. Anyway, the “Bottled in Bond” act was passed this week in 1897- March 3rd, to be exact. So, cheers…
Especially if you’ve been newly promoted, newly released, or, finally, properly rated. That all deserved a drink…
"Bjarke Ingels is a design activist whose design philosophy is "Hedonistic Sustainability". He believes creating sustainable architecture should be fun. He creates unusual structures that bely expectations while remaining environmentally sound."
"Bjarke Ingels infuses his architecture with a unique blend of the pragmatic and the utopian, creating a juxtaposition between striking design elements and local features. His buildings always have a surprising appearance while fitting right into the landscape and the terrain."
"Bjarke Ingels designed a proposed stadium for the now Washington Commanders that included a moat surrounding the venue which, in the offseason, could double as a wave pool and beach."
From https://study.com/academy/lesson/bjarke-ingels-architecture-design-philosophy-sustainability.html
Nuff said...
As Jim Hightower said, the only things in the middle of the road are yellow stripes and dead armadillos. Of course, there was once Armadillo World HQ in Austin where some band called the Grateful Dead performed on occasion. I've seen the photos to prove it.