Category: NFL

Back for another installment of Happy Endings with Barrister and Scizz! The fifth one, in fact.

8/2/2015

Y'all, we recorded this four nights ago but then a whole hit load of life happened and fuck you for asking. But seriously. Work, a mass of yard work, summer hangouts and loads of Lagunitas chased by spliffs. Here we are.

It's the offseason of most things we talked about so nothing is all that out-of-date apart from some baseball talk - the Mets swept those Nationals shut the front door. Delightful. Life filled with delight.

Podcast featuring rants about Russ Brandon, Tom Brady, born-again Bills fans, Uber-less Buffalo, our plans for Week 1 tailgates and a few other things that I can't remember since I haven't actually listened to this and just hastily tossed in some musical selections without worrying about the propriety of taking on American Methodists, among others.

Good to be back, kids.

Music by way of Bleachers, Oddisee, Fitz and the Tantrums, and Priory.

Download here or here. RSS here. iTunes below and a streaming boxey box below that. Old podcasts, and there are a bunch of them, available at deargodwhyussports.libsyn.com or the Deeg Podcast Industries tab at the top banner. Gooey gooey aural goodness.

Go Bills.

Squeezing every last drop out of my 15 seconds.

7/29/2015

The Barrister

I still can't really fathom why anyone would think it a good idea to listen to anything I think or say or write ever, much less think it has any redeeming qualities, nor want to give me a platform to signal boost the things I think and say out to a broader audience - for instance, everyone who listens to the Howard Simon Show on WGR550. BUT PEOPLE DO AND I AM AN EXPERT HUMBLEBRAGGER AS WELL AS LEGAL THINKER ta-daaaaaaaaaaa. Here we are.

Yesterday, Tom Brady's suspension was upheld by the hearing officer that heard his appeal under Article 46, Section 2 of the NFL/NFLPA Collective Bargaining Agreement, the document that generally defines the exclusive process by which a player may substantively appeal discipline assessed by the league. The hearing officer, as is obvious from everything you've already seen on the webs, was Commissioner Roger Goodell, esteemed douchebag and villain of any and all things. A man so entirely deplorable that a part of me wanted Donald Trump to buy the Bills - I KNOW! A means to an end, solely - so he could start throwing non-stop, outrageous, totally offensive and gratifying shade at Goodell's smug fucking face and give us Bills fans something to cheer for past Week 6, picking up the slack since we don't write here much anymore and thus aren't throwing as much of that shade as we ought. Goodell served as hearing officer, in his discretion, through the authority to do so under the CBA.

What was more awesome about what went down yesterday was that we learned Tom Brady, after having notice of the NFL's desire to inspect his cell phone and/or certain contents of the phone to the extent they were related to the NFL's request for communications concerning ball pressure and the like, destroyed his phone. Like, either the day he was interviewed by Ted Wells or the day before. I mean, Tom didn't actually do it. He had an assistant carry out his bidding as millionaires are want to do. He said he always destroyed his phones when he got a new one, which was pretty often because reasons and also the reality of his relationship with consumer goods closely resembling my relationship with hamburgers - the faster you blow through one, the faster you can feel good about getting a new one.

Except, nope. The phone BEFORE this one that he destroyed in March? He didn't destroy that. Because, errrr, shut up, Richard. I mean, he's totes being honest, guys, I mean look at his smile and his spiral and that wife. She is pretty and stuff.

No one is disputing that this is what went down. No one.

The NFL thought it mighty suspicious of him to destroy the phone on the day of the Wells interview, and then to come up with an excuse belied by the fact that he clearly didn't always destroy his phones, not always. Of course, when the NFL found it suspicious, I mean Goodell, a guy who couldn't love Brady more even if Tommy was made exclusively of the tears of Junior Seau's family. A guy who couldn't love the owner of Brady's football club more even if Robert Kraft was made exclusively of the kinetic energy created by the sanctimony of billionaires chastising what grown men do in between seasons of consistent head traumas. What I'm saying is that Goodell loves Junior Seau's family's tears and he LOVES billionaire sanctimony, but he loves Brady and Kraft more. These guys are bae, or something.

Dammit. I'm so white.

Anyway, this happened, an internet full of hot takes arose, and I couldn't help but enter the mix. I have a problem with entering the mix and not, you know, refraining. I also know a little something about something, certainly more than I can learn from a Jay Z song - though that didn't stop me from paraphrasing '99 Problems' on the NY Bar Exam's essay section - so I tweeted a bunch, like self-important members of the Buffalo Bloggerati are want to do. I hit some nerves, some people DM'd me calling me a fag (true story, there was one guy), and some people liked it. I don't get it either. My twitter feed is here. Some of the good bits are below.

So Long, and Thanks For All The Squish - Bills vs. Dolphins - A Week 2 Recap Boner

9/15/2014

"Norton had no intention of going quietly. ... I'd like to think that the last thing that went through his head, other than that bullet, was to wonder how the hell the Buffalo Bills ever got the best of him."

The Barrister

We've been here before, surely, but the past informs our present and while it may be foolish to think too seriously about how this feels different than other teams and other hot starts to a season, here we are on a September Monday with a palpable sense that a change is gonna come. Indeed, it already has.

It is more than fair to say that I have, at pretty frequent intervals over the past twenty years or so, hated Ralph Wilson in a way that is both rational and insane; rational because he was a very rich man who got rich off of our devotion to a game and never delivered a championship he so frequently promised, and insane because - for better or worse - he gave me something to ease my transition into a Buffalonian when my family moved west from Western Massachusetts when I was six. Hating him was always a Sisyphean task; inevitably, when the team played a good stretch of ball, my wallet would come out and a jersey or a sweatshirt would be purchased, I would buy into the franchise again, and my hate would be shown for what it really was: flimsy. A weighty frustration with the dissonance between the callous business of professional sport and a region barely able to support any business at all, yet always tempered by an unceasing willingness to be moved to heaving emotion by a football team and what that team achieves by way of abundant fellowship.

That Ralph, by virtue of capitalism and the economic forces of an increasingly powerful league, had the power and the apparent motive to take our team away from us was an ever-present reality that many of us resented; that he never did, and moreover seems to have assured that no one ever will, is a now-present reality that seems far too good to be true. I always hated the man for, in my opinion, failing to appreciate that Bills fans had invested deeply into the franchise with their wallets and their tax dollars and their inexplicable, loving commitment; for failing to demonstrate that he understood his constituency deserved much more than the looming possibility of losing the team. And even if that's still right; even if there are scenarios wherein Ralph could have done more to spare an adoring fan base more than a decade of worry; even if these last several months have been a constant series of panic attacks that might have ultimately been avoidable - he still set the table for a complete and unassailable victory. With the past of this team set in stone, the present entirely enjoyable and the future suddenly looking bright, not to mention actually existing, that victory is massive. For a fan base that primarily thrives not on wins, but on community and shared experience, Ralph's last victory is everything.

Wins are nice, though. They are really fucking nice.

I don't know how anyone really thought that the Dolphins had a prayer in flying out of Buffalo with a victory, but those people did exist last week and they are deserving of our derision. It was a long shot before the season started (see, e.g., Lewis, Thad Based God, 2013), it was still a long shot a week ago (Bills win in Chicago > Dolphins win vs Pats, it's science), and it became a near impossibility as soon as the news of the sale to the Pegulas was announced and the region was lifted into a place of unspeakable giddiness. Hell, when a Dolphins linebacker is saying the Bills are built to beat Miami (a thing I believe to be bullshit; the Bills are built to be AWESOME, duh, and beating Miami is a nice thing that comes along with that), maybe the world shouldn't have shit like this being said out loud...

Guys I Blacked Out There For a Minute, What the Shit Just Happened - Bills/Bears - A Week 1 Recap Boner

9/7/2014

The Barrister

I just woke up. I remember something about Hoboken, a vagrant with a speech impediment and a Bills hat signed by Andre Reed, laughing at the bar as I came to terms with the supposed inevitability of a Bills loss, some masters of Dutch treats, Strongbow on tap, and friendship. The internet tells me that the Bills won a football game, but let's be real y'all ... that kind of nonsense fucks with our narrative and we all know that shit can't happen. Our narrative is sacrosanct. Our narrative is untouchable. It is rationally-developed and rock solid. Immovable. A thing with which one cannot, by definition, fuck.

Well, shit on a shingle, friends. Apparently pigs do fly.

"Bitches ain't shit but hoes and tricks" - Saint Doug

U.S. Patent and Trademark Office Best Patent and Trademark Office

6/19/2014

YA HEARD?!?

The Barrister

Damn, kids. So much law shit creeping into our sports shit, you'd think I'd be popping on here more often to explain to you plebes how the world works, but I gots stuff to do. I'll break down my thoughts on the Bills trust soon and how the revelation by Mark Poloncarz that the trustees who decide on the Bills sale may have a "fiduciary duty" to sell to the highest bidder is the most obvious-as-fuck revelation since Mike Harrington revealed he likes Soft Batch cookies and tall glasses of warm milk. NO FUCKING WAY! Our media fails us, again, if for no other reason that that it took about two months for someone to actually consider the legal obligations in play with the Bills and that perhaps irrelevant is the shared hope of proving our eternal devotion to the Bills trustees so that they'll be overcome with a certain sense of civic pride and sell the team to Jim Kelly for pennies and leave us all in a land of bliss and tailgate blunts and shotgunned beers in perpetuity.

BUT THAT RANT IS FOR ANOTHER DAY.

I expect your appetite to be whetted.

Nay, today is not about the crippling sense of Ralph Wilson's failures and the inevitability of the trustees' duty of loyalty to the bank accounts of named beneficiaries rather than an amalgamate of hapless sports fans with grills and RVs and little to no sense of limits. Today is about motherfucking JUSTICE.

I fucking love justice. I love it in all its forms and I love it when the people given the power to seek it through judicial process actually find it. Justice is fucking great.

Rarely, it seems, is the journey to justice a simple task. Somewhere along the way - and I'll assume it was way fucking back because people have been shitty forfuckingever, basically - the concept of justice became bastardized and co-opted so as to mean something uniquely personal. The meaning of justice co-mingles with each of our personal ideas of right and wrong and, more to the point, our personal desire to feel good - personally good - about outcomes. Justice becomes about getting our way, though rarely do we stop and take a thorough account of how many different interests and desires are competing for predominance. Rarely do we appreciate that sometimes justice produces arguably shitty outcomes, or outcomes that piss some of us off, or outcomes that suggest we should reform our system of justice in subtle or substantial ways ... and all of that is generally ok. You are not entitled to getting your way all the time. In fact, a just system might be one that ensures you don't.

All of which is to say that if you're looking at what the U.S. Patent Office did and you're angry about Free Speech or Dan Snyder's liberty or the storied tradition of a fucking football team, well, TOUGH. FUCKING. BREAKS. This went down in exactly the way it should have ... perhaps even a decade or two late. This is American justice. OUR American justice. And it's fucking beautiful. Get on board.

Some truths for you to chew on, if you're so inclined:

The U.S. Patent and Trademark Office did this, ultimately, because five Native Americans filed a petition in 2006 and litigated it to fruition. Without the petition, there is no trademark revocation. Someone with standing - i.e. a personal stake in the issue - had to step up to the plate so as to achieve this particular relief. This is not the work of Democratic senators, as some pissants have whinged over the past day. This is legal process being exercised by Americans and American judicial process - in this case, the Trademark Trial and Appeal Board of the federal agency legally authorized to oversee trademark registration - going through the mechanics that lead to a result. So, to sum up: STOP BLAMING EVERYTHING ON THE POLITICIANS YOU HATE BECAUSE IT MAKES YOU LOOK LIKE A PETTY IGNORANT PIECE OF SHIT.

CrapTastiMania! with Joe and Barrister

6/4/2014

Hosted by Joe from Buffalo Wins, this synergistic podcast is focused on the Bills news of the day - namely Marcell Dareus, Jerry Hughes and their fast cars, and how we feel about #99 given his recent arrests and their closeness in time. We ramble and rant and ultimately get to talking about the future of the Bills and what kind of legacy we're wading through following Ralph Wilson's death.

Stream below. iTunes link below. Download here or here. RSS feed for all DGWU Sports podcasts here.

Music from Wu Tang, Bloc Party and Gnarls Barkley. Cheers.

- The Barrister

Tire Fires, Optimism & the Rest: A Buffalo Sports Check-In.

5/29/2014

The Barrister

You know what? I've fucking enjoyed not writing for this site. It's the off-season for the Bills and Sabres, the English Premier League ended with a whimper for my surging Liverpool Football Club, the Mets are meats, and the rest of sports news is on my simmer setting while I look ahead to a World Cup in which the US team has a better chance of scoring zero goals than it does of pretty much anything else.

Everything is pointless. Everything is lost.

Why the check-in, then? Obligation, I suppose. Not to you pissants, mind you. To myself and my own need to get up to speed on our beloved teams and get myse..... fuck it I can't lie to you. I love you too much.

It's because of dick jokes. I want to make some dick jokes and call someone a douchebag and I wanted to do it in long form. Fuck off.

Who first?

Rich White Guys Who Want My Football Team.

The steady beat of time marching on has ensured that each passing week brings another notch of excitement - or something we want to call excitement but is more akin to watching our skin sear under the heat of a hot iron skillet - regarding the future of our Buffalo Bills. Specifically the ownership of the team and not anything else in the future, since we all are painfully aware that the future of the team is written in the stars right next to God's most recent memo to us wherein he requests, again, to stop sticking our dick everywhere. To love the Buffalo Bills is to love an unknown destiny that we can only guess will be outrageously shit.

Ownership, in the grand scheme of things, is irrelevant when compared to the cosmic forces of sadness that have been working so diligently all these years, spinning us on the back of giant elephants standing on a turtle, elephants and turtle all equally intent on watching just one more Johnson/Losman/Edwards/Fitzpatrick/Tuel/Manuel/Lewis pick six.

Erik James tosses bullets, the defense makes little Geno look like the football equivalent of Gigli, and our Buffalo Bills do what they want for 60 minutes – a Bills/Jets Week 11 Recap

11/19/2013

The Barrister

In the wake of such a joyous victory, it’s probably no surprise that it’s taken a little longer to get a recap up. Words are simply insufficient to express the happiness with which I take every step throughout the Tri-State knowing that my beloved squad has vanquished such an annoying and petulant team from the nether regions of Douchebagistan, New Jersey.

Either that, or the Apologist offered to do the recap and then got burnt out by over-thinking it and now I am diligently picking up his fucking predictable slack.

Hashtag friendship.

That really was a great game. The first of its kind this year: a convincing win by the Bills; the result never really in doubt beyond half time. Sure, many fans, including a few in my living room, expected the game to fall apart when the Jets finally put a touchdown on the board, but those efforts by Gangrene, excuse me Gang_Green, were woefully insufficient compared to the kind of day Buffalo was having. Fucking unreal, totally unexpected, and still has me tingling from head to toe a day and half later.

Bullet points await!!

Bullies on Parade

11/4/2013

Monsieur Shorts de Bonaire - @Boner_Shorts - Deeg Guest Contributor

Yesterday afternoon, I was listening to The Sports Hub in MA wanting to hear more about the Richie Incognito fiasco taking place in Miami. I tuned in to the Gresh and Zo show, featuring Andy Gresh and Scott Zolak. Andy Gresh’s name probably doesn’t ring a bell, but those of us who would choose Backup Quarterbacks in the NFL During the 90s as a category on Jeopardy might recognize Scott Zolak’s name. He played most notably for New England and Miami. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride, but he does a passable job of waving the pom poms during lunch for Boston sports on the radio. Gresh is a big fat guy who played D1A football in Rhode Island somewhere.

So, given this pedigree, I thought it would be an interesting take on this locker room situation. Both of the hosts know first hand what it’s like to be in a football locker room. They of course started with the “using racial slurs is crossing the line” tack, which really isn’t that hard to take. So they certainly set up Incognito as the one clearly at fault here. He’s the bad guy. But then something interesting started happening: a not so subtle start to discredit, and borderline assign BLAME to Jonathan Martin in all of this. It first began with Zolak asking the question, “Does Martin want to play football? We always talk about how Belichick only gets guys who have football as their first priority (ahem… well, besides murdering people). If he can’t handle this stuff, is he really putting football as something important to him?” And then? They start in on his education and his parents. “He went to Stanford. Both of his parents are lawyers. He’s got other options in life, he was just given a gift of size so he decided to play football.”

Later in the day, I see Bert Breer tweet out the lawyer parent thing as well. Why tweet out their professions? What bearing does that have in this case and how is that information being used by readers beyond what appears to be a subtle attempt to suggest that his parents’ careers somehow reveal a character flaw of Martin’s? Where is the tweet informing us all of Incognito’s parents’ careers? (fwiw, his dad's a mason and if I wanted I could make all sorts of baseless insinuations about that if I wanted to be an asshole). It’s almost to say that “pfft… Martin’s parents are lawyers… it figures that a little pussy like that couldn’t stand up for himself. He can do the white collar thing like his parents, he's just quitting because that other stuff is easier. He obviously doesn't want it enough.”

What the shit was that glorious victory? Let's hash it out - Week 7 Recappythinger - Bills/Dolphins

10/21/2013

This was WAY too easy to find, god bless you internet and god bless us, everyone!

The Barrister

Well I'll be fucking damned. I slept off some Pabst and the wonderful emotion of a road, divisional win and, yep, I'm a touch hungover but still fucking amped at what we all saw yesterday. Well, not quite all of us. Some of us turned it off sometime late third early fourth quarter because, well, there really is no reason to believe that this team will win a close game. Those of us in this category are stupid, jaded assholes since, these days, there's also really no reason to believe they'll lose a close game either. Predictions are thrown out the window with Jerry Sullivan's racist testicles - legit, they're a three (three??) person hate group as per the Southern Poverty Law Center, read a book or something - and we have yet another game to show that this team can not only hang with the league's supposed best, but are capable of surprising some of those squads along the way.

Going into New Orleans next week, even if there is no reasonable hope that the Bills can pull a win out of their collective asses, this team has firmly established itself as a squad able to put together a decent game of football every week, regardless of their opponent, and keep their fans glued to the TV wondering which way the result might go.

This is fun as hell.