San Jose 49ers: (Let's call them what the are and not SF) Back to football. Garapolo looked pretty average. He's obviously not. But at the end of last season, he was a surprise. Now that teams have film of him, they're better prepared. This makes all the team deficiencies more important to solve.
In the meantime, Shanahan wins the "Spin" of the NFL's first week: impressed with how G handled adversity.If you don't make it as a head coach, Kyle, there's a job waiting for you in politics.
New York Jets: Have finally got a QB. Darnold looked mostly like a vet as he led his team to a win over the Lions, which is not a shabby outfit. It was a serious performance.
Early betting on the vikings to win the Stupid Bowl would be reasonable. LA Rams next in line.
Arizona Cardinals might as well get it over with and make Rosen their starting QB. Preseason showed the kid had poise, skill and cockiness needed to be a big time NFL quarterback.
My long-shot team for max improvement is the Cleavland Browns.
This could be a very lopsided NFL season with wide disparity between the good teams and the bad, a little like our economy, the rich getting richer and the poor (and Middle Class) getting poorer.
ETC
Pro Tennis has got to get off that weird and outdated rule that coaches can't coach from the sidelines. In what sport, other than tennis, do coaches have to sit on their hands and keep their mouths shut as they watch their athletes perform? DUMB AND MORE DUMB. That silly ass ref during the Serena William's match calling calling a foul for a coaches "thumbs up" gesture. It started a chain reaction. Serena should not have blown her cool. Her racquet toss required a point loss.
Lots of CHEERS Keegan Bradley winning the BMW. Bradley hasn't won since since 2011. Love watching him approach shots: approach, step back, approach a second time. measure, step back, approach, twist club a couple of times. My wife calls him "Nervous Nelly". Nerves off steel at the end against Rose in the playoffs.
More CHEERS for Djokovis wining the US Open. Got a ways to go to tie Federer's 20 Grand Slams, but he's in striking distance of Nadal's 14.
The recent death of my old college roommate and Saint Mary's College basketball teammate, John Shirley prompted this poem.
On Hearing of John’s Death by Tom Meschery
Got an email
from Ron with a poem
about the wind that is a gift
on a day I needed one having heard
of the death of my college roommate,
the best and only one-legged basketball player
in the history of Saint Mary’s College who’d limp
past you for a lay-up if you weren’t careful, so smart
he barely studied his sophomore year and got straight A’s
and nearly drove me out of my mind learning, instead of
reading
the Classics, while I was struggling with the dactylic
hexameter of the Iliad,
how to play one fucking song, Easy Rider on his guitar, the same notes over
and over; and the poem Ron sent me closed with the wind
sounding like
a blues harmonica that arrived, as befits poetic license, all
the way
from Pluto, the farthest planet in the Universe, which is
where,
perhaps, if one does not believe in heaven, my roommate
John is now entering like the wind, the fierce wind
of his life no longer limping but sure footed
past Pluto, past all other undiscovered
planets, their moons and suns
and the dark matter
of our lives.
