From The Sports Desk

An alternative title to this post could be Retired Old Man Spends Entire Saturday Watching Sports on TV.  

There's a lot to report here and it's almost all good news, but the Sports Desk's basic dilemma is that either a) you already know all this because you're interested in sports and we've nothing new to tell you, or b) you're not interested in sports and therefore don't care what we have to say about yesterday's games.  But the Sports Desk has to get it off their chests (there's really no restraining them at this point), and even though they've got their own little blog, here they go again on this one.  

We'll get the bad news out of the way first.

The Red Sox lost yesterday.  To the Yankees.  In Fenway Park.  The reigning World Series champions are now mired in third place in the AL East, 16.5 games behind New York, and seven games back in the wild-card standings.  With 20 games left to the season, it's still mathematically possible that they could make the playoffs, as four of those remaining games are against Tampa Bay, who currently lead the wild-card race. If Boston wins those four games AND somehow manages to win three more of the remaining games than does Tampa Bay, they could qualify as the wild-card team . . . and then in all likelihood probably lose to the Yankees in a seven-game playoff series. 

But it's still a chance, a hope, even though it's obviously not the Red Sox' time, despite last year's World Series triumph. But things are definitely looking a lot better for the reigning Super Bowl champion New England Patriots.

In one of the biggest sports stories of the year, the Patriots acquired former Pittsburgh Steelers wide receiver and punt returner Antonio Brown.  As you probably know, Brown led the NFL in receiving yards in 2014 and 2017, and was the first player in NFL history to have more than 1,000 yards receiving and returning in the same season.  However, his relationship with the Steelers, especially QB Ben Roethlisberger, had soured and earlier this year he requested a trade. He wound up in Oakland, where the Raiders made him the highest-paid receiver in the league, but yesterday, following several off-field incidents, including a confrontation with the team's GM, the Raiders released him before he had played even a single regular-season game. The Patriots had tried previously to sign Brown, but Pittsburgh refused to trade him to their AFC rival, so New England snapped him up as soon as he became available early yesterday afternoon.

This is huge news, and the already talent-rich Patriots just got that much better. The thought of Tom Brady aiming one of his perfectly-spiraled passes toward a receiver as talented as Antonio Brown should send shivers down the spines of the rest of the league.  The deal hardly seems fair to those other teams, those mere mortals toiling along the sidelines of the league, and the usual on-line commentators are already cooking up the conspiracy theories that inevitably go along with anything the Patriots do. New England didn't have to give up any draft choices to get Brown, while Oakland had to give up two to Pittsburgh for the "privilege" of having him abuse the team for the whole off-season and then go running off to play for a better team.  Was this all a brilliantly choreographed plot by New England to acquire Brown from the very beginning?  Was there, dare we say it?, collusion between Oakland and New England to steal him away from Pittsburgh? 

We look forward to hearing all these conspiracy theories and more in the months ahead, but right now, Pittsburgh must be so mad over losing their star receiver to their arch-rival for so little compensation.  They must be dying to take out their frustration on the Patriots.  When do the two teams get to play and take it out on each other on the field?  Let's take a look at the schedule and see . . . there it is!  Tonight! The play each other tonight! Unfortunately, Antonio Brown is ineligible to play in the game (he didn't make the roster in time), but there's going to be a lot of open hostility in this already contentious match up, beyond the usual Brady-vs-Roethlisberger hype (friendly reminder that Roethlisberger has been accused of sexual assault on multiple occasions and was suspended for 4 games in 2010 and ordered to undergo "professional behavior evaluation."  Nice guy).  Should be a good game to watch.

But enough about pro sports - Saturday afternoon was spent watching college football, and the University of Georgia Bulldogs demolished Murray State 63-17 yesterday.  Murray State played surprisingly well and even put a little scare in the Dogs in the 1st Quarter by tying the game up at 7 points, but Georgia responded with a 35-point 2nd Quarter and never really looked back from there.  QB Jake Fromm didn't even play the second half and finished the day at 10-for-11 with 166 yards and one TD.  

Former Bulldog Justin Fields had a much better day at Ohio State, beating Cincinnati 42-0 and going 20-for-25 and 224 yards, with two TD passes and two rushing TDs.  The Sports Desk wonders how long Fields will have us in the unusual (for us) position of cheering for Ohio State.

Former Bulldog Jake Eason didn't fare as well at Washington, which lost to California by a single point, 20-19, after a last-second field goal by Cal.  Eason went 18-for-30 and 162 yards, was intercepted once and sacked three times.  A rough day to be sure, but they still almost won, if not for that one late field goal.

Finally, in probably the best game yesterday, the sixth-ranked LSU Tigers went to Austin and beat ninth-ranked Texas, 45-38.  The Austin crowd was amped up, loud and confident, Matthew McConaughey was there on the sidelines cheering the Longhorns on, and the Texas fans even taunted the entire SEC with reminders of Coach Tom Herman's past wins against the conference, including last year's Sugar Bowl win over a dispirited Georgia team.

Texas expected to win but instead trailed the entire game. To their credit, the Longhorns played tough and kept coming back, coming to within two points of LSU twice in the second half, but LSU held on and prevailed. And since the Longhorns were the ones to bring up conference comparisons, LSU's victory proved once again the SEC's superiority over the Big 12, despite claims of Tom Herman's mastery, and revealed how over-hyped teams from the State of Texas actually are.  The new rankings that came out today have LSU moved up to No. 4, just behind No. 3 Georgia, and Texas dropped down to No. 12.

And that was the day yesterday.  The two games tonight, Game 3 of the Red Sox-Yankees series and New England vs. Pittsburgh, are both on at the same time, so we anticipate some channel surfing but with a bias toward the more-intriguing Patriots' game.  

And then everything should go back to normal again.