What’s Going On Tries to Make Fetch Happen

Soccer: still not a thing in America. Molly McManimie on the US Soccer teams:

Even with all the love and attention the USWNT did receive, I don’t think people fully grasped just how big that World Cup team and run were. One of the best sports teams in the history of ALL sports.

— Molly McManimie (@MolllyMack) January 11, 2020

I’m just imagining if the men made the same run and how big of a deal that would be. The support was amazing but I still think the country slightly took it for granted.

— Molly McManimie (@MolllyMack) January 11, 2020

To the first point, while the run the 2019 USWNT had was certainly impressive, they weren’t even the best team in sports in 2019 (How is is anyone other than LSU football?), so let’s pump the brakes on the all-time talk. As for the men, the ceiling on a potential USMNT run is the Miracle on Ice. Hockey was more popular in America before the Miracle on Ice than soccer is now and 40 years later, hockey is still the #4 sport in America, and the gap isn’t particularly small. Game 7 0f the 2019 Stanley Cup Final was the most-watched Final game in 46 years with 8.72 million viewers and was beaten soundly by game 7 of the World Series (23.01 million viewers, fewest all-time for a game 7, by the way) and game 6 of the NBA Finals (18.34 million). A USMNT run in the World Cup would capture people’s attention for a month, maybe make people care long enough to carry into the Women’s World Cup the following year, there would be a Disney movie at some point, and then people would go back to not caring about soccer for two years and eleven months. We’ll see how much attention the USMNT gets in 2022, provided they make the tournament, as the 2022 World Cup will take place during the heart of football season.

Going, going, gone. MLB.com put out a list of the 10 greatest baseball video games ever made. #1 [Spoiler Alert] was a no-brainer:

1. MVP Baseball 2005

game so good, it can never die. Despite coming out nearly 15 years ago and multiple gaming systems ago, there is still a modding community dedicated to updating rosters so that players can continue playing this every year.

While gameplay is smooth, with some of the best mechanics any sports game has ever featured, MVP Baseball’s greatest strength lies in its franchise mode that allows players to build dynasties over 120 years. With two levels of the Minor Leagues, including real MiLB logos, players could finally undertake realistic rebuilding efforts or create unstoppable powerhouses with fresh rookies supplanting the roster.

EA Sports lost the license the following year and hasn’t produced an MLB game since. Honestly, that may be for the best, given the quality of the last few Maddens and what NBA Live had devolved into before that title was cancelled. You either die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain. 2K put out a baseball game for a few years that was okay, but never truly filled the hole MVP Baseball left, then that series was cancelled, leaving the PlayStation-exclusive MLB: The Show was the only baseball simulation standing.

Who? Kealia Ohai, fiancee of J.J. Watt and professional soccer player in the NWSL, was traded from Houston to Chicago. Watt was not please at how ABC Houston broke the news on Twitter.

This headline is trash.
Kealia Ohai (which is her name by the way, since you didn’t even bother to mention it) is incredible entirely on her own merit and deserves to be treated as such.
Be better than this. https://t.co/82GMrYOv9U

— JJ Watt (@JJWatt) January 7, 2020

We went through this in Chicago during the 2016 Summer Olympics when then-Chicago Bear Mitch Unrein’s wife, Corey Cogdell-Unrein, won bronze in trapshooting. Your author had never heard of trapshooting, and given that he is significantly more sports-obsessed than the average person, case in point – this blog exists, guesses he is not alone. Accordingly, your author had never heard of Corey Cogdell-Unrein and would not have ever heard of her were it not for the Bears connection. People got bent out of shape anyway, because I guess the Chicago Trubune is supposed to devote space in their paper to comprehensive women’s trapshooting coverage. This situation is a little different, given that Ohai did play for a Houston team, but even so, without the connection to Watt, the vast majority of the responses to the story of her trade would have been “Who?” In both the Watt and Unrein instances, the media outlet in question should have included the name of the significant other in the headline, but beyond that, getting upset about linking a not very famous person to a famous person in telling a story about said not very famous person is ridiculous.

What do a National Championship-winning coach and The Boogeyman have in common? A great Coach O story from Pardon My Take:

Since were doing Coach O stories today. Here’s the GOAT story from the one and only pic.twitter.com/a3inuu7PHU

— Big Cat (@BarstoolBigCat) January 8, 2020

How in the world was any non-Clemson fan rooting for Dabo Swinney over this guy?

Twitter: @KSchroeder_312

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