Giant-Watch: Preseason Game #1

I don't know how good the Jets' defense is, but Giants rookie QB Daniel Jones looked about a million times better than I thought he would look in his preseason debut.  The Giants' O-Line looked better, too, even when the Jets brought extra pressure.

CFB Roundtable: Duke at Pitt, 2018

The Yankees played a doubleheader yesterday, and I cooked dinner on the grill in between the games.  I put Duke at Pitt, 2018, on outside while I cooked, and man, am I ever glad that I did.

CFB Roundtable: Final Thoughts on Daniel Jones and the NY Giants

I’ve been back and forth in my head about whether or not to write this.  On the one hand, the Giants draft infuriated me so badly that I feel like I have to talk about it, or else I’ll scream.  But then again, everybody and their brother has already written something about the draft.  It’s not clear that the universe needs my particular thoughts.

Part of the reason that I’m actually doing this, and that I’m doing it here, is that we’ve been over this at some length as an As For Football (AFF) staff, and not to put too fine a point on it, but nothing that’s not directly tied to Army Football is really on the menu over there.  We’ve got two sponsors now, and we’re growing, and things are generally pretty great.  However, our audience is a distinctly Army Football audience.  My dream of doing a weekly CFB Roundtable podcast are on indefinite hold, and any coverage of other teams and/or other aspects of the sports are also out at least for the foreseeable future.  My long-term goal for the site is to cover not only Army Football but also the football that Army fans are watching.  But there’s no consensus as to exactly what that means, nor has any of that stuff drawn enough interest to make it worthwhile.  Meanwhile, we need to actively resist taking focus away from stuff that’s actually working.

I’m not sure how to handle it.  Part of me feels like I should just do CFB Roundtable here, and if there’s an audience for it, maybe that will create some kind of opportunity.  We’ll see how it goes as the season progresses.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Thanksgiving has become one of my favorite days of the year.  There aren't any presents to worry about, lots of football is on TV, and we have abundant friends to keep us in good cheer.  It's great!  This year, we're headed over to our friends Bruce and Tammy's house.  I don't even have to grill the turkey because Bruce is doing it.

I'm getting over!

5 Things on a Friday: @ Duke

We’ve got a game tonight.  You may say that it’s not a big game, but Duke Head Football Coach David Cutcliffe and his players would probably not agree with you.

Duke HC David Cutcliffe says the practice after last season’s loss to Army might have been the best practice of his career. Says he slept well that night pic.twitter.com/MqSNav902m

— Jeff Jones (@JeffJonesSports) July 18, 2018

You think these guys don’t want it?  They circled this one on the calendar before last season even ended.

5 Things on a Friday: Showing Your Work

Good morning, folks!  It’s Week 3 of the preseason, which means we might see some actual starters in uniform tonight, and college football kicks off tomorrow!

Hallelujah!  Our long national nightmare is almost over.

5 Things on Friday: Football Begins!

Truth is, I didn't love the Giants' first preseason game even though it started with a bang.

Welcome to the NFL @saquon! First game, first play!!! #CLEvsNYG pic.twitter.com/OpukgNsiJX

— New York Giants (@Giants) August 9, 2018

After that, things slowed considerably.  The Giants' revamped O-Line looked maybe a little better than they were last year, but their second stringers were terrible, and backup QB Davis Webb, would-be star of the preseason, was not good at all.  Starting QB Eli Manning wound up 4/7 for 26 yards.  He took a sack, made a terrible pass via miscommunication to TE Rhett Ellison that should have been intercepted, and was victimized by two really egregious drops.  One went to a backup wide receiver on a quick out; the other came on a well-timed screen play to RB Jonathan Stewart.  Both should have been first downs.

5 Things on a Friday: Bucket Hats for Everyone

Let go!

NFL Preview: NFC East

We’re back, folks.

Yup.  That’s right.  My friend Joe and I are back with another season of preternaturally accurate NFL seasonal predictions.  As we did last season, Joe will be covering the AFC over on his blog A Hoosier on the Potomac.  I’ll be doing the NFC right here, starting with this week’s post on the Black and Blue Division, the NFC East.

5 Things on a Friday: Football Season is Coming!

The New York Giants reported to training camp this week along with the rest of the NFL.  With that, my buddy Joe and I scheduled the new season of our now annual four-week NFL divisional previews.   The NFC will be here again during the week while Joe covers the AFC over at A Hoosier on the Potomac on weekends.  I think Joe said he was going to run his columns on Sundays, but don’t hold me to that.  Mine will run on Thursdays.

Live shot of Eli Manning and the NY Giants in training camp.

More to the point, I’ve personally got a lot of football scheduled for the next few weeks.  It starts Tuesday with the return of weekly Army Football Preview posts, and then we’re off.

Let’s do it!

5 Things on a Friday: We Need More Instagram

I went back and forth this week on how many serious articles I should run.  The news has been so grim, though, no matter where you turn, so I decided to keep it light.  I mean, I don’t know that I’m any more optimistic than you are, but I will say that I don’t want to dive any deeper into the garbage pail than I have to through my writing.  

No one wants that, do they?

5 Things on a Friday: The Saga of Greg Schiano

As a cadet, I at no time expected that it would ever be easier to be a fan of Army Football than it is to be a fan of the Tennessee Volunteers.  But here we are.

Honestly, I'm glad that my father did not live to see the destruction of his beloved Vols, but I also kind'a wish that I could rub it in, too.

5 Things on a Friday: The Mad Pooper’s Revenge!

Happy Friday, folks.  It’s a crazy world out there.

Finally!

5 Things on a Friday: The Last Saturday Night EVER!

We’re back!

The hiatus was unintentional, but I hope you missed me nonetheless.  Did you miss me?

5 Things on a Friday: Farewell My Bluefish

Happy Friday, everyone.  The forecast this week is for sun with a chance of Nuclear Winter.

Enjoy!

5 Things on a Friday: Move Over, Babe Ruth!

The Yankees are on a roll, the Giants took a pass-catching tight end, and the Bluefish open tonight at Harbor Yards.  

We’ve got a lot to talk about, folks.  Let’s get to it.

Friday Mad Science: Putting Ourselves Back Together

I feel better.  

I suffer from a touch of Seasonal Affective Disorder, which I would personally argue is not a disorder, exactly, considering that most people struggle when they don’t get enough sunlight.  But whatever.  My symptoms are complicated by the reality that I work in a windowless bunker in Midtown Manhattan, and they were complicated even more this past weekend when temperatures in New York and Connecticut dipped into the single digits alongside several days of snow and overcast skies.  I usually deal with my SAD by swimming and bike commuting, but I couldn’t get to the pool early in the week, and with the weather, cycling was impossible as well.  This left me with far too much energy, too many ugly brain chemicals, and not enough light.  At exactly the same time, I was also dealing with some profoundly negative thoughts about a project I’ve allowed to become entirely too personal.  By midday on Tuesday, I was bouncing off the walls.  I found myself snapping at my wife and indulging some rather nasty fantasies…  This was not good.

I finally got to the pool Tuesday night, and it was a Godsend.  My main sets were as follows.

Back to Life, Back to Reality

It's Sunday, but after more than a week off, we're back to the grind today.  I have to swim, iron, and get to the grocery store, and tomorrow I have to go into New York City and do actual work.  My phone tells me that I have more than a hundred sixty-five emails waiting for me, and that's after I've had my out-of-office assistant on all week telling people not to bother trying to contact me.

Sally took this picture yesterday at Pier A in Hoboken.

What can you do?  We've got to pay the bills.

5 Things on a Friday: On Knowing Evil When You See It

It’s been a disturbing week in American political life.  Normally, I really enjoy politics--and especially this year’s presidential primary race--but this week it became clear that Donald Trump is not only going to win the Republican nomination, he’s going to do it using a Fascist, neo-White Supremacist platform, and there’s not a damned thing that anyone can do about it.

It’s disturbing.  I’m not a Trump supporter, but I am a Republican, and I don’t know what the Hell has happened to the party that I grew up in.  

The party of Abraham Lincoln and Theodore Roosevelt--heck, of Dwight Eisenhower and more recently, of arch-pragmatist George H.W. Bush--has abandoned compromise and the essential forms of democratic government so completely that its own core supporters no longer understand the difference between reasoned discourse and hate-speech.  Republicans have vilified the President, who is a good man regardless of his being on the wrong side of a number of important policy issues, to the point where we can’t now look at an actual villain and see him for what he is.

This is not the way our government is supposed to work.  Honestly, I keep wondering if this is what conservative, patriotic Germans thought in the 1930s as they watched a demagogue rise up, take over their country, and turn it into a dictatorship.

Hitler did not represent the natural course of German historic evolution, but he sure as shit convinced people that he did, and look what that got us.  Or, to put it another way, what the fuck is wrong with people?

5 Things on a Friday: 80s Sci Fi Comes Roaring Back

It’s Friday, folks.  Wahoo!  Let's get ready to party!!!