Week 14 GPR and Other Sports Thoughts

The Grandstander Power Rankings for Week 14 of the NFL:

1. Ravens
2. 49'ers
3. Saints
4. Chiefs

Knocking at the door.....Bills, Packers, Patriots, Seahawks, Steelers, Vikings.

No change at the top; Niners jump two slots; Seahawks fall out; Chiefs are back; Steelers now knocking at the door.

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Speaking of the Steelers, we are destined to have nothing but anxiety-ridden experiences watching this team perform this season. No such thing as an "easy win."  I'm not sure what mirrors Duck Hodges is using in piloting this team to where they currently sit: 8-5 and in a playoff position.  The defense being played by this team is reminiscent of great Steelers teams of the past fifty years, and T.J Watt, if not the NFL Defensive Player of the Year, is easily the team's Most Valuable Player.

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The CFP semi-finals will be LSU-Oklahoma and Ohio State-Clemson.  The dual between Joe Burrow and Jalen Hurts will be fun to watch, and I'm not sure how to go in picking that second match-up.  Should be terrific game, and based upon the scare that Wisconsin put into the Buckeyes on Saturday, the smart pick just might be Clemson, but I'll be rooting for Ohio State (and who thought that I would have ever said that about the school the gave us Woody Hayes, Jim Tressel, and Urban Meyer?) for three reasons: (1) My niece Frances and nephew Brian are students at Ohio State, (2) who outside the state of South Carolina isn't getting tired of Clemson in the CFP every year?, and (3) I would love, love, LOVE to see Dabo Swinney get punched in the mouth, figuratively speaking, of course.

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The "Modern Era Committee" elected Marvin Miller and Ted Simmons into the Baseball Hall of Fame.  I have written about how Miller belongs in the HOF so often in the past that I'm not going to restate it all once more other than to say "It's about effin time."  As for Simmons,  he was for sure a good ballplayer, but nothing about him ever screamed "Hall of Fame" as I watched him play over the years, and you know that it wasn't his stint as Pirates GM back in the day that got him into Cooperstown.

Of local interest was the fact that Dave Parker once again fell short of getting elected, and the vote wasn't even close.  Twelve of sixteen were needed, and the Cobra only received seven votes.  Proponents said that Parker is Hall-worthy because for a "period of time", he was the best player in the game. True, but should a four or five season stretch of brilliance (and Parker was undeniably brilliant during that time) over a 19 year career qualify you for the HOF?  It is a point that is fun to debate.  I also remember how Parker acted when his time in Pittsburgh was coming to an end.  He let himself get fat, out of shape, and his recalcitrance with the media and the fan base left a sour taste in the mouths  of most everyone in Pittsburgh, and I remember THAT aspect of Parker every bit as much as I remember his MVP type seasons with the team.

To his credit, Parker has worked to make himself once again a part of the Pirates family and heritage over the years, and that has helped to make the bitter ending here recede quite a bit.  It would have been nice if he had made it, and, face it, there are guys in the HOF who are less deserving than Parker (like, say, Ted Simmons), but c'est la vie.

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The Pitt Panther football team is headed for the Quick Lane Bowl in Detroit against Eastern Michigan on December 26.  Good luck to them there.  The big question is, will those  precious fifteen extra practice sessions they get from playing in bowl and that coaches love so much help propel them beyond another seven win season in 2020?

H2P.

"The Laundromat"

We watched this movie on Netflix on Friday night.  It was, to say the least, and interesting movie, and I am not sure I can even tell you what it was about.  Money laundering? Corruption in the tangled relationships among lawyers, bankers, and insurance and financial services companies?  Corrupt political systems both here and abroad? It was funny in parts, sad in parts, and it made you feel both angry and helpless against "the system."  It stars Academy Award winners Meryl Streep and Gary Oldman, as well as Antonio Banderas, James Cromwell, and an almost unrecognizable Sharon Stone in a minor role.

WARNING:  If you lean to the right, and like wearing a red baseball cap with gold lettering that promotes a certain political agenda, don't bother seeing this one because you will hate it.  You've been warned.

Two and one-half Stars from The Grandstander.

College Football Championship Weekend and the CFP

It was Conference Championship Weekend in College Football Friday and yesterday, and great works of gridiron art were NOT produced.  Of the five Power Five  championship games, only one of them can be termed an exciting contest:  Oklahoma's 30-23 overtime victory over Baylor.

The Big Ten game held promise of an exciting upset when Wisconsin led Ohio state 21-7 at halftime, but the Buckeyes then got serious and scored 27 unanswered points in the second half to win 34-21, and the game turned into a yawner right after OSU scored within two minutes to open the half.

The other three games featured scores of 37-15, 37-10, and 62-17 (a comment on that one a bit later).  Let's hope that the  semi-final and final CFP games that will be played will all be more competitive and exciting than what we witnessed this weekend.

As I type this at 10:25 on Sunday morning, here's how I see the rankings coming down later today:

1. LSU
2. Clemson
3. Ohio State
4. Oklahoma

The committee could flip-flop Clemson and Ohio State, but since #2 plays #3 on a neutral field in the semis, that ranking is, essentially, meaningless.

As for Clemson, this is the team that I will definitely be rooting against  as the Playoffs unfold.  I switched over from the Ohio State game late last night to see how the ACC game was going.  What I saw was Clemson with the ball inside the Virginia five yard line with less than minute and a half to play, and leading 55-17.  Most coaches, even Bill Bellichick, would have taken a knee right there and let the clock run out.  Not sanctimonious Dabo Swinney, though.  He chose to run it up the gut and win 62-17.  After the game, Dabo, who loves to invoke the Jesus' name when talking about his sacred football program, probably cited a passage in the Bible to justify that play call.  

I can find reasons to root for any of the other three teams, but, like I say, I know what team I DON'T want to see win in the CFP.

Speaking of lopsided scores, did you notice that a team won the PIAA Class 2A state championship on Friday by beating another team 74-7.  The coach, whose name and school I am not going to mention, was quoted in the paper about what a "great victory" this was for his "program."  I mean, honestly, how proud could this coach be of watching his 15, 16, and 17 year old kids beating up on another school's 15,16, and 17 year old kids?

Hey, if an NFL team runs up a score like that on an opponent,  I say "tough shit" to the losing team.  You're pros, so start playing better.  I can even be a little more tolerant of elite NCAA schools doing it, although I still don't like it, as my comment about Swinney above attests.  However, it just ain't right that this happens in a high school game.  I don't know if this coach cleaned his bench in the second quarter and was playing his fifth stringers in the fourth quarter and did nothing but run plays straight into the line.  Maybe he did, or maybe he really tried to run it up like that, but in any event, a 74-7 win is nothing to be proud of.

And this is purely a personal pet peeve, but I have a problem with high schools who talk about their football and basketball "programs."  When I was in high school, my school's football coaches were an algebra teacher and a history teacher.  Neither of them thought that they were Vince Lombardi or Tom Landry, to name the two top coaches of that era.  I believe that they perceived that they were coaching an extracurricular activity, and I am guessing that they thought a "football program" was the booklet sold before the game that listed the players numbers.

Kwickie Kapsule Kritical Kommentaries

Our friend Barbara recommended this documentary to me a few months ago, and I caught up with it earlier in the week.  "Hosted" by Jakob Dylan (who appears to be as laconic in demeanor as his father, Bob), the doc takes you on a terrific ride exploring the pop/folk/rock music scene that centered in the Laural Canyon area of Los Angeles circa 1965-67.  It features interviews with such people as Brian Wilson, David Crosby, Stephen Stills, Graham Nash, Tom Petty, Eric Clapton, Ringo Starr, and Michelle Phillips.  If you are of that era and/or just love that music, I highly recommend it.  Two things that stood out to me: One, the absolute reverence that all of these artists had and continue to have for Brian Wilson, and, two, the scene of a 70-something Stephen Stills laying down a guitar solo track in an LA recording studio.

Three solid Stars from The Grandstander.

O'Connor, Colman, and Menzies

We finished watching Season Three of Netflix' "The Crown", and I think that of all the people that I've spoken to who have watched this, my bride included, I am the only one who has liked it.  The focus of their criticism seems to be "Olivia Colman isn't as likable as Queen Elizabeth as Claire Foy was in the first two seasons."  My response is that Colman is playing a different woman - older, more experienced, perhaps more jaded - in the time period covered (1964-77).   I liked her in it.  I also thought that Tobias Menzies was a better Prince Phillip.  Josh O'Connor as Prince Charles plays a prominent part of this season, a season that portrays Charles as a total boob.

Also of note is Helena Bonham Carter as Princess Margaret.  Fun Fact:  In the 2010 movie "The King's Speech" (which I just re-watched and is a terrific movie, btw), Miss Carter plays Queen Elizabeth, the wife of King George VI and the mother of the the current Queen and the late Princess Margaret.  All she needs to do now is find a vehicle where she would play the current Queen Elizabeth and she will have achieved a Windsor Family Trifecta.

Season Three of "The Crown" gets Three Stars from The Grandstander.

Kracinski and Rapace

We so much enjoyed last year's first season of "Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan", and we were anxiously awaiting this new season.  How much did we like this one?  Not so much.  This one was so implausible that I found myself getting totally PO'd with the total ridiculousness of it.   

WARNING:  The next paragraph contains possible spoilers.  Feel free to skip over it if you haven't watched the entire series as yet.

Have one American special forces soldier fight off a couple of platoons of Venezuelan soldiers?  Sure why not.  And how many times is John Kracinski's Ryan going to disobey orders and go it alone against first, a camp full of vicious mercenaries, and then, even more ridiculous, the entire Venezuelan army, or so it seemed, after every American in the entire country was ordered by the US State Department to evacuate the country.  Screw you all, says Jack, I'm gonna do this MY way.

Okay.  You can go back to reading this post now.

The whole series made me realize why I quit reading Tom Clancy novels after about the third one of these flights of fancy.

One cool aspect of this series was the appearance of Noomi Rapace, the Swedish actress who appeared in all those Girl With the Dragon Tattoo movies.  She's an asset to anything that she's in, but she isn't in this one nearly enough to get "Jack Ryan" any more than Two Stars from The Grandstander.


On a brighter note, an email from Amazon arrived this morning informing us that Season Three of "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel" is now available for viewing.  Can't wait to get into that one soon.

The Week 13 GPR , plus Pirates and Pitt Thoughts

As you have all no doubt been on the edge of your seats awaiting this, here are the Grandstander Power Rankings for the NFL after Week #13:

1. Ravens
2. Seahawks
3. Saints
4. 49'ers

Knocking at the door....Bills, Chiefs, Packers, Patriots, Vikings.

No change in the Top Four teams from last week, but the Saints and 49'ers swapped places.  I wanted to put the Steelers as a team "knocking at the door", but I'm just not ready to do that quite yet.  If I was going on defense alone, they might be in the Top Four.

My pal John Frissora has his FGE top four as follows:

1. Saints
2. Ravens
3. Seahawks
4. Patriots

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The Pittsburgh Pirates were in the news last week with the announcement that Derek Shelton will be their new manager.

In a manner that was so typically Pirates-like, they made this announcement on Wednesday, the day before Thanksgiving when most people, if they were thinking about sports at all, they were thinking about football, and they did it via a press release, and Shelton wasn't even here in town for the announcement.  

Way to get the maximum publicity bang for the buck, Bucs.  Why didn't they just wait until Christmas morning to make the announcement?

Shelton will be formally introduced to the media and to Pittsburgh at a presser on Wednesday (tomorrow) of this week.

Shelton spent the last two years as bench coach of the Twins and, prior to that, was the hitting coach of the Rays for several years.  He combines, according to the press release, both old school baseball knowledge and familiarity with new age analytics/metrics 21st century baseball acumen.  Personally, I am glad the the Pirates went outside of the box and brought in a new face and not some retread who has been hired-and-fired by several teams (Jeff Bannister, e.g.).  Is he the right guy for the Pirates?  Who knows?  

The former Best Management Team In Baseball has now been overhauled and replaced and the BMTIB 2.0 (Williams, Cherington, Shelton) is now on board, but Bob Nutting is still the guy steering the ship and controlling the purse strings.  One thing that the Nutting Administration has done is make me a complete and total cynic when it comes to the performance of the Pirates.  I hate that this is what they have turned me into, but there you are.  I hope, I really, really hope for good things ahead for the Pirates, but I am no longer accepting anything from 115 Federal Street on blind faith.  They've got to show it to me.

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Pitt ended it's 2019 football season by laying two colossal eggs, a 28-0 did-they-even-show-up? loss at Virginia Tech (when a chance for the division title was still there) and a 26-19 loss to Boston College at home on Senior Day. They finish the season at 7-5 with some nondescript to-be-announced bowl game ahead of them.

This is the year-by-year W-L record for Pitt in the Pat Narduzzi Era...8-5, 8-5, 5-7, 7-7, 7-5 = 35-29 (.555).  In ACC play, they have fared slightly better under HCPN...6-2, 5-3, 3-5, 6-3, 4-4 = 24-17 (.585).  

They have won more games than they have lost, they have more often than not put an entertaining product on the field, and there was that ACC Championship game appearance last year, but... Yes, there is always a "but", and it was posed by Joe Starkey and Ron Cook on The Fan yesterday, and that is..."Has the Pitt program improved or moved forward under the HCPN regime?"

I guess it all comes down to what you want your University and its athletic teams to be.   I wonder if even the staunchest Panthers Fanatic out there would like his or her University to surrender its soul to the likes of Nick Saben or Urban Meyer and all that that entails just to have a string of double digit wins seasons.  Be careful what you wish for.

And bring on the Mienecke Car Care Pizza Pizza Weedeater Bowl!

Steelers 20 - Browns 13

In professional sports, all wins and losses count the same in the standings, statistically speaking.  Emotionally, however, it's a different story, and some wins are way, way sweeter than others.  The Steelers 20-13 win over the Browns yesterday was one of those, and we all know the reasons why.  To wit....

• It was the Browns, and it's always great to beat the heated rival from Cleveland.
• Those same Browns acted unbelievable chesty after their 21-7 win against the Steelers two weeks ago, so how great was it to see them humbled by the guy who, when training camp began, was the Steelers undrafted, free agent, training-camp-arm fourth string quarterback?
• The manner in which the Browns owners (Dee Haslam wearing that Myles Garrett stocking cap at last week's game), head coach (Freddie "The Buffoon" Kitchens wearing a "Pittsburgh Started It" t-shirt out in public, and at the Mr. Rogers movie with his family, no less), players (Garrett deciding eight days after the fact that, yeah, Mason Rudolph used a racial slur against him), and fans (the Mason Rudolph pinata in the parking lot last week), it all added up to making the Steelers comeback from a 0-10 deficit and sticking it to that team and all of those folks just so, so sweet
• (Browns owner Jimmy Haslam - Dee is his wife - was at one time a minority owner of the Steelers.  He obviously never learned anything about how to act graciously or how to effectively run a football team in those years that he was hanging around the Steelers' offices on the South Side.)

So the Steelers now sit at 7-5 and hold the sixth and final AFC Playoff spot "if the season ended today."  This is an almost unbelievable state of affairs given all of the circumstances that have surrounded the team this year, first and foremost being the loss of their bound-for-the-HOF quarterback at halftime of the second game of the season.  The Tomlin Haters, inexplicably, are still out there, but he has as strong a case to make for Coach of the Year as any other HC in the NFL this season.

And that fourth string quarterback?  

 Duck Hodges

Devlin "Duck" Hodges has now started two games and won them both.  He also came in relief in another one and pulled victory from the jaws of defeat last week in Cincinnati.  He has now developed a full scale cult following here amongst Steelers fans.  A colorful nickname and an underdog back story can do the for you.  I admit that I had no expectations for neither the team nor Hodges going into that one yesterday, which made the results all the more satisfying.

Of course, the season does not end today, so, what lies ahead for Rooney U?

•  @ Cardinals.  The Steelers should be favored in this one and should come away with a Win.
• Bills @ home.  The Bills are now 9-3 and had a coming out party on national TV against the Cowboys on Thursday.  When the schedule was released in April, this looked like a sure W, but now so much now.  Two terrific defenses going against each other.  Either team could win this one, but the final score might be 10-7 or 9-6.  Bet the "Under" on this one.
• @ Jets.  The Jets stink.  They lost to the Bengals yesterday, for God's sake.  This should be a W.
• @ Ravens.  Unless John Harbaugh decides to rest all his starters for the playoffs, the Steelers aren't going to beat Baltimore.  In fact, the Ravens could very well run the table right up to the Super Bowl in Miami in February.

The Steelers could, conceivably come out of this season at 9-7 or 10-6 and be playing in the Post-Season.  Would you have bet on that when they were at 1-4 with Big Ben out for the season?

"The Irishman"

So Mrs. Grandstander and I decided upon a Saturday Night at the Movies date night this weekend, and settled in to watch perhaps the most anticipated movie of 2019, Martin Scorsese's "The Irishman", and what can I tell you, it did not disappoint.

This is an epic of a movie.  Three and one-half hours long and and all-star "mob movie" cast of Robert De Niro, Al Pacino, and Joe Pesci.  It is the story of the rise of Frank Sheeran (De Niro), the Irishman of the title, within both the Mob in Philadelphia and the Teamsters Union of the 1960's, and how he became a favorite of both mob leader Russell Bufalino (Pesci) and teamsters head man Jimmy Hoffa (Pacino).  It has all the trademarks of Scorsese - the long single take that takes us through the halls of a nursing home (and a few other such takes elsewhere in the film), the sound track featuring period music, the voice over narration of the main protagonist, and the freeze frame shots of characters that tell us "whatever became of" them.  "The Irishman" is reminiscent of all great Scorsese movies, and it is just as good, and perhaps better, than all of them.

The main thrust of the movie is the story of "what the hell happened to Jimmy Hoffa, anyway?"  Scorsese and screenwriter Steven Zallian posit their theory on how Hoffa came to his end, and I won't spoil it for you.  There are so many great scenes in this movie.  One of my favorites involved a meeting between Hoffa and mobster Tony Provenzano (played by Stephen Graham, who played Al Capone in "Boardwalk Empire") wherein Tony Pro is late for his meeting - an unforgivable sin with Hoffa - and most of the meeting is the back-and-forth between the two of them as to why you should never be late for a meeting, per Hoffa, and who-gives-a-shit-I'm-here-now, per Tony Pro.  Fantastic.

The three stars are great. No surprise with De Niro, who's always great. Pesci plays a very different type of mobster, not the bombastic, fly off the handle type you are used to seeing him as, but quiet and perhaps even more chilling.  And Al Pacino will probably get an Oscar nomination for his portrayal of Jimmy Hoffa.  

I really, really liked the movie, but I wish that I could have seen it in a movie theater.  As I wrote about earlier in the month, this is a Netflix production that was released to a few theaters in selected cities for a three week period so as to qualify for the Academy Awards and then pulled and sent straight to the streaming service.  I would like to have had the experience of seeing it on a big screen with a crowd of people in a theater, but this is the wave of the future, so I guess that there is no point shouting at the clouds about it.  And with its three and one-half hour length, I was able to hit PAUSE for both a bathroom break and a break to get myself a dish of ice cream, so there is that.

About that length.  At first, I was put off at the thought of it.  Hey, a good movie should be no more than two ours, tops, amiright?  After watching "The Irishman", though, I can't think of any part or parts of it that were superfluous or that could have been done away with to tighten it up.

One final thing.  The movie is based on a book by  Charles Brandt called "I Heard You Paint Houses".  You can guess what "painting houses" is a euphemism for.  Anyway, both the opening title and the closing credits did not say "The Irishman", rather they said "I Heard You Paint Houses".  Wonder what was up with that? 

"The Irishman" gets the full Four Stars from The Grandstander.