Stick To Sports

I feel bad for my friends who are sports bloggers. It goes without saying that I feel bad for a lot of people right now, but this is a sports related post. Sort of. While there have been times over the years when I considered making Sean’s Ramblings exclusively a Pittsburgh sports blog, I always found this limiting. I like writing about my kids or entertainment or just what’s going on in my life. So while I still write about sports, I have never been a traditional sports blogger. So while I can write about various topics, it’s going to be tough for sports bloggers to come up with content over the next few weeks, months, etc. (Unless you have a blog about football and you can spend months writing about Tom Brady.)

Since we're in a country without sporting events taking place, I thought I would share a few things. First, the XFL announced last week that the league won't be playing its regular season games. I assume that means that there won't be a postseason either. You know what this means? I'm the XFL fantasy football league champion!

ESPN has a game called Streak for Cash. It's a monthly contest where you pick various props such as who will win NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB, soccer, and college games. There might also be individual props such as points scored or goals per game. Anyway, whoever gets the most picks correct in a row per month wins $25,000. I've played for years and never come close to winning. Anyway, with no major sports going on, the props have been quite interesting. There's a Singaporean Premier soccer league match. The Russian Super basketball league game. The other night featured whether the first Mega Millions lottery ball would be odd or even. There's even been "The Masked Singer" and "Survivor" props. I'm all for seeing what props appear next!

And now is where this blog post turns dramatically. Want to know one positive thing about the NCAA cancelling the men's and women's basketball tournaments? Liberty University's men's team, who earned an automatic birth, will not get to play. I'm sure that most of the students, faculty, and staff at Liberty University are good people. The problem is the school's president, Jerry Falwell Jr. I wrote about Falwell being a sore loser after the Virginia elections in 2017. Less than two months ago, Falwell tried to get some Virginia counties to secede and join West Virginia (and he's still working on this). This is completely absurd, but I guess it's politics by someone who is supposed to be spiritual leader and educator. He's all for free speech...except when it comes to people at his own school. Oh, Liberty University also owns Freedom Aviation who sells jet fuel to the Pentagon. I'm not sure how that fits into the school's mission.

Now, Falwell is being dangerous. Last Friday, he went on "Fox & Friends" and said, "You know, impeachment didn’t work, and the Mueller report didn’t work, and Article 25 didn’t work and so maybe now this is their next attempt to get Trump,” he said. This meaning the coronavirus.



You can even hear the anger about the school having to cancel residential classes.

University President Jerry Falwell, Jr., said, “We originally believed it was safest to return our students following their spring break instead of having them return following greater exposure opportunities from leaving them in different parts of the country for longer periods. But, the Governor’s recent decision to limit certain gatherings has left us no practical choice because we have so many classes of more than 100 students. We want to provide for the continuity of our students’ education while doing what makes sense to help slow the spread of the coronavirus to our university family and local community.” The school has one of the largest online student populations in the world, so they can of all places can handle social distancing better than most.

The whole point is that Liberty University, meaning specifically Falwell Jr., doesn't need any type of positive exposure from the basketball team. He's the worst.

I'm going to end this post with something good. Here's Will Ferrell being a soccer referee a few weeks ago.

This isn't a movie. Apparently, all of the parents in this league need to volunteer, and he's a parent. The uniform is legit, so it's possible that he really is a certified soccer ref. Just another thing that me and Will have in common!