Happy Hanukkah everyone! It's that time of year when I share Hanukkah videos from around the world. With the tradition of pickles at Hanukkah growing each year (at least in my mind), I was curious to see if 2025 Hanukkah videos mentioned pickles or at least showed pickles in the background. Enter the dream collaboration of Monty Pickle and Kosha Dillz!
Monty Pickle has lots of wonderful Hanukkah content. Here's the dreidel song as an opera.
On to videos without talking/singing pickles. The rivalry between Six13 and Maccabeats might be at a level never seen before. They both have K-Pop Demon Hunters themed Hanukkah songs this year.
Maccabeats include dancing pigs in their video but not a pickle?!? C'mon!
Y Studs enters the chat with a Jonas Brothers medley.
Huge credit to the Miami Boys Choir is keeping donuts on their desks without eating them.
So many a cappella groups! We need other songs and activities.
And for real little kids, there are some cartoons including one by Cocomelon.
Again, no pickles other than Monty Pickle. I challenge artists and educators to include pickles in their 2026 Hanukkah songs and videos.
PAWRA's BACK, ALRIGHT! If you don't remember what PAWRA is, and really why would you know this, PAWRA stands for Pittsburgh Athletes with World-Renowned Athletes. Previous posts include Kenny Pickett with Wayne Gretzky, DeAngelo Williams with Christian Pulisic, and Sidney Crosby with Maria Sharapova. Well, we got a good one today. Pictured below is Kevin Durant, currently a member of the Houston Rockets and likely one of the 20-best NBA players of all time with Evgeni Malkin, Kris Letang, and Boko Imama of the Pittsburgh Penguins.
The Rockets visited the Dallas Mavericks on Saturday night, and with the Penguins playing the Stars the following evening, it appears that Malkin, Letang, and Imama enjoyed a night out. In case you're wondering, Boko is listed at 6'1", Geno at 6'5", and Kris at 6'0". They look like me if I was pictured with them! No word on if Durant had any idea who he took a picture with. And did the Pens players not want a picture with Anthony Davis or Cooper Flagg?
I've been thinking about writing some variation of this post for a very long time. It’s long. I’ll include some videos to provide a break.
If you watch or listen to sports on television, radio, online, or in person, you are inundated with advertisements for sports betting. All of the professional sports leagues and some (many?) individual sports teams have partnerships with various gambling companies such as FanDuel, DraftKings, and BetMGM. Even if you are able to ignore the commercials, the announcers give live odds with graphics showing them. ESPN highlights scores and schedules via the scroll on the bottom of the screen but will also show game odds. It's impossible to avoid sports betting. More on this momentarily.
Virginia legalized sports betting in April 2020. Online sportsbooks started accepting wages in early 2021. I downloaded the BetRivers app several months after that. I got some type of sign-up bonus and deposited maybe $50 or $100 of my own. I was down to the last few dollars in my account for the 2022 NCAA men's basketball tournament championship between Kansas and North Carolina. I had some type of bonus bet where I picked Kansas to win the national title before the tournament began and would get a pretty good payout if the Jayhawks won. If I lost, I told myself that I wasn't going to make another deposit, and I would be done with sports betting. Kansas won, so I won.
First break!
I signed up for FanDuel in October 2022 and transitioned away from BetRivers. I started on DraftKings in February 2023, probably thanks to some type of Super Bowl promotion. I don't think that my initial deposit on either site was more than $10. While I'm not 100% sure of the accuracy, in my three years on FanDuel, I believe I have won about $150. I think I'm up around $500 on DraftKings. That sounds pretty good, and winning is definitely better than losing, but I'm starting to think I have a problem.
What concerns me most about the prevalence of sports betting is the impact on kids, primarily for those from the ages of about 12-25. (And yes, I know that people in their 20s aren't really kids.) Actually, it's not the prevalence of sports betting; it's how easy it is to bet which is concerning. I knew a bookie when I was in college. I made one wager with him on the January 1996 Steelers-Cowboys Super Bowl and that was it. I've also made a few bets at sportsbooks when visiting Las Vegas over the years. In both those cases, you had to physically go somewhere to make a bet. Now, all you have to do is download an app and you can make bets on all kinds of things 24/7. Sure, wagers on football (NFL and college), baseball, and basketball are probably the most common in America, but you can wager on anything. Snooker, badminton, tennis matches in Argentina or Indonesia. Any soccer league in the world. There is always the opportunity to make a wager on a live sporting event. And yes, I'm guilty of doing this.
Here's a video of me in Iceland going between the tectonic plates separating Europe and North America!
Lucy (my cat) often wakes me up around 5:00 AM. After I feed her, I regularly go on my phone to check email, see if anything big is happening in the world, and find out whether I won or lost bets from the previous night. I've also been known to make a wager on some live tennis or soccer matches without knowing anything about the players or teams. I should probably mention that I historically wager about $10-$15 a day. Nearly all of my wagers are $1. Sometimes, I go crazy and make a $2 bet on a game. Relatively low stakes, but I spend way more time on betting sites than I should. I also follow at least a dozen sports betting people on Twitter and check out a few different sports betting shows online. As I wrote above, I've had some success, and winning money is obviously better than losing. However, the issue isn't the money. It's the time. I don't think I want to know how much money I've made per hour spent on the betting sites or reading/following bettors. It must be insignificant. Actually, what’s even worse for me is the FanDuel Faceoff app. You play various cards or strategy games (such as Freecell solitaire and Boggle) against people for money. Even when you when, FanDuel wins. And when you lose, FanDuel wins more. By the way, I'm glad there wasn't a Minesweeper game like this when I was in college. I would still be in debt.
While I try to hide it from them, my kids have seen me on the sports betting apps. The Moose (14) seems to only care about sports. He loves ESPN. I'm pretty sure he's seen the Bad Beats segments they have on Sportscenter. Although I don't watch Pat McAfee, I know that he does, and there's probably some sort of gambling aspect on the show. (At a minimum, ESPN shows odds on the bottom scroll.) The Moose recently asked me how old you need to be to bet on sports. I was leaning towards stopping sports betting before he asked me this, but this sealed it. Do as I say, not as I do doesn't really work. It's time to delete the apps, but it's not that easy. And this is another way that the sports gambling sites get you. Courtesy of some boosts, I have several season-long wagers. I have $10 (to pay out $21.50) on the Steelers making the playoffs. $5 (to pay out $10.45) on Sidney Crosby having more regular season points than Jack Hughes of the New Jersey Devils. $10 (to pay out $27.40) on the Washington Wizards winning over 20.5 games. (As I'm typing this, the Wizards are 3-16. I thought they could win 25% of their games. Looks like I have chosen poorly.)
With the cash out option gone, it seems like these apps will remain on my phone through the end of the NHL and NBA seasons until these bets are settled.*
The Moose is probably one of thousands if not millions of people asking the same questions. When can I start betting? How much money can I make? When The Moose asked me about sports betting, I tried to explain to him that the reason there are so many betting commercials is because the sports books are making millions of dollars.
I don't think I shared this story before. I got my Masters degree in Higher Education and Student Affairs. For one of my classes, two of my classmates and I did a small research project on gambling among students at our school. I remember very little about this. I'm sure we had some theories or conclusions, but I don't recall what they were. However, at around the same time as we finished a paper, I attended a student affairs conference and went to a session about gambling among college students. The basics of the session was that there was a lot of programming and resources dedicated to combating binge drinking and alcohol abuse. There was nothing about gambling prevention/education and very little research into this. I really could have done a substantial paper/project about gambling among college students with one of my professors, but I was too lazy. I was already overwhelmed trying to balance school and work. I didn't have the time or energy to do a project in my "spare time." All of this is to write that I truly hope there's more research and activities about this now. I can't imagine how many college students are addicted to sports betting and how many are in debt.
To start, I'm going to delete the FanDuel Faceoff app and unfollow some accounts on Twitter. Then, I need to lead by example and completely stop betting.
* Though not the point of this post, I'm sure there's a way to delete the apps, download them again in April or May, and cash out, and then delete the apps again.
I’m not an economist, but I’m going
to play one on the internet today. I mean, I have a minor in International
Business, so that has to count for something. Basically, I learned that culture
is important in business. And guns and butter are a thing.
Which brings me to gas prices. They
can differ significantly depending on location and time of year. There are
taxes involved, which impacts the price, as well as supply and demand. For
example, with millions of people traveling for Thanksgiving and more people
needing gas, you can expect prices to increase. There's also microeconomics and macroeconomics. I'm just going to write economic terms!
All of this brings me to a gas
station a few miles from my Northern Virginia home. Last week, I dropped off my
two younger kids at school and got gas for the car. The price was $2.759 per
gallon. Nearly 12 hours later, I returned to the same gas station and the price
was $3.099 per gallon, an increase of 34 cents. Knowing that this would be
pointless, I went inside the store to ask for an explanation. The guy simply
said that they have no control over the pricing as this is done by corporate.
So my next step was contacting
corporate. While I won't say the name of the gas company, the first three letters
are the same as a star closer to Mercury and Venus than Earth. It's also very hot. Anyway, this
company passed me on to their partner, who has free Slurpees on a specific day
in July, since they own and operate this location.
This is the message I received:
Thank you for contacting us with
your question about the change in fuel price at our location in redacted. Although I do not have the specific metrics as to why the price
changed yesterday I do know that our Fuel department felt the need to change
the price throughout all of Northern Virginia. The prices may go up or
down several times a weeks for any number of reasons. I appreciate your
interest in this matter and for being a loyal customer.
Now my turn:
I appreciate your quick response.
While I certainly understand that gas prices may fluctuate regularly, an
increase of 34 cents per gallon on the same day seems extreme. I'm just trying
to figure out an explanation of why there was such a significant increase in
such a short amount of time. Are there any specific reasons?
Naturally, I haven't
heard anything back from my email. There wasn't a natural disaster in Northern Virginia causing disruptions in getting gas to the station. Instead of speculating, let's play a game. Please leave your
guess (real or silly) as to why gas prices at this particular station went up
so much.
There are certain types of shampoos or lotions that open by twisting the cap, so it pops up. Here's a picture since I'm probably explaining this poorly.
It looks simple enough to open. You twist the top either left or right once or twice around, and the pump pops up. Except that it's never that easy. I find that I turn the top hundreds of times without success. And it's not like this happens only occasionally. This happens at least half the time we get these types of bottles.
Look, I know there's videos about how to successfully open these containers, but how about someone coming up with a design to make this much easier and less complicated!
By the way, from the video above, how much of the product are you wasting just to open the stupid container?!?
I take pictures
for myself and my family, and I like to share some of them online. And then
they sit on my phone for months if not years. So today, I'm putting together a
post showing some of the things I saw and did over the last few months.
I took my kids
to a high school baseball game in the late spring, and Pedro Tulo noticed
the ring of the guy sitting next to us. It turns out that he is a retired
baseball scout who spent most of his career in the Detroit Tigers organization.
This ring is from the team winning the American League in either 2006 or 2012.
I ended up talking with him for much of the game but the
conversation mostly focused on Northern Virginia high school baseball. He
still likes going to games.
The Baseball
Project is a band who sings songs about baseball. They have a song about Ted
Williams. A song about how Dale Murphy should be in the Hall of Fame. The video
below is part of a song about Harvey Haddix and perfect games from when I saw
them in September. I should probably mention that two members of The Baseball
Project are Peter Buck and Mike Mills. They were also in another band you may
have heard of called R.E.M.
To various
degrees, my kids are all obsessed with sports. So every once in a while, I try
to mix in a little culture. Twice over the last few months, I was able to mix
sports and culture. In June, I took The Moose to Round House Theatre to see a
2-man show titled "King James." The show takes place in Cleveland and
has four quarters: LeBron James' rookie season, after LeBron leaves, when he
returns, and when the Cavs win the NBA Championship. Yes, there's plenty of
sports talk, but the show is really about the relationship/friendship of the
two characters over this time.
Then, last
month, I took The Moose and Pedro Tulo to see a revival of Damn Yankees at
Arena Stage. I had never seen the show before, but I really enjoyed it. I'm
also a big fan of seeing theater in the round. The run of Damn Yankees ended in
DC, but I think the plan is for the show to go to Broadway. Both shows
were big hits for the kids.
In early
September, I saw Ben Schwartz (Parks & Recreation, The Afterparty, the
voice of Sonic) & Friends do an improv show at the MGM National Harbor. I
don't think I've laughed so hard in a long time. Highly recommend seeing the show if
they are in your neighborhood. It's improv, so every show is completely
different. For those who saw the show in the DC area, you may remember the
"Attentive" song for years.
Oh, I definitely did not expect to see a Steelers' Crosby jersey at the show!
I went to a
late-season Nationals-Pirates game with the lowest attendance I had ever seen
at Nats Park. We also shared an elevator with the Nats mascot, Screech. I have some pictures of him posing with my kids, and um, this one of the mascot avoiding the paparazzi. Also not pictures is my kids getting pictures or autographs with Spencer Horwitz and Cam Devanney of the Pirates.
As a staff
development activity, we did some painting. Even though my pumpkin doesn't look
quite like the model, I'm very proud of my work. This could be worth thousands
some day!
The older I get, the more I realize that I am a dinosaur. While I'm not anti-technology, I just like things a certain way. For example, earlier this year, I wrote about a Verizon commercial where people have difficulties using their phone as a boarding pass, and how it seemed like the perfect ad for me. I'm probably one of the few people who still use paper boarding passes when flying. This was confirmed to me last week. When checking in to a United flight at Washington Dulles airport, the screen asked me if I wanted my boarding pass sent by text, by email, or other. When I selected other, the screen again gave me the option of sending the boarding pass by text. email, or other. After picking other again, I was given the option to print the boarding pass. The screen/United reluctantly allowed me to print.
When I got on the plane, I reached into my bag and brought out a book. Yes, a physical book. I'm currently reading Project Hail Mary by Andy Weil, which is nearly 500 pages long. Reading on a screen would be much lighter, but I like a physical book.
Finally, at the hotel, there was an option to scan a QR code to give a tip to housekeeping. Pass. Still giving/using cash.
Earlier this year, I wrote about how future NFL Hall of Famer and fellow Woodland Hills High School graduate Rob Gronkowski returned to our high school for the reopening of the school's weight room. Gronk's foundation contributed a significant amount of money to make this happen.
Earlier this week, another Pittsburgh sports legend visited Woodland Hills for a different endeavor. Cameron ("Cam") Heyward was the Steelers' first round draft pick in 2011. He is the son of the late Craig "Ironhead" Heyward, who was a legend at the University of Pittsburgh, had a successful NFL career, and is the star of one of my favorite commercials of all time.
Cam has been the anchor of the Steelers defense over the last decade plus, made the Pro Bowl multiple times, and won the 2023 NFL Walter Payton Man of the Year award for his philanthropic contributions and community impact. One of his initiatives is Craig's Closet, which provides free dress clothes to high school boys throughout Western Pennsylvania. Cam, his mother, and members of The Heyward House visited WHHS on Tuesday for the opening of a Craig's Closet at the high school. This is a very cool project, and I'm glad that Heyward is helping the Woodland Hills community. It also might be the only time where Heyward, a fellow graduate of The Ohio State University, can proudly say Go Wolverines!
More information about Craig's Closet is available here. You can also learn more about Cam's visit to Woodland Hills with additional pictures here and here.
Keanu Reeves recently appeared on the Kelce Brothers podcast, New Heights. Per the video here, the big revelation from the podcast (at least in my world) is that Reeves grew up as a Steelers fan.
While I’m not going to dispute Reeves’ childhood and fandom, I find it odd that this seems to be the first record of Reeves being a Steelers fan. That was going to be the premise of my post. In all his years as an actor, I figured Reeves spent time filming in Pittsburgh and at some point he would have mentioned in a local news interview that he liked the Steelers as a child. Turns out, it seems that Reeves hasn’t spent much time in Pittsburgh. It was a big deal when he got coffee in Pittsburgh in 2023 prior to playing a gig with his band Dogstar.* He also filmed the movie The Prince of Pennsylvania in 1988, but I can’t find any blog posts or reels of Reeves from when he filmed that.
So instead of being confused as to why we never learned of Reeves being a Steelers fan until now, we need to encourage Keanu to make a movie in Pittsburgh!
* About 25 years ago, I worked as a beer vendor at several Columbus Clippers minor league baseball games. (I was one of the guys walking around the stands yelling "beer here.") Dogstar played a concert after one of the games. I stayed for the first song, and they sounded pretty good, but I was tired and left the stadium.
I was invited to join LearnedLeague in 2015, and it's become a significant part of my life. Before I get too far, LearnedLeague is the trivia league of all trivia leagues and features countless Jeopardy! contestants and champions. There are six divisions or rundles: A, B, C, D, E, and R for rookies. It's invitation-only, and you're obviously in R for the first season. R is the most difficult season. You face players of all skill levels, and without knowing their question history, you're somewhat guessing how to play defense. Plus, you're still trying to understand how all of this works.
My rookie season was LL66. Due to my terrible performance that year, I was naturally placed in an E rundle where I have pretty much stayed for the next 40 seasons. Every once in a while, I earned promotion to D only to get relegated back to E the following season. I've actually been very successful (for me) recently as I got promoted to D for LL season 104 and stayed up for 105, 106, and now the upcoming 107 season. Yes, we're now up to season #107.
I know that I'm not explaining LearnedLeague very well and skipping a lot. You can get basic information as a non-member on the LearnedLeague website. There's also an LL Wikipedia page and articles about LL by places like The Ringer, The New Yorker, and Milwaukee Magazine.
In my now 41 seasons of playing, I've learned a lot about my knowledge base. My best categories are pop music, television, games/sports, current events, and American history in that order. Meanwhile, my five worst categories are language, art, science, classical music, and math. I've only got 5 of 133 math questions correct, which is like 0.004%. (Math joke. It's actually significantly better at.038%!) I really should try to find a way to improve these scores. Anyway, it's really easy to play defense against me. If there's a question about one of my best categories, assign me the lowest possible points. Conversely, assign me lots of points for the latter categories since there's an excellent chance I'm going to get it wrong.
The primary mantra of LearnedLeague is don't forfeit, don't cheat. I'm proud that I have never forfeited in 1025 matches. What's funny is that I should have forfeited my 5th ever match. I drove to Pittsburgh that day and stayed at a hotel with my two young kids at the time. I was busy and exhausted and didn't answer the questions. However, the LL website ended up being down for part of that day, so they extended the deadline by a day. Over the next ten years, there have been plenty of times when I fell asleep on the couch, woke up right around the 1:00 AM Eastern time deadline and got credit for completing the answers.
One of my favorite parts of LL is the offseason mini leagues. While there are plenty of mini leagues that aren't for me, there are others particularly focused on sports and music which are perfect. In mini leagues, you are placed in completely random groups. It's fun defeating A-rundle players who would crush me in general knowledge but not in genre-specific games. I actually had a close loss in a mini-league several years ago against Jeopardy! champion Brad Rutter!
LearnedLeague is not for everyone, but I do have referrals available if you want to check it out. Just let me know The first season is free, and then there's an annual fee. It's fun and you might learn something. Not trying to sell anyone on this. Just sharing my experience.
Back in March,
I asked an esteemed group of individuals for their predictions for the
2025 Nationals season. Want to see how everyone did? Or would rather bury the
original post and hope that it never sees the light of day again? Well, since I
already created a blog post title, feel free to see how we did. Or don't.
1. There are
high expectations for 2023 #2 overall pick Dylan Crews. What do you expect from
him this season?
Crews, the #2
overall pick after some guy named Paul Skenes in Pittsburgh, only played in 85
games thanks to injuries. His overall stats of 10 home runs and 17 stolen bases
seem encouraging. 27 RBIs, a .208 batting average, and .280 on-base percentage
are not so encouraging. Crews was one of the best college hitters of the last
20 years, so it seems unlikely that he forgot to hit overnight. Still, it's
been a difficult adjustment to the major leagues. Most of the group had high
expectations for Crews, and he didn't live up to them. Frank probably was the
closest in his predictions of putting "some pressure on the defense with
his base stealing ability."
2. Who will
lead the Nationals in home runs in 2025?
This ended up
being an easy one. Nearly everyone (Ryan, Frank, Richard, Chris, Marc, and
Sean) picked James Wood who led the Nats with 31 home runs.
3. Will
the Nationals be buyers or sellers at the trade deadline?
Pretty much
everyone through the team would be sellers and they were though not really any
big names. Kyle Finnegan went to Detroit, Amed Rosario to the Yankees, Michael
Soroka to the Cubs, Alex Call to the Dodgers, and Andrew Chafin and Luis Garcia to the Angels. You have to be very good at Immaculate Grid or really, really,
really follow the Nationals to know most of these players. (Maybe Josh Bell was frustrated not getting traded?)
4. Will CJ
Abrams go to a casino this season?
Probably a mean
question. I'll just pretend that I didn't ask
this.
5. Who will
be the team's surprise/breakout player this year?
Richard wrote
that this player isn't on the opening day lineup and he was right. Daylen Lile joined the Nats in late May and excelled after the All-Star break. Lile hit
.304 in August with 1 home run and 8 RBIs to go along with a .353 on-base
percentage. In September, Lile hit .391(!!!) with 6 home runs, 19 RBIs, a .440
on-base percentage and .772 slugging percentage. That's a 1.212 OPS! (OPS is
On-Base plus Slugging.) While I understand that this stat is for only one
month, as a comparison, Aaron Judge led the majors with a 1.144 OPS and Ohtani was next with a 1.014.
Partial credit
to Ryan for predicting Jose Ferrer. Ferrer pitched pretty well in the closer
role after the team traded Finnegan.
6. Which
Nats Summer Concert are you looking forward to the most?
OAR and Nelly were the right answers, but there really weren't any wrong answers.
7. Finally,
what's your overall prediction for the Nationals? (ex. record, finish in
the NL East).
Well, the team
was pretty lousy this year finishing 66-96 and last place in the NL East. The
record was only better than the Chicago White Sox and dreadful Colorado
Rockies. The team fired the manager and general manager mid-season. While I'm
not sure anyone would call this rock bottom, I think it's an understatement to
say that the Nationals 2025 season was a disappointment. No one thought the
Nationals would be THIS bad, though Frank was the closest predicting 70 wins.
If you asked me
to come up with a list of 1,000 blog post suggestions, a post about Lawrence
Moten would not be in the top 5,000. However, the passing of the Syracuse legend earlier this week brought up several memories. I grew up a fan of the
University of Pittsburgh basketball team and by extension the Big East
conference. I also went to college in upstate/central New York where Syracuse
basketball was the biggest sports team in the area.*
Moten played
for Syracuse from 1991-92 through 1994-95. Looking at his stats, he was only a
31.6% career 3-point shooter (though the 3-point shot wasn't as important or
used as much then) and a 71.6% free throw shooter. Yet, Moten averaged 19.3
points per game in his four seasons. He was annoying. He always seemed to make
a big shot or a key free throw near the end of games. Moten wasn't on the team
that went to the NCAA championship in 1995 (which featured John Wallace and
Otis Hill), but he was a big part of the foundation for that team.
Moten also
played at a time when you really got to know college basketball players. Look,
I'm all for current players getting as much NIL money as possible.
Colleges profited off of players for years. I also think it was completely
unfair that coaches could leave schools whenever they wanted for a new job but
players would have to sit out a year if they transferred between institutions.
I'm all for players being able to move from school to school. We'll get back to
that momentarily.
Pitt is still
my favorite basketball team. I just looked at the 2025-2026 roster and really
only recognize two names, Cam Corhen and Brandin Cummings. Okay, Papa Amadou
Kante also looks familiar since he had a good game against Ohio State at
the beginning of the last season. Otherwise, everyone else is new except
for Amdy Ndiaye who played all of 21 minutes over 8 games during
the 2024-2025 season. The complete turnover of rosters from year to year
isn't exclusive to Pitt. It's everywhere. I also follow George Mason basketball
closely, and there is only one player (Brayden O'Connor) who had significant playing time last
season on the roster this year.
Which brings me
back to Moten. During his time, you knew the best players in college
basketball. Looking at the all Big East teams from the early to mid-1990s, I
remember nearly all of the names. I can't do that for many teams/conferences
today. Maybe it's because I followed college basketball more closely in my
teenage years than now, but I don't think that's the case. Yes, while the best
NCAA players go professional immediately, many of the really good players
switch teams year to year. It's impossible to follow.
Moten was a
star at Syracuse and in the community. That rarely happens in college
basketball today when players are only at a school for a year or two.
RIP.
* Completely
unrelated to Moten, in 1995 or 1996 former Vice President Dan Quayle spoke at
Ithaca College. He may or may not have been testing the waters for a
Presidential bid. Anyway, Quayle, born in Indiana and a representative of the
Hoosier state in the House and Senate, started the speech by mentioning how
Indiana defeated Syracuse in the 1987 NCAA title game thanks to a Keith
Smart game-winning shot. The crowd, which was not all college students, was not
pleased. There wasn't booing, but there was definitely an uneasiness of him
bringing up a sore subject. For my Pittsburgh friends, it would be the
equivalent of a Georgia politician speaking in Western Pennsylvania and being
excited to mention Francisco Cabrera.
Photos by Manny Milan - Sports Illustrated via Getty and Nick Lisi AP
Welcome to the fourth annual post where I scour social media to see which NFL teams share Happy Rosh Hashanah messages. And by scour, I mean that I check NFL teams' Instagram and Twitter pages. I don't search Facebook, TikTok, Bluesky, MySpace, or Friendster or visit individual team websites or drive by NFL facilities to see if they have signs posted outside buildings. I only have so much time! And with that, here are screenshots from NFL teams:
Although I didn't search Facebook, the Eagles' post somehow popped up on my feed.
And then this appeared in my feed:
Including the Eagles (but not Sunderland in the Premier League), that's 10 separate NFL teams. While I'm disappointed that the Steelers didn't include a message this year or in any of the years that I started tracking NFL posts, this is a significant improvement from 2024 when only 4 teams posted messages.
On
Sunday, the Steelers started the 2025 NFL season with a 34-32 win over the New
York Jets. While the game featured quarterbacks Aaron Rodgers and Justin Fields
facing their former teams, one of the big stories was Steelers kicker Chris
Boswell hitting a 60-yard field goal late in the fourth quarter to essentially
win the game. A 60-yard field goal is extremely difficult, particularly with a
roaring crowd in a pressure situation.
Following the
game, Steelers coach Mike Tomlin said this about Boswell at the 3:30 mark of
the video:
You heard that
correctly. Tomlin called Boswell a serial killer. And meant that as a
compliment. Maybe Tomlin recently watched the new version of Dexter featuring a
"good" type of serial killer who only kills bad people. Or perhaps Tomlin
saw the Netflix show Mindhunter (filmed in Pittsburgh), where FBI agents
interview serial killers to try to understand their behavior. I don't
remember the killers talking about a low pulse rate, which is something that
Tomlin attributed to Boswell though. (Maybe Tomlin's statement is a setup to
get Mindhunter to return for a third season or even as a movie. If Tomlin helps motivate show creator David Fincher to make this happen, Tomlin should immediately get inducted into the NFL Hall of Fame and get a star on the
Hollywood Walk of Fame! And Boswell needs to be in the show/movie too!)
In future
weeks, Tomlin should accuse Boswell of other crimes. The next time Boswell
makes a game-winning kick, Tomlin should refer to Boswell an arsonist. Since
he’s on fire! (And yes, an arsonist starts fires and aren't actually on fire.)
Or maybe a thief. You know since Boswell stole the hearts of opposing teams’
players and fans. Boswell is definitely a money launderer since he’s clearly
money making the kicks. He is so money, baby!
Welcome to Sean's Ramblings! If you're looking for thoughts on pop culture, music, fun and informative links, random DC and Pittsburgh info, sports (particularly Pittsburgh sports), and just what's going on in my life, then you're come to the right place.
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