I'll give you the Cowboys. But born in 1971, the Mets of his formative years were abysmal. Well past the Amazin' years and way before there were any seeds of what would happen in 1986. In fact, other than '86, being a Mets fan has sucked. Growing up in NY, picking that team and sticking with them while the Yanks were the Yanks, that makes up for adopting the Cowboys.
The Mets have been good for like 2 years over the previous 40 years. They are a joke in baseball and rightfully so. So I wouldn't classify that as front running. If anything, it's the opposite.
How old do you think Sal was when he formed his real sporting allegiances? I'm guessing it was probably right around the time that the Mets were really good, and the Cowboys...well, they've always been the Cowboys, even in their late-80s doldrums. The point is really that I'm automatically suspicious of anyone - in sporting terms, at least - who a) has his favorite teams in different cities without any natural reason for that (e.g., it's not like Sal ever lived in Dallas, did he?), and b) has identified with at least one team that is a mainstream, "public" team (to put it in gambling terms). Did Sal grow up in NYC? I'm guessing the Mets are his real team, and the Cowboys were a youthful affectation he stuck with.
Everyone loved the Vikings. What was cooler than Ahmad Rashad and Sammy White?
I was watching games with a bunch of friends on Sunday, and one who grew up a (baseball and football) Cardinals fan in St. Louis remarked that he also had affinity for the Vikings, because he thought their purple uniforms and especially their helmet were the coolest in the NFL. Their old 70s era togs might have been the best at the time and were for sure in the top five at the very least.
That kind of ends it, for me. People become fans of specific teams for all kinds of reasons, and if you're still a fan of a team like the Cowboys (3 playoff wins, all in the wild card round, in the past 25 years) in 2022, it's hard for me to judge you harshly at this point. Since 2000, the only teams with fewer playoff wins are Washington, Cleveland, Miami and Detroit. Even taking into account the moderate success they've had in the regular season over that same time (11th in wins), whatever the initial reason was, he's certainly not a frontrunner now.
He said something stupid on Twitter and found himself under attack a few months ago, so he may have taken a step back from the Simmons spotlight. But he's tweeting about the Yankees again, so maybe he'll be back next season.
He hasn’t been on basically at all over the last 5 years or so, has he (at least compared to earlier in Simmons’ podcasting career when the “Heeeey Johnny!” segment seemed pretty frequent). My guess is he and Simmons aren’t as close anymore for whatever reason, or he just told Simmons he doesn’t want to be on the podcast anymore.
Thanks - for a guy working outside entertainment, it makes sense that he’d opt for deep cover when there’s heat.
He hasn’t been on nearly as much in recent years but would be good for at least two appearances a year. YED was usually an annual occasion. I figured Simmons has a lot of new, higher profile people already in regular slots, so there’s a time squeeze, but nattysez laid out the probable root cause.
I wish Simmons had high profile people who were actually good. Mahoney is awesome, but the NBA talk 3 games into the season is brutal. The NFL is the golden goose of content, NCAA football is huge, and the World Series is literally happening and all Simmons did this week was talk about the Lakers and Durant, with a little bit of surface discussion about football. Woof. And I like Schrager on GMF because that is a fun show. But million dollar picks is a tired bit that was never good to begin with. At least when PMT talks about gambling, they are honest about how ridiculous it is and how tough it is.
I didn't listen to the Friday pod in large part because "NBA Panic Watch" was in the title. The Spurs and the Jazz, two teams he identified before the season as teams tanking for Victor, have better records right now than the Warriors, Mavericks, Pelicans, Clippers, Heat, Sixers, Raptors, and OH BY THE WAY, Celtics. Does anyone really want to read a lot into what's occurred in a sport six games into an eighty-two game season? If all you do is cover the NBA, you have to, because what else can you discuss. But if you purport to offer opinions on all sports, why would you spend so much time on the NBA, when, as you wrote, the World Series is happening, and both NCAA Football and the NFL are deep into their seasons.
True story. Simmons was absolutely ready to write the Warriors on Thursday night when they were playing the Heat. Then they had a big fourth quarter and beat the Heat. Now Golden State is fine and there is no reason to worry.
He didn't say that were fine, he pointed a bunch of reasons to be concerned including Klay and Draymond both moving into different phases of their career and how they adapt to that mentally will be something to watch. Did you even listen to the pod...or are we just writing some Simmons fan fiction to confirm what we want to believe about him? This thread is so, so bad.
This thread is on par with Simmons then, I guess.
He has some really weird vocal crutches that (I guess?) come from talking to scouts or something. For example, "dudn't" just does not sound right coming from someone like him. He's extremely grating and I pretty much skip any segment he's on.
If you judge based on exciting games then yeah, if you judge based on quality of play then it's been terrible. Most of the exciting games that come down to the wire are happening because both teams make mistake after mistake when they had a chance to put the game away, especially some of the OT games.
I think it's the gambling. Bill hitched his wagon to Carolina at the beginning of the season. He stuck with them until Week 7, despite the fact that Carolina was horrendous. Then week 7, they go out and PJ Walker all over TB and then they lose a tough one to Atlanta in Week 8 but PJ was good. Carolina looked good after the Rhule era.
A big part of his rationale was that the Pats were a team with a good offensive line.
I am probably reading too much into it, but I took a lot of that podcast as window dressing for a legit rumor he's heard through his rich guy friend group. He's connected at the ownership type level and probably texts a lot with the Damon/Affleck type fans who are probably famous enough to be in the Brady orbit. IIRC, he compared the rumor to his leaks of the Vegas NBA expansion and Sarver's unwillingness to sell to the Disney guy, which both apparently came true.
Imagine how great it would have been if the Panthers win had been paired with a Cowboys loss to the Texans. Sal's been getting a little full of himself about his Cowboys.
He vowed on the podcast today to tell Eli that the Giants got away with holding throughout the game that shall not be named (without actually saying that he was going to be on the broadcast tonight).
