It's on. Read the rest

A gentleman was arrested in Portsmouth, England after punching a police horse during a riot following a soccer game. He apparently was angry that Portsmouth lost to Southampton. It isn't clear why he blamed the horse though. From The Telegraph:

In the footage of the aftermath of the first match in seven years between bitter rivals Southampton and Portsmouth, the supporter then attempts to run from the horse, but his path is blocked as he ends up in the arms of a group of police officers with riot shields.

Hampshire Constabulary said a 52-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of animal cruelty and attempted criminal damage. He was later released but remains under investigation.

Read the rest

Clemson's national championship football team went to the White House on Monday where President Donald Trump hosted them for winning the title. Trump had a bunch of burgers ready for them: Wendy's, McDonald's and Burger King. Read the rest

A kindergarten and first grade football time in Morrow, Ohio is holding a gun raffle to raise travel money for tournaments. They've already sold 500 tickets. The winners, 21 years or older, will receive either a handgun or HM Guardian F5 Elite. Apparently, gun raffles to support kids sports and schools isn't uncommon. From WLWT:

Gina Pennycuff is a mother and a substitute teacher. She happened to be working when she got a Facebook message about the gun raffle.

"It was disturbing to me because gun raffles for a youth organization just doesn't mix," she said.

She shared the flyer on Facebook and the comment section took off, some in favor and some opposed...

"I can't imagine being a parent of a kindergartener and them worrying and doing lockdown drills, but them also knowing they're raffling off guns," she said.

"Youth football team gun raffle sparks debate" (Thanks, Charles Pescovitz!) Read the rest

Nike hired Kap for an ad campaign: a satisfying yet bathetic result of his de facto expulsion from professional football for protesting police brutality by kneeling during the national anthem. Conservatives are mad, obviously, and are expressing it by destroying the Nike-branded gear that they have already paid for.

First the @NFL forces me to choose between my favorite sport and my country. I chose country. Then @Nike forces me to choose between my favorite shoes and my country. Since when did the American Flag and the National Anthem become offensive? pic.twitter.com/4CVQdTHUH4

— Sean Clancy (@sclancy79) September 3, 2018

Our Soundman just cut the Nike swoosh off his socks. Former marine. Get ready @Nike multiply that by the millions. pic.twitter.com/h8kj6RXe7j

— John Rich (@johnrich) September 3, 2018

Life is but a dream. Read the rest

Below, German football player Felix Passlack demonstrates masterful gum control:

When you spit your gum out, but your hands are dirty

Read the rest

Playground compiles 2,000 Google Earth images of American football fields, then plays them alphabetically at a speed where they become hypnotic. Read the rest

I don't follow football, but Bad Lip Reading hit a grand slam with this one! I'm literally LOLing over here, people...

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Weird Universe shares the tale of Larry Canaday, the 1970s football coach at Eau Gallie High School in Melbourne, Florida, who would bite the heads off live frogs to psych up his team before games.

"Our kids love it," Canaday told the Associated Press in 1977. "They say 'Look how wild the coach is, let's get wild, too!'"

Canaday said he started the practice when trying to fire up one player. "I looked down and saw this little frog and just reached down and bit it. The boy's eyes got big as saucers and he became a real go-geter."

After several years of the ritual, school officials told him that the "frog-biting must cease."

"Last year we were winning," he said in the 1977 article. "But now we're losing, and certain intellects will use this as an excuse to pick on football." Read the rest

The chief health and safety officer of the NFL today acknowledged a connection between football-related head trauma and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), in what is the first time any senior football league official has said anything about the link between football and the devastating brain disease that affects so many who play the game. Read the rest

Football is about one thing and one thing only: dance. As far as I can tell American rules football is where men in elaborate costumes, featuring tight pants, seek to stop other men from dancing.

Colloquially known as a touchdown celebration, the body of rules and regulations managed by the credible governing body, the National Football League, seems to focus on allowable practices to bar the opposing team from dancing. After they've determined what you can do to stop a dancer, and what things are permissible to get the dancer on to the dance floor, known as an "end zone," the NFL then heavily regulates what type of dancing is appropriate.

We have seen Footloose, sad things happen when you try to stop people from dancing. In the NFL this frustration frequently seems to present as abuse and other ugly, unacceptable social behaviors.

I do like the commercials.

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For fans of beer honoring a sex-abuse enabler, this one's for you.

Radiolab can always be depended on for an interesting take on questions you never even knew you had. Their story on American Football is no exception. Read the rest

photo: Kate Harmer/Hum Creative

BB pal Nick Harmer, bassist for Death Cab for Cutie, made a portrait of Seattle Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch out of Skittles. Why, Nick? "Because GO HAWKS!" More photos below. Read the rest

I hate football but I love marching bands. Here's the Ohio State Marching Band doing a terrific Michael Jackson tribute during a game on Saturday. Don't miss the moonwalk money shot at 4:45! Read the rest

Here's a brutal, must-read article from Brian Phillips detailing the bizarre, globalized game of soccer-match-rigging, which launders its influence, money and bets through countries all over the world, in what sounds like an intense, sport-themed LARP of a William Gibson Sprawl novel:

Right now, Dan Tan's programmers are busy reverse-engineering the safeguards of online betting houses. About $3 billion is wagered on sports every day, most of it on soccer, most of it in Asia. That's a lot of noise on the big exchanges. We can exploit the fluctuations, rig the bets in a way that won't trip the houses' alarms. And there are so many moments in a soccer game that could swing either way. All you have to do is see an Ilves tackle in the box where maybe the Viikingit forward took a dive. It happens all the time. It would happen anyway. So while you're running around the pitch in Finland, the syndicate will have computers placing high-volume max bets on whatever outcome the bosses decided on, using markets in Manila that take bets during games, timing the surges so the security bots don't spot anything suspicious. The exchanges don't care, not really. They get a cut of all the action anyway. The system is stacked so it's gamblers further down the chain who bear all the risks.

What's that — you're worried about getting caught? It won't happen. Think about the complexity of our operation. We are organized in Singapore, I flew from Budapest, the match is in Finland, we're wagering in the Philippines using masked computer clusters from Bangkok to Jakarta.

Read the rest

ABC News reports that a team of scientists who analyzed the brain tissue of the late NFL star Junior Seau after his 2012 suicide "have concluded the football player suffered a debilitating brain disease likely caused by two decades worth of hits to the head." Read the rest