Your “Borrowed From Betty Ford” Tuesday Open Thread

NFL Notes:

• humourous in a “you dumb fuckers” kind of way, nfl.com has a long-winded story about why both sides are comfortable watching Kirk Cousins play under the franchise tag for 2016. I’m sure the season ticket base agrees with this logic.
• trading “dumb” for “sad”, PFT reports that Ezekiel Elliott has the top-selling jersey in the NFL since April.
• still on the money and Cowboys side of things, Dez Bryant is suing his former financial adviser for using his name to attract business and withholding monies generated from the use of that name. If only they’d asked his mom…
• venturing into Crimebeat! territory, Eagles WR Nelson Agholor won’t be facing charges over sexual assault allegations arising from a strip club visit back in February. The ever-popular “lack of evidence” is cited as the main reason, although I’m sure he and the lady finally sorted out the prices for the champagne room.
• the Giants plan to induct Tom Coughlin into their Ring of Honor sometime this season. Joining the old man in receiving the honor on November 14th – versus the Bengals! – will be Justin Tuck and Ernie Accorsi.
• ESPN has a pretty sad story about the Rooney Rule and its apparent inability to make a dent in NFL coaching hiring practices. Between 2012-16, only one first-time minority coach – Todd Bowles – was hired during that time, the same number as between 1997-2001 when the rule first came into effect. If anything, most senior positions on staffs have only gotten whiter.

Finally, SI has a story about the USFL and Donald Trump’s time owning the New Jersey Generals. A telling part of the story is that, much like today, the Donald only had time for the stars, and the everyday players had to make do knowing he was their boss but not their contact. The part I didn’t know about was his attempt to try and buy the Baltimore Colts, which probably would have kept them in Memorial Stadium and out of the Mayflower vans. Given the timing and the convention in Cleveland, it’s actually quite a good piece for echoing Trump’s rise and bellicosity.

For about an hour today, some people thought I was dead.

A Facebook acquaintance – over the age of 60, whom I should unfriend – tried to post a tribute for a person named Rob Arnold. He ended his post with “RIP Rob” and, by typing Rob, my name came up. He apparently deleted my last name, but didn’t realize that leaving the first name still tagged me in the post.

I know this because at about 9:30 this morning, my phone started to go bananas with emails and notifications. I had to ignore them because I was teaching, but when I gave the class a break at 10:15, I saw about a dozen emails with titles like, “WTF?!”, “CALL ME ASAP!!” and “Is everything okay?”. I figured the rest of it out pretty quickly and tried to undo the damage. Luckily, it never got to my wife – who doesn’t Facebook – or my mother, because she wasn’t up yet.

I’ll file this under “shit I don’t need”.

Tonight’s sports is once again the Republican Convention. The highlight will be the roll-call vote of states. It will be fun to see which delegations blow up in front of the microphone, and which ones fracture into a million pieces with walkouts and attempts to seize the platform. That ban on tennis balls will be sorely tested this evening.

In terms of Mrs Tertiary Trump and her speech last night, one could argue she stole from the best. In that regard, I direct you to a Cracked article on plagiarism from 2014. It’s a better read than all of today’s “think pieces” on whether she did or didn’t plagiarize Michelle Obama. Me – I tend to view it in the same light as all those former eastern European politicians who had to resign due to being discovered as plagiarists when they presented their Ph.D thesis. It was easy to cheat when you were one of the few able to leave from behind the iron Curtain, knowing most everyone else wouldn’t be able to access the works you liberally borrowed from. But with the decline of communism and the explosion in digital media, it became fairly easy for people to find out what politicians with privilege had done to enhance their reputations. She probably thought she’d never get caught, or that people wouldn’t give her the same hard look as her husband.

ENJOY THE SHITSHOW!