The NFL Draft is this Thursday, so there’s still a couple of days to abuse the brain with speculation and other mind wanks about your team being in position to select several difference makers who will be on the cheap for the next three seasons Hell yeah! Your team filling a position of need will move you to engage in the kind of self-negotiation that lonely folks engage in with potential dates who text you “Hi 😉”—the excitement of going out and maybe clickin’ with someone, anyone overrides a bio that says “I hate lies” or other objectionable crap.

Can handle suds, classy Jimmy Kimmel

vibes, solid 8! [texts “Sup”] Via The Sun

The NFL draft is opium to the optimist. It’s consistently the most joyous time of the league year for Jets fans. For the educated in college ball, the draft is the nitrous oxide for I CAN’T BELIEVE this small school linebacker fell to the 5^th round. But no one really knows what will happen to the prospects in the NFL. Especially now: the rookie contract structure and salary cap incentivize drafting players on the cheap rather than giving a second contract to a solid, but not stellar, former high prospect. 🚧🚨Mindless Exaggeration Alert 🚨🚧Peyton Manning had a bad rookie year and was a playoff choker thereafter for a while. If that career started right now, Manning could’ve been a Trubisky.

So the draft is a whole lotta uncertainty and Mel Kiper. The only substance that the draft provides is the reading of names, which happens to be the worst kind of public event. In fact, allow me to rank name-reading events, from terrible to Oh My God No:

3. Award Shows – Back in the early days of the Webz, “Forrest Gump” won Best Movie instead of “Pulp Fiction”. That did it for me: award shows, every single one, are an orgy of smarm and public relations (See also, Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry [grabs crotch] Kissinger.) BONUS: weeks after those Oscars, I lost my innocence forever when a homeless guy burned me as middle man to a weed transaction.

2. The NFL draft – I can do with a recap on Monday. For me, TV commentary on the picks is a bottomless pit of speculation and jargon—which I don’t condemn on principle, heh, don’t get me wrong. But it’s about players I’m first hearing about. And OK, the highlights package shows impressive plays… Against college kids. Nobody knows how the rookies will fare against men playing for a legal paycheck.

1. Graduations – Three plus hours of speeches and protocolar acknowledgments to see a loved one collect a diploma (and hopefully, medals or a smoked ham), is a big ask. It’s awards for school grades—so you studied, whoop de doo. Let’s see ya making cold calls to earn a paycheck or, or! Getting your bearings back and doing your job after being stabbed in the soul because months of your work could not help a deserving person in catastrophic circumstances. Then, please oh please, tell me how accomplished you are, Poindexter.

Yeah I turned 50 earlier this year—so it’s a rant, not a tantrum. K?

NFL NEWS

-Niners GM John Lynch “can’t ever imagine wanting to move on from Deebo”, and then incidentally mentioned that San Francisco doesn’t have a 1^st round pick this year. I’ll translate Lynch for the benefit of the married folks: “I love [Deebo], but it will be difficult preparing delicious dinners for one while I have the mansion to myself for the next three days. And we just stocked the wine cellar, it’s a bummer”. I could see the Niners getting offered, for Deebo, two firsts and two seconds—the equivalent of a husband getting a nude text with a pizza box and a six pack. Gay or straight; men be horny.

-Bengals WR Tee Higgins had shoulder surgery. He will miss workouts, but the season is so fucking away that who gives a shit.

Sorry. Steven A. popped into the computer and I went berserk. This is why I have to stick with espen deportes. And if I had only one Life Mute button, I would use it on Stephen A. over Donald Trump, Elon Musk, the Treasury Department, The Barstool Universe, and [name withheld pending signed release].

-A month ago the Bears signed WR Byron Pringle and he was arrested Saturday in Florida for:

• Suspended license
• “doing donuts on a public road in a 2016 Dodge Challenge SRT Hellcat”
• Being “verbally confrontational” to the Police

And there was a “male juvenile child” in the back seat. That bugs me. Is he a child? A juvenile? If in-between, my guess is 12-14. Juveniles can drive cars and hit you with a brass knuckle to impress a sex partner  (15 up). While a male child is at most 10-11: still believes in Santa Claus and that people are good. Pringle was sent to jail.

SPROTS TONITE

All times Central.

MAJOR LEAGUE LOITERING

Medias Rojas (Eovaldi) @ Azulejos (Berríos) – 6:07 PM ON THE DOT!

Mets (Scherzer) @ Cardenales (Mikolas) – 6:45 PM

Fokin Astros (Valdez) @ Patrulleros (Dunning) – 7:05 PM

Guardianes (Bieber) @ Angelinos (Lorenzen) – 8:38 PM

Doyers (Buehler) @ Serpientes (Kelly) – 8:40 PM

NHL

Flyera @ Blackhawks – 7 PM

NBA PLAYOFFS

Celts @ Nets – 6 PM (Boston going for the sweep)

• Nets’s Ben Simmons is oOt

Raptors @ Sixers (Philly leads 3-1) – 7 PM

Jazz @ Mavs – 8:30 PM (Tied 2-2)

TOP FLIGHT FÚTBOL

Full listing here (espen); 1^st division below:

Brazil

Avaí hosts Goiás – 6 PM

Ecuador

Guayaquil City FC hosts Cumbayá – 7 PM

Guatemala

Comunicaciones hosts Sololá – 8 PM

Paraguay

Nacional hosts Sol de América – 7:15 PM

Uruguay

Defensor Sporting hosts Cerrito – 6 PM

FINALLY,

the only memory I have of any NFL draft is the tweet, from Laremy Tunsil’s account, showing him taking a monster hit off the most awesome contraption I have seen outside of Boulder, Colorado. It was in 2016 and I was pulling late hours at my last employer’s [hocks, spits toward sidewalk], and that was the perfect pretext to drop everything else. If Tunsil did it, it was an Anton Newcombe-level self-sabotage. So Tunsil must’ve been hacked, but there is not much info. on who did it.  Still, Tunsil was drafted 13 by the Dolphines. That’s a decent high pick; Tunsil was considered precipitous drop in Draft World, a planet made of gas. Tunsil has been a good player and got a windfall by the Buttchinski Texans. I’m happy for him and, while society is falling apart now, almost nobody would care if you light a joint.