Your Scattered Thursday Night Open Thread

Welcome back folks! Let’s see what’s out there and has caught my attention.

Underrated Signing:

Mike Gesicki is my Devin Singletary of tight ends-lots of talent but misused or just in the wrong place to properly utilize his skillset. He improved each of his four years on the Fins and then took a nosedive when McDaniels came to town. Then he made the mistake of signing with the Pats and getting stuck in that quicksand of an offense. Now he’s with the Bengals and is immediately the starter-unless you think Tanner Hudson is gonna blow up. (real good)

Joe Flaherty:

Now that is a quality segue if there ever was one. Whether he was playing Big Jim McBob, (that was my name for right-off-the-farm fuckos for years) the supposedly wheelchair-bound Guy Cabellero (the oily owner of SCTV) or of course Count Floyd, Flaherty always made this young teen double over in laughter. Though I would have bet your last loonie that he was a Canuck, the man hailed from Pittsburgh and worked the names of surrounding small burbs into his comedy writing. He never got much far beyond bit pieces in movies but he shone oh-so-bright for Second City TV for a decent amount of time. He achieved the near impossible-staying in “The Biz” for sixty years and not having anyone say a single bad thing about him.

Mock Drafts:

Beware-we’re at that stage when those whose job it is to do them start with the fanciful tradeups and tradedowns because they’re bored silly with the process. Now they’re trying to entertain themselves with the notion of being able to say, “I called it!” on Draft Day.

The Horror:

I speak of the notion of existential nothingness and the Bills wide receiver room. Hey, there’s Khalil Shakur, (unproven and unused) Curtis Samuel (a fantastic #2 receiver if your regular #2 is injured in the short term) and Mack Hollins. (turning 31 at the start of the season, a 22 catch per year average) Those guys are great depth pieces elsewhere but starters in Buffalo.

Three Years in Purgatory:

The A’s are headed to Sacramento. (I got nuthin’)

Times, Changing, etc:

The Iowa/LSU tilt on WWW averaged 12.3 mil viewers this past Monday. Despite not being a real sport (h/t Blax) that number outdrew 4 of the 5 NBA Finals games last year as well as the clinching game of the World Series. Taken as a whole, the 60 games played so far increased eyeballs at a 127% rate over 2023. And the race war on twitter was just gravy on top of the sundae!

Cream of the Indiana Crop:

Don’t ask me how (I was flipping channels) but I saw ISU’s Robbie Avila on Pat McAfee’s show for a hot minute. Seriously, I watched just long enough to see that Rob is composed and has a great sense of humoUr. He also mentioned that there is a great core of players there (he’s just a soph) which I presumed to mean that he was sticking around but the NIL money will come fast and furious for that Illinois boy, so we’ll see.

Tonight’s Watchings:

Pretty much just Seton Hall/ISU for me. You? You might be a completely different animal.