All Sports Are Bad

This week we took a look into the situation surrounding Deshaun Watson and the Houston Texans and discussed the unprecedented power dynamic that exists between this player and his team, as well as a comparison between this situation and the power dynamics that exist in both Major League Baseball and the National Basketball Association. Unrelated but related: Jerry Jones is horrifying. This is evergreen. "Drip" theme music courtesy of Yung Kartz.

The world is a hell place, so we decided to talk about nice things for a change. In this episode we talked about the athletes that brought us joy. Patrick gushed about Tim Lincecum, Jake talked about Vince Young, Todd Helton, and John Elway among others. Sometimes it's nice to be positive, yeah? Or our warped version of positive, anyway.

ASAB is back with our first episode in over half a year. We haven't been podcasting well, because, quite frankly we just didn't feel like it. But we're back for 2021 and in this episode we discuss America's ever-dwindling former pastime: Baseball, more specifically why the dehumanizing aspects of Major League Baseball as a whole make it insufferable.

Well folks, there ain't much else to say about this one. This is about three hours of Last Dance takes. Over our Discord server. During a pandemic. We also reference Joaquin Phoenix a few times but that's neither here nor there.

All Sports Are Bad is coming at you from our respective homes in our first ever remote-only show. Friend of the podcast Peter Bogren joined us to talk about our general lack of sports, some NFL tidbits, and sports movies. We got into sports movies pretty heavily. Because what is everyone doing while we're all at home? Binging movies.

In another behemoth of a podcast, we cover a wide range of topics including: Local Seattle weed politics, the ever-unfolding MLB sign-stealing scandal, the NFL's weird and disrespectful narratives aimed at black quarterbacks, and the pitfalls of hardcore NFL fandom in general.

For a month we at ASAB have been working on a metric called ALPE, that stands for Anonymity to League Popularity Egregiousness. What ALPE does is it measures a sports franchise level of genericness, or Padres, as we like to call it. It factors anonymity, league popularity, market size, market share, and a team's history. All of these come together to create a team's Padres rating. Wait, why "Padres"? Because the San Diego Padres baseball team embodies what it is to be generic. They are the world's most historically generic sports franchise. They are bland, they are unmemorable, and no amount of star power and success (they've actually had a lot of those two things believe it or not) can alter it. They are truly vanilla. Why? Why do this? Why create a metric to specifically point out the unrelenting blandness of certain sports franchise? Why even bother to make fun of the completely unmemorable? Well, because it's funny. Being generic is objectively funny. And we took this joke to extreme measures, because we lack tact. I mean, that's it, really. Our first show of 2020 explains the history behind our rankings, the process of creating the metric that measures genericness and blandness, and all of the interesting things we discovered while creating the metric. So I present to you our ALPE metric, the rankings can be found as a companion piece here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ApZyCpeEOJH6VZTtZ0iflC1gST3E4ym2IlHZbBrz05Q/htmlview Oh yeah, we also talked about the NFL playoffs and the NBA too, believe it or not.

In ASAB 31 we discuss a number of pressing sports topics such as: Racist ass Don Cherry, Baseball's electronic sign stealing scandal, and the egregious case of the Washington Football Franchise's handling of Trent Williams' cancer recovery. Also we talk a bit about our upcoming editorial content. Keep an eye out for that!

Recorded the night before Halloween, we reacted to the news surrounding Gizmodo Media Group and their sports publication Deadspin.

In episode 29 we had quite a bit to talk about. First off we had to address the despicable fuckery that went down regarding the Astros and their (now former) assistant GM Brandon Taubman and his atrocious behavior. We also talked NBA season predictions, the MLB World Series, and Patrick being mad at shitty fonts. Our main story is one we're a bit late on but had to weigh in regardless, and that's the situation with the NBA and China. Listen, it's just not that complicated. Okay?

For episode 28 we've got a hell of a lot to talk about with regards to the MLB Postseason. We run down what we think about each team and their chances of winning the world series. We also talk about some of the teams NOT in the postseason, mostly the ones actively tanking. Spoiler alert: Tanking in baseball is an egregious thing to do.

The Antonio Brown saga was ugly and unrelentingly shitty on all fronts. It started off weird and has only gotten more grotesque as it continued to unfold over the last few months. It was impossible to ignore, an absolute sports news behemoth. AB is a total scumbag and no one will deny that at all. But the way this whole thing unfolded has led us to examine the way the NFL controls the narratives of its players (you know, the ones not named Antonio Brown) and encourages fans to see the sports world through Football-only colored lenses. We also talk about less-pressing matters like, oh I don't know, baseball, basketball, and the Sopranos for some reason.

It's our final episode of the season, and thank god summer is over. In this episode we chat about just how boring it is to try to cover sports from July through August. We also talk about Major League Baseball's transformation into the sport it is right now and how a few older folks are very, very in their feelings about these changes.

This week we discussed the United States Women's National Soccer Team, their history, and their quest for equal pay. We also examined our own privilege as men and how even well-meaning allies can contribute heavily to problematic narratives that allow higher powers to discriminate. We also weighed in on the red-hot San Francisco Giants, Magic Johnson's ability to destroy the Lakers from any position he wants at all times no matter what, and other on-goings in the sports world.

The All Star Game was in Cleveland this past week and it caused us to take a look at the still very thriving culture of racism against Native Americans embedded in not only Cleveland Indians fandom, but sports as a whole. We learned that while Cleveland has (kind of) phased out its racist caricature of a mascot, its fans aren't so willing to let go. So this week we examined that behavior, why they're holding on, and what they have to say for themselves with regards to their awful actions. We also talked about the USWNT and NBA Free Agency, which is bonkers. They're both bonkers. Both of those things are bonkers.