rather win ugly
than lose pretty – no Lions fan
feels comfortable

As any of my regular readers (bless their hearts) know, I start my day with the Guardian Newspaper of Manchester, GB and the New York Times (at least I do when I remember to renew my free three day account through my library).

This morning, both papers had articles about the Detroit Lions!

The Guardian has a story headlined, From sad sacks to contenders: How the Lions became the talk of the NFL where a Mr. Dave Caldwell writes, “Goff said in a postgame news conference, “You’d rather win ugly than lose pretty. There were times earlier in the year when we were winning pretty in certain situations, and then kind of letting it fall away from us towards the end, and I think that’s totally flipped to where we’re at now. We’ve won some games recently pretty handily, but we’ve also won some close games, and won some games on the road close that we had to pull out and things had to go our way at the end.

“Is it going our way, or are we making a play? I lean toward making a play, whether it was a sack on that last drive, or just things we did up front, we’re starting to learn how to win and how to win consistently in close games in tough environments. And yeah, it’s a good, mature team now.”

The New York Times has a story, NFL Power Rankings: Jaguars rise, join Lions as ex-doormats with playoff hopes by Bo Wulf who writes, The wildest weekend of the NFL season included the biggest comeback in league history, two ho-hum comebacks of 17 points, a potentially season-changing injury for a Super Bowl favorite, and probably the dumbest play since the invention of the game.

There won’t be any kneecaps left in the Detroit metro area if Dan Campbell’s Lions are able to pull off this rally to the playoffs. After Jared Goff hit Brock Wright — a real high-water mark season for Brocks leaguewide — for a 51-yard game-winning touchdown to beat the Jets, Detroit has a 57.6 percent chance of making the playoffs, according to Mock’s projections.

Do I believe?

YOU BET I DO!

What do I believe?

Believe me, you don’t want to ask.

Mr. Wulf closed his comments with a caveat on the Lions.

(BTW remember how in the BOOK, Gone with the Wind, Scarlett wanted a new name for her store she acquired by marrying Frank Kennedy? Rhett Butler suggested the name “CAVEAT EMPTORIUM” and Scarlett liked it so much she had a sign made. Then Ashely Wilkes translated the sign for her. But I digress.)

Mr. Wulf writes: Its schedule the rest of the way looks there for the taking, but there isn’t a Lions fan alive who feels comfortable.

And if they don’t pull it off, well, there might not be any Lions fans alive.

Well well well.

Entirely agree that there isn’t a Lion’s fan alive who feels comfortable.

That easy enough to say as there isn’t a Lion’s fan alive who EVER felt comfortable.

But the idea that if they don’t pull it off, well, there might not be any Lions fans alive.

Cannot say I agree with that one bit.

Because they always play next year.

Honolulu Blue forever!

dumbumvirate
debacle coverage
back worse than ever

Yes the inspiration for this haiku was based on the use of just one word in a long review of FOX Sports coverage of the World Cup and that word was dumbumvirate.

I am not 100% sure of what it means.

From the usage in the sentence, Four years on from the dumbumvirate debacle of its coverage in Russia, Fox is back, and worse than ever, it has refer to the color commentary team of talking heads that FOX has hired as the face of their soccer coverage.

The word dumbumvirate only occurs, according to the google, in this story and another story by the same author, Aaron Timms, back in 2018 on the same topic.

Mr. Timms has written for The Sydney Morning Herald so maybe dumbumvirate is one of those colorful Australian idioms like g’daymate and barbecue stopper, all said with that wonderful rising inflection that makes Australians seem like they are asking questions or for agreement, nes pas?

ANYWAY, I had to salute the word and Mr. Timms and his article, Fox Sports’ US World Cup coverage is an unmissable abomination and here are some of his other word combinations.

>> From the moment that Stone called Doha “Dosa” ahead of the opening match – between the capital of a small oil state on the Gulf and a fermented south Indian pancake, who’s really insisting on the distinction? – then promptly vanished from Fox’s coverage for the next three days, the US host English-language broadcaster of this World Cup has offered up a feast of gaffes, stupidity, and unconquerable on-air awkwardness for American viewers to enjoy. 

>> Insults to our collective intelligence have come from all angles: the constant, tedious analogies to American sports (stepovers and feints described as “dekes” and “hesis”, corners constantly compared to “pick and rolls”); the neverending quest to “contextualize” the world game by comparing whole countries to American states (“Qatar is the size of Connecticut,” we were told repeatedly on the opening day); the network’s embrace and promotion of the interminable “it’s called soccer” cause (who cares?); the strange extended segment in the run-up to USA v England about how much Harry Kane likes American football (ditto); the employment of Piers Morgan as a special guest pundit (no thanks).

>> Take a moment to appreciate the full dizzying scope of Fox’s witlessness in Qatar. After Rob Stone noted, in the lead-up to the group match between Brazil and Serbia, that the Brazilians have won the World Cup five times – perhaps the most widely known World Cup statistic of all – a wide-eyed Dempsey exclaimed, “Wow, you really did your research!” During France v Denmark, match commentator JP Dellacamera described Kylian Mbappé as “a kid who’s 23 and already the whole world is talking about him,” an evaluation whose awestruck “already” suggested that JP has watched close to no football over the past half decade. Donovan started the tournament pronouncing Iran “Eye-ran”, witnessed Tyler Adams being corrected by an Iranian journalist for mispronouncing his country’s name – then continued to call the country “Eye-ran”.

>> Indeed the mispronunciation of foreign names – stadiums, players, whatever – has become a running joke on Fox’s Corniche set. Asked to offer a prediction before the US match against England, Lalas thundered, “I don’t know how they say it in the King’s English but dose a seero my friends to the USA,” helpfully demonstrating that he doesn’t know how to say “dos a cero” in the King’s Spanish either.

I don’t watch much of soccer.

I am just not a soccer fan, like Tennis or Corn Horn.

I’ll watch golf but with a hidden NASCAR schadenfreudesque of wanting to see someone miss that putt.

But I watch football and I want to Mr. Timms to know that here in the states, CBS has worked just as hard as FOX to create the dumbumvirate of Tony Romo and any one unlucky enough to be stuck with him in a broadcast booth.

Over Thanksgiving, Mr. Romo provided commentary on the Detroit Lions game and his manner was such that I finally took to social media to ask DOES ROMO ever shut up, Its Like Tim McCARVER doing football …

A friend of mine commented that she had to ask who Tim McCarver was and the response she got, “The most annoying person on the planet.”

You know, the type of person you would find in a dumbumvirate.

stoic straight-talking
unclear how this differs from
rest of the country

One Saturday afternoon some time ago, at a backyard neighborhood graduation party, I was sitting at a table between Fred Meijer of Meijer Thrifty Acres fame and Mr. and Mrs. DeKorne of DeKorne’s Furniture store fame.

Both big names if you grew up in Grand Rapids, Michigan in the late 1900’s like I did.

The occasion was to recognize the Ph.d of the son-in-law of our neighbor, Dr. Julius Franks, the University of Michigan’s first black All American football player.

It was an interesting neighborhood.

All these folks and me and my family.

I am happy to report that Mr. Meijer was about an unassuming billionaire as you could meet and the DeKorne’s were just folks.

Mr. Meijer was telling stories about his family history and how they worked up from a one location grocery store started by his father to the huge success Meijer’s was today.

BTW, yes, we call it Meijer’s not Meijer, because it was Fred’s store.

Mr. Meijer took his story all the way back to the Netherlands and how, had the family not emigrated to the US, the story would have been different as the family just would not have made it over in Holland.

So I looks at Mr. Meijer and I says, “Gosh Fred, I guess you aren’t Fries?”

The DeKorne’s laughed so hard they fell out of their chairs.

This story will either make you laugh out loud and shake your head at my daring or you will shake your head and say to yourself, ‘I don’t get it?’

If you are Dutch you are in the club and you are laughing.

See, there is Dutch and there is Dutch or at least there is Dutch and there is Fries.

FYI Fries is pronounced FREEEEESE.

It is a word not from the Dutch, but the Frysian language, or Fries. 

Fryslân is the name of the Dutch province in which Fries is spoken: Friesland. 

Those Fries think they are so smart, they need their own language.

Full disclosure here, I am or at least my family is NOT Fries.

My family is from Groningen.

I am talking about the twelve provinces of the Netherlands.

If you are Dutch and not Fries you say that … those Fries, they think they are better than everybody else.

If you are Fries, you say that … those Fries, we ARE better than everybody else.

I remember once meeting the father of a friend who in conversation asked me all sorts of seemingly benign questions about my family and background and such and then out of the blue says, “you must be Fries …” with an approving smile.

I just nodded and smiled back.

So why am I bringing all this up today?

The Dutch and the American’s play in the 2022 World Cup next week.

Reading about the game and the two teams, I came across the article, The Giant World Cup Rookie and an Enduring Dutch Mystery: The Netherlands is Europe’s most reliable talent factory. Unless you need a goalkeeper (click here to read pdf) by Rory Smith.

Mr. Smith relates in depth the problems Dutch teams have in developing great goalies and discusses the current Dutch goalkeeper, Andries Noppert.

Mr. Smith writes: “He’s a real Frisian,” defender Virgil van Dijk said last week, referring to the part of the Netherlands where Noppert grew up, a place famed for its stoicism and straight-talking.

Mr. Smith they goes on and writes, “(It is unclear how this differs from the rest of the country.)”

Those parentheses are in the original.

It is unclear how this differs from the rest of the country?

Huh what?

Mr. van Dijk said “He’s a real Frisian.”

How could be that be unclear?

How could be he be MORE clear.

Boy howdy!

Mr. Smith then quotes the Dutch Coach, Louis van Gaal, who said of goalkeeper Noppert, “He has the sort of personality that means he would not be too impressed by this championship. It would be a lot tougher, after all, being a policeman.“

Yep, that’s it.

The sort of personality that means he would not be too impressed by this championship.

That guy must be Fries.

Ohio came to bury
Michigan … game over … was
someone else instead

Forgive me or at least indulge me this little bit as again I go into sports.

My team won yesterday.

My team won the latest edition of the biggest game of the big game.

While the big game is the BIG GAME, and it is played every year without COVID, there are probably about 4 or 5 that can be counted as greatest BIG GAME in my lifetime.

After one of these BIG GAME’s in 1976, long time Michigan Football Radio Announcer, Bob Ufer, read off a short little poem to commemorate the victory that went like this:

Ohio Came To Bury Michigan, All Wrapped In Maize And Blue
The Words Were Said, The Prayers Were Read And Everybody Cried
But When They Closed The Coffin, There Was Someone Else Inside!

The Bucks Came To Bury The Wolverines – But Michigan Wasn’t Dead,
And When The Game Was Over, It Was Someone Else Instead.

Twenty-Two Michigan Wolverines Put On The Gloves Of Gray,
And As Cavender Played “The Victors”, They Laid Woody Hayes Away!

To update for today:

Ohio Came To Bury Michigan, All Wrapped In Maize And Blue
The Words Were Said, The Prayers Were Read And Everybody Cried
But When They Closed The Coffin, There Was Someone Else Inside!

The Bucks Came To Bury The Wolverines – But Michigan Wasn’t Dead,
And When The Game Was Over, It Was Someone Else Instead.

Twenty-Two Michigan Wolverines Put On The Gloves Of Gray,
And As the Band Played “The Victors”, They Laid Ryan Day Away!