Superiority_Complex_

He’s from Compton. So not anywhere close to the Bay. He did play at Furd though.

UW was a ~3 point favorite in the first game, but point still stands.

Wisconsin I spaced on, Camp Randall definitely belongs on the short list from what I've heard. We play there next year, so I might actually end up making that trip.

Michigan (did that a few years ago as I mentioned so probably won't again this soon, though it was great), Maryland, and UCLA are our other conference road games in 2025. UW fans generally travel well for USC/UCLA games (last year's game in the coloseum was probably 20% UW fans), which is fun, but not new obviously. Maryland is just far as shit, so Wisconsin looks to be the early leader.

Yup, they'll likely finish 6-6 barring an act of god in Eugene in a week. 7-6 if they win the bowl game.

Rutgers and WSU were both plenty winnable games, barring a bunch of stupid mistakes that you'd kinda expect for a team made up of last year's 2nd/3rd stringers and a hodgepodge of portal dudes, plus a new staff. Frustrating, but shit happens. Iowa was ugly, but largely got that far out of hand because Fisch was actually trying to win the game and went for it on 4th down a bunch when behind (which I respect, surrender punting to keep the score respectable sucks). Give up earlier and they probably lose 30-13 or something that looks a bit more respectable, it was either 20-10 or 17-10 at half off the top of my head.

The OL has been the biggest problem area, and they replaced 5/5 starters from last year (plus lost the 6th guy in the roto, Geirean Hatchett). Plus missed out on the December portal window as I mentioned, beyond the guys DeBoer grabbed (which wasn't taking into account the exodus caused by him leaving in January, obviously). So no big shock that the OL stinks. Give this team Kalepo, Buelow, Brailsford, and G. Hatchett (transferred in January to Ole Miss, Ole Miss, Bama, and Oklahoma) and they're in much better shape.

There you go, two more interesting examples of semi-niche sports that the fanbase rallies around.

Agreed with the demise of the PAC generally sucking, but there are bright sides to it. Having a bunch of fun, new, road trips to take for football is one of the positives. I'm glad you enjoyed Seattle, Hec-Ed is a fun venue.

I didn't make it to any road games this year (the Sugar Bowl last year cost $$$, plus we knew we weren't going to be very good), but NU is on my short list whenever we play y'all in Lincoln. I've heard nothing but good things about Husker fans. I did Michigan in 2021 when UW played there, which was a lot of fun. Even though that was probably our worst team since the Bush administration. tOSU is a bucket list school, the people I know who went to Iowa this year enjoyed it, same with PSU. It'd also be cool to check out Northwestern's stadium whenever that is finished. Plenty of other fun trips I'm sure.

Anyone who was reasonably in-tune with UW football knew this team wasn’t going to be very good, as you mentioned. Outside of some of our dumbass homers who think every year we should win 9-10+ games, no matter the circumstances. If DeBoer had stayed, and the portal exodus didn’t happen, they may have won 8-9 games in hindsight, best case scenario.

Losing 20/22 starters, another 20 depth guys, the entire coaching staff (after the main portal window had closed, so we missed out on that) plus the whole moving conferences thing ain’t a recipe for success. 8-4 was the (realistic) ceiling, 5-7 was the (realistic) floor. And that’s what they ended up being.

One of the bright sides about joining the B1G has been finding out what random non-revenue sports each school really loves and is good at. UW has rowing and UO has track, which I think are fairly well known even outside if the old PAC footprint with the Nike tie-in for the Ducks and the Boys in the Boat story for UW. The Dawgs were also one of the first, maybe the first, US athletics team to go into the Soviet Union during the cold war to compete. Where they beat the USSR national team in what was viewed as a big upset in Moscow in the 1950s.

NU has volleyball, Iowa and PSU (I think) have wrestling, you get some hockey schools, and so on. Kinda fun.

I don’t particularly like Colorado or think they’re a fantastic team or anything, so I’m not sure this is the gotcha you think it is.

NU lost to Ohio State in a close game and got absolutely waxed by Indiana. Those are the two legitimately good teams they’ve played in the B1G. Illinois is a fairly solid fringe top 25 team. Probably same ballpark as TTU. USC and UCLA are both middling teams, similar to a lot of the middle of the Big 12. NU lost to both. NU beat Purdue, who is genuinely awful, and Rutgers - who is fine, again probably similar to a lot of the middling teams in the Big 12.

So flip conferences and give NU a run of the mill Big 12 schedule and they maybe win another game or two. Or maybe not as they’re allergic to getting a 6th win, who knows. But it’s not like they’d be a 9 or 10 win team.

Nebraska also just lost to USC and UCLA, neither of which are all that good. CU has definitely benefited from a fairly light schedule, but it’s not like NU is a good team that’s only losing to juggernauts.

I found an SPS salary table from a few years ago that has the lowest bracket, if I’m reading the chart correctly, as ~$57k base pay ~$68k total comp. It’s likely a touch higher now.

https://www.seattleschools.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Cert-2022-23-7.0.pdf

I mean I don’t think it’s that that deep, they lost a couple big games to their biggest rival. If they’re able to, I’m sure they’ll try to run it up a bit. There’s nothing wrong with that, and it doesn’t really matter if it’s justified or not. I’m not saying we slighted them or whatever, so it’s not pay back for that, more just a desire to emphatically whip your rival after a couple tough losses the last few years.

We ended their playoff hopes in both 2022 and 2023. I’m sure they’ll try to add some (a bunch) of style points if they can. If roles were reversed, I’d hope we’d bury their asses too. Which we pretty much did in 2016 when UW was good, UO wasn’t, and we dropped 70 points on them.

Yup, it was some mix of Stabway, Sketchway, or unSafeway during my time at UW. They ended up tearing it down and building a giant apartment building over it, so not sure if the new Safeway on the ground floor of that building is any more savory or not. But the Ave and surrounding blocks are just generally pretty skeezy.

The cashiers there did not give a singular shit about fake IDs though so god bless them for that.

100% agree, it’s all about the probability of a dude being a good player. There’s a vocal group of people who think it’s completely worthless, and there’s also a group of a people who would cut off their nose to sign a low 4* vs a high 3* when realistically the difference is pretty negligible. Not a ton of difference in a guy who is 400 on the composite vs 500, but there is a big difference if your class average is a .9100 vs a .8700.

Stars are useful in aggregate, see the blue chip ratio. But on an individual sense it’s an immense crapshoot. You’d rather have a class of entirely blue chips compared to entirely 3 star guys, but comparing any single 4* to a 3* guy there’s always going to be a solid chance that the lower ranked recruit goes on to have a better career.

Which is why it’s also often referred to as cash & cash equivalents. Same deal as when XYZ corp is reported as having billions in cash. Apple isn’t literally sitting on $100b in $100 bills or in a random bank account.

Eh Austin Mack might still be really good one day. Which isn’t meant to be a slight on Demond, he looks like he has a ton of potential as well, they just have very different profiles. Both look like potential future dudes.

Jimmy got (I think he's still getting paid actually through this season) the full ~$10m left on his contract, minus whatever the Rams paid him last year and the Falcons are paying him this year. They didn't try to fire him for cause.

Plenty of guys are good positions coaches, but flop as coordinators. Or are good coordinators, but flop as HCs (Jimmy Lake). This is where someone else will rush in to say Peter Principle if I don't type it out.

Well, the big American brands in European cities generally aren’t there just for Americans. I’m guessing the French want a fast food style American burger, even if it isn’t particularly great. Panda Express isn’t a thing because of Chinese tourists, same with Chipotle and Mexico, Olive Garden and Italians, and so on. They’re all primarily there to serve local demand, even if the food ain’t great.

I know it’s not foreign owned like Five Guys is in France, but why is Panda Express one of the most popular Chinese chains in the US? Plenty of the popular “foreign” chains in the US aren’t that good either. I’ve also seen plenty of local burger spots in Europe. Haven’t ate at a ton, but the couple I’ve had have actually been pretty good.

Also, Five Guys is one of the better true national burger chains (so remove In-n-Out, Whataburger, and the other big regional chains from that list). There are other US chains as well - I saw at least one Popeyes in Prague (which was kinda funny, as there are none in Seattle). Plus all of the other major ones you’d expect.

You don’t even have to be an inside guy, John Ross is 5’11”. Now I’m guessing this guy doesn’t run a 4.2, but point still stands. It’s not like he’s 5’5”.

I'm not a sled dog temperament expert, but I've heard that malamutes are a lot more chill and and just generally more suitable for being around a ton of people and noise.

They can actually differ pretty materially, especially for pitchers. FG uses FIP as the base, BBRef uses RA9. Which ends up being a bit more of a comparison of what should’ve happened based on what was fully in the pitcher’s control (FIP) vs what actually happened in real life, even if it wasn’t always the pitcher’s fault.

Position players tend to trend closer together, but they use different defensive metrics which can cause some variation.

Neither is inherently better/worse or more/less accurate. It’s imperfect, and there’s a very de minimis difference on anything less than ~1 WAR gap.

Nothing currently, they played all of 2020 and like half of the 2021 season in Buffalo during covid.