Author: BL

The Coggin Toboggan is coming to an end…once I become an XFL coach

The XFL. The PINNACLE of professional football in America. Such vaunted men of lore whose names are still spoken  in hushed tones across the great gridirons in this fine country. Tommy Maddox! Mike Furrey! Uhh….uhhhh…..that He Hate Me guy! Remember him?! He was fun!

It’s a league steeped in fine football tradition….and wrestling. Please don’t forget about the wrestling.

So when I saw on Twitter that Vince McMahon would PERSONALLY be reading applications for coaches and players when the XFL kicks off again in 2020, well, I figured it would be my one shot at glory. Plus, they’re taking applications through LinkedIn, and guess who has a scarcely visited profile he created more than a decade ago……THIS GUY.

I’m not a sucker though. I’m 36, I still have plenty left in the tank, but I think these men, these WARRIORS would find my wisdom to be much more valuable than what I could do physically next to them on the XFL field. I have so much to teach….so why not be a coach? Also, my doctor told me if I sustain one more concussion I very well may fall into a deep, dark coma and never return, so this seems like a win-win on so many levels.

Check out my very real application to the XFL after the jump. You can apply here too if you like.

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Harry Styles’ fans over-analyzing Ben Simmons’ breakup letter to Kendall Jenner is amazing

Found this on Twitter this morning while looking for Kendall Jenner’s Instagram post of the letter Ben Simmons wrote her after they broke up. Don’t worry, she crossed out Ben’s name in the letter so nobody would ever know it was him writing her a sappy letter spewed forth from the broken heart of a man who just wants to love a girl….THIS GIRL….right in front of him.

I guess it’s ok, she only has 100,000,000 followers on her IG account, so I’m sure nobody saw it.

DuGGp-nVAAAcRUK

(H/T to @STEVEJCLARK85 for posting this on Twitter)

Looking for the letter on Twitter, I stumbled across this conversation from European super fans of Harry Styles who are VERY nervous that their young crooner is trying to reignite the flame with ex-Jenner and who obviously have no idea who this boorish Ben Simmons fellow is.

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The anatomy of a lost season

In retrospect, we should have seen it coming. The signs could not have been more clear. Everything pointed to a down season for the Eagles, the vaunted “Super Bowl hangover” that seems to plague every Super Bowl Champion outside of Foxboro.

But we turned our heads. We ignored it. We pointed to the beefed up defensive line, a healthy Sidney Jones, a largely intact and returning offense, and Big Balls Doug Pederson leading us back to the promised land.

We put the blinders on. We ignored Carson Wentz coming back from a devastating knee injury. We ignored Alshon Jeffery coming back from a devastating shoulder injury. We ignored Brandon Graham coming back from a devastating ankle injury. We ignored Jason Peters coming back from a devastating Achilles injury. We ignored Darren Sproles coming back from a devastating leg and knee injury. We ignored a spine injury to Tim Jernigan. A spine injury!

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The blueprint to defeat the 76ers has never been more evident

The 76ers took a massive poutine shit in the Great White North in front of a national audience, and in turn gave the rest of the NBA step-by-step instructions on how to dismantle their entire game.

Despite putrid shooting in the first half, the clearly superior Toronto Raptors rallied to defeat the Sixers by double digits after completely negating two of their three best players through the night. Jimmy Butler kept the Sixers in it with 38 points, but when Ben Simmons is doing his best impersonation of the Invisible Man for 99% of the game and Joel Embiid is getting dominating by Jonas Valanciunas, it’s not going to end well.

And end well it did not.

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Will the Flyers break free from the past and forge a new identity?

The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Every calendar in the Flyers’ wing of the Wells Fargo Center is from 1975. Gas is 30-cents a gallon. Scouts are desperately searching for grainy, reel-to-reel footage of the USSR national team in preparation for the huge, international exhibition tilt scheduled for the new year.

But yesterday a new intern walked into the facility with an iPhone and blew everyone’s mind. Wifi became a thing. Gas shot up to over $2 a gallon. Donald Trump went from a young, cocaine hungry boob to our current cocaine hungry boob of a president.

And the Flyers fired Ron Hextall from his GM position, another vaunted visage of a more successful past hired to bring the Flyers back into relevancy.

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It’s time for the 76ers to be transparent and say what’s going on with Markelle Fultz

Ho hum. Another week, another scathing controversy/conspiracy brewing about the Philadelphia 76ers.

What’s next? Are we a day away from 76ers CEO Scott O’Neil being found complicit in the JFK assassination? Is Brett Brown really DB Cooper? Is Joel Embiid’s success all a “Jacob’s Ladder” scenario that we’re experiencing during our last moments on our death bed?

For a yet unknown reason (be it the way the planets are aligned, the wind is blowing, or if a full moon is on the horizon) at the direction of his attorney Markelle Fultz is being pulled  from all 76ers activity until he sees a shoulder specialist next week.

The strange, sad saga of Fultz has taken yet another strange, sad turn.

No practices. No games. Nothing until Fultz is seen by whatever hack specialist he’s being shoveled off to now.

Oddly enough, Fultz has said nothing about his health this season. He’s said on multiple occasions that he feels “good” and publicly bristled when ex-shooting coach Drew Hanlen said he wasn’t healthy.

Here he is on Nov. 6th saying how good his shot feels.

 

 

 

He had opportunity last night to say he was injured. He did not.

So what changed from then to now? How have we gone from a happy-go-lucky, yet struggling, Markelle Fultz to this:

 

 

Is he hurt? Is his shoulder still bothering him? Is he and his team peeved that Brett Brown gave his minutes to TJ McConnell last night?

Now is the time, 76ers, to finally come clean and tell us what you know about Fultz.

Is he hurt?

Was he injured in a BMX accident after he was drafted?

Why is he being sent to a shoulder specialist after assuring everyone he was healthy?

Why did he so publicly split with Drew Hanlen?

Is he upset with being benched for TJ McConnell?

How much of a say do the people around Markelle have on this decision?

All of these questions have been asked by the 76ers beat reporters. None of them have been answered.

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The strange, sad saga of Markelle Fultz

Watching Markelle Fultz double-clutch his way through a free throw attempt and having it spread through social media like a plague hurt my soul. It’s painful to watch, and even more painful when you realize everyone is already laughing at it seconds after it hits Twitter.

He put in so much work, so much effort into retooling his shot, and for a while it seemed to be working. Sure, it wasn’t the nicest shot anyone has ever seen, but it was a hell of a lot better than the janky nonsense he put up last season.

Then, well, this hit Twitter minutes after his double-clutch du jour:

Oof. Just another strange nail in the strange coffin of Fultz’s young career. I know Fultz will get a lot of shit for tossing Hanlen to the curb, but Hanlen always struck me as an odd guy himself.

And to top it all off, he’s a bit of a Chatty Cathy. I’m all for sending passive aggressive tweets about someone, but give me a break. Do shot trainers need to send out “mysterious” tweets about their clients health, and then fire off this nonsense last night?

Who would have thought a weirdo shooting coach wouldn’t work well with a weirdo shooting guard who is suddenly so far inside of his own head that he’s scared to attempt a jump shot farther than 15-feet?

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