BREAKING NEWS

The Coggin Toboggan’s Festivus miracle!

And that miracle is that we’re publishing our annual Festivus column TWO DAYS EARLY! In the words of Frank Costanza, I’VE GOT A LOT OF PROBLEMS WITH YOU PEOPLE AND NOW YOU’RE GOING TO HEAR ABOUT IT!

Festivus, as we all know, is where we gather our good friends and family together for a dinner, an entertaining feat of strength, and the ever popular Airing of Grievances.

What is the Airing of Grievances? I weep for you.

Frank Costanza: At the Festivus dinner, you gather your family around, and tell them all the ways they have disappointed you over the past year!

Why, the Airing of Grievances is your once chance a year to scream your disappointments to the heavens and not be judged for them.

But I am a lazy man, and I run a lazy, lazy blog. So that’s why I decided to farm out my work to the suckers (fans) that actually read the nonsense I spew all over this site. It’s the American way…when something is too daunting and too much work, you simply find the losers who will do the work for you and reward them with a mere pittance for their efforts.

LOVE YOU GUYS.

Let’s see the best grievances we received this year after the jump.

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Phillies already taking public steps to lessen blow of hugely disappointing offseason

We’ve gone from the promise of being “a little bit stupid” in the offseason to the very public warning by Phillies president of baseball operations Andy MacPhail that landing either Bryce Harper or Manny Machado is not the end all be all for the future success of the franchise.

What a load of steaming horse shit.

And here we are, folks. For years Phillies fans have looked at 2019 as the year. Sure, we may suck now, Citizen’s Bank Park may be less than half full for 80% of all home games and we still have to watch Maikel Franco on a nightly basis, but 2019 is going to be different. Harper and Machado are ripe for the taking. The Phillies have little to no payroll, they’ve got a ton of money in their coffers, and John Middleton and Andy MacPhail are sick and tired of the losing.

Back up the Brinks truck, because we’ve got money to burn and forget about getting just ONE of those guys, hey, we may be “a little bit stupid” and sign both. Why not? IT’S THE NEW NORMAL, FOLKS, AND WE WILL NOT BE OUTBID.

Except it seems like the rest of baseball didn’t get the memo, and now the Phillies are scrambling to create the narrative that success is not dependent on signing EITHER Harper or Machado. As reported by Todd Zelecki at MLB.com, MacPhail certainly sounds like he’s taking proactive steps to convince fans that the franchise really didn’t need Harper or Machado in the first place.

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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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What the hell was that?

After the Eagles fucked away a 17-point lead against the Panthers three weeks ago, Doug Pederson proclaimed the pressure was off his team.

Imagine how little pressure this team feels right now.

Oh me oh my. What the hell did we all watch last night? More important, WHY did we all watch that last night? If we had paid closer attention to this team, to the smoke and mirrors it had displayed during their four wins, we surely would have noticed that the air was dewy sweet with the potential for a massive letdown.

Please go someone else if you want any type of analysis from this game. Stay here if you want to listen to pure, unadulterated bitching.

Look over here! It’s Brandon Graham stripping Tom Brady in the Super Bowl! Remember that? Hey look at this, it’s the Lombardi trophy! Awesome, right?! No no, don’t look over there at the patchwork secondary, the questionable coaching decisions, or Darren Sproles taking up a roster spot all year to get free healthcare….look back over this way, it’s another replay of the Philly Special! Remember that? Philly Philly? Too cool, right?

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