The Daily Dose/October 30, 2019
By Gaylon Kent
America’s Funniest Guy
Leading Off
Notes from around the human experience…
LET’S GET OUR CRYSTAL BALLS OUT, SHALL WE?: We try not to do much prognosticating here. One, we’re lousy at it and, two, it’s more fun to make fun of things after they happen. But there’s a difference between predicting and taking a big-picture, long-term view of something(s), and that’s what we are going to do here.
Hut, Hut Hike: Regular readers of this crap are familiar with The Bottom Ten, our hilarious weekly columns chronicling the worst college and professional teams and if you are keeping track there is some lousy football out there. In the college ranks, there are three 0-8 teams, an inordinately high number, while in the NFL the Dolphins and the Bengals are winless and the only reason the Redskins aren’t winless is because they played the Dolphins. Including the Redskins, seven teams have won one or two games.
Thank You Joe Friday: There is a lot of bad football out there.
Work With Me Here: High school football participation rates have been going down for a few years now and we are on record in this space as saying there will come a time when there aren’t enough good players to keep college and pro football the billion-dollar industry it is now.
We would’ve thought that point would still be a few years, maybe even a generation, off, but Lord knows we’ve been wrong before and perhaps might be seeing the beginning of that now. Or maybe it’s an anomaly.
And Down The Stretch They Come: Horse Racing will be back in the news soon and this is another sport whose future is not exactly assured. 2019 has been a brutal year for the sport, horses dying at an alarming clip, even for a sport where horses die regularly. This has been especially true at Santa Anita, which will host the sports biggest two-day event, the Breeders Cup, this Friday and Saturday.
Get Your Official Daily Dose Policy Right Here: We hope no horses die ever again at a race track. We ran into and killed three deer this past weekend and still feel bad about that. And one horse having to be put down at the Breeder’s Cup probably will be taken in stride.
But multiple deaths? Who knows? A lot more people are ignoring horse racing now than in generations past when, along with baseball and boxing, it was one of America’s big three sports, and multiple deaths at Santa Anita this weekend might just put the sport down for good.
Today At The Site
The Diary of a Nobody: Sparrow reports he used to work with one of the murder suspects at the retailer. Today’s Diary.
The kid’s name is Brooke, the only chick in the suspect triumvirate, and if any of you have worked for Mr Sam you know having a former retailer employee facing a murder rap probably isn’t the biggest surprise in the history of crime…They were formally charged Monday and the paper reported that their statements are conflicting, with each accusing the others of doing the stabbing while they innocently stood by and watched a fellow human get slashed to death.
It’s Sparrow, an average man passing an average life.
Editor’s Note: the Week 10 NFL Bottom Ten will move Thursday.
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On This Date
In 1938 – Giving a clinic in fake news, Orson Welles’ radio presentation of The War of the Worlds causes a national panic when listeners believe Earth is being attacked by Martians. The show simulated a live radio broadcast interrupted by bulletins announcing an explosion on Mars. The invading Martians eventually die because they lacked immunity to Earth’s germs. Meeting with reporters after the show, Welles expressed surprise the show had been taken seriously.
In 1974 – Muhammad Ali defeats George Foreman in an 8th-round knockout to regain the world’s heavyweight boxing championship. The fight was held in Kinshasa, Zaire, now the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and is known to history as the Rumble in the Jungle. Ali regained the title he had been stripped of in 1967 for his refusal to be drafted into the US Army. The began at 4am local time in order to begin at 10pm in the eastern time zone of the United States, was watched by a then-record one billion people and grossed roughly $100 million, about $510 million in today’s money.
In 1977 – If You Leave Me Now by Chicago is at #1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 for the second and final week. It was the group’s 19th Top 40 hit, their eleventh Top 10 hit and their first of three #1s and the song also went to #1 in six other countries, including Great Britain and the Netherlands. If You Leave Me Now also won Grammy Awards for Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalists and Best Pop Vocal Performance by a Duo, Group or Chorus, awards that are now issued under similar or different names. The song was written by Peter Cetera, who also provided lead vocals.
Quotebook
If you are acquainted with the principle, what do you care for a myriad of instances and applications?
Henry David Thoreau
Walden
Answer To The Last Trivia Question
OJ Simpson rushed for 2,003 yards for the Buffalo Bills in 1973, then an NFL record.
Today’s Stumper
Who wrote the novel The War of the Worlds? – Answer next time!
