RedRamage

It's kinda too bad there isn't anything like employer-employee privilege so that the Lions can plan accordingly. Not saying TA is guilty of anything here of course but it'd be nice from a team's perspective to have a player able to be completely and totally honest about any legal issue so the team can figure if they should work to replace him without the player having to worry about that information being compelled in court. Of course, from a player's perspective they probably wouldn't want to do that anyway. They're not going to want to give the team any reason to think about cutting them early if they are guilty of something.

I think the biggest problem is here is that Holmes did so good in his first few years with players who were star level almost right from the get go that anything else looks bad by comparison.

I dunno if we'll ever know the extent of involvement TA had in these events. I can totally see a situation where these people "went rogue" and TA knew nothing about it but they were using his name with some of the "little people" in the plot to lend legitimacy to the effort. I can also see a situation where TA planned, or helped plan, the events but intentionally kept some distance so he could have plausible deniability. This honestly doesn't seem that likely to me just because that seems to involve a certain high level of thoughtfulness and planning, but then communicating by a easily tracible method of texting from their main phones, dropping TA's name repeated in the conversation, and the apparent amateur effort of the events feels very unthoughtful and unplanned. If I was forced to guess? I'd say TA probably was hanging out with some of these people and they were lamenting about the stolen items. As young men are prone to do they probably started bs-ing about what they'd do if they caught the people they figured did the robbery. Maybe even made some off the cuff plans on how to carry it out. I suspect there wasn't any real intention here, just young guys talking **** and that's all it ever would have been. But then someone (or someones) from the group decided to act on the "plans." In this imagined possible senario I'm gonna assume that Hilton (the guy alleged to be the leader of the actual incident) was in that bs session and decided to make it happen for real. The questions then are: Did TA encourage or authorize Hilton to make it happen? Did Hilton think TA authorized it, even though TA didn't? Did Hilton take the initiative on his own and he (and/or his co-conspirators) use TA's name to try to lend legitimacy to the actions for the lower level players? Obviously if it's #1, that's bad. Whether there's evidence of it remains to be seen but it's still bad if TA actively was involved in anyway. If it's #2 then it's potentially bad. If Hilton legitimately thought TA authorized it (but TA didn't), he may accuse TA of doing it and maybe law enforcement believes him and maybe they go after TA. In this situation TA is innocent, but still have to deal with court cases to clear his name. If it's #3 then it's just bad PR. TA needs to get better friends but it's just a a bad look having his 'friends' be criminals.

I remember when I was a kid we weren't allowed to watch TV on Sundays until after night church... unless the Tigers were on, then we could.

Is it spin?

Tigers on pace to score 2,754 runs this year.

Rough day for Pivetta... does he even make it out of the 3rd?

Who is Mick Gonagal guy? I haven't heard of him before. Is he good?

I would tend to agree. This seems actually contradictory to your previous desire to have the game called right, even if it seems to slow down the game a bit. They actually do this in the UFL and it works pretty nicely... you can actually hear what they are reviewing and what they are looking at and why they made the decision on air. I liked it a lot. Of course... then they'd cut to interviewing the review guy during the game and asking him all the questions again when was annoying, but watching the process itself was interesting.

These are proposed rule changes from the competition committee: 1. Kicking team can declare for an onsides kick at any point, not just in the 4th qtr. - I really don't care one way or the other on this. While I do like the new kick off rules in general I do miss the "surprise" onsides kick potential. This rule doesn't bring back the surprise, so... whatever. 2. Remove the incentive to kick out of bounds when kicking from the 50. - If you'll recall the Lions did this once last year. If I remember the details of this: If there's a penalty that gets enforced on the kickoff, that changes where the ball is placed if the kick goes out of bounds. I think it's goes to like the 20 instead of the 40. This makes sense to me as I don't think the intention of the rule was to allow this. 3. Expansion of Replay/Ejections. Basically league personal can consult with on field refs regarding ejecting players WITHOUT the refs needing to flag the play. Right now if the refs miss an obvious flagrant or non-football act and don't flag it, replay can't come back and tell the refs they should look at something and consider an ejections. This would fix that and I think it's a good rule change. 4. Replacement Referee Contingency. This is apparently just being proposed for one year, but it would allow the NFL officiating department to overrule "clear and obvious" bad calls if a work stoppage involving the NFL Ref. Association occurs. Anyone else remember "Replacement Refs"? Ugh... 5. Changes to receiving team alignment during kicks. I think this is to reduce the minimum number of players who need to be on the restraint line. All in all I don't see anything too earth shattering here.

Anyone know what the rules are in terms of multiple live views at the same time? I'm asking for... uh... for a friend... yeah... Seriously though my brother subscribed to Bally/FanDuel for the RedWings games and shared it with my Mother so she could watch the Tigers and they split the cost. Given that it was just the two of them and Bally/FanDuel apparently allowed two simultaneous views that worked out well for them. Can you do the same thing with DSN?

You can watch it through MLB.com as well... The young guys are getting it done right now. 4-0 in the top of the 2nd.

No.

Funny you would word it that way because I was just thinking that the WBC is pretty much like the Olympics in terms of how I following it. I honestly don't follow most of the sports played in the Olympics. I couldn't tell you who the top ranked downhill skiers are or the top curlers or long jumpers or gymnasts. I would never really care about results of a rowing competition or speed skating match normally. But when it comes to the Olympics I suddenly become mildly interested. I DO care if the US is winning these events. I DO care about the results. I may even tune in to watch some of the events if the US is involved and going deep into the contests. And this is exactly how I'm following the WBC: Oh, the US played last night? Did they win? Are they going to advance to the next round? Oh, the US is in the semi-finals? Well, I don't have anything else major to do, maybe I'll turn the game on for a bit. And while watching the game last night and being amazed as Witt Jr. defense and being able to cheer for it I think I realized where the enjoyment is coming from: This is an All-Star tournament. Now I know most of you just went: "Yeah, duh! Took you that long to figure it out?" But stay with me here: For those older folk like me, remember the All-Star Games of yesteryear? Remember when there was some serious pride in those games and the stars played all out for the AL or the NL to win? Remember when you might have actually cared who won beyond just "Well I'm a fan of an AL team so I guess I'd prefer the AL to win..." I may not have always watched the All-Star Game back then, but I did tune in if I had nothing better to do, and I certainly cared who won and actively rooted for the AL. This what the WBC feels like to me. It's an All-Star Game but with players actually trying hard to win and being upset if they don't. And instead of it just being one game it's a tournament. I can enjoy that.

Mexico loads the bases in the bottom of the 8th, but Italy gets out without allowing any runs. On to the 9th. At this point it would be nearly impossible for the US not to advance. It would require an amazing top of the 9th for Mexico to get back into the game. But even if that happened that helps the US because a high scoring game hurts both teams runs allowed quotient. Mexico would need to score a bunch AND it would need to go into extra innings AND it would need a LOT of extra innings AND Mexico would need to win for the US to be eliminated.

If Italy wins, even if it's 15-14, the US advances. If Mexico wins, then it gets complicated.

Now the only real danger is extended extra innings with low scoring. Seems unlikely.

Column 1, Row 0... Need more runs!

Sweet @Edman85! I was thinking about fumbling around with this but wasn't sure if I'd get all the math right.

So browsing youtube and I think found my answer. Unfortunately it's kinda complex but it seems it boils down to runs allowed divided by outs. Turns out a very similar situations is what played out in pool C for determining second place. This video does a REALLY good job of explain it so I highly recommend watching it a moment, then look at my numbers below. So, if I'm doing my math right (and that's a HUGE if!) then: Mexico - 0.101 (7 runs allowed over 69 innings.) USA - 0.157 (17 runs over 108 innings) Italy - 0.123 (10 runs over 81 innings) So, if Italy wins, then USA is runner up and advances because USA beat Mexico head-to-head. But, if Mexico wins then it goes to the runs allow quotient, and if I'm understanding correctly things could get very interesting. If it's a super high scoring game, then that helps the US, but if it's low... particularly if Italy doesn't score a lot, then Mexico would win the first tie break and they'd be Pool B champs. At this point I think they start over with the tie-breaker rules... that is they'll compare USA and Italy and the first tie breaker is head-to-head... that means USA it out. So, we should be rooting for Italy tonight I guess... or at the very least if Mexico wins we want it to be a shoot out with lots and lots of scoring.

Later today 2-1 Mexico hosts 3-0 Italy. If Mexico win then we'll have three teams at 3-1: Itally, who only lost to the Mexico. Mexico, who only lost to USA. USA, who only lost to Italy. Anyone know what the tie breaker rules are then? On a side note the WBC got the final pool games scheduled nicely for the most part. Pool A's final game decides between Cuba and Canada will decide which of those teams advances, as well as which team is the pool winner and runner up. Pool B's final game, as discussed will decide then same. Pool C's final game was meaningless. Pool D's final game between the DR and Venezuela will determine the winner vs. runner up.

Saying the "the cap is fake" isn't specifically saying the cap isn't real... just that there are way to play around with it to make it feel like it's not as strict as it could (should?) be. I mean the point of the cap is to prevent a handful of teams from just buying up all the talent, but if a team can just buy up all the talent and pay them next year or the year after or the year after... and oh by the way three years down the road that contact that eat up 5% of a teams cap will only count for 3% of the cap then so it's not as much of a hit. In the end all teams are still playing by the same rules so it's fair. It's not like only 1 or 2 teams know about or can use these tricks. So I'm not complaining that teams are cheating or whatever. Just that it feels like these loop holes make the cap far less of a solid limit and much more of a numbers game that you just need to plug in the right formula rather than actually make sure the contacts stay under a certain limit.

And this is why people say the Salary Cap is fake. I mean if you can just so easily adjust a few things and BAM, 32 million (more than 10% of the Salary Cap) is freed up, then I find it hard to argue against those people. I get the feeling that the Salary Cap rules are as convoluted as the Tax Code is here in the US. It's starting to feel like all the deferrals that are happening in baseball. None of it is real money anymore. It's all just kicking the can down the road and when the road ends? Well, just build more road and kick the can more.

I don't think I'd close the door, but he's gonna have to eat a lot of crow if he comes back... not sure he'd be willing to do that. He was very nice and polite about how he said it, but there doesn't seem to be much doubt about what happened: Lions wanted him to take a pay cut and/or be a backup. He didn't feel right about that, now he'd have to come back to Detroit taking a pay cut and/or be a backup. Maybe I'm putting too much in the wording of his statement, but it doesn't sound like he was terribly happy or understanding of it and just said: "Okay, let's just call it quits now before we start arguing and yelling and ending on a worse note." If he's said something more like: "The Lions asked me to take a lesser role. While I understand their position from a business stand point I still believe I have many games of high caliber football left in me and I've requested a release to test the FA market." To me that feels more like "I'm gonna shop around but I'm open to coming back if I can't get a better deal." But again: Y'all know me... I'm probably putting way too much importance on specific phrases and words.

And the signature may or may not have been with an autopen.