#his contracts with Bill seem to have reset or something

[mr-cactis]

Multiverse always confuses me, like…. Bill is a multidimensional being, and since other dimensions similar to the one we see in the series exist (Ford mentions in J3 that dimension where Stanley leaves with the diary and Ford goes back to work with Fidds), what's to say that Bill interacted with several Ford's at the same time? And that makes it all the more fucked up when you remember that Ford really felt good about Bill, thinking he was special, while Bill was all "lol, that guy again"

At the same time, I remember that there is some extra material from GF that mentions that there could be other alternative Bill's? What's to stop them meeting? (Would it be a mathematical relationship of: for every X dimensions there is 1 Bill?)

as i hate/love multiverse, i feel dumb

[unholyhelbig]

We Sold Our Souls | 001: Beca

Summary: A small-town rock band continues to play even smaller venues well past high school graduation. Aubrey, Beca, Emily, and Chloe struggle with newfound fame and the long bloody road to get there.

[Based off of "We Sold Our Souls" By Grady Hendrix"]

Read on AO3 | Dt to the amazing @ifionlyhadmorepaper

Beca’s fingers were split and callused where Chloe’s were warm and protected. They were covered in bandages of all shapes and sizes, little adhesive papers that browned at the edges from dirt or from blood that hadn’t been dabbed away. They were wrapped, lacerated where she had pressed too hard on the velvet cords of her guitar. Beca Mitchell would play until rustic oozing syrup covered the face of the instrument.

They stung, sometimes, but right now she leaned into the numbness that the temperature in the office provided. She wanted to spread them in an equal motion over the glass of the desk so each finger lined up with a toe in her Doc Martins. Instead, she placed them calmly in her lap and stared at the silver pen that rested next to the contract.

She picked silently at the ace bandage that she had strategically wrapped around her pinky finger. It had been the newest slice; a wound still fresh to the sterile room. She was sure it would drip one, maybe two drops of red on the white linoleum.

Beca glanced up from the writing utensil and saw nothing but a suit, a slate and dull grey that blended perfectly with the rest of the room. There were no photos on the wall, nothing but a bland black leather sofa and a glass coffee table that matched the same desk they sat at now. She wanted to look through the floor to ceiling windows but saw nothing but white. Everything was white.

She was the darkest thing in the room.

Her boot tapped against, a low and thumbed rhythm. She waited for him to say something, to say anything. But she realized quickly that he may be darker than her. She could stare into the abyss that was his face, into the shadow but it would mean nothing. There were no defining features other than a crisp, business-like smile.

She had switched from pulling at the dressing of her wounds to picking at the frayed edges of her black jean jacket, littered with patches and permanent marker. Beca traced a signature that Chloe had drawn on one drunken night.

They had popped a bottle of champagne and the bubbles made the cuts on her fingers burn something fierce. But she let the golden liquid slosh onto the carpet of the hotel room, and bubble up in her throat until she couldn’t quite hold it between her lips anymore. Chloe kissed her and she tasted like weed and cherry.

It was the first night that their song was played on the radio.

The four of them huddled around a radio, its antenna stretched to the ceiling of that dingy room. The lights buzzed as much as the static, and it was close to three am; too late for the bar handlers to be heading home, and too early for the suits to be warming up their cars. But they played it- they played it.

They could quite possibly be the only four people in the entire world to hear the first song from the DEMO that Beca slid under the studio door.

When she leaned forward, the leather her pants made an ungodly noise. She didn’t’ want to read through the stack bound with a thick black clip. The first page was highlighted where she needed to initial and bolded at the most important parts; the parts that distracted her from what really mattered.

Her father was a stockbroker before he was dead, and he would tell her every single time he brought home a new contract, that they make the glittery things darker. That’s not what she was supposed to read; she was supposed to look at the little pieces of text that had stars next to them. People liked to trick you with shiny things.

Beca moved her finger across the large stack; the paper was cool to the touch and caught on the adhesive of her ace bandage. “What exactly are you offering me here?”

Summer 1985

It took her four whole months to save up for the old white Charvel that sat at the back of Shawl's pawn shop. There were bars strapped across the windows and an ugly neon orange sign that let Beca know when they were closed and when they weren’t. She would cling to those bars when old man Shawl would tell her to buy something or get the fuck out.

He stared at her even harder when she emptied the shoebox of change and crumpled up bills stained with sweat and sticky substances onto the glass counter, but even he couldn’t turn down a profit. She waited for ages while his liver-spotted hands counted the money carefully. Then he pursed his lips and pulled the beat up guitar down from his perch above his shoulder.

In later years, Beca knew she didn’t have nearly enough, and she thanked him silently for taking pity on her and passing it over anyway. She was driving all of his customers, she reasoned, by sulking on the hot sidewalk in front of the shop, letting banana flavored popsicles drip onto her fingers until it was nothing but a stick left.

She had fastened the worn leather strap around her chest and straddled her jet red bicycle. Beca had never peddled so fast in her life. The Mid-August heat clung to every inch of her was humming with sweat by the time she skidded to a stop in front of her house. She let the bike drop and got an instant hit of relief when she crossed the threshold into the open garage.

Beca scooted past the dusty Monza that barely fit in front of the door leading into their kitchen. Her mother had bought it off a stranger that came into the diner back in 78’. There were questionable stains in the backseat and an odd scent of Clorox that they could never get rid of. But it ran back and forth, and that’s all they needed.

She pulled open the honey blossom fridge and grabbed the closest thing they had to a cool drink. Beca drank tang straight from the pitcher, letting it drip down her face and soak into the collar of her shirt. She was noisy when she drank, and oblivious to her mother watching her from the archway as she tied her apron around her waist.

“We have glasses, Bec’s”

Her mother didn’t’ comment on the guitar strapped to her back. She figured that her daughter had picked up another hobby. Last year it was basketball, and the year before that she begged and begged for a set of baseball cards from the local hobby shop. After they were shoved under her bed she was told to fund her ventures on her own.

Beca swallowed the last of the orange flavoring on her tongue and took a savoring breath to fill her burning lungs. She turned to the woman and smiled “That would just dirty two things instead of one. Besides, you don’t drink this anyway.”

She couldn’t argue with that. Her mother wrestled silently with the faux pearl earrings that matched the beaded necklace against her collarbone. The soft blue tone of her uniform washed out her skin and made her look pale despite the summer heat that lingered well into August.

Beca placed the glass decanter back into the bottom half of the fridge before she mock saluted her mother and wandered back out to the garage. Her skin instantly became slick with sweat. She pulled an empty milk crate a few inches from the line of the setting sun.

She finally pulled the old Charvel from her back and situated it in her arms. It was far from a perfect fit. She reached over the neck and felt the way the side dug into her ribs uncomfortably. The strings were frail and sounded rough as she dragged her thumb against them.

Beca had only learned the start of one song, the first few cords of Black Sabbath’s Tomorrows Dream. They had printed the cords on the back of the record sleeve, each specific note highlighted in a comically large dot. Beca would breathe in the dust of the garage and listen to the record on a constant loop, pressing her fingers down against the notes.

She took a deep breath and started to follow the instructions that she had completed a million times over. The strings were too tight and it sounded choppy, sharp, and thick all at once. She cringed at her half-hearted attempt and the way the cords cut so deeply into her fingertips they stung.

She ignored the old car pulling out of the garage, and the way she had to squint at the darkness after a while. There was still the sour taste of orange on her tongue and sweat dripped from her nose. But she played and played, and played until there was blood against the white face of the instrument and tears pinching at her eyes. It sounded somewhat like Black Sabbath.

“You like metal?”

Beca jerked her hand back quickly and drew in a sticky warm breath of air. She had been so wrapped up in her task that she hadn’t realized she wasn’t alone anymore. A girl stood in the dull light that leaked from the garage and into the pavement. She didn’t’ quite pass the threshold- instead, she lingered.

A certain chill had invaded the air and the girl folded into herself. Her wild mane of orange hair fell around her shoulders and ghostly blue eyes lit up optimistically at the sight of a guitar.

“Uh,”

“That’s a Charvel, right? I begged my parents for one last Christmas but they got me an acoustic instead. Hooked me up with lessons from Miss Jensen. I learned one country song and started pocketing the fifty bucks a week instead.”

“Yeah,” Beca swallowed hard “It’s a Charvel”

“That’s cool,” she rocked back and forth on the souls of her sneakers. The cold didn’t’ seem to get to her much anymore. Beca tried to place her. Her ears were ringing and her fingers hurt. The crickets were hissing their own song. “You go to Kennedy don’t you?”

“I’m second year”

“I’m third.” She beamed “I live right next door, I’ve seen you around.”

Beca lifted her chin; she had seen the girl around too. It usually followed loud screaming and slamming doors. She would sit on her stoop and stare at the way her cassette player would turn. Beca had seen her flip a tape four times once- still like a statue until the music stopped and hat to be reset.

“Listen, I uh- don’t want to intrude, but maybe we could play together sometime?”

“Yeah, I would like that.” She found herself saying, the orange drink in her system making her stomach churn. She nearly felt bad, felt a pang of sadness for the girl. “I’m Beca.”

“Hi, Beca. I’m Chloe.”

Winter 1994

Beca let the case fall shut a little too loudly. The acoustics on the small stage seemed to catch all the wrong things. She couldn’t get her voice to carry earlier in the night, but the fur-lined box that they housed their amp in bounced all the way to the entry of the little venue in Portland.

She blinked hard, trying to ignore the harsh red lights that covered every single inch of the place. There were bumper stickers covering the spotty paint of the walls and a bar that was more piss and peanut shells than anything. Emily gulped down warm beer and struggled to keep it down momentarily. She didn’t look up at the noise, her stare trained on a coaster, and the crumbs that lie next to it.

Beca leaned back on her heels and pulled in a thick breath. She smelled like sweat and blood and alcohol. Her little stunt had drawn the attention of Aubrey, the woman wrapping the cord to a different amp around her forearm and palm. She narrowed her unripe stare.

“This was fucking shit,”

“I’m doing my best”

They spoke at the same time. She knew that Aubrey’s anger was buzzing, it was festering until it finally burst. She looked pale under the red lights, the same tattoo they had all gotten two years ago stretched under her tank top and down to the gap between her jeans.

She knew what Aubrey was going to say. Her best wasn’t good enough, and it never was; they had been doing this for years, eight long years and they were still playing the shit-stink venues in even shittier towns. They barely had an audience tonight, and it had all been Beca’s fault. The whole room was thinking it, but no one had the balls to say it other than Aubrey.

Chloe moved from the corner of the room, “We’ll get a better place, Bree.”

“Yeah? When? I’m tired of giving my all to an audience that doesn’t’ fucking exist. We’re not kids anymore.”

“We’re shit broke.” Emily turned in the creaky barstool, swallowing the foam at the bottom of her glass. “I don’t even think we have gas in the van.”

“How much from this gig?” Chloe asked.

Her hair was matted with sweat and her thumb pulled at the chain around her neck. It was fastened with a marbled red pick, one from their first real venue ever. She had nervously wiped away the gold lettering and now the smooth plastic was all that was left. Beca hated disappointing her, and she did it often these days.

“Five hundred.”

“Five hundred? Beca that’s barely enough to cover the hotel rooms.” Aubrey let the wrapped cord fall back to the stage “We don’t break even on this. It’s not fucking worth it. It never was and it never is.”

They all knew what came next. Emily stared down a coaster she had begun to shred. The remaining foam on the glass culminated at the very bottom of the glass and she knew she couldn’t muster enough change to order another one. So she sat with the sour taste in her mouth and festered.

Aubrey would mention Julliard.

“I could have had everything.” She hissed instead.

Beca didn’t dignify it with a response. Instead, she leaned down and pulled the amp up with nothing more than a grunt. Instead, she walked out into the cold Portland air and let it make her skin tighter. She blinked away the red light and searched for the keys in her pockets. She had left them inside.

[jj-lynn21]

Santa’s favorite Elf Part 2:  Ch 6:

Santa’s fav elf ch 1, Santa’s fav elf ch 2, Santa’s fav elf ch 3, Santa’s fav elf ch 4

Santa’s fav Elf Part 2 ch 1, ch 2, ch 3  ch 4   ch 5, ch6

Warnings: smut, behind the scenes, The end

You rub your thighs. Your knees on either side of Bill’s pelvis. “I’m not sure I can do this in front of everyone.”  

“It will be a closed set.” Bill ran his hands down your sides. “And we really won’t be doing anything. I’ll have a mesh sock over my cock. You will have a flesh-colored thong on. You signed a contract that said you were okay with showing a little tits and ass. You will do great. Just roll your hips a little.”

You grind into his groin. “like this?”

He groaned. “This isn’t going to be easy. No actual touching.”

“Oh, I’m sorry.”  You take his hands putting them on your breasts. “But this is in the script.” You roll your hips again barely grazing his bulge. “Like that?”

Bill bites his lip. ‘Oh, fuck I hope not.”

His hands move to your cheek coaxing you down as he lifts his head to kiss you in a way that makes your toes tingle. He loosens your lips with his tongue as he turns you on your back for the control he wants, and you let him have it. You chase his lips with your as he starts to move away. His face nuzzles yours.  

“I know this is a really bad time but if I don’t blurt it out now, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to tell you.” You breathed.

“What? Do you want me to stop?” He stopped looking at you curiously. His hands inches away from removing your panties.  

“I think I’m in love with you!” You pulled him down for another kiss. “And please don’t stop.”

“I love you to sweet...” he kissed you. “sweet,” he went in again. “woman.” He slid your panties off with a gleam in his eyes. He got out of his briefs. “Be my friend, my lover, my companion, my käraste.”  

“Yes.” You whimper as he filled you. “It's not going to be this good tomorrow.”

“faking it never is.” He pants.  

You crash into each other with intensity and need. Fitting together perfectly as you climb higher and higher to that point of bliss. He finally reminds you why he is the best you ever had.  

He falls over beside you exhausted. “Remind me why I didn’t want to do that sooner. You are amazing.”

“Something about friends versus lovers.” You were breathing heavily still. “I think we have always been both.”  

“Shower and we will go to the hotel bar for a late bite while they put new sheets on the bed?” He kissed your temple. “käraste.”

“Sure.” You looked at him dreamily your brain still flooded with oxytocin.  

The night ends snuggle in his arm as you drift off to sleep. When the alarm rang at 4am it seemed like you only slept for minutes. It was five hours. Nervousness made your stomach flutter. You still managed to get down some caffeine, surgar and carbs before costume and makeup did their magic to make you Santa’s favorite Elf once more.

It was a very brisk windy morning when you went to film part one of your scene with Bill. It was -2.7°C (27.1��F) and still dark outside to see the lights above. The assistant director told you the shot was looking beautiful through the camera. All they need was you to provide the magic to bring back Santa.

You performed twenty times or more. A bunch of times in an over-the-top manner. You cackled as you performed the spell. When the sun was creating too much light to look like the middle of the night the director yell, “cut, that’s lunch.” It was noon.  

Bill came over with a big smile on his face. He whispered really close to your ear. “You did great, Min käraste.”

You filmed one more part outside. The part where Santa appears. Your only line was “Santa”. Santa says nothing just puts his bony looking cold hands on your face to kiss you as you close your eyes. You put your arms around him inside of his coat. The director yelled ”cut”.  

The A. D. came over. “Santa put your hands into her hair more, so we see her face. Miss Winterblows sliding your hands around him was great instinct. Try a little lower. Then slide them up his back.”  

“Action.”  

You did what you were instructed or so your thought. When the director yells cut, he also said don’t move. Your lips were still kissing. Eyes still closed when you felt someone move your hands to rest on top of Bill’s large Santa bum over his Santa suit. You also felt Bill’s hands move high into the hair on the wig you wore.  

“Okay, he wants you to end up just like this.” The A.D. directed. Take a breath and we will go again.  

You and Bill took two minutes as they reset. Then you did the scene again and again and....ect. And until the director yelled “cut, take a break.”

You had a coffee sitting in a holding area with Bill. You were quiet and nervous about the next scene. Your nose wiggled as you looked at some scene blocking notes.  

Bill touches your knee under the table squeezing a little. “I told you it would be technical.”

“It will be shot indoors made to look like a snowy mountain side so at least you will not freeze your nuts off.” You giggled.

“Exactly what I told you.” He chuckled.  

The scene took hours. It was slow. If anything organic would start “cut” was yelled. It was not nearly as hot and steamy as it looked on camera. Fake sweat was dappled on your head. It ran down your body as you were straddling Bill on the set of cotton and fake snow. Bill had your breasts covered with his hands for most of the scene even a close-up.  

It felt so silly and a little embarrassing because of the pace of filming.  You were grateful to let out the giggles when the final “cut !” was yelled wrapping production for the day. Two people rushed over to cover you and Bill in robes so you could walk across set comfortably to dress in a tiny room.  

Later cuddling in bed, you stroke Bill’s chest. “Tomorrow I have one more scene and then I am done. Homeward bound until next we meet, I suppose.”

His arms tighten around you. “Or you could stay until I am finished. I know you have some American holidays to spend with family and friends but come spend some time with me in Sweden before the year is done.”

“I would like that.” You smiled up at him. “I would like that a lot.”

[idolizerp]

[ LOADING INFORMATION ON POIZN’S MAIN DANCE STEELE…. ]

DETAILS

CURRENT AGE: 28 DEBUT AGE: 20 SKILL POINTS: 15 PERFORMANCE | 05 VOCAL | 15 DANCE | 05 RAP SECONDARY SKILLS: B-boying

INTERVIEW

SHITSTARTER.

only in not in such strong terms –– it’s no secret that steele believes actions to speak louder than words. sometimes it’s as if his main mode of communication is dance. but aside from that, aside from his lifeblood and everything that’s made him who he is today, it’s glances from the background. freakishly tall ( 6’ 5” towers over heads everywhere in asia ), you’ll often find steele standing in the back. to occupy his time ( and to earn that blessed attention ), he makes faces at the camera, rolling his eyes at certain things and giving incredulous ‘ are you kidding me ? ’ expressions at unsympathetic lenses. this wordless candor is what builds him up in the early days.

steele is no - nonsense, but he can have a dry sense of humor. often times you’ll see him lifting his brows at a group member, engaging in a slight chuckle. other times he’ll poke and prod within his group and spark play - fights between members with just a look, his face holding a treasure trove of inside jokes.

so, he is wordless. but even when very little noise leaves his mouth ( and people never seem to get enough of the rich depths of his voice ), steele has a lot to say. or, at least, that’s how it was in the beginning.

over time ( after a single scandal ), though, his snarkiness becomes a detraction. critical and scathing glances are amplified. every single movement is read too far into. why did he cross his arms at that specific time ? is there some beef between them ? did he yell at that person for getting into his light too ? really, he blows up at ONE PERSON and the whole world seems to think he’s a ticking time bomb ready to explode.

the truth is, that’s the old steele. he’s almost thirty; he understands that screaming at people isn’t productive or acceptable. and he also doesn’t believe letting such anger and resentment fester within him is worth his time. the way his face sits coolly unmoving now says as much. no longer is he the funny background guy. steele is the handsome man with the big brows who doesn’t say much. who scowls, but that’s only because that’s how his face is built. forgiveness is a slow and long time coming, but 99 is convinced that keeping his mouth shut and his expressions blank is the key to resetting it all.

“ don’t comment on anything, don’t even blink in someone’s direction because it’ll be taken the wrong way. ” they don’t yank on his chain, instead leaving rather forceful suggestions, but he lets the ‘ or else what ? ’ die on his lips nevertheless. steele / jieping / everything in between knows the answer : “ or else we’ll send you packing. ” they don’t need to squish him like a bug like midas would, because they know that they can just drop him instead of offering to renew his contract, leaving him flat on his ass. and isn’t that just the single worst thing in the known universe ?

so, nowadays, it’s less. ‘ oh my god, look at steele’s face ! ’ and more ‘ who’s that really hot guy with the chin in the back ? he’s so good - looking but he doesn’t say anything. ’

and steele preens at being called hot / sexy / et cetera, et cetera. so, all in all, it’s not so bad.

BIOGRAPHY

PART ONE: PHANTOM BLOOD

keep your head down. don’t start any trouble. we’re tight on money as it is. just finish school. get a good job. help mama out with the bills.

an easy five - step plan enacted on august 17, 1990, 9 : 36 am cst after a difficult birth and an extremely large baby boy. only a mother and father are in the waiting room, waiting to take their daughter and grandson home to guangzhou. the father is a potter, the mother a seamstress, and the daughter a secretary. the not - son - in - law is nowhere to be found, and he never reappears in their lives after the grandson’s birth.

three incomes are still just barely enough to keep the grandson ( jieping, “ hero of peace ” ) fed and clothed. so the boy starts to help out where he can, bouncing to an inaudible tune on his mother’s lap as he helps her sort through letters and take down messages for her boss with shocking accuracy for a boy of seven. this intelligence is never developed further, his free time spent more on menial chores than stimulation and socialization.

at the very least, they indulge his passion for dance, scrounging around enough to send him to classes for a few years from the ages of five to eight before they run out and he has to drop out. jieping never begrudges his family for that.

he never lets what few friends he has know that he does not, in fact, own seven pairs of the same pants –– but, in fact, two that he recycles over the week. it doesn’t even matter, anyway. once he’s done with step five, he’ll have all the pants he wants.

PART TWO: BATTLE TENDENCY

have nots like jieping tend to hold a lot of resentment. bitterness. once his mother manages to wrangle enough money to ship him off to a private school in beijing, he starts to see just how much he really does not have. rolexes on the upperclassmen, his peers deciding to go out for milk tea every other day while he sits in his lonely apartment counting his monthly allowance and stretching it as thin as it can possibly go. while the others get to avoid the oppressive smog either by being driven everywhere or from the safety of their own vehicles, jieping invests in masks and filters.

he walks everywhere, even through the seedier parts of town late as night as long as they get him to his destination quicker because he knows the only place he’d really be understood is the underground dance scene. there, he’s nameless, but his talent is admired. self - taught, crew - less, he spends more time than he expected giving vague non - answers when his identity is questioned. dancing is his priority ; he’s not the type to show up to an underground club hoping to get recruited, though the interest is, at least, flattering. jieping isn’t there to make a name for himself. he’s just there to move. and if he puts on a good performance, trapped in his own world as he is, that’s just negligible.

back at school, it doesn’t improve matters that he’s something of an unkempt lad, often yelled at by administrators to start tucking his shirt into his pants and to wear a normal belt or else insert - empty - threat - here. if people look at him long enough, they’ll start to see his father in his face. if they’re malicious enough, they might even use his existence to blackmail a high ranking official who has yet pay a hefty fine for secretly siring another child. but then they see the way jieping’s thick brows draw together and his fists clench and decide that it’s better to be on the good side of a young boy who’s too tall to be only thirteen.

he has no qualms with punching out fellow students, though this only happens three times in his entire career at beijing huijia private academy. the knuckles on his left hand catch on the cheekbones of rich kids that are too proud to admit that they’ve been beaten up by a dirty commoner. the so - called ‘ charity cases ’ start to look up to jieping. their accounts of his bravery and heroism are inconsequential when antis dredge up this part of his past.

see ? he was always aggressive. what a prick.

PART THREE: STARDUST CRUSADERS

“ it’s a vacation, ” he tells his mother. “ you’re supposed to relax. ” they stand in front of her estranged elder sister’s daunting apartment complex in gangnam. he’s fifteen, scrawny with long hair and an underbite, bruises all over his arms and legs from failed attempts at b - boying. he’s learning, getting better, but he just doesn’t have the upper arm strength to hold himself up very long before crashing down. his mother thinks he’s getting into fights again instead of hanging around with underground dance crews, and, frankly, that’s a little hurtful.

jieping’s never met his aunt before, the woman leaving six years before he was born. all he knows is that she’s something of a socialite ( ex - trophy wife ), and she’s friends with lots of powerful people. when he meets her, he notes with some distaste that she doesn’t seem very fond of his mother. but when he tells her he likes to dance, her eyes light up and he’s taken off - guard.

as if his mother is a nonentity, jieping’s aunt starts interrogating him, nodding as he drops some names from the chinese underground scene that he’s sure she doesn’t know, and after an hour of probing, she eyes him, and asks, “ you know, i think you’d thrive in sopa. ” she knows people, she can get him an interview and audition and is even willing to help him take care of the costs.

jieping blinks. “ what ? ” he barely speaks korean, his elective language being english. jieping’s only experience with korean was being his friend’s study buddy, whereupon he picked up a few basic sentences. to say nothing, of course, of the fact that he wasn’t even intending to pursue a career in dance. and that … he wasn’t expecting his mother to seem so enthralled by the idea. his aunt tells him that sopa’s not planning on accepting new students just yet, but if he’d like to enroll for the next school year, he should let her know by the end of the week. seeing as they’re staying in her loft, he’s probably going to be pestered until the day they leave.

he mentions it off - handedly to his mother as they’re preparing to go to bed that night and is taken aback when she tells him to consider it. “ how do you know she’s not lying to us ? ”

didn’t he know she used to be a dancer, leaving home because their parents thought her dreams were too frivolous ? that her career came to a screeching halt when her relationship with an idol was exposed and she was ( publicly ) cast to the wayside ? she probably sees some of herself in him.

( not like that’s troubling. no, not at all. )

“ if you really like dancing, baobei, ” his mother tells him, her hand cupping his cheek, “ if you really love it like you used to when you were young, then you should take her up on it. she’s even willing to pay for everything. ” oh, and it always comes down to money.

if he stays with his aunt, his mother won’t have to send him red envelopes anymore. she can use her meager paycheck on herself. purchase some new clothes, finally fix those clunky heels. maybe even break out the hotpot all for herself. jieping chooses to think of it this way rather than acknowledging the fact that it sounds like his mother’s just trying to get him out of her hair –– or, her wallet, as it were. he makes his decision that night. it’s the day before new year’s eve. a little early to be making resolutions like this, he thinks, but it doesn’t hurt.

living with his aunt isn’t as bad as it seems at first, culture shock –– which she helps with –– aside. he thought he’d profoundly dislike her, but it turns out the woman actually gives good advice. in addition to whipping his korean into ( amorphous ) shape, she teaches him actual technique so that he doesn’t end up hurting himself, and she even takes him out to eat with a bunch of her b - boy friends when his acceptance to sopa is finalized. it sparks the start of a very close kinship, expressed by wandering into her room in the middle of the night to ask what a certain word means in this one context or by massaging his calf after a long day of practice.

when jieping actually starts to get some real instruction, he skyrockets. one of the “ best damn dancers in this school ” according to the chair of the department of practical dance, most likely to succeed, his teachers all rave about his potential. the other students grumble about the fact that a non - native –– a boy from across the yellow sea –– is their superior. his area of focus is singular, they gripe. he’s not even interested in pursuing anything else. the only reason the faculty likes him so much is because he could’ve gone to hanlim, and all they expect him to do is dance, anyway. the man can hold a tune, but that’s not exactly difficult to do. so what if he’s actually pretty steady even when dancing ? his rapping is average, and that’s mostly because his grasp of the language isn’t as strong as it could be. a singular skillset and the vestiges of natural talent in other areas aren’t worth all that attention. a lump of clay could become a beautiful vase, but jieping’s never seemed interested in metaphorical pottery. maybe the praise will actually start to seem merited when his grades in everything other than dance stop being terrible.

jieping doesn’t care much when they relentlessly mock his accent, but it does drive him into fluency if only to stop that avenue of attack so he can have his peace and quiet. it’s a pity about his looks, the frequent chin jokes tossed his way, but braces have cleaned him up quite a bit and when he cut his hair ( enough that you could finally see his eyes ) he really wasn’t too bad looking. maybe that’s why he never really gets anywhere until after graduation. in the end, it turned out all the attention he received from the faculty was only meant to keep him from transferring schools when he figured he could get a better education elsewhere. they were waiting for him to seek out companies on his own and leech off of that ( “ we knew he had what it takes ! ” and other -isms thereof ), but when he kept to himself and instead looked into jobs in teaching dance, the favoritism all but vanished in his third year. from “ one of the best ” to “ a very good dancer. ” if only they’d told him how they really felt from the get - go.

“ have you thought about what you wanted to do ? ” his aunt asks him almost a year since he’s been out of school. he helps out at her studio in the meantime, his pockets still lined with her money. it makes sense that she, too, is trying to boot him out of her life –– or, she’s just trying to get him to reach maximum potential, if he wanted to be optimistic. which he didn’t. “ i think you’d do well in the idol circuit. you’re intense. it’s fun to watch you dance, and it’d be a waste to keep it to my studio or the underground when you could have this massive audience. you’ve got that flare about you, y’know ? ”

he thinks of her old boyfriend, the one who almost ruined her life, and makes a face.

“ oh, come on. don’t tell me you didn’t think of it ! you went to school with at least a couple of trainees, didn’t you ? and they didn’t pique your interest at all ? ”

if he shook his head, he’d by lying, but … he’s also something of a realist. him and idol life probably wouldn’t mix –– though not exactly a wild card, he’s got something of an independent streak. he only plays by the rules he likes, and that’s not the most desirable thing for companies looking to hit it big with their next boy group. even the phrase boy group makes him feel a little weird.

his aunt rolls her eyes. “ i know what you’re thinking. you’re too cool or whatever for it, they’ll spend every second of every day trying to control or contain you. i mean, that’d probably be true if you were in midas or msg. but 99’s pretty lax in comparison. koala.t is a maybe. kjh is too new to be reliable, in my opinion, but you could definitely go for the two other ones i mentioned. it’s just something to think about. i can probe around to see who’s currently casting, if you’d like. ” then, as an afterthought, she compliments his shower singing, ruffles his hair, and then flounces away.

jieping scowls at the kitchen counter, sighs, and then makes his choice. he might as well shoot for the stars, right ? even if he misses, he’ll land near the moon.

PART FOUR: DIAMOND IS UNBREAKABLE

99 gets him by chance, a coin that landed on heads leading to him attending two rounds of auditions and an interview.

being added into the company in april of 2010, in the midst of planning poizn out, doesn’t leave him a lot of room for bonding. so he doesn’t really do it. his skill as a dancer is acknowledged by the others, and he’s fine with that. his height intimidates a lot of them, and choreographers grouse about where they should put him in formations so that he doesn’t block people who are ear - height and below. his fairly average performance in rapping and singing is something of a shock, though it’s generally acknowledged among the teachers that he’s nowhere near good enough at either to be given a ‘ lead ’ anything. “ a little boring, ” the vocal teacher says. “ uninspired. but it could be something, if you tried. ” ‘ if ’ being the operative word.

all they know is that he’s a main dancer, through and through. impeccable technique, electrifying ( and just the perfect amount of terrifying ) stage presence. the name of his aunt’s studio sitting prettily at the top of his resumé definitely helps matters, as do his actual good looks once the stylists get their hands on him. he’s got the makings for poizn, they declare. he’s a little surprised. he��s not really friends with the other boys in the lineup, and he’s still something of a greenhorn in 99. to have them push him so far so soon is a little nerve - wracking, and no amount of arm pinching is waking him up from this dream.

what is he going to do when they offer him the spot ? say no ?

and so that’s that.

being an idol is an … acquired taste. he doesn’t expect everything about him to be so relentlessly marketed. his dry humor, which he’d been using to endear himself to his group mates, is suddenly now his shtick. his name ? steele ? some reference about how he’s a tough guy, unbendable, and flashy and shiny all at the same time. sturdy, holds the group’s performances together with his undeniable skill. it’s all coming up roses.

their reputation starts to take a few hits because of scandals before long ( what does 99 expect when looking for bad boys to fit the concept, anyway ? ), but jieping pays it no heed. he likes to think of himself as a good friend, offering support where the others need it, but he also manages to keep himself afloat by 1. ) staying out of trouble and 2. ) looking as if he doesn’t approve of his members’ choices in public. widened eyes as someone dodges a question about a past scandal and stretched lips that indicate a level of ‘ oh jeez ’ are enough to make him go viral for brief moments at a time. for a while, he’s the ‘ good ’ member ( if not the condescending foreigner ), even when cures realize he’s prone to somewhat malicious teasing. he does a good job of masking the slight resentment and weariness of being around constant fuck - ups.

but this good faith doesn’t last long.

2016. dumb and dumber. jacket shooting. he lets his temper get the best of him, becoming one of those rich idiots he hates the most.

( all because of a missed phone call. if he’d slept at an appropriate hour instead of practicing all night, he might’ve been able to catch his mother one last time. semi meets sedan. who’s going to win ?

the public never finds out about this. )

“ what do you think you’re doing ? ” it’s not so much of a roar as a boom. everyone freezes, even his group mates look up at the normally pleasant and quiet man with shock. “ you’re in my light, you idiot ! how is the photographer supposed to take pictures of me when i’m drenched in your shadow ? no, don’t walk that way. knowing you, you’ll just trip over the cable and take out the thing entirely. do you guys just fuckin’ hire anybody these days ? jesus christ. dumb and dumber. guess this song’s about you, huh, moron ? ”

shaky cell phone camera. shaken production assistant. jieping goes viral again. for all the wrong reasons, of course.

at least he realized he’s messed up. every comment that calls him out for his shitty treatment of this particular staff member is absolutely right. he shouldn’t have snapped like that. no matter how tired, no matter how stressed, no matter the deep grief paining his heart, nothing warranted taking it all out on someone who was just trying to do their job. it would have taken less than ten seconds to politely ask the p.a. to move. he might’ve received a smile and apology in return, rather than a young woman bursting into tears. he hates that there are cures that come to his defense. he wants to call them out, but after posting a handwritten apology on instagram, 99 strongly implies that they’d like him to keep mum, more consequences forthcoming.

this isn’t what he wanted. when he calls his aunt for advice, it’s the first time where she doesn’t know what to tell him. she’s disappointed in him, that much is clear in her voice, and he feels even shittier. “ i didn’t think you were that kind of person. ” he’s not, and he isn’t sure if she believes him. but she goes with him, hand in hand, to the funeral back in guangzhou, and it seems like all is forgiven, even if he never ended up explaining himself.

he’s only allowed to be there for two days and he’ll half to spend half of their promotion time benched. nobody recognizes him, mask covering his face, though there’s a slight murmur that maybe tall jieping grew up into this giant after all. he doesn’t make a fuss when he comes back, and 99 pretends that he never left. fans are none the wiser, though jieping’s sure the information is floating around somewhere now.

( his first reappearance on a music show is lukewarm. it doesn’t surprise him that the cheers are quieter than usual. )

poizn looks empty without their main dancer, someone says. if jieping had any amount of sense, he’d leave that empty space for brighter skies. maybe become a recluse like his aunt, teaching other young hopefuls to dance. she really did see a lot of herself in him, didn’t she ?

jieping’s mother didn’t raise a quitter, though, so that kills the thought immediately. it comes to a halt with a crunch of glass and steel.

PART FIVE: GOLDEN WIND

even though it’s two years in the past, 99 still reminds jieping to keep on his toes whenever interacting with anybody. his resting bitch face did him no favors as soon as his snark became an unfavorable mark upon him. he has to be neutral or friendly. no in between. if he can manage to work his way up to happy without looking terrifying, then that’s even better. but any ounce of negative emotion will be read for filth, so it’s in his best interest to stay away from anything pointing downward.

forgiveness comes slowly, given a slight boost when it comes out ( against jieping’s will ) that he personally apologized to the p.a. in question and even took her out to a dinner that went around six figures –– all out of his own pocket. but that’s not enough, because they’re all just waiting for him to scream at someone else.

he’s only two years away from turning thirty, so he figures he should start to act like it. and he does, stopping to think about things from an ‘ adult ’ and ‘ responsible ’ perspective as opposed to ‘ well, i’m doing just fine all on my own. ’ he sacrifices his isolationist tendencies for kindness and encouragement, wanting to show his juniors and the public alike that he’s grown up and decided to show that he really is a good person, just caught at the wrong time.

he tries to pick up where his aunt left off with her vague but pleasant advice, aiming for a wise - beyond - his - years vibe. and if all else fails, then he could at least be the calm respectful one sitting in the back. adult, jieping reminds himself. with a capital a. songs like love scenario and rubber band hinder this a little bit, at least on stage, but he finds that perseverance is the key to everything. so he’ll just keep working at it until he finds himself where he wants to be.

he doesn’t need to hole himself up in a fancy apartment in seoul, waiting for a cousin’s kid to show up and tell him that they enjoy b - boying. he doesn’t have to be a repeat of his aunt. he can claw his way back to the not - top.

it’s not like a guy who stands at 6’ 5” can afford to be scared of heights, after all.

[thevoidwrites]

I am ...

October 8th, 2018

I recall how I felt about writing while I was in high school, maybe early university years as well, very early actually. I feel that I had felt more like a writer then than I do now. I’m certain that if I read those writings I would cringe, contract into myself in embarrassment, yet, what I wrote and the act of writing were part of my existence. “I am a writer”

Part of this is how writing was always brought up. Almost any conversation can easily veer into one of my writings or end up as a writing. It would be easy to recall what I had written about recently and bring up points and well-structured thoughts in the conversation. Now, I don’t remember when was the last time I wrote. I can’t structure much into coherence and barely feel much that can be worded gracefully in a long introspective piece. The written word is still part of my expressing myself.

I’ve been using an application called youper that keeps track of your moods and how they come to be, asking for a small sentence about your thoughts at the time. I still write there. I am forced to write anyway and sometimes I get surprised by the length of whatever I write. I write about what I fear, what hurts me. I write about situations and how they can affect me physically, like the words between two friends that settle on my heart and add weight upon it till it pushes against my lungs so that every breath shortens and pushes at the heartbeat. I wrote about my fear while reading of the war crimes in Palestine at the hands of the great Radwa Ashour in Tantoriya. I still use the written word as a physical manifestation of my thoughts, yet I’m not a writer. I just write.

The same logic can be applied to other aspects of my life. I program, I am not a programmer. I teach, I am not a teacher. I engineer, I am not an engineer. I read, I am not a reader. I do so much, yet I am nothing. Surely, I can say I am “insert whichever title” and it would be correct in a way, but I do mean my internal feel for what I do, what I feel. I do not know how to describe what it feels to be an engineer, or to be a writer, but I feel neither at the moment.

I also guess that “I am” becomes harder to complete as one ages, as if our existence blurs. I was a child. I was an engineer way before studying it. I was a writer. I was something. Now, I’m not. Do not mistake my statements for a delusion that this is a permanent state, I realize it is not. I also realize life to be made out of phases, no matter one’s age. Except, when I would doubt the permanency of a state before, I would be comforting myself that a previous state when I was happier and more self assured would return. Now, I’m starting to think no phase is ever repeated across one’s life. We change, by decision or by chance, while conscious of the change or unaware of ourselves, and we never go back to where we stood before.

This can be received in several manners. I can despair at never returning to a state I may have presumed to be perfect. I can assume things are to remain in a downhill direction for the rest of my life, yet I may notice that most phases are neutral anyway. The concerning matter is the blurriness. I worry for the outlines of my existence as they fade into the background behind me and I no longer stand as a separate entity. This brings to mind the ship of Davy Jones in Pirates of the Caribbean. Particularly, the scene where we come to know that William’s father, Bootstrap Bill, has become part of the ship, a protrusion of bones and barnacles from the deck walls. He forgets almost everything, no new interaction remains in his memory, instead, he resets and blends with the wall again. An extension.

My mother believes that every step will make sense in the great reveal in life as parts start showing up that will need the knowledge or skills you had spent time learning for no particular purpose. I may believe in that as well, yet I seem to practice reservations in all that I believe. Actually, that is not accurate. I do entirely believe in that, I just don’t consider it fully in fear of the pain inflicted if the belief is not realized. Which can still mean that I do not fully believe in that if I continue to doubt its realization.

I will stand by this belief though. And, surprisingly, I will also stand by what Dr Ashraf said 4 years ago, “People can find their calling at different times of life, maybe as old as 50, at least in their 30s. What people lack though is a work ethic, they refuse to work diligently or reliably until they find their calling.” so I want to be reliable, I want to work and show up and do what I have to do. Until it calls to me.

[theliterateape]

The Trouble with Transactional Relationships and Recognizing Them

by Don Hall

"Who the FUCK spends $288.00 in a Denny's?!"

Back in the 80s, the Wild Wild West was known as King 8 Casino & Hotel and was host to the King 8 Grill. At the time it was one of the hottest spots to eat in Vegas off the strip. Today, the King 8 Grill is a Denny's franchise and separate from the casino and hotel. Managers can still comp guests (and staff) but the company pays the Denny's Corporation for the courtesy.

Given the lack of perks for the guests, the Denny's comp is about all the managers at the West have to placate those with a beef.

The machines are rough around the edges. Approximately a third of the Game Kings and Buffalo's are decades old and break down frequently while players have money in them. In the earlier days of Vegas, slot machines were mechanical. Today, they are almost entirely Microsoft computers, monitors, and bugs.

✶

I noticed one of my cocktail waitresses at two tall Buffalos. She was flanked by two women who were both a solid foot taller than she was and highly animated, talking and gesticulating wildly. I came over, saw that the two machines were frozen. One had $11.00 in it. The other had $10.00 but had frozen during a Bonus Round. I tapped my waitress out. "I got this."

I held up my hands dramatically.

"I'm going to predict the future!" I exclaimed. "I'm going to get into these machines and do my level best to get them up and running so you can continue playing and you can get your bonus round. For the next ten minutes or so, I will endeavor to fix this. But I'm going to say something now that, if I cannot get things up and running, will not change from now to then. If I can't get your machines up and running, you will be given your $11.00 and $10.00 back, no question but you will not be awarded for a Bonus Round unplayed. You will now commence to bitching about this while I work."

And bitch they did commence.

For eight minutes I pulled out all the tricks. I checked the bill validators. I unplugged and plugged back in the silver box, the blue box, and the main computers. I put in my special reset card and reset both machines twice.

All the while, the two women yelled non-stop about how they treat people at the MGM Grand, about how one was a nurse and if something didn't work with a patient it would be on the hospital to compensate them, that the casinos were all making so much money that we could afford to pay out Bonus Rounds even if they weren't played. During the cacophony, I learned that they were mother and daughter but hardly looked it, that they were there with 'boyfriends' who they didn't really know too well (neither could get the mother's male companion's name right), and that they played here at the West all the time.

"OK. I tried. I failed. As I predicted, you will now be refunded the money in your machines."

Immediate discord.

My hands went up again. "Alright. I hear you. Here's what I can do. For you (the mother) I can give you your $11.00 back. That's it. My apologies and $11.00. For you (the daughter) I can either shut down the machine and you can wait for a slot technician to come and fix it and then play your bonus round. That'll happen next week and I can call you if you win anything. Or I can refund your $10.00 and offer you a meal at the Denny's for your trouble."

A pause.

"How about four meals? There's four of us."

I did a quick calculation in my head. I could get away with four meals at Denny's and justify it if for no other reason than to shut these ladies up and move on with my day.

"OK. I can do four meals."

The four of them, satisfied, walked over to the Denny's. I went to the cage and got them their $21.00. I handed it off as they were getting drinks. "This is on the house," I told the waitress.

I went about my business.

Ninety minutes later, the Denny's waitress came over to give me the bill so I could fill out the comp slip.

"$288.00?! What the hell did they freaking order? Holy Shit!"

Four steak dinners. Four milkshakes. Four desserts. Three breakfasts, a sandwich, and a meatloaf platter to go along with two more milkshakes. An order of brownies. The list went on. I was stunned and furious.

I was so caught off guard, I left the casino to smoke and vent out loud to myself. The first trip around the property I was angry at them. The second trip, I realized I was pissed at myself. I had opened the gate; they had just walked through it.

Twenty minutes later, I came back and noticed they were still there. No longer at the Denny's but back playing the machines. I knew that as soon as my general manager saw the $288.00 comp, it was my ass but I thought I saw a way out. I approached the four, all smiles.

"Did you enjoy your meal? You should've because you got enough food to serve a football team!" And they laughed.

"You sticking around? If you are, can I get you some drinks on me?"

They were and I could. They ordered four double shots of Patron. $72.00 in tequila. "Absolutely!" I said. I was betting these idiots wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Patron and El Toro so I had the bartender pour four double shots of the latter. A $1.80 comp.

Sure enough, they didn't know the difference between premium tequila and horse piss so they were feeling quite taken care of. I kept this up, delivering my fake Patron double shots every 45 minutes or so, chatting them up, directing them to slots that I told them were big payouts but, in fact, were more like donation boxes.

Six hours later, they were plastered and had lost over $6,000.00. I had made my $288.00 back and then some.

A few months later, I saw them in the joint again. The mother was having a problem with her free play points. There was no chance I was being suckered twice. I explained that I could email our marketing department to look into it but there was nothing I could do for her at the moment.

"What about some Denny's?" the daughter asked.

"No. I'm sorry but I can't give out Denny's for a $5.00 free play issue."

"That's alright. We already jacked up that stupid manager." They both started laughing. They didn't recognize me as I had shaved my beard off since our first encounter. "We ordered $300.00 in food. We ate on that for two days. That white boy was DUMB."

Yes. He was.

✶

In the casino most of the relationships are openly transactional. That's the very nature of the business. The casino wants people to come in and lose their money on slots. The people want something in return if they keep losing. Everyone is looking to get one over on everyone else. The nicest encounters from the nicest people can turn ugly in seconds as soon as the staff refuses a request.

My difficulty in life has been my inability to recognize these transactional relationships outside of the casino.

When we moved to Vegas, we came out here with a friend who financed the move in exchange for our help. He was disabled and couldn't handle the move. We were friends and it all seemed kosher until we arrived and the move was complete. The transaction had been concluded but the relationship was cemented in our obedience to more transactions. After all, he was still disabled and expected that we would continue to do his bidding and as soon as either my wife or I refused a request, we became his enemies.

My second marriage was transactional. She wanted someone to produce her artistic inclinations; I wanted someone brilliant to create shows I would produce. When I stopped producing shows of any kind, she moved on to a mutual friend for a year before we divorced.

In the earliest days of the theater I founded in the nineties, I thought we were all in it together but whenever I attempted something that would benefit us all and I failed, my failure resulted in my perceived comrades in arms turning on me in a split second. I spent the first several years of that endeavor constantly worried that the ensemble would simply leave should I not meet the transactional requirements in place. Eventually I got tired of that pressure and when people left only to scorch the earth with tales of what an asshole I was, I couldn't be surprised.

I was definitely the asshole. I reneged on the premise of the relationships. I was there to serve them, they were there to be served. I rejected the premise thus the promise.

Upon reflection, I've never been great at making friends. I can lay blame on a host of reasons for this but I'd wager that the rolling stone nature of my growing up has me gaining status and relationships based in large part from what I can supply. I'm worth your time because of what I can do for you. As soon as I find myself resenting the transactional nature of the friendship, as soon as I stop doing things, the relationship becomes null and void.

I'm getting on in years at this point and I find a healthy sense of misanthropy is settling into my bones. My earlier inability to understand the transactional nature of so many of my relationships—from the assistant I trained at the public radio station who was instrumental in my resignation to the misperceived friends I had in Chicago who abandoned me in the face of controversy—has fostered a desire to be left alone.

Yes. There was a time when I blamed them, was angry at them. After a second walk around the property, I realized that I had opened the gate; they just walked through it. If anyone is to blame (as if assigning blame is either necessary or helpful) it is most definitely me. I am the asshole. I entered into the agreement of friendship in exchange for industry. I no longer have any desire for that sort of bought and paid for relationship. Thus multiple burnt bridges to multiple transactional friendships.

I am, gratefully, beginning to recognize those relationships based on mutual interest, common enthusiasms, and equal transactions. I'm beginning to see the joys of friendships without strings attached, without a contract.

✶

With the economy having taken a hit and employment moving further and further online, it concerns me that so much of our communication to one another has become strictly transactional. GoFundMe, Patreon, Buy Me a Coffee, OnlyFans. As our relationships grow exponentially from in-person to online, the mixed message of being a "friend" (the definition changing before our very eyes and meaning everything from 'friend' to 'subscriber' to 'follower') and a transactional partner is murkier.

I mean, Christ, I just started to see the difference in my own life and I'm over half a century old. I wonder if my niece is able to see the difference now that so many of her relationships are primarily digital. I wonder about kids who've spent the past year in lockdown and who's only relationships are within the social media platforms.

From this position I'm in, having realized the emptiness of transactional friendships, I offer a caution. Take a moment or two and reflect upon your relationships. The ones that are predicated on transaction are doomed.

[junker-town]

What if the NFL had a quarterback-only draft today?

Lamar Jackson, Deshaun Watson, and Patrick Mahomes are among the NFL’s best QBs.

Every QB gets thrown into the draft pool on their current contracts. Who goes where?

What if every NFL quarterback were made available in a QB dispensation draft?

Who would go first? How would playoff teams recover from losing their signal callers? Who’d risk their future for the short-term boost of an accomplished, but aging, veteran?

Let’s give it a shot and shuffle the league’s QB decks. Every club takes a turn drafting a passer. This isn’t a ranking of NFL quarterbacks 1 to 32, though. Each team drafts based on its current roster and coaching lineup, so fit matters.

Age and contract status matter as well. Young and cheap are major assets for building a championship roster. Lamar Jackson will be saving Baltimore upwards of $30 million in salary cap space the next two seasons thanks to his team-friendly rookie contract. Patrick Mahomes may obliterate the league’s salary record in the near future, but he’s currently set to make just $5.3 million next fall.

Below, the teams are listed based on the 2020 NFL Draft order. The Bengals start us off. The defending champion Chiefs wrap things up. Every quarterback in the league — including backups, free agents, and this year’s rookie class — is eligible.

Here’s how this theoretical QB rundown shakes out.

1. Cincinnati Bengals: Patrick Mahomes (24 years old)

The reigning Super Bowl MVP and easiest pick in this draft. Pairing up Mahomes with A.J. Green, Tyler Boyd, Tee Higgins, John Ross, and Auden Tate would turn Cincinnati from the NFL’s least watchable team into a legitimate reason to buy Sunday Ticket.

2. Washington: Lamar Jackson (23 years old)

The reigning league MVP owns the NFL record for most single-season rushing yards as a quarterback and led the league in passing touchdowns while doing so. He’s 19-3 as a starter during the regular season. His playoff record could use some polish, but even if he’s done growing as a player, he’s an absolute monster capable of single-handedly swinging games. Washington needs that, because its offensive depth chart is just a picture of the Mongrovian flag.

3. Detroit Lions: Russell Wilson (31 years old)

Wilson is a perennial MVP candidate with Super Bowl bonafides. He’s also the reason the Seahawks refuse to slide into rebuilding mode following year after year of baffling draft decisions and shoddy blocking (99 sacks allowed the past two seasons). Now he gets to oversee a perpetual rebuild (bad) while throwing to Marvin Jones, Kenny Golladay, and D’Andre Swift (better).

4. New York Giants: Deshaun Watson (24 years old)

Watson goes from a franchise that just fixed a gaping hole at left tackle (albeit by giving Laremy Tunsil record-setting money) to one that hopes it has after drafting Andrew Thomas at No. 4 overall. Watson guided Houston — a team that went 1-11 in the games he didn’t start in 2017 — to a 24-13 record in his three seasons. He’s also responsible for the only Bill O’Brien playoff win that didn’t come against Connor Cook.

5. Miami Dolphins: Aaron Rodgers (36 years old)

Is Rodgers fading as he heads into his late 30s? Or were the past two seasons of good, not great, play the product of a lackluster cast of receiving talent behind Davante Adams? Even if it’s the latter, he’s made too many insane throws in big moments to be ignored. Plus, he’s younger than Ryan Fitzpatrick so ... youth movement in South Beach?

6. Los Angeles Chargers: Dak Prescott (26 years old)

STILL the best quarterback of the class of 2016. The Cowboys asked him to throw more than ever in 2019, and he responded with a career-high 4,902 passing yards (more than 1,000 more than his previous best) and a 30:11 TD:INT ratio. The Chargers, forever on-field drama magnets, get a player who led 14 game-winning drives in his first three seasons.

7. Carolina Panthers: Drew Brees (41 years old)

Brees was 40 years old last season and still finished second in the league in passer rating — albeit after missing five games with a torn ligament in his thumb. He may not have more than the 2020 season left in his NFL career, and the odds he’d leave New Orleans, especially to play for a division rival, are roughly zero. Still, there’s no denying his greatness.

8. Arizona Cardinals: Joe Burrow (23 years old)

This seemed like a good spot for Tom Brady — Larry Fitzgerald and DeAndre Hopkins! — until I remembered what an immobile veteran with a wavering deep ball would look like in Kliff Kingsbury’s system. I hated that idea and opted for a college quarterback who threw 60 touchdown passes last season, averaged more than 14 yards per completion, and who would absolutely lose his mind in Kingsbury’s adapted air raid.

9. Jacksonville Jaguars: Tom Brady (42 years old)

Brady remains in Florida, but doesn’t get the receiving upgrade of Mike Evans and Chris Godwin. Instead, he’ll throw to D.J. Chark, Dede Westbrook, Chris Conley, and Laviska Shenault Jr. His 2019 season was one of the least efficient of Brady’s career, though many of those struggles could be attributed to a disappointing surrounding cast in New England.

Does throwing Brady on a tanking team make sense? Nope! That’s why it’s an extremely Jaguars move.

10. Cleveland Browns: Carson Wentz (27 years old)

Here’s where things get difficult. There’s a host of good, not yet great, young-ish quarterbacks and heady veterans who make up the next tier.

I opted for Wentz — the quarterback the Browns traded back from possibly drafting in 2017. He arrives carrying the hope Cleveland’s massive upgrade at wideout (and to a lesser extent, tight end) will unlock the player who threw 54 touchdown passes against just 14 interceptions in 2017 and 2018. This could be my dumbest selection of the day, seeing as the Eagles may have drafted his replacement last week and have appeared very stupid doing so.

11. New York Jets: Jimmy Garoppolo (28 years old)

As much as a stately veteran like Matt Ryan or Kirk Cousins would fit here, Garoppolo’s ability to exceed expectations makes him New York’s pick. The 49ers signal caller was a few bad decisions away from being the reigning Super Bowl MVP. He’s also 21-5 as a regular season starter, and his 8.4 yards per attempt ranked third in the NFL last year.

12. Las Vegas Raiders: Kyler Murray (22 years old)

Jon Gruden loves Kyler Murray. His cheap salary would help Las Vegas continue to spend big in free agency and give a club in a new home a young, bankable star. The 2019 NFL Offensive Rookie of the Year wasn’t amazing in his debut, but he finished strong enough to showcase his potential.

Here’s what he did in his final eight starts as a rookie: a 65.2 percent completion rate, 217 passing yards per game, 6.9 yards per pass, 33 rushing yards (on 6.2 per carry) per game, and an 89.3 passer rating. The 13:8 TD:INT ratio over that span is worrisome, but that’s something Gruden can tolerate if it means getting his guy.

13. Indianapolis Colts: Matt Ryan (34 years old)

The Colts chose a prolific, experienced quarterback when they signed Philip Rivers this offseason. They do it again by selecting Ryan, a former MVP who completed a league-high 408 passes last fall despite sitting out one game in the middle of the season. Ryan had 11 300+ yard performances in 2019 thanks, in part, to a defense that kept him frequently playing from behind. He’ll get a boost on that side of the ball in Indianapolis, but the lack of Julio Jones could put his high-volume passing in a new light.

14. Tampa Bay Buccaneers: Kirk Cousins (31 years old)

Cousins’ two seasons since being freed from the shame treadmill that is the Washington franchise: 69.7 percent completion rate, 56 touchdowns, 16 interceptions, 255 passing yards per game, and a 103.0 passer rating.

Now he gets to whip passes at the Evans/Godwin combo Brady was forced to vacate in the draft.

15. Denver Broncos: Matthew Stafford (32 years old)

6’1 Baker Mayfield is probably the highest-upside player available. But Matthew Stafford is 6’3 — closer to the tall QB ideal general manager John Elway absolutely loves. Stafford’s more than willing to take chances downfield, as proven by his league-high average throw depth of 10.6 yards downfield last year. That makes him 100 percent the kind of gunner Denver wants launching deep balls to Courtland Sutton, Noah Fant, Jerry Jeudy, and KJ Hamler.

16. Atlanta Falcons: Ryan Tannehill (31 years old)

Tannehill is the draft’s X-factor. He’s a player whose 2019 season measures among the league’s best but who is also capable of reverting back to the ineffective form that ended his Miami tenure. The Falcons need a win-now quarterback to keep Dan Quinn’s employment hopes alive, and Tannehill’s ability to air the ball out would help keep a passing game that features Julio Jones and Calvin Ridley running smoothly.

17. Dallas Cowboys: Baker Mayfield (25 years old)

Mayfield could be the draft’s biggest bargain if he can harness the power that pushed him to MVP-caliber numbers over the second half of his rookie season (68 percent completion rate, 19:7 TD:INT ratio, a 106.2 passer rating). Playing behind an offensive line that allowed Dak Prescott to be sacked on only 3.7 percent of his dropbacks — and playing for a head coach who isn’t Freddie Kitchens — should spur an improvement in his return to Texas.

18. Pittsburgh Steelers: Ben Roethlisberger (38 years old)

The Steelers almost made it to the postseason with Devlin Hodges and Mason Rudolph starting the majority of their games. Bringing Big Ben back into the fold after he slid down the draft board makes more sense than hitting reset and starting over with one of the available, unproven QBs like Sam Darnold,

19. Chicago Bears: Josh Allen (23 years old)

Chicago’s facing a hard reboot following Mitchell Trubisky’s failure to become a franchise quarterback. Allen’s recent development makes him a better bet than Daniel Jones, another quarterback who wasn’t amazing playing college ball in the state of North Carolina but still enjoyed a meteoric rise through the pre-draft process.

Allen made the improvements necessary to guide Buffalo back to the postseason last year, upping his completion rate by a full six percent and cutting his interception rate nearly in half. He’s a capable runner (1,141 rushing yards, 17 touchdowns the past two years) who can exceed the production a healthy Trubisky provided. He’s also pretty cheap; Allen will count less than $13 million against the team’s salary cap through 2021.

20. Los Angeles Rams: Jared Goff (25 years old)

LA was forced to shed contracts this spring, somewhat as the result of Goff‘s massive extension after he led the Rams to Super Bowl 53. He rewarded that faith with a backslide in 2019.

Even a bad season in which his touchdown rate and yards-per-attempt figures shrunk and his interception rate rose, he’s still the quarterback who piloted a stacked offense to a 33-14 record the past three years. Sean McVay would be happy to have him back this late in the draft.

21. Philadelphia Eagles: Derek Carr (29 years old)

The Eagles worked hard to overhaul their WR corps this offseason by adding skillful deep threats like Marquise Goodwin, Jalen Reagor, and John Hightower to the mix. None of those wideouts are sure things, however, and it could behoove the Philadelphia to find a passer capable of efficiently moving the ball in the mid-range.

Carr hasn’t gotten much recognition since his MVP-adjacent 2016 season, but there’s only one thing he truly does poorly as an NFL quarterback; hold on to the football while diving for the end zone. He attempted the fewest deep balls of his career last fall thanks to the Raiders’ lack of targets, but he was rock solid in the intermediate game. He completed 78 percent of his passes from 0-19 yards.

22. Buffalo Bills: Tua Tagovailoa (22 years old)

The Bills took a chance on a big-armed college passer in 2018. They do the same here with Tagovailoa, who was a better collegiate quarterback (by a mile) than Josh Allen but brings several questions about his health following last year’s dislocated hip. He’ll look great in Buffalo’s continually evolving offense.

23. New England Patriots: Teddy Bridgewater (27 years old)

The Patriots could swing on higher-upside quarterbacks like Jones, Dwayne Haskins, or Sam Darnold. Instead, Bill Belichick’s refusal to spend anything more than a Day 3 pick on a quarterback indicates he may be more interested in veteran help to replace Tom Brady. Bridgewater, fresh off a 5-0 stint as the Saints’ spot starter, is used to filling in for a future Hall of Famer.

24. New Orleans Saints: Philip Rivers (38 years old)

Out goes one prolific passer who used to play for the Chargers. In comes another. Michael Thomas may be the perfect eraser for Rivers’ increasingly erratic throws.

25. Minnesota Vikings: Sam Darnold (22 years old)

Darnold has been in the league two years and is still one of the youngest starting QBs. He improved steadily throughout 2019 as long as he wasn’t seeing ghosts in the Patriots’ secondary, going 7-6 as a starter in an otherwise ugly Jets season. He threw only four interceptions in his final eight games to go along with an efficient 93.3 passer rating. Now Minnesota gets to see if he casts off some Kirk Cousins vibes once freed from Adam Gase’s influence.

26: Houston Texans: Daniel Jones (22 years old)

Jones swaps out Dave Gettleman as his GM for Bill O’Brien. He may be cursed.

Jones somehow had three different games where he had at least four touchdown passes and zero interceptions. He also had seven games with multiple turnovers, including so, so many embarrassing fumbles. He is the Schrodinger’s Cat of second-year quarterbacks. Houston is perfect for him.

27. Seattle Seahawks: Cam Newton (30 years old)

Being able to avoid pressure is a prerequisite for a Seattle quarterback. Newton can do that — though his injury concerns suggest this could end poorly for the Seahawks. Still, they get a former MVP who may just need a change of scenery to put his last two disappointing seasons behind him.

28. Baltimore Ravens: Drew Lock (23 years old)

As tempting as it would be to snag Dwayne Haskins and once again show Washington how developing a franchise QB is done, the Ravens have a special place in their heart for anyone who makes Joe Flacco expendable. The Broncos scored 15.9 points per game in their 3-8 start without Lock. They averaged 21.4 in a 4-1 finish with the rookie in the lineup.

29. Tennessee Titans: Jacoby Brissett (27 years old)

Tennessee took one roughly average quarterback and turned him into found money when it traded for Tannehill last offseason. Brissett is another buy-low passer with the capability to throw a gorgeous deep ball. The former Patriot looked like a real franchise building block in the Colts’ 5-2 start, but a Week 9 knee injury sapped his effectiveness in a disappointing finish.

30: Green Bay Packers: Justin Herbert (22 years old)

They already drafted Aaron Rodgers’ real life replacement in 2020’s first round. Herbert’s availability allows the Packers to follow up on that instinct with a more productive college quarterback.

31: San Francisco 49ers: Dwayne Haskins (22 years old)

Haskins was a monster in college, but he struggled in his NFL debut with an undermanned Washington team. He’d get an immediate upgrade and the opportunity to fulfill his potential with the Niners — and he’s got the upside to make his drop all the way to 31 look downright stupid.

32: Kansas City Chiefs: Ryan Fitzpatrick (37 years old)

This is partially a win-now move and partially because I want to see some FitzMagic involving Tyreek Hill, Travis Kelce, Mecole Hardman, and Sammy Watkins. Would Gardner MInshew or Jordan Love be better forward-thinking moves? Yep. Would Jameis Winston, Andy Dalton, or Nick Foles provide similar instant gratification and a longer runway to the future? Probably.

But the NFL is better when Fitzpatrick is given the green light to close his eyes and chuck it deep. Kansas City is perfect for that.

[kristablogs]

These ultramarathoners say life is easier after running 40 miles on frozen backwoods trails

‘I could do this all night,’ O’Neill thought. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

It is 10°F outside of the wood-beamed shelter at St. Croix State Park, a 34,000-acre pine-and-oak expanse in eastern Minnesota. Hell, it’s cold inside, despite two fireplaces blazing, their smoke pulled into flared metal chimneys that resemble the business ends of rockets. The 54 athletes standing around keep their hats on, for the most part. Each has spent good money to embark on exactly the kind of endeavor most people would pay to avoid: running or skiing—whichever suits their fancy—for 40 miles. At night. In Minnesota. In January. While pulling a sled packed with 30-plus pounds of supplies.

This torturefest is called the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra, and its participants find pleasure in the hardship. At 4:30 p.m. they jiggle their legs and apply insulating tape to their cheeks and noses while the organizers give a prerace pep talk.

Of sorts.

“No one died last year,” says Jamison Swift, deadpanning. “Let’s keep it going.”

He soon passes the stage to Lisa Kapsner-Swift, his co-organizer and wife, who talks about what the racers can do if they feel like they’re coming down with the winter-ultra baddies: trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia.

The advice washes over Meredith O’Neill, who wears glasses and bright blue snow pants; two Heidi braids hang down her shoulders. She’s prepared for months, training to be alone, cold, and tired for what might feel like forever as she runs across an Upper Midwest oak savanna, passes through stands of pines, and treks across acres of trees felled by a storm. She’ll go and go and go until she returns, finally, hopefully, to this same building sometime tomorrow.

It’s fun. Not the normal, easy kind that comes with games of horseshoes or beach volleyball. Wilderness-seeking enthusiasts often call that “Type I Fun.” Instead, this is the more complicated variety, “Type II Fun,” which basically encompasses an activity—like backpacking up a steep mountain or scaling a sheer rock face—that suuuuuucks when you’re doing it but seems cool in retrospect. (Their categorization system also includes “Type III” activity, which is never actual fun and puts your life in danger.)

Type II recreation appeals to a variety of nature-loving folks, including a growing community of runners called ultramarathoners—those who think the traditional 26.2-mile course isn’t a big-enough test of physical endurance and mental fortitude. Their events mostly take place on remote trails, rather than on big-city streets with live bands and aid stations stocked like curbside Trader Joe’s. There were just over 100,000 finishes in ultraraces around the world in 2018, compared to 1.1 million for marathons. The extreme feats have to cover at least 31 miles (50 kilometers) and sometimes include extra challenges, like St. Croix’s sleds and snow. For tonight’s contest, participants must bring along, among other things, insulated water containers, gear for sleeping in the elements, a stove kit, and enough food to finish the course with 3,000 calories to spare.

The St. Croix winter ultramarathon covers 40 miles—from dusk till done—and draws athletes considering longer events. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Sports psychologists have investigated the why of races like this one, looking closely at people who think that “more than a marathon” sounds like a terrific Saturday. What they’ve found is that ultrarunners get a kick out of tackling self-imposed challenges, forming community while also pursuing solitude, exploring the wilderness as well as their own limits, and then applying the idea that they can nudge their own boundaries to their tamer everyday lives.

If you ask athletes like O’Neill why they push themselves to and through mile 37 toward the finish line, their anecdata matches scientists’ findings pretty well. “In road marathons, there’s a lot of people, and I’m more introverted,” she says. “I wanted something a little quieter, more nature-filled.”

After her first ultra, a 31-miler outside of Minneapolis, O’Neill knew this was the sport for her. It wasn’t about fast finish times or jostling with other competitors. Participants like her go slower, mostly alone, through pretty places. She liked that. “I could do this for eight hours,” she thought. “I could do this for 12 hours; I could do this all night.”

O’Neill realized she could continue beyond where her biology told her to stop. That it was thrilling to go past her usual boundaries. “Your brain is holding you back a little bit to protect you,” she says. “But that’s sort of a wiggly, wobbly line that you can push further.”

It’s an idea exercise scientist Tim Noakes first suggested in the 1990s and dubbed the “central governor” theory: Your brain sends a signal to the rest of your body, informing the muscles that they’re too tired to possibly go on, and that if they do, they might damage themselves. But that signal comes long before it needs to, when the body still has tons of energy left.

Finding out how much literal and figurative fuel she has propels O’Neill into the now-single-digit Minnesota night—that, and seeking the kind of peace physical exertion provides. “It’s one of the few times I don’t really think about anything other than how far I’ve gone and how far I have to go and whether I feel okay,” she says. “I’m very present. I like it. I like having that calm.”

At 5:55 p.m., when it’s just below 10°F, O’Neill stands in full moonlight next to her sled, which is about the size of a Flexible Flyer a kid would ride downhill. Some entrants have wrapped their gear in fancy REI stowage; others merely tote big, blue IKEA bags with the handles knotted together. O’Neill’s kit hides in a black duffel. Her camp stove, like everyone else’s, rests atop the snow, ready to be lit in order to show that she can boil water in the cold—required before she can start moving her legs. Unlike road races and traditional ultras, this event requires all runners to demonstrate not just that they’re able to last a long time, but also that they have survival skills to fall back on. When the official says, “GO!” to signal the start, O’Neill’s cooker engulfs itself in a ball of flame, then settles down. A hundred feet away, two rows of primary-colored triangle flags wave from the start of the course.

Across the snowy ground, a participant named Bill Hansel has decked out his sled with Christmas lights, their blinks reflecting aggressively off the white flakes. Nearby, a spectator in an inflatable T. rex costume dances, a Cretaceous cheerleader. Hansel is a veteran ultrarunner who also organizes his own events, the Storm Trail Race Series, as a fundraiser for youth mental-health initiatives. Like O’Neill, Hansel loves what distance challenges do to his brain. “You’re alone with your thoughts a lot,” he says. “It’s my meditation.” But he also enjoys the community. “Trail runners are a very welcoming group. Everybody wants to help everybody,” he continues. Even if you’re mindfully alone for 25 miles, “you can pick up a random person” in the middle of nowhere and chitchat through ragged breaths.

Runner ­Meredith O’Neill likes being surrounded by nature. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Hansel starts working to get his cold fuel to light.

Standing still like that, the elements start to intrude. At first it doesn’t feel so bad. Crisp! But then you breathe in sharply, and the insides of your nose flash-freeze together for a second. Frigid! Your lungs contract. Ouch! Then all of a sudden you realize that the iciness has slithered into your veins. It’s part of you now. And just as you can’t really remember exactly what it felt like to be a teenager, you can’t recall what it felt like to be warm. Maybe, you think, you never were. Maybe you’ll never be again. But the seemingly never-ending chill is temporary.

This, too, shall pass. Hansel talks in phrases like this sometimes—aphorisms interspersed with regular sentences, snippets of wisdom that are about running but really could be about anything: “There’s ups and downs, and it will get better if you keep going.” “Even if you run the same race, it’s not the same course.” “Don’t look at the big picture.”

That last one will buoy him throughout this challenge, as it has during every other ultra. He always, for instance, sets the timer on his watch for 10 minutes. When it’s up, he’ll take a drink of water. He’ll reset his watch. He’ll shift his attention to the next interval. “I have run 200 miles, 95 hours, 10 minutes at a time,” he says. He’s persisted so long that he’s hallucinated recreational vehicles (multiple times)—tales he swaps like drinking stories with other Type II enthusiasts.

This, though, is his first winter ultra, and he’s going into it with the same three big aims he always has: to finish, to have fun, to not die. He likes to play around with what he calls his superpower, which is the ability to go very slowly for a very long time. To take pleasure in how the moonlight hits the snow, to really notice his body at work, to hear only his footsteps and internal monologue, and to feel from afar the support of friends and family.

Soon, the water in his stove bubbles, and he begins moving toward his trifecta of goals. As the yellow moon rises over the trees, Hansel jogs between the flags, which lead down a snowmobile trail. He and O’Neill and the others will follow the path for the first 24 miles of the race, watching for yellow signs with blue reflective arrows to appear out of the darkness, showing the way to the only checkpoint.

More than one-quarter of the 54 people who set out on this evening will quit there.

O’Neill prepped for months to run the St. Croix trail ­ultra in frigid temperatures (Ackerman + Gruber/)

So, yeah, the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra does claim some victims. But it’s actually one of the easier cold-weather endurance events out there. The Swifts founded it specifically for people who weren’t ready yet for the truly masochistic affairs: the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1,000, the Alaskan original and still the mother of all these races; the Tuscobia Winter Ultra, whose 160-mile route is a step toward qualifying for the Iditarod; and the Arrowhead 135, a challenge that begins at International Falls in northern Minnesota and that more than half of all starters don’t finish. (The numbers in the names refer, of course, to distance in miles.)

The Swifts want to give anyone interested in trying a winter ultra a safe place to practice something “short”—especially considering that even out here, in a straightforward test, it’s not very hard to die simply by standing still for too long. That’s why the runners have to show off their survival skills: so that someday, if they do have to set up a subzero camp, they’ll be ready.

Kapsner-Swift gets that. She does similar races herself. Last year she completed her first 24-hour run. “It was terrible,” she says, “and I loved it so much.” Her statement echoes the dichotomy articulated by another St. Croix participant, Adam Warden: “You want something that’s going to suck,” he says. “And be beautiful.”

For Kapsner-Swift and Warden, and for most ultrarunners, getting through the gut-wrenching parts is a game, like a tough chess match. “Not to get all existential,” Kapsner-Swift says, “but we have this incredible privilege of having, generally speaking, very comfortable lives.” That’s great—most of the time. But challenge is good for human beings. It’s how we grow. “Sometimes a little fear and self-doubt go a long way,” another participant, Kari Gibbons, explains. “I don’t feel that anywhere else in my life. That means I’m not pushing myself. I’m not taking a risk. If I do feel that, I know I’m doing something important.”

If life doesn’t give you lemons, in other words, you should probably pluck a few and bite down. Then, when you actually do get lemons, you’ll know what to do with them. That shift—from athletic challenge to regular existence—may be easy for ultrarunners, according to a 2014 dissertation from organizational psychologist Anthony Holly, now a director of strategy and analytics at PRO Unlimited, a workforce management company. He wanted to understand how these athletes’ mental toughness plays out in the workplace. By interviewing runners, he projected that the discipline, patience, and tenacity they use to complete races are skills they could transfer to job environments. It sounds a little Hallmarkian to say, “Because I could plod more miles, I knew I could handle the frustrations of office politics and rough deadlines.” But it seems to work. The St. Croix athletes have found that the extremes help them cope with personal and professional troubles.

St. Croix athletes pull sleds with emergency supplies. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

To understand why people initially decide to go to such lengths, Rhonna Krouse-Adams, an associate professor of health science at the College of Western Idaho, studied endurance athletes. After she failed to find any data on women ultrarunners, she decided to focus her research on them. She herself was one, and had become fascinated by the community and camaraderie among these women, who technically are competitors and mostly fly solo. “They’re noncompetitive people who form almost a family unit through this process,” she thought.

Surveying 344 participants, Krouse-Adams found they cared about health and used running to give themselves a sense of well-being. They focused on self-centric goals, like just finishing the race, rather than outward-facing ones, like besting a competitor. “The sense of freedom and accomplishment” topped the “why” list. “A sense of belonging was really high,” she says. It’s a whole identity—not just a hobby. According to a 2018 study, finishers are more motivated by their group affiliation and a feeling of happiness and fulfillment than those who complete shorter distances.

This is a self-selecting bunch, though, Krouse-Adams points out. “You can’t commit to something for 25 hours a week and have a lot of other commitments,” she says. “This was not a sport chosen by families. Not by moms.” Perhaps not surprisingly, other researchers have found that ultrarunners in the United States are around 85 percent male, 90 percent white, and more educated and richer than average. It’s a pursuit often taken up by those with lots of leisure time and money to spend on the $100-plus entry fees.

Life circumstances aside, not everyone is mentally suited to endurance events. Gavin Breslin, a sports and exercise psychologist at Ulster University, sees a focus on self-challenge. “The marathon is achievable,” says Breslin, who also coaches a team of Olympic hopefuls. Ultrarunners ask, “‘What can you do above that?' There’s risk-taking involved.” The uncertainty is that you might not be able to do what you set out to do. The fist-pumping triumph is when you do it anyway. As O’Neill puts it, “That was liberating, to know that when I thought things were over and done, I had a little more.”

Breslin and his associates have also looked at how distance athletes score on a personality test of five major traits, sometimes called the Big Five, which in concert can define character: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Ultrarunners tend to score significantly higher than average for that last trait, thanks to some mysterious mix of genetics and upbringing. You can cultivate this quality, he says. “You can develop goal setting. Somewhere within us all, there’s a level of ultraendurance.”

At the 24-mile checkpoint, some of the St. Croix participants might be questioning Breslin’s assessment. The ones who decide to bow out join volunteers inside a billowing warming tent that looks like it was fashioned from the inflatable T. rex at the starting point. Other crew members stand slump-shouldered around a fire, waiting for each bedraggled, frigid racer to emerge from the darkness.

The first athlete arrives around 10 p.m., but the last runner doesn’t get there until around 2:30 a.m. If they plan to take on the last 16 miles, they have to again prove they have the skills to stay alive in an emergency. They must stop, set up their bivy sack (basically a body-shaped tent that envelops their sleeping bag), climb into the makeshift bed, wait around 30 seconds, then pack it all up before leaving. That sounds like a pain, sure. But no big deal compared to running 40 miles, right?

Counterclockwise from top: foam pad, sleeping bag and bivy sack, water bottle sleeves, camp pot and stove, fuel (red canister), snacks, trekking poles, microspikes. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Wrong: When the temp nears zero, and you’re sweaty, you get cold quick—the kind of chill that seems to attach itself to your DNA. Some who feel too frosty after their survival demo, or just beaten, call it quits and either walk a mile (as the crow flies) on a road back to the finish line or catch a ride in a volunteer’s car.

Around 3 a.m., back at the starting point, the race crew begins making breakfast in the shelter for the people who’ve returned, either humbled from the checkpoint or triumphant from the trail. There are flaky eggs, bacon, Krusteaz pancakes, bags of Colby Jack cheese, and Activia probiotic yogurt. Also a big orange cooler with a piece of paper taped to its side: “TANG!” On the registration table, not-yet-cooked bacon languishes—which is fine, because it’s still too cold inside for bacteria to propagate.

Hansel comes in around 4 a.m., shaken. Shaky, actually. His lips are blue like Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade, and his fork wobbles as he brings eggs up to them, or tries to cut into the pancakes.

“I had dark times starting after about five miles,” Hansel says. He didn’t really see anyone else—at all—till the checkpoint. “I’m used to dark times,” he continues, “but not that early.”

To keep going, he says he thought of his family and all of the people who support him. Would he do it again? No. “Was it fun?” Hansel asks aloud. “Yes,” he answers himself. Perhaps that’s Type 2.5 Fun. (Within a couple months, though, he would be training for next year’s St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra.)

When O’Neill comes in around two hours later, after more than 12 hours on the trail, she looks jubilant. She caught that heightened state of being she’s always chasing through the woods—what psychologists call “flow,” or total absorption in a task. You lose track of time, you feel totally in control, like you are in charge of yourself and the world. “I’m not thinking of anything but what I’m doing, my footsteps, what’s around me,” she says.

She removes her coat, revealing a pale blue argyle sweater, the kind you might wear to the office, and a down running skirt over her bright blue snow pants. The race appears to have barely fazed her. She says, in fact, that it was “90 percent Type I fun.” Her only trouble was that all her food froze—except for a stash of Twinkies. But no big deal: She just ate Twinkies, fully present to sense their spongy outsides, their gooey centers, their sugar flowing into her veins. Crisis averted. Achievement unlocked. Game won, and over.

This story appeared in the Summer 2020, Play issue of Popular Science.

[scootoaster]

These ultramarathoners say life is easier after running 40 miles on frozen backwoods trails

‘I could do this all night,’ O’Neill thought. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

It is 10°F outside of the wood-beamed shelter at St. Croix State Park, a 34,000-acre pine-and-oak expanse in eastern Minnesota. Hell, it’s cold inside, despite two fireplaces blazing, their smoke pulled into flared metal chimneys that resemble the business ends of rockets. The 54 athletes standing around keep their hats on, for the most part. Each has spent good money to embark on exactly the kind of endeavor most people would pay to avoid: running or skiing—whichever suits their fancy—for 40 miles. At night. In Minnesota. In January. While pulling a sled packed with 30-plus pounds of supplies.

This torturefest is called the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra, and its participants find pleasure in the hardship. At 4:30 p.m. they jiggle their legs and apply insulating tape to their cheeks and noses while the organizers give a prerace pep talk.

Of sorts.

“No one died last year,” says Jamison Swift, deadpanning. “Let’s keep it going.”

He soon passes the stage to Lisa Kapsner-Swift, his co-organizer and wife, who talks about what the racers can do if they feel like they’re coming down with the winter-ultra baddies: trench foot, frostbite, hypothermia.

The advice washes over Meredith O’Neill, who wears glasses and bright blue snow pants; two Heidi braids hang down her shoulders. She’s prepared for months, training to be alone, cold, and tired for what might feel like forever as she runs across an Upper Midwest oak savanna, passes through stands of pines, and treks across acres of trees felled by a storm. She’ll go and go and go until she returns, finally, hopefully, to this same building sometime tomorrow.

It’s fun. Not the normal, easy kind that comes with games of horseshoes or beach volleyball. Wilderness-seeking enthusiasts often call that “Type I Fun.” Instead, this is the more complicated variety, “Type II Fun,” which basically encompasses an activity—like backpacking up a steep mountain or scaling a sheer rock face—that suuuuuucks when you’re doing it but seems cool in retrospect. (Their categorization system also includes “Type III” activity, which is never actual fun and puts your life in danger.)

Type II recreation appeals to a variety of nature-loving folks, including a growing community of runners called ultramarathoners—those who think the traditional 26.2-mile course isn’t a big-enough test of physical endurance and mental fortitude. Their events mostly take place on remote trails, rather than on big-city streets with live bands and aid stations stocked like curbside Trader Joe’s. There were just over 100,000 finishes in ultraraces around the world in 2018, compared to 1.1 million for marathons. The extreme feats have to cover at least 31 miles (50 kilometers) and sometimes include extra challenges, like St. Croix’s sleds and snow. For tonight’s contest, participants must bring along, among other things, insulated water containers, gear for sleeping in the elements, a stove kit, and enough food to finish the course with 3,000 calories to spare.

The St. Croix winter ultramarathon covers 40 miles—from dusk till done—and draws athletes considering longer events. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Sports psychologists have investigated the why of races like this one, looking closely at people who think that “more than a marathon” sounds like a terrific Saturday. What they’ve found is that ultrarunners get a kick out of tackling self-imposed challenges, forming community while also pursuing solitude, exploring the wilderness as well as their own limits, and then applying the idea that they can nudge their own boundaries to their tamer everyday lives.

If you ask athletes like O’Neill why they push themselves to and through mile 37 toward the finish line, their anecdata matches scientists’ findings pretty well. “In road marathons, there’s a lot of people, and I’m more introverted,” she says. “I wanted something a little quieter, more nature-filled.”

After her first ultra, a 31-miler outside of Minneapolis, O’Neill knew this was the sport for her. It wasn’t about fast finish times or jostling with other competitors. Participants like her go slower, mostly alone, through pretty places. She liked that. “I could do this for eight hours,” she thought. “I could do this for 12 hours; I could do this all night.”

O’Neill realized she could continue beyond where her biology told her to stop. That it was thrilling to go past her usual boundaries. “Your brain is holding you back a little bit to protect you,” she says. “But that’s sort of a wiggly, wobbly line that you can push further.”

It’s an idea exercise scientist Tim Noakes first suggested in the 1990s and dubbed the “central governor” theory: Your brain sends a signal to the rest of your body, informing the muscles that they’re too tired to possibly go on, and that if they do, they might damage themselves. But that signal comes long before it needs to, when the body still has tons of energy left.

Finding out how much literal and figurative fuel she has propels O’Neill into the now-single-digit Minnesota night—that, and seeking the kind of peace physical exertion provides. “It’s one of the few times I don’t really think about anything other than how far I’ve gone and how far I have to go and whether I feel okay,” she says. “I’m very present. I like it. I like having that calm.”

At 5:55 p.m., when it’s just below 10°F, O’Neill stands in full moonlight next to her sled, which is about the size of a Flexible Flyer a kid would ride downhill. Some entrants have wrapped their gear in fancy REI stowage; others merely tote big, blue IKEA bags with the handles knotted together. O’Neill’s kit hides in a black duffel. Her camp stove, like everyone else’s, rests atop the snow, ready to be lit in order to show that she can boil water in the cold—required before she can start moving her legs. Unlike road races and traditional ultras, this event requires all runners to demonstrate not just that they’re able to last a long time, but also that they have survival skills to fall back on. When the official says, “GO!” to signal the start, O’Neill’s cooker engulfs itself in a ball of flame, then settles down. A hundred feet away, two rows of primary-colored triangle flags wave from the start of the course.

Across the snowy ground, a participant named Bill Hansel has decked out his sled with Christmas lights, their blinks reflecting aggressively off the white flakes. Nearby, a spectator in an inflatable T. rex costume dances, a Cretaceous cheerleader. Hansel is a veteran ultrarunner who also organizes his own events, the Storm Trail Race Series, as a fundraiser for youth mental-health initiatives. Like O’Neill, Hansel loves what distance challenges do to his brain. “You’re alone with your thoughts a lot,” he says. “It’s my meditation.” But he also enjoys the community. “Trail runners are a very welcoming group. Everybody wants to help everybody,” he continues. Even if you’re mindfully alone for 25 miles, “you can pick up a random person” in the middle of nowhere and chitchat through ragged breaths.

Runner ­Meredith O’Neill likes being surrounded by nature. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Hansel starts working to get his cold fuel to light.

Standing still like that, the elements start to intrude. At first it doesn’t feel so bad. Crisp! But then you breathe in sharply, and the insides of your nose flash-freeze together for a second. Frigid! Your lungs contract. Ouch! Then all of a sudden you realize that the iciness has slithered into your veins. It’s part of you now. And just as you can’t really remember exactly what it felt like to be a teenager, you can’t recall what it felt like to be warm. Maybe, you think, you never were. Maybe you’ll never be again. But the seemingly never-ending chill is temporary.

This, too, shall pass. Hansel talks in phrases like this sometimes—aphorisms interspersed with regular sentences, snippets of wisdom that are about running but really could be about anything: “There’s ups and downs, and it will get better if you keep going.” “Even if you run the same race, it’s not the same course.” “Don’t look at the big picture.”

That last one will buoy him throughout this challenge, as it has during every other ultra. He always, for instance, sets the timer on his watch for 10 minutes. When it’s up, he’ll take a drink of water. He’ll reset his watch. He’ll shift his attention to the next interval. “I have run 200 miles, 95 hours, 10 minutes at a time,” he says. He’s persisted so long that he’s hallucinated recreational vehicles (multiple times)—tales he swaps like drinking stories with other Type II enthusiasts.

This, though, is his first winter ultra, and he’s going into it with the same three big aims he always has: to finish, to have fun, to not die. He likes to play around with what he calls his superpower, which is the ability to go very slowly for a very long time. To take pleasure in how the moonlight hits the snow, to really notice his body at work, to hear only his footsteps and internal monologue, and to feel from afar the support of friends and family.

Soon, the water in his stove bubbles, and he begins moving toward his trifecta of goals. As the yellow moon rises over the trees, Hansel jogs between the flags, which lead down a snowmobile trail. He and O’Neill and the others will follow the path for the first 24 miles of the race, watching for yellow signs with blue reflective arrows to appear out of the darkness, showing the way to the only checkpoint.

More than one-quarter of the 54 people who set out on this evening will quit there.

O’Neill prepped for months to run the St. Croix trail ­ultra in frigid temperatures (Ackerman + Gruber/)

So, yeah, the St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra does claim some victims. But it’s actually one of the easier cold-weather endurance events out there. The Swifts founded it specifically for people who weren’t ready yet for the truly masochistic affairs: the Iditarod Trail Invitational 1,000, the Alaskan original and still the mother of all these races; the Tuscobia Winter Ultra, whose 160-mile route is a step toward qualifying for the Iditarod; and the Arrowhead 135, a challenge that begins at International Falls in northern Minnesota and that more than half of all starters don’t finish. (The numbers in the names refer, of course, to distance in miles.)

The Swifts want to give anyone interested in trying a winter ultra a safe place to practice something “short”—especially considering that even out here, in a straightforward test, it’s not very hard to die simply by standing still for too long. That’s why the runners have to show off their survival skills: so that someday, if they do have to set up a subzero camp, they’ll be ready.

Kapsner-Swift gets that. She does similar races herself. Last year she completed her first 24-hour run. “It was terrible,” she says, “and I loved it so much.” Her statement echoes the dichotomy articulated by another St. Croix participant, Adam Warden: “You want something that’s going to suck,” he says. “And be beautiful.”

For Kapsner-Swift and Warden, and for most ultrarunners, getting through the gut-wrenching parts is a game, like a tough chess match. “Not to get all existential,” Kapsner-Swift says, “but we have this incredible privilege of having, generally speaking, very comfortable lives.” That’s great—most of the time. But challenge is good for human beings. It’s how we grow. “Sometimes a little fear and self-doubt go a long way,” another participant, Kari Gibbons, explains. “I don’t feel that anywhere else in my life. That means I’m not pushing myself. I’m not taking a risk. If I do feel that, I know I’m doing something important.”

If life doesn’t give you lemons, in other words, you should probably pluck a few and bite down. Then, when you actually do get lemons, you’ll know what to do with them. That shift—from athletic challenge to regular existence—may be easy for ultrarunners, according to a 2014 dissertation from organizational psychologist Anthony Holly, now a director of strategy and analytics at PRO Unlimited, a workforce management company. He wanted to understand how these athletes’ mental toughness plays out in the workplace. By interviewing runners, he projected that the discipline, patience, and tenacity they use to complete races are skills they could transfer to job environments. It sounds a little Hallmarkian to say, “Because I could plod more miles, I knew I could handle the frustrations of office politics and rough deadlines.” But it seems to work. The St. Croix athletes have found that the extremes help them cope with personal and professional troubles.

St. Croix athletes pull sleds with emergency supplies. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

To understand why people initially decide to go to such lengths, Rhonna Krouse-Adams, an associate professor of health science at the College of Western Idaho, studied endurance athletes. After she failed to find any data on women ultrarunners, she decided to focus her research on them. She herself was one, and had become fascinated by the community and camaraderie among these women, who technically are competitors and mostly fly solo. “They’re noncompetitive people who form almost a family unit through this process,” she thought.

Surveying 344 participants, Krouse-Adams found they cared about health and used running to give themselves a sense of well-being. They focused on self-centric goals, like just finishing the race, rather than outward-facing ones, like besting a competitor. “The sense of freedom and accomplishment” topped the “why” list. “A sense of belonging was really high,” she says. It’s a whole identity—not just a hobby. According to a 2018 study, finishers are more motivated by their group affiliation and a feeling of happiness and fulfillment than those who complete shorter distances.

This is a self-selecting bunch, though, Krouse-Adams points out. “You can’t commit to something for 25 hours a week and have a lot of other commitments,” she says. “This was not a sport chosen by families. Not by moms.” Perhaps not surprisingly, other researchers have found that ultrarunners in the United States are around 85 percent male, 90 percent white, and more educated and richer than average. It’s a pursuit often taken up by those with lots of leisure time and money to spend on the $100-plus entry fees.

Life circumstances aside, not everyone is mentally suited to endurance events. Gavin Breslin, a sports and exercise psychologist at Ulster University, sees a focus on self-challenge. “The marathon is achievable,” says Breslin, who also coaches a team of Olympic hopefuls. Ultrarunners ask, “‘What can you do above that?' There’s risk-taking involved.” The uncertainty is that you might not be able to do what you set out to do. The fist-pumping triumph is when you do it anyway. As O’Neill puts it, “That was liberating, to know that when I thought things were over and done, I had a little more.”

Breslin and his associates have also looked at how distance athletes score on a personality test of five major traits, sometimes called the Big Five, which in concert can define character: extroversion, agreeableness, openness, neuroticism, and conscientiousness. Ultrarunners tend to score significantly higher than average for that last trait, thanks to some mysterious mix of genetics and upbringing. You can cultivate this quality, he says. “You can develop goal setting. Somewhere within us all, there’s a level of ultraendurance.”

At the 24-mile checkpoint, some of the St. Croix participants might be questioning Breslin’s assessment. The ones who decide to bow out join volunteers inside a billowing warming tent that looks like it was fashioned from the inflatable T. rex at the starting point. Other crew members stand slump-shouldered around a fire, waiting for each bedraggled, frigid racer to emerge from the darkness.

The first athlete arrives around 10 p.m., but the last runner doesn’t get there until around 2:30 a.m. If they plan to take on the last 16 miles, they have to again prove they have the skills to stay alive in an emergency. They must stop, set up their bivy sack (basically a body-shaped tent that envelops their sleeping bag), climb into the makeshift bed, wait around 30 seconds, then pack it all up before leaving. That sounds like a pain, sure. But no big deal compared to running 40 miles, right?

Counterclockwise from top: foam pad, sleeping bag and bivy sack, water bottle sleeves, camp pot and stove, fuel (red canister), snacks, trekking poles, microspikes. (Ackerman + Gruber/)

Wrong: When the temp nears zero, and you’re sweaty, you get cold quick—the kind of chill that seems to attach itself to your DNA. Some who feel too frosty after their survival demo, or just beaten, call it quits and either walk a mile (as the crow flies) on a road back to the finish line or catch a ride in a volunteer’s car.

Around 3 a.m., back at the starting point, the race crew begins making breakfast in the shelter for the people who’ve returned, either humbled from the checkpoint or triumphant from the trail. There are flaky eggs, bacon, Krusteaz pancakes, bags of Colby Jack cheese, and Activia probiotic yogurt. Also a big orange cooler with a piece of paper taped to its side: “TANG!” On the registration table, not-yet-cooked bacon languishes—which is fine, because it’s still too cold inside for bacteria to propagate.

Hansel comes in around 4 a.m., shaken. Shaky, actually. His lips are blue like Frost Glacier Freeze Gatorade, and his fork wobbles as he brings eggs up to them, or tries to cut into the pancakes.

“I had dark times starting after about five miles,” Hansel says. He didn’t really see anyone else—at all—till the checkpoint. “I’m used to dark times,” he continues, “but not that early.”

To keep going, he says he thought of his family and all of the people who support him. Would he do it again? No. “Was it fun?” Hansel asks aloud. “Yes,” he answers himself. Perhaps that’s Type 2.5 Fun. (Within a couple months, though, he would be training for next year’s St. Croix 40 Winter Ultra.)

When O’Neill comes in around two hours later, after more than 12 hours on the trail, she looks jubilant. She caught that heightened state of being she’s always chasing through the woods—what psychologists call “flow,” or total absorption in a task. You lose track of time, you feel totally in control, like you are in charge of yourself and the world. “I’m not thinking of anything but what I’m doing, my footsteps, what’s around me,” she says.

She removes her coat, revealing a pale blue argyle sweater, the kind you might wear to the office, and a down running skirt over her bright blue snow pants. The race appears to have barely fazed her. She says, in fact, that it was “90 percent Type I fun.” Her only trouble was that all her food froze—except for a stash of Twinkies. But no big deal: She just ate Twinkies, fully present to sense their spongy outsides, their gooey centers, their sugar flowing into her veins. Crisis averted. Achievement unlocked. Game won, and over.

This story appeared in the Summer 2020, Play issue of Popular Science.

[johnmauldin]

China Is an Underrated Threat to the World

In Hong Kong, somewhere between 1–2 million people (out of a 7+ million population) have taken to the streets protesting an extradition bill proposed by Beijing.

These protests have been ongoing and persistent. That the extradition bill has now been withdrawn is seemingly not enough to satisfy a smaller but active protest group.

And then came the furor over the NBA. The general manager of the Houston Rockets, Daryl Morey, tweeted out a small and rather innocuous message of support for the Hong Kong protesters.

(Note that Twitter is not allowed inside of China. This should have been a non-event. Almost any NBA referee would have overseen it as no harm, no foul.)

But it set off a furor within China. Contracts were cancelled, and the government demanded Morey be fired.

Think About That for a Second

Some low-level bureaucrat pressured businesses to cancel contracts and then demanded an American organization tell one of its members to fire one of its employees who had exercised what we think of as free speech over here.

Note that NBA basketball is one of China’s most popular sports. China is a growing market and moneymaker for the NBA. To his credit, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver defended the right of free speech and said there was “no chance” the league would discipline Morey over that tweet.

This was business as usual from the Chinese perspective. It is something every American company that does business in China has to deal with.

You don’t criticize the Chinese government. You block access to information the government wants hidden. You use maps that are Chinese-government approved. The list goes on and on.

The key “tell” is that the Chinese actually expected a reaction and felt they had the right to dictate to US companies and organizations, which because of prior acquiescence on the part of companies and organizations, led them to believe they would be successful.

Most of their “arm-twisting” is done behind closed doors and out of the view of the public. This was not…

This Is the Underlying Problem with China

The United States and the rest of the West are not dealing with 1.3 billion Chinese citizens and human beings. The country is run by the Chinese Communist Party, which controls almost every facet of life for everyone there.

Over the last three or four years, I’ve become increasingly uncomfortable with China’s ambitions.

There has been a surge of research pointing to the fact that the Chinese military has openly planned to be the dominant world power by 2049. And while many of these documents have been withdrawn, there is no doubt that they were written.

I have talked to people who have been in the libraries and read them in China. This desire for dominance has always been a latent force but one that was convenient to ignore, except that now we can no longer ignore it.

There’s a growing consensus that behind the Chinese economic colossus is a threat to not just the United States and other Western democracies, but the very concepts of free speech and personal liberty, not to mention property rights and the rule of law that we consider the foundations of civilization.

If something so utterly meaningless as a tweet about Hong Kong rises to the level that it requires “thought control” then what is next? 

The Great Reset: The Collapse of the Biggest Bubble in History

New York Times best seller and renowned financial expert John Mauldin predicts an unprecedented financial crisis that could be triggered in the next five years. Most investors seem completely unaware of the relentless pressure that’s building right now. Learn more here.

[torentialtribute]

10 things to get excited about in the Championship this season

The new Sky Bet Championship season starts this weekend and there is always a lot of intrigue.

Whether it is the lucrative race for the promotion of Premier League at the top of the table, the fight for play-offs or the fight to prevent relegation, it promises to become a fascinating nine months.

Here are just 10 reasons to get excited about the new championship campaign.

Who will follow in Norwich City's footsteps and win the Sky Bet Championship table?

EL LOCO & SECOND TITLE TILT

Marcelo Bielsa is usually not a manager to surpass his welcome, so it came as a huge relief to all Leeds United fans that he re-entered the club after last season's Play-off failure.

Life on Elland Road was certainly not boring under the beating Argentinean final installment, whether it was his intense training schedule, Spygate or their end of the season collapse amid claims of exhaustion.

Bielsa will once again expect his team to play at full throttle at all 46 games, but there is a good reason why bookmakers have installed them as a favorites promotion.

It is probably not boring if Marcelo Bielsa preparing to take charge of Leeds for another season

Jack Clarke signed for Tottenham, but became returned to Leeds for the coming season

Defender Pontus Jansson may have disappeared, but Leeds signed the port Uguese winger Bright Costa on loan from Wolves, Tottenham-bound Jack Clarke determined a little longer and acquired Jack Harrison for another year.

Bielsa has always wiped out pig hair during the season due to fatigue, but last season's experience should have taught him something.

FULL STEAM FOR PREMIER RETURN?

Of the trio that was relegated from the Premier League in May, it is Fulham who looks the best back.

They seem to have learned a hard lesson from 12 months ago, when their £ 100 million spending was on an uncertain side, defensive vulnerability and only five games outside the bottom three.

Their business transfer is not mentioned, but should be effective. Aleksandar Mitrovic has signed a new contract, and they have further strengthened their attack by lending Ivan Knight and Anthony Knockaert.

Aleksandar Mitrovic is expected to thrive again in the championship for Fulham

Fulham has loaned the English winger Ivan Knight from Wolves

Some of their expensive flops from last season are also widened from the team and the wage bill, which makes Fulham look like

Their fans have become accustomed to a style of play that is easy to monitor in recent seasons and Scott Parker – now permanent manager – can keep that.

One question mark has passed Ryan Sessegnon, a target for Tottenham, and if he stays in his team after his deadline, his chances of promotion are further increased.

BEES GOING FOR NEW MOUNTAIN TRANSACTIONS

Brentford & # 39; s new stadium rises rapidly above the West London skyline and how bees like to cut the ribbon next summer as a Premier League -club.

They belong to the bookmaker's favorite cluster because of their attractive brand of football and some ambitious takeovers such as Jansson for a club record £ 5.5 million

Pontus Jansson's defense is the Brentford club record £ 5.5 million summer arrival from Leeds

They have the will of Ezri Konsa lost to Aston Villa and Romaine Sawyers to West Brom, but the money earned back is reinvested.

If Brentford can hold star attacker Neal Maupay – who scored 28 times last season – and creative dynamo Benrahma said, they have a chance to shake up the division.

CAN COCU IMPROVE IT FOR DERBY?

Derby has had four heartbreaks in the past six seasons while trying to return to the Premier League for the first time since 2008.

They have also gone through seven managers over the past four years, with the Dutch legend Phillip Cocu the last after Frank Lampard found the temptation of an emotional return to Chelsea too difficult to resist.

Cocu certainly has no lack of confidence, but he will have to show the versatility he showed as a player for Barcelona and the Netherlands if he wants to succeed where many others have failed.

Dutch legend Phillip Cocu has been commissioned gotten the play-off curse from Derby County to end

Like Lampard, he will rely on a web of contacts to reach talented borrowers, although progress so far has been slow.

He has also vowed to turn the academy graduates of the club into regulars of the first team, but only if owner Mel Morris gives him time.

SUPER SLAV BACK GAME

West Brom also suffered from play-off heartbreak last season – beaten by penalties by local rivals Aston Villa – and so must press the reset button emotionally for the new campaign.

While Derby boss C ocu was on the Dutch side who lost to Brazil in the 1998 World Cup semi-final, new Baggies manager Slaven Bilic was in Croatia and lost in the same phase of France.

Bilic manages Al-Ittihad in Saudi Arabia since his resignation from West Ham, but it was always a matter of time before returning to England.

Slaves Bilic returned to English football as a West Brom challenge for promotion

The Baggies have strengthened their frontline with the £ 8m signing van Kenneth Zohore

West Brom is again expected to they take on the challenge for the top six, even though they have lost Rodriguez to Burnley and this time have no hotshot Dwight Gayle.

They have strengthened their forward line by signing Kenneth Zohore of Cardiff for £ 8 million and Brentford's Sawyers for £ 3 million, but will the 45 goals from Rodriguez and Gayle?

CAN AGOMIN MAY PROMOTION EXPERT WARNOCK?

Cardiff remained loyal to Neil Warnock after their degradation of the Premier League in May, the sad conclusion dominated by Emiliano Sala & # 39; s tragic death.

It will be a difficult question to immediately return to the top flight, but Warnock – with a record of eight promotions on his resume – is the right man for the job.

The signing of hard-as-nails mid-half Aden Flint from Middlesbrough looks good and the Warnock team will be stingy and hard to break down.

Neil Warnock hopes for ninth promotion as Cardiff push for Premier League return

Cardiff made a cunning signing in with Middlesbrough

And in another classic Warnock move, Cardiff has signed long-throw specialist Will Vaulks from degraded Rotherham.

So the defense works of the opposition can expect that they have many catapulted balls when they are played against Cardiff this season. Probably they get away from that kind of game plan his Middlesbrough, who replaced Tony Pulis with the favorite and former player of Jonathan Towngate.

He has vowed to produce an exciting, offensive side that will undoubtedly be a relief for Bororo fans who & # 39; Pulis-ball & # 39; tired of seeing them slip out of the playoffs last season.

Woodgate will enjoy a lot of patience from the fans, but has to get rid of the play-off mix

They have been silent on the transfer market so far, although Woodgate – the former attacker Robbie Keane has brought in Ireland as an assistant – has said he will strengthen before the deadline.

Place boy Jonathan Woodgate is located on familiar site as the new manager of Middlesbrough Middlesbrough

CAN LAMOUCHI FIREBOS?

It has been a long time since Nottingham Forest has challenged promotion – their last play-off performance was in 2011.

Their owner, the Greek ship magnate Evangelos Marinakis, demands success and replaced Martin O & # 39; Neill by the virtually unknown Sabri Lamouchi.

Lamouchi, the former international midfielder of France, took Ivory Coast to the 2014 World Cup and then led El Jaish in Qatar and the French club Rennes.

Marinakis certainly has high hopes that he can deliver a push promotion, but it is hard to give the impression that Forest is again intended for mid-table.

HOW WILL THE NEW BOYS GET?

After Lampard's success in Derby last season, it will be interesting to see how his contemporary Lee Bowyer is doing in Charlton.

After getting promotion through the League A playoffs last season, Charlton & # 39; s hated owner Roland Duchatelet issued a statement that the contract talks had been broken off and Bowyer would leave.

However, a further revolt of the fans in The Valley was averted when Bowyer committed himself to an annual contract extension to lead them into the second layer.

Lee Bowyer and Dean Smith A joke ahead from Charlton & # 39; s friendly with Aston Villa

Macaulay Bonne, Tom Lockyer and Chuks Aneke have given fans hope that they can survive.

Luton, League One champions, seem to have enough momentum on their side and they too have a new manager in Graeme Jones, until recently Roberto Martinez's assistant for Belgium.

Barnsley is also back, with the German manager Daniel Stendel who has done a great job. But the Tykes tend to have yo-yo between the divisions, so they need something impressive to survive.

WHO WILL LOSE?

Charlton and Barnsley seem to have been convicted by the bookmakers, but people like Millwall, Queens Park Rangers, Reading, Wigan and Birmingham are also expected to struggle.

Birmingham, managed by Pep Clotet following the unpopular plunder of Garry Monk, has the likes of the Jota and Che Adams departments

QPR flirted with relegation last time and is not expected to be better while Wigan & # 39; s talisman Nick Powell has moved to Stoke.

Nick Powell is now in the colors of Stoke after the leaving Wigan in the summer

Opening weekend competitions

[1945902] FRIDAY

Luton Town vs Middlesbrough (19.45pm) [1945900]]

Live on Sky Sports Football

SATURDAY (fifteen unless otherwise stated)

Barnsley vs Fulham

Blackburn Rovers vs Charlton Athletic

Brentford vs Birmingham City

Millwall vs Pre ston North End

Reading vs Sheffield Wednesday

Stoke City vs Queens Park Rangers

Swansea City vs Hull City

Nottingham Forest

Nottingham Forest vs West Bromwich Albion (5.30 pm)

Live on Sky Sports Football

SUNDAY

Bristol City vs Leeds United (4:30 PM)

Live on Sky Sports Football

MONDAY

Huddersfield Town vs Derby County (19.45pm)

Live on the Sky Sports Football

]

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[thegloober]

Three things the two 2018 World Series teams should reaffirm for the Yankees

Teams are calling about Gary Sanchez and the Yankees would be crazy to trade him

(Maddie Meyer/Getty)

Later tonight the Red Sox and Dodgers will open the 2018 World Series at Fenway Park. The Red Sox are looking to win their fourth championship in the last 15 years. The Dodgers are trying to win their first World Series title in 30 years, since the iconic Kirk Gibson home run series. We’re all Dodgers fans this series, right? Right.

Anyway, this is the time of year when we start to see “this is what [team] should learn from the World Series teams” articles. I’ve done it myself. Multiple times. This is not one of those articles. What is there to learn from the Red Sox and Dodgers? Draft and develop well, be good at as many facets of the game as possible, and hope it all works out? Yeah. We knew that already.

The Yankees don’t need to learn anything from the Red Sox and Dodgers. Rather, there are a couple of things the Yankees already know that the Red Sox and Dodgers reinforce. Here, in no particular order, are three big picture ideas the Sawx and Dodgers reaffirm, just in case you or the Yanks have forgotten.

It’s okay to outspend everyone (by a lot)

Kinda weird I have to point this out when talking about the Yankees, but here we are. Between payroll and luxury tax, the Yankees paid $240M for their roster last season. This year that number was all the way down to $193M or so. The Yankees went to Game Seven of the ALCS last year and cut nearly $50M off their payroll. Good grief.

Let’s check in on 2018 Opening Day payrolls, shall we?

Red Sox: $228.4M

Giants: $205.6M

Dodgers: $199.6M

Would you look at that? Two of the top three teams in payroll are in the World Series. The third team stunk, but you know what? That third team won three World Series titles in a five-year span recently and spent like crazy to try to extend the championship window. They tried like hell to keep winning. There’s no extra credit for winning with a cheapest roster. Spend spend spend.

The Yankees set out to reset their luxury tax rate this year and they did exactly that. Will they increase payroll next year and exceed the luxury tax threshold? Brian Cashman didn’t make it seem like a given. “I don’t want to speak for (Hal Steinbrenner), but my general feeling from him and for us has been not wanting to line the pockets of others to let them utilize that excess against us,” said the GM.

Luxury tax money goes to non-luxury tax paying teams. At least part of it does. It sucks having to pay bills, we all know that firsthand, so I totally get why the Yankees don’t want to continue footing a luxury tax bill. By doing that though, the Yankees are throwing away their market advantages. Playing in New York and having this organization’s history means sky high revenues. The Yankees have willingly leveled the playing field.

The Red Sox spent like crazy this year — I don’t want to hear any “they’re buying a championship!” nonsense, it’s hard for a Yankees fan to be more hypocritical than that — and the result was 108 wins and a trip to the postseason. The Dodgers, like the Yankees, worked to get under the luxury tax threshold this year. They went from 104 wins last year to 92 wins this year. They leveled the playing field and had to battle all season.

If there’s a lesson here, the lesson is that when a team has a very talented young core capable of doing something special, they absolutely should throw money at whatever roster holes exist in an effort to get over the hump. Could you get saddled with a bad contract along the way? Absolutely. You also might wind up in the World Series. Success can be fleeting and championship windows can closer sooner than you expect. Spend when you can.

Home runs are cool, long live home runs

Machado. (Maddie Meyer/Getty)

The Red Sox clinched the AL pennant with a 4-1 win over the Astros in ALCS Game Five. The Dodgers clinched the NL pennant with a 5-1 win over the Brewers in NLDS Game Seven. All eleven runs in the two deciding games were scored on home runs. Every single one. Three solo homers (Christian Yelich, J.D. Martinez, Marwin Gonzalez), one two-run homer (Cody Bellinger), and two three-run homers (Rafael Devers, Yasiel Puig) equal eleven runs.

From 2016-18, there were 1.19 home runs per game during the regular season and 1.15 home runs per game in the postseason. The difference is one homer every 25 games. A negligible difference. Also:

2018 regular season: 40.3% runs on homers

2018 postseason: 40.2% runs on homers

As Joe Sheehan notes, the team with more home runs has won 17 of 21 games this postseason. Point is, home run production does not decrease in October. That’s a lazy and tired narrative that anyone watching this postseason should see is false. Hitting a home run is literally the best thing a hitter can do and that is true any time of year.

Fortunately, Cashman and the Yankees don’t seem eager to overhaul their record setting home run offense this winter. They’re not going to be pressured into shaking things up after a quick ALDS exit, or after last year’s offensive issues in Houston during the ALCS. “I’m good with our offense. I think we lost because we were ineffective, and that had to do with what was done to us,” said Cashman at his end-of-season press conference.

Are the Yankees too right-handed? Yeah, I think so, especially now that Didi Gregorius is going to miss an undetermined length of time next season. Another lefty bat and another high on-base guy in left field should be offseason priorities. Generally speaking though, a home run heavy offense is a (very) good thing. The Yankees shouldn’t overreact to the ALDS (and last year’s ALCS) and overhaul things. The ball still flies in October.

Don’t pass up elite talent

I didn’t love the idea of trading for Gerrit Cole last year. Not at the reported asking price. The Yankees wanted to build a deal around Clint Frazier and secondary prospects. The Pirates wanted Frazier and Miguel Andujar, and no. Just no. The Yankees stood their ground and Cole went to the Astros for a package that looked underwhelming at the time and looks even more underwhelming now.

What I didn’t appreciate enough at the time is how hard it is to acquire elite talent. And Cole, even with the step backwards he took in 2016 and 2017, is an elite talent. He was 27 years old at the time and he’s a former first overall pick with premium velocity, a swing-and-miss slider, and pretty good control. How often do players like that become available? How often do they actually change teams? Not often at all. These guys are hard to get.

Look at the two World Series teams. When the Dodgers needed a shortstop to replace the injured Corey Seager, they went out and got Manny Machado. When the Red Sox needed another starter a few years ago, they traded for Chris Sale. When they needed a power bat last winter, they signed J.D. Martinez. There were no corners cut. There approach was “we’re a great team and we’re getting the best players available to address our needs.”

This isn’t to say I think the Yankees should’ve caved and given up Frazier and Andujar for Cole. Andujar is my dude. Can’t really blame the Yankees because the Pirates said no and wound up making a bad trade. My point is elite talent is difficult to acquire and whenever it becomes available, the Yankees should get involved in the bidding. They did last offseason with Giancarlo Stanton! This offseason Machado and Bryce Harper are available for nothing but cash, and yeah.

This sorta circles back to the first point. The Yankees stuck to a self-imposed payroll limit this year, and if they do it again next year and miss out on a prime-aged superstar like Machado or Harper, it’s going to look terrible. Squint your eyes and you can find baseball reasons to pass on Machado (two knee surgeries) and Harper (various injuries), and if the Yankees put on the full course press and they sign elsewhere anyway, so be it. But they have to try. Role players are important, but you win with stars.

Teams are calling about Gary Sanchez and the Yankees would be crazy to trade him

Source: https://bloghyped.com/three-things-the-two-2018-world-series-teams-should-reaffirm-for-the-yankees/

[junker-town]

The 3 biggest NFL storylines worth following this offseason

Photo by Jonathan Bachman/Getty Images

A lot could change in the NFL in just a few short months.

The NFL offseason has started in earnest, with the Super Bowl now almost a full two weekends behind us. As we look toward the 2020 season and a new league year in March, I’ve identified three off-the-field storylines that could have an impact even before we get to the draft.

Let’s jump in.

1. The new CBA

The collective bargaining agreement between the NFL owners and players expires at the start of the 2021 season. Sensing that a prolonged lockout isn’t ideal, the NFL and the NFLPA appear to be negotiating in earnest as they approach the one-year countdown to the expiring deal.

According to reports, an offer of 17 games and an increase of 1.5 percent of player earnings — moving from 47 to 48.5 percent of the pie — has been offered by the NFL. Separate of the 17-game issue, it seems they are close on continuing most parts of the CBA. If both sides can agree on a deal before the new league year, it would lead to a massive new cap number for the players.

This would reset the market for every player, including a quarterback like Dak Prescott, who still hasn’t signed a deal with the Cowboys. It would change how the Chiefs handle a new contract with Patrick Mahomes. If a new CBA is not completed before the league year, Mahomes could wait for another season, hoping to make even more money when the new CBA starts in 2021. This would alter how the Chiefs approach their offseason. The Patriots have a roster full of unrestricted free agents, including Tom Brady. A new CBA would give them freedom to sign more of these guys to go at another Super Bowl with this core.

These are just three example of the importance of a new CBA before the league year. I think it’s unlikely, because the players need to vote on new leadership in March and it’s difficult to get us to agree on anything, let alone a brand-new CBA. But, there’s hope it can be done. If it does, it will change the course for every team and player in the NFL.

2. Quarterback movement

I don’t recall another season with so many possible quarterbacks on the move.

Brady: The first time in his career he’s an unrestricted free agent.

Philip Rivers: The Chargers are moving on. I can’t see a team signing an immobile quarterback for multiple seasons.

Drew Brees: Possible retirement.

Ryan Tannehill: Coming off the best stretch of his career, leading the Titans to the AFC Championship Game.

Teddy Bridgewater: 5-0 this season when Brees was out.

Prescott: Still unsigned by the Cowboys. While I think he returns, most likely via the franchise tag, it’s still surprising he’s not locked down yet.

Matthew Stafford: Rumors of his trade keep popping up, though the Lions general manager has denied them.

Cam Newton: I strongly feel the Panthers will move on.

Andy Dalton: He’s gone when the Bengals draft Joe Burrow.

Add into the mix the three top quarterbacks in the draft — Burrow, Tua Tagovailoa, and Justin Herbert — and the 2020 season could have the most turnover we’ve seen at the quarterback position in a long time.

3. Officiating changes

Something has to change, and the NFL knows it. We can’t have the play on the field overshadowed by officiating complaints.

Like most things on social media, the reaction is often harsher than reality, but the pass interference replay review system really was an utter disaster. This needs to be eliminated now, and I think it will.

Officials need to stop having points of emphasis, which leads to officials looking for infractions instead of just calling what they see.

I think a sky judge would be a valuable add, even though it appears the NFL has some mechanism in place for that, as we saw in the Bills-Texans playoff game when a kick returner dropped the ball in the end zone for a touchback before taking a knee. An official sprinted off the sidelines to meet the head official for a discussion. A more formal role for the sky judge should be in place.

As I discussed in my XFL piece, more transparency is needed as well. I hope the NFL does this.

[flauntpage]

Some Thoughts On The Jordan Matthews Trade

I’m gonna start this post by stating clearly that I love that the Eagles obtained Ronald Darby, a third-year cornerback who had a fantastic rookie season but came back down to Earth, along with most of the rest of the Bills’ D, last season. If you could’ve hopped into your Madden create-a-player machine and came up with someone to fill a need for the Eagles, it would’ve been a starting caliber cornerback with speed and upside and two years remaining on his rookie deal.

What they gave up for him, Jordan Matthews and a 2018 third round pick, isn’t a massive haul.

The trade, itself, is reasonable, and potentially a good one for both teams. The Bills are hitting the reset button a bit, and they got themselves a good wide receiver to replace Sammy Watkins, whom they traded yesterday, and a pretty good draft pick. The Eagles filled a need and traded a player at a position where they have some ostensible depth.

But there are a few specific circumstances that make evaluating this trade a bit less black and white.

The groupthink on Eagles Twitter this offseason seems particularly strong. Sixers Sam Hinkie strong (I like Sam Hinkie!). The mob mentality, which squashes any dissenting voice, has stood out as Howie Roseman’s moves have been almost universally lauded by the Eagles faithful. Indeed, on paper, he’s done a pretty good job. He improved a receiving corps that badly needed improving, bolstered the defensive line substantially, had a good draft strategy, obtained a successful running back, and traded for a starting corner. But some are turning a blind eye to Howie’s history as a GM and talent evaluator and failing to recognize that his good-on-paper moves have rarely, if ever, worked out in the past. And so for that reason alone I think it’s fair to question every move he makes, up to and including the decision to go balls-out to trade up for Carson Wentz (which I was, and am, in favor of!).

I also loved his moves this offseason to obtain Alshon Jeffery (super talented, if healthy) and Torrey Smith (some upside), and his draft strategy of going for the sure-thing early (Derek Barnett), the risky-upside guy in the second round (Sidney Jones), and then stockpiling offensive talent later (Donnell Pumphrey, Mack Hollins). I am, and remain, less excited about the LeGarrette Blount signing, mostly because he’s struggled to have success anywhere but New England, comes with a non-insignificant list of character concerns, and is exactly the sort of player who could prove to be a huge letdown to a fan base placing undo expectations on him. Like Jeffery, there’s a reason why the market for Blount was less than what many might have expected from a player who put up his numbers last year.

And now there’s this trade.

I said it two weeks ago, I said it last week, and I’ll say it today: the notion of trading Jordan Matthews because you were impressed by the early training camp performances of Nelson Agholor, a hugely unproven and nearly cut-bale entity, and Mack Hollins, a fourth round rookie, seemed foolish. Though Matthews is in the last year of his contract and many figured that he wouldn’t have re-signed here (an admittedly likely scenario), there was a non-zero chance of it happening, especially if Matthews proved himself to be a top-5 slot receiver in the league, something I think was (or is) more than possible once he was no longer the top receiving option for a bad or rookie quarterback. With Jeffery taking up defenses’ attention, Matthews, who is better than he gets credit for, could’ve excelled and been a big part of a feared passing attack. They would’ve turned a huge negative into a positive, partly due to the addition of Jeffery and Smith, but also because Matthews becomes that much better as the second option. A top-5 slot position would’ve paid him next year somewhere around $10 million per year– a hefty sum, but one that teams like the Patriots, Seahawks and Packers have no trouble paying their slot receivers. Never mind the fact that Matthews was a beloved locker room presence, hard worker, and close friends with and a favorite target of Carson Wentz, to whom the Eagles brass have hitched their wagons.

Here’s Wentz today talking about Matthews being traded:

  “I spoke with Howie shortly before it was news. He told me is was already done,” Wentz said. “He obviously knew how I felt with Jordan being one of my best friends. On the personal side its tough. He knew that, he was prepared for that and I told him that.”

Doesn’t sound happy. And though I think it would’ve been unconventional to consult a second-year QB on a personnel decision, everything about the way the Eagles have treated Wentz has been unconventional since the moment they went to dinner with him in North Dakota. Trading his friend and favorite target, coming into a year where the top offseason priority was giving him weapons, seems like an oddly tone-deaf and hostile move, especially for a team that preaches “emotional intelligence.” This feels like a sort of I’m-smarter-than-you trade Chip Kelly would’ve made. If you disagree with that line, I think you’re looking at this through Green and Silver colored glasses.

Could this turn out to be a great trade? Absolutely. If Darby returns to his rookie form and becomes a legitimate #1 CB in the league – a designation that is being thrown around a bit too loosely on Twitter today – and Matthews continues being… whatever it is Matthews is… then this is a win for the Eagles. But what if Darby turns out to be at best a middling cornerback – like almost every other secondary player Howie Roseman has ever obtained – Matthews flourishes once he finds himself in a situation where he’s not the top (or only) option, Alshon Jeffery struggles with nagging injuries, Nelson Agholor continues to be exactly the player we think he is, and Mack Hollins struggles with consistency during his first few seasons? The whole reason that the Eagles needed depth at wide receiver is because they have so many unknowns. Both Jeffery and Smith are far from sure-things, though they do carry high upside. Agholor will need to prove, over the course of a season, that he’s not a talented head case who can’t translate his abilities into games. Hollins is already being written in as a starting receiver because of literally one preseason stiff-arm. And then there was Matthews, who had proved himself to be a capable, above average wide receiver when playing out of his role with bad and rookie quarterbacks. Remember 2015 when Sam Bradford nearly got him decapitated once per game? Matthews has had success as the focal point of bad offenses. I actually think he will be quite good with some consistency and complementary receivers, which is why the notion of trading him felt foolish from the first whisper of Agholor looks good at camp.

Again, this is a logical trade, and perhaps a good one. But the notion that it can’t be questioned is downright ridiculous. God forbid one judge a trade on the merits of anything but analytics or the cap. Somehow calling attention to the human element has become taboo. Keep in mind, this is an organization that lambasted Chip Kelly for lacking the emotional intelligence to do just that. The trade looks good on paper. The collected works of Howie Roseman moves could win a Pulitzer. But yet the movie versions always seems to suck. So excuse me for not doing backflips over yet another offseason Super Bowl. It turns out none of those rings last very long.

Some Thoughts On The Jordan Matthews Trade published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[junker-town]

The Mookie Betts trade confirms MLB has had a shadow salary cap all along

Why MLB teams are focusing on the last word of “competitive balance tax” instead of the first.

A quarter-century ago a World Series was canceled after a prolonged strike. The most divisive issue was the owners’ insistence on a salary cap and the players’ steadfast rejection of it. Now, baseball has a salary cap, though not in name. The Mookie Betts trade is the latest evidence.

Bob Boone was retired for a few years by the time the 1994 baseball strike happened, but the longtime catcher was around for more than his share of labor wars, including strikes in 1981 and 1985, and a lockout in 1990. During the ‘94 strike, Boone recalled former players union head Marvin Miller, who will be inducted posthumously to the Hall of Fame this year, saying that players wouldn’t even consider a salary cap.

“Miller has deemed that the [salary] cap equals sin,” Boone told The Sporting News. “Therefore we don’t talk about sin.”

“The players will never agree to this cap,” then-Yankees reliever Steve Howe told The Sporting News. “It’s not going to happen in 1994, or 1995, or 1996. If I have to pound nails for a living, I’ll do it. I’ve done it before.”

The strike wiped out the final third of the regular season in 1994 and forced the first cancelation of the World Series in 90 years. When the two sides finally agreed to a deal in 1995 — lopping off the first three weeks of that season, too — the salary cap was not part of the contract. But in the ensuing collective bargaining agreement, baseball implemented its first luxury tax.

In its current form, which has essentially been in place since 2002, the luxury tax kicks in when teams exceed a certain payroll threshold. Which brings us back to the Betts trade.

Boston massacred

The Boston Red Sox agreed to trade its best player in Betts, the 2018 American League MVP, along with David Price and a boatload of cash to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a reported three-team deal. All Boston got back was outfielder Alex Verdugo from the Dodgers and reliever Brusdar Graterol from the Minnesota Twins.

This was a salary dump, pure and simple.

It was plain for everyone to see. The Red Sox front office even openly stated its goal to avoid paying competitive balance tax. “This (coming) year we need to be under the CBT,” Red Sox owner Henry told reporters in September. “That was something we’ve known for more than a year now.”

Henry then dismissed his own comments in January, telling Dan Shaughnessy of the Boston Globe:

“But this focus on CBT resides with the media far more than it does within the Sox. I think every team probably wants to reset at least once every three years — that’s sort of been the history — but just this week ... I reminded baseball ops that we are focused on competitiveness over the next 5 years over and above resetting to which they said, ‘That’s exactly how we’ve been approaching it.’”

The rumors don’t seem so media driven now.

Once J.D. Martinez didn’t opt out of his contract after the season, it seemed inevitable that Boston would make a big move to achieve its stated goal. Their CBT payroll was estimated at roughly $229 million before this trade, per Cot’s Contracts, well above the collectively bargained threshold of $208 million for 2020.

Boston had the top payroll in the sport in both 2018 and 2019, and paid competitive balance taxes of $12 million and $13.4 million, respectively. They won a World Series in the first of those years, which is supposed to be the point of this whole endeavor, but missed the playoffs last year. Facing a potential tax bill of more than $10 million (Boston’s rate as a repeat tax payer is 50 percent of any overage), the Red Sox opted for the thriftier approach in 2020.

They aren’t alone.

Mookie’s new team

The Dodgers, who won 106 games last year and were the clear National League favorites before this trade, didn’t need to add Betts and Price. But they pounced on the opportunity to add an elite player in their bid to win a World Series for the first time in 32 years.

None of the Dodgers’ top prospects were traded to get Betts, though they did trade two major league pieces in Verdugo and Maeda. They didn’t even have to absorb all of Price’s considerable salary ($96 million over the next three years). Again, they are getting Mookie freaking Betts. You would do that trade eight days a week if you could.

But along with acquiring Betts and Price, the Dodgers also reportedly traded Joc Pederson to the Angels for young infielder Luis Rengifo. Other players are reportedly involved in that trade, but on first glance this deal appears to be financially motivated from the Dodgers’ side.

Yes, with Betts and reigning NL MVP Cody Bellinger taking two outfield spots, Pederson would have had to fight for playing time in left field with A.J. Pollock, but in dealing Pederson and his salary — between $7.75 million and $9.5 million, depending on the results of his arbitration case this month — the Dodgers will likely find themselves slightly under this year’s $208 million tax threshold, something LA has avoided the last two seasons.

Even the Yankees, among the game’s financial super powers along with the Red Sox and Dodgers, avoided the tax in 2018, after paying it for 15 straight years.

Baseball doesn’t have an actual salary cap. But with teams actively avoiding paying the competitive balance tax whenever possible, the sport basically does have a salary cap.

The Red Sox choice

The common refrain in defense of this trade from a Red Sox standpoint is that Betts was intent on reaching free agency. And why wouldn’t he be? Since his debut in 2014, he has the second-highest WAR in baseball, behind only Mike Trout’s astronomical figure. Betts does everything well on a baseball field, and he’d be entering his age-28 season in free agency after 2020, a perfect storm of performance and youth that could potentially set a new contract standard.

Boston, according to this defense, simply had to trade Betts in order to get something for him. Can’t let him walk away for nothing, after all. But the argument here ignores just what the Red Sox gave up. For one, if Betts walked away as a free agent, the Red Sox would have received a first-round draft pick as compensation. The other, more compelling factor is a very good Red Sox team’s best chance to compete in 2020 is to have one of the very best players in the game on their roster. That’s not nothing.

I can hear Herm Edwards in my head, imploring, “You play to win the game.”

The Red Sox got a lot worse in 2020, but the owners saved some money by reducing payroll. Ticket prices, however, went up.

The Red Sox sold Babe Ruth for cash to the Yankees 100 years ago, and it’s not hyperbole to put Betts in the same category. Ruth was one of the very best players in baseball in 1919, and to that point had accumulated 40 WAR in six seasons. Betts is one of the very best players in baseball, and through 2019 has 42 WAR in six seasons. Betts doesn’t have to be Babe Ruth for this trade to be a disaster for the Red Sox.

But if you’re a baseball owner, at the helm of one of the richest teams in the sport, if you can’t keep your best homegrown player in decades, one of the very best in the sport, what the hell is the point?