#meanwhile i could probably be decently happy in a different career as long as it was outdoorsy but would forever grieve all the time wasted

[pantestudines]

kinda fucked up that the thing which makes me feel the most like a real person with goals and aspirations and a successful life (academics) is also the thing that triggers my depression and stress most. like cmon man

[banqdanfnfic]

which, as they kiss, consume | jjk

you just wanted to get a tattoo from your boyfriend

pairing: tattoo artist!jk x reader

genre: established relationships au, tattoo artist au, smut

word count: 4k

warnings: unprotected sex, biting, making out, grinding, licking, nipple play, jk has a lip ring, oral (f receiving), fingering, shy jk and oc, sexual tension, slight choking, slight aftercare

♫ : Streets by Doja Cat, Candy by Doja Cat

♡ Aesthetics: Playlist | Moodboard

He visibly chokes on his glass of beer as he almost snaps his neck to meet your gaze. He could say that you were awfully drunk and hence the sudden confession out of the blue, but behind your heavy lidded eyes, Jungkook could sense that you were serious.

“You what?”, he gulps abruptly, moving closer to your face, doe eyes pleading to repeat yourself.

“Yes Kook. I want that tattoo on my breasts. I’ve decided”.

It’s not that Jungkook didn’t have experience in his career with inking on different parts of a human body. He just had never given a tattoo to someone who is romantically associated with him and the thought of seeing you half naked made him chuck down the rest of his drink in one go.

The most physical he had ever gotten with you was a kiss shared occasionally since it’s only been over two weeks you had started dating. Okay maybe you made out once in his car but that’s it. It never got to the point of shedding clothes or anything intense.

“Are you sure?”

You giggle at the sudden hoarseness in his voice and nod positive. Ironic how his aura never matched his personality. His inked skin, athletic body proportions covered in black monochrome bad boy outfits gave out default energy that he is a local heartthrob with multiple chicks wrapped around his finger each night and a heavy demeanor to carry in his smirk.

You were one of those believers until Jungkook asked you out in the most hopeless romantic way possible after constantly visiting the café you work in, a few shops besides his parlor. He was a gentleman with respectful boundaries, warm hands to hold yours and sweet sensual kisses though you are pretty sure he probably has a good game.

For any outsider it looked like those cliché bad boy and shy girl love stories, but for real both of you were a good percentage of introverts.

Jungkook runs his tongue around his lip ring while he is stressfully ruffling his dark locks into a mess. He is trying to explain his reasons to postpone your decision considering how shy he got at this point. But then that’s exactly why you were requesting him with soft eyes, it would be so uncomfortable to be shirtless in front of anybody else. Or maybe it’s your way of saying the relationship is open for higher levels of physical affection.

After debating around in vain, he finally hums and clears one of his slots for his beloved client.

Friday approaches way quicker than you assumed and now your heart is beating in your throat. Right after you are done cleaning the tables, you have to make it to Jungkook’s parlor for your appointment.

Running on three hours of sleep, black under eyes even after a decent amount of makeup, you groan as you check yourself out in the mirror. You opted for a simple shirt and skirt (also known as the outfit you bought for occasions with Jungkook), light beach waves resting on your shoulders. Hoping that a few cups of coffee will save you, you stride across the street to stop before the infamous parlor he worked in. Hopefully the full body shave and chocolate body butter has kept its excellence on your skin below the clothing.

The door chimes as it opens with a dragged creak on the musky wooden flooring. It felt like an otherworld where air smelled like men’s perfume and faint tint of cigarettes. In other words, intoxicating.

You ask the first person you meet at the reception, one of Jungkook’s companions at the shop and he assists you to his cabin located at a comfortably remote location.

His space is hidden with a simple black curtain. You are met with Jungkook’s back facing you, working determinately on a client’s arm and cares to spare a glance only when the guy with you is informing him about your presence.

“This will be over in a few”, he grins to your face and goes back to focusing his coil on the skin of a woman in her late twenties laying down his chair. The vibration from his inking machine fills in the silence and you excuse yourself to sit on a small black couch beside them.

This was the first time watching him at work and now you can understand why people rumored so much about his attitude because damn it is intimidating.

Brows knit together and inked muscles flex as he drags the needles around for finishing touches. Meanwhile you can pretty much smell the drool from the woman who is shamelessly checking out your boyfriend. Though you are pretty sure Jungkook gets such glances more than he can count every day, you can’t help but feel jealous. Partly because of the childish possessiveness and partly because you want to be the reason behind his dark eyes and intricate concentration, in profession or not.

To stop from mentally throwing daggers on the client’s way, you grab a random fashion magazine from the side table and flip through pages, though other four senses are inclined on your man. With a close attention to his low sigh you conclude that he is done.

The customer with now a fresh tattoo on her arm is discussing random useless topics to get him to talk, a very vain job realizing how Jungkook doesn’t bat a friendly lash at anybody, especially to those who hit on him. To be honest a large part of the ink business was linked with the obsession to attractive people who worked here, even if it meant trading an area of your skin. You grip the edges of the magazine a bit hard, not able to contain the sanity particularly at the high pitch voice she mumbles in before finally leaving his cabin.

A little excited and a lot nervous, you stand up as Jungkook bids goodbye to the third person.

He is quick to notice your discomfort, though not sure if it was the woman or the thought of finally getting the tattoo, he knew you were nervous and surviving in several cups of espresso by the dark circles slowly showing through the faded layers of your concealer. But nothing pulls down the opinion he has about you, beautiful and simple, no dramatics attached.

“Hey are you okay?”

You nod as soon as you sit down on the black tattoo chair, shifting a little to find a comfortable position. He is taking out a box full of equipment and fine needles, already making you break a sweat at the side of your forehead.

But more than that, it’s the way he is sharp and professional that catches your attention more.

You have never seen Jungkook this serious before. The choice of his vetiver perfume digging through your nostrils was driving you insane. If he doesn’t smile soon, you are going to melt into a puddle at his gaze.

“Are you nervous?”, he smirks this time, a newfound reason for your worsening gut health.

It’s mostly going in cycles at this point. Every bit of his skilled motion causes a vigorous hormonal reaction which initiates his next set of effortless teasing.

“I’m a little nervous”, you say, fiddling with your freshly painted nude nails.

“Me too”

It’s something you least expect to come out of his mouth observing how confident he looks right now. He basically has you cornered with his gaze. But whenever he had been truthful about his emotions it felt like a hug.

“I can take off my shirt too, so that we are even. Is that okay?”

He said it so softly like he is handling a child and the duality of the situation had your mind fogged and limbs frozen for a few minutes.

“Yeah it’s okay” It’s far beyond than okay. It’s great actually.

Jeon Jungkook is ripped, a Greek God sculptured masterpiece covered in self designed artwork you are more than happy to wake up to every morning. He hears you gulp at the feast before your eyes while he discards his black t-shirt to a nearby chair.

Now you don’t know if this whole thing is supposed to warm your heart or make you play several erotic fantasies like a movie before your eyes.

Both of you share a small smile while his long fingers are tugging at the hem of your shirt and pulling it up over your head.

He almost wishes you don’t opt to wear a bra but he is met with lacy black, a-bit-over your-usual-budget fabric hugging the roundness of your breasts.

It seemed like you were way too competitive about today. Anything less than complete awe from Jungkook for you was straight disappointment, you don't want anything less.

Well it seems like it did from how blown his pupils were at this point. He peels his gaze off your chest with a sharp gulp to look at your eyes suddenly devoid of any fear and staring back at him with all ease. He is filled with an exapnse of warmth and he isn't sure why does spending just a little amount of time with you had such a grip on him. He can’t wait to propose the idea of getting a couple tattoo together soon and as far as you know how Jungkook is, he is very serious with his body art so apparently he does trust you a lot already.

“Where exactly are you trying to get it?”, his voice is a lot deeper suddenly as he waits for your fingers to guide to his canvas.

You softly trace the spot at the upper circumference of your right boob, “Here”.

You suck a breath through your nose as his own fingers are mimicking your gesture, lightly pulling down the lace to inspect the fitting of the design at hand.

These violent delights have violent ends

And in their triumph die, like fire and powder

Jungkook traces each word on your burning skin, now leaning dangerously close which was questioning your control to put your palms flat on his pecs. He doesn’t notice that though, his mind is busy creating his own fantasies about the women under him.

After two minutes and twenty four second long of inspection and mutual thirst, Jungkook is selecting a bunch of needles to set into the rotary machine. Five fine sharp like a painter's brush moves in and out at a set regularity as Jungkook tests it out.

The next of his actions had you flushed into a pool of crimson. He gently lifts up your resting torso with one hand while the other is unclasping the hook of your bra, making you half naked for the sake of the tattoo.

"I'm going to start", he says shyly.

You still have time to save yourself from the growing phobia for the object, but another unlogical part of your brain says it's a piece of cake considering you have a whole distracting full course meal in front of you.

It stings at first. Well, okay it hurts like hell but your face is devoid of any indication, except your right hand is gripping on the rim of the chair for dear life.

Jungkook on the other hand had never felt this much diversion of mind during his work. He knows that you are probably hurting very badly, especially for a first timer. He is biting into his lip ring, trying to get this over with for the well-being of your pain and his hormones.

After he had scribed one word into your dermis, you are no longer able to contain the ache so you give out a small squeak out of your glossed lips and the vibration of the machine at his hands stops as he looks at you.

"You want me to stop? ", he is relaxing his face as he cups yours with one hand. You don't want to answer that question, but the drumroll of the current situation is making your heart flutter and everything about the little burn on your chest is forgotten.

"No. It does hurt but I'll be fine I guess", you whisper. His breath is mixing with yours slowly as he is leaning more towards your face. If it isn't for a kiss then you are likely to be disappointed.

"It'll be over before you know it. I'll make it quick", and then he kisses you, a small act to get off the pressure of sexual tension between your bare upper bodies.

Before you think of any tongue in the act, he is breaking off the contact and returns to his position on your chest. He misses the pout that forms on your mouth but right now both of your heads are in cloud nine.

The pain starts again, only this time you are busy reliving how his lips felt in yours; soft, firm and controlled.

You gasp when you feel one of his hands cupping your right breast to further his design but it's lowkey an act empowered by lust which is straining behind the so called professional eyes.

You just sit there flustered out of your mind and then Jungkook is suddenly squeezing, full palm hiding your breasts like it's a protected treasure, but he isn't showing the slightest facial expression other than determined eyes and his lower lip caught between his teeth.

Fuck you can't take it anymore. Jungkook can feel your nipples harden against his hand and his brain isn't helping much to concentrate on the design. But by the grace of some positive karma left on his side, he makes it through the long text and when he is letting go of your chest and standing tall, your skin is popping out with redness on the places the text lays embedded.

He fishes out a mirror for you to look.

"It looks beautiful thank you Jungkook", you smile.

"Can I give you one more tattoo on your left one?", he asks while you are contemplating whether going through the pain is worth it, not to mention you really want to get back at a private space with Jungkook as soon as possible.

"It won't hurt I promise", and then he is kissing you a lot filthier than before; all tongue and teeth, while his hands are grazing on the skin of your waist, pressing a little firmer than before.

The coldness of his lip ring rivaled around your mouth, and you try sucking on it to which Jungkook responds with a growl and pushes his body adamantly against yours.

Skin to skin, you are lost in euphoria of everything happening and finally, you roam your eager hands around his body, to his pecs and the definition of abs.

As your fingers scraped against his scalp, Jungkook is biting eagerly down your jawline to your collarbone and continues his ministrations at a particular spot which is bringing out melodic moan variation from you.

He is going down your skin, licking on your left boob before he starts planting violet tattoos as he had promised. As if it couldn't get better, he is massaging the right breast, in a way to soothe pain.

He loses it when you stutter his name, but he is just a fucking tease when it comes to making love and doing anything in a public space is the last thing he wants to do. There isn't much room for all that he wants right now.

"Why did you choose this particular tattoo Y/n?", he rasps while he is planting small pecks on his artwork, and you reply when he is finally eye level with you

"I just felt like it's a good one", your breaths are uneven and mostly caught in your neck. He pecks your lips before speaking, "Those are lines from Romeo and Juliet".

He takes your hands to trace over a line of text among the many designs on his chest.

which, as they kiss, consume

"We pretty much have a couple tattoo now Y/n", his breath is matched with your pace and you are not very sure how to respond to this new knowledge.

"That's… hot"

You break into giggles along with him, he just can't stop dragging his lips around your skin, but he isn't able to word his feelings right now either.

"I have some aftercare healing ointment for the tattoo at my place, wanna come over?" Now that may be a little lame of an excuse to get his little friend out of his pants but you are too unfazed to analyse any of that.

His hands find place on your ass under the skirt as soon as the door to his apartment closes, and before you know it, you are in his bedroom, sitting on the soft mattress and tongue lost devouring each other.

While eagerly getting rid of every article of clothing, Jungkook notices that you don't have your bra on beneath the shirt, so it's probably back at the parlour, but none of you have the slightest care for it, might as well make an excuse with it later to fuck you in his cabin.

He is pushing you farther towards the headboard, him on top, grinding sensenslesy while your lips mould with his. Though he has his whole body pressed against you, you can't seem to feel his weight at the slightest, every one of his actions were just balanced and perfect.

As Jungkook goes down on you, his smile is evident against your skin, finally able to find out how every one of those scenarios in his head will come to look like. He lets out a satisfied hum being finally able to suck on your tits, your fingers finding place on his hair, twisting it out of stimulation.

His pelvis is flushed harshly against yours, grinding and rubbing against your pussy for as long as he is rejoicing the feeling of moving his tongue around both the nipples.

He stops rubbing after some point and you whimper at the loss but his fingers are soon to meet your core as a quick apology. All your later moans are muffled on his mouth once again.

Feeling the controlled movements of his fingers on your clit, you dig your nails down on his toned shoulders. It's becoming impossible to reciprocate his lewd movements of tongue on your lips at this point as the excitement between your thighs is growing every passing second.

Your mouth remains slightly parted as he removes his face to watch you squirm underneath, lips swollen, deep red and glossy from all the saliva.

He pecks at the shell of your ear before going down past your navel.

You haven't had much heads in the twenty years of your life, most of the guys being completely against the idea which made you feel insecure to bring up the topic in bed, but Jungkook does it like his life depends on it.

He growls at the sight of you dripping into his sheets and he seems to enjoy the idea of being the influence behind it. But none is going through your head at the moment, not the metal on his lips grazing against your folds, or the fact that Jungkook is grinning each time you cry his name, it feels unreal to feel something like this.

His mouth is wrapping against your entrance and he is balancing your lower body on his palms to help him reach the right depths inside you. While all you can muster up is the strength to grope the bedsheets in your fist and close your eyes at the pleasure.

Jungkook brings his head higher to give some attention to the throbbing clit, catching it between his teeth and triggering the bundle of nerves just the perfect dose to have your hips jolting up to his face.

He can't take it himself when you are now whining and chasing for your release, so he is slightly humping against the bed to get some friction.

He licks a slow stripe up till your abdomen and slowly raises to your face, already fucked out and dishevelled to keep up with his dominant orbs.

He swears he had never felt so much warmth and care for sex with any of his previous partners, in relationship or not, all he could think is how good can he treat the pleading eyes underneath him.

"Is there something you like that you want me to do?", he says, fingers grazing once again to your crotch to not deny you from his contact. Only this time he is exploring the tightness of your pretty cunt with two skillful fingers.

Is there? You are not sure. Or in other words you are too caught up at the sense of him fingering you. It's not like you had enough experience or people who cared enough to ask that question. It astounds you that never in this entire foreplay he asked for any favor for himself.

"I'm not sure…", you whisper and then maybe you have something on your mind " um I guess I would like to be choked" Okay this felt embarrassing.

He smiles before sliding his free hand from your lips to your neck, and applies slight force, careful to not hurt you in the slightest bit.

"Is that fine?"

"Yeah", you muffle through the decreasing course of air.

He pulls up your face by the throat to attach lips once more. He just can't seem to get enough of kissing you senseless. Then, the tip of his long ignored cock is teasing the length of your pussy twice before it's stretching you out to the brim.

Bodies flushed and hot, his pace is deep and slow, making sure to kiss the cervix every time he is inside.

He watches as your eyes close shut and flutters around whenever he is grazing against your sweet spot. Both of your ears lost and eager for the moans looming out of each other, his more like what he sounds at the gym. Nice observation Y/n.

In this span of sexual energy you shared, you can make some obvious conclusions. Sex with him was surreal, both in terms of domination and the care he had. Rocking against him and keeping up with his hips was attainable— Compared to the intense eye contact he tries to hold, or the way he cups the side of your face and rubs the pad of his thumb on your cheeks while he kisses you during sinking back in, or the way his eyes glow at the beauty of your body open for him. It makes you feel special and it's difficult to respond to these gestures when you never felt this way before.

Jungkook could tell that from your face, but he hopes he lasts with you enough to help you know the worth you hold. You couldn't think too much about anything when you are busy squeezing around his length and coming twice in the first ten minutes.

By the third orgasm Jungkook is nearing his own and he pulls out to pump a few times before coming on your stomach.

"Was it okay?", his voice is all over the place, still balancing his body on his arms while you are amazed by his strength.

"It was amazing Jungkook", you smile. You have known a lot about Jungkook over the few dates you spent with him. That he likes literature, classics and philosophy, designs tattoos as a subconscious thing, that his game is A-1, and he likes working out almost three hours a day. Good for you. But it wasn't until now you know him to be gentle, like he is afraid to crush you under a feather touch. You don't know him as someone who is staring deep into your face after a good fuck, speaks nothing, smiles widely, and plants a peck on your forehead before getting off the bed.

He does the honors of cleaning both of your bodies with a towel, it's not like you have any strength left in you anyway. And then pulls out an ointment from the bedside table and plops next to your body.

"There. You need this to protect the tattoo", he takes off the nozzle and applies a required amount against the words on your chest and massages against them.

"Now go to sleep Juliet", he mocks, pulling up the sheets over you both "good night".

You snuggle against his hard chest, kissing his pecs before resting on it, "Good night Romeo".

thank you so much for reading!! please leave a feedback!!

★ taglist: @pjmochii (dm, ask or comment to enter the tl!)

★ credits: @/rainbeary on spotify : songs that'll make you feel everything's in slow motion playlist

★ banner & boards: by me :)

a/n: this is my first time writing smut and i basically died of second hand embarrassment during the process. pardon for my untalented ass, i tried this wip continuously for a week and i seriously don't think it could get anything better though it's probably not much.

© banqdanfnfic 2021, all rights reserved. do not modify, translate, or repost my works. modification, translations, and/or redistribution of my works on any platform is strictly prohibited.

[pointnumbersixteen]

A Head Cannon Biography and Character Analysis and of the Captain, Part 7: the Sad Ending

We’ve finally reached the end. I usually like to give a bit of argument before I give conclusions, but I’m going to alter this slightly, so that people don’t start reading, get invested, and then realize they’re reading something they’re not comfortable reading.

That being said: I think the most likely explanation for the Captain’s death is suicide. It’s still head cannon, but I personally wouldn’t bet on anything else at this point.

If you’re not comfortable reading an in-depth analysis of the whys and hows of this or a rendition of what his head space might have been like leading up to it, for whatever reason, or you simply don’t believe it’s something he’d do, I made another post for you to refer to called ‘Alternate Endings’ that gives different options.

...

Now for the argument:

World War II ends in August of 1945. The Captain most likely never saw any combat. He was unable to find the sort of validation that might have given him accordingly. He’s a forty-six year old captain with a dead-in-the-water career. And unfortunately for him, the British government is deeply in debt. It cannot financially sustain the over three million man army that it built up for the war. It has to downsize back to pre-war sizes (less than a million), eventually even smaller, as with the advent of nuclear bombs, the air force and navy have become more important than the army. Two out of every three people in the army, at least, have to leave it. This was a process that took a few years, but at the end of the war, everyone knew it was coming. A lot of people only joined for the war and are demobilized once it’s over, but not everyone wants to be. Decisions have to be made on who is staying and who is going.

And the Captain is just the sort of person who’d end up on the ‘go’ list. His men don’t respect him. He’s far too old for his rank. He hasn’t received a promotion in twenty years. There’s probably at least some suspicion about his sexuality. Meanwhile, there are plenty of much younger men, artillery captains who joined for the war, who upon taking a look at the harsh post-war economy, decide that they want to stay in. They’re good at their jobs. They’re popular with their subordinates. They likely have young families, wives and children, to support. They have the sorts of personalities that can impress the higher echelons. They have the potential to make major. These are the kind of men making it onto the ‘stay’ list. When you have to get rid of every two out of three people, that’s the way these things go. And to make things easier when the time comes, you put the people you want to keep in the better commands, and you suggest to the people that you don’t want to keep that maybe they should look into other options, to save yourself from having to get rid of them later on.

At Button House, preparations are underway to stand down the unit and return the estate to its owners. The individuals who joined for the war that want to go home once it’s over are preparing to be demobilized. The rest are getting ready to be reassigned. At some point the Captain goes to talk to higher echelons about his own reassignment and gets the absolutely crushing bombshell: “Actually, we ‘strongly encourage’ you to take early retirement.”

(I experienced research failure trying to find out what British military pensions looked like at the end of WWII, so I’m stuck going with the modern version and hoping it’s the same, or at least fairly similar.) Essentially, if you stay in until you’re sixty, you collect full pension, but early retirement is available for anyone over the age of forty with more than twenty years in, receiving about a third of what the pension would normally be. So, they’re not suggesting putting him out with nothing, but it’s not a lot, either.

He would argue, of course. Ineffectively. He doesn’t have the sort of interpersonal skills necessary to convince any of these people. His main arguing technique seems to be being forceful and persistent about what he wants, but that doesn’t work on people who outrank you.

Again, I’m not sure whether they could have quite officially forced him out or not, at that juncture. But it would be easy enough to unofficially force him out: just suggest that there have been suspicions about him for a while and maybe, if he doesn’t want to cooperate, it’s reached the point where there should be an inquiry about it. And if anything’s found, he won’t get early retirement, he’ll be kicked out and probably sent to jail in disgrace. And even if nothing’s found out, or can be proven, his reputation will be ruined just by the question of his sexuality being officially asked and even then the only reassignment he’ll get is something pointless and tedious, sorting out-of-date records or the like, until the inevitable juncture is reached, within the next year, where he CAN be officially forced out due to government mandated personnel cuts (the first round of which were in ‘46). And eventually he’d have the sense to stop arguing and acquiesce. Because really there is no choice for him. It’s ruin or worse ruin.

But: the army is the only thing he has.  

He’s been in the army at least half his life. He has repressed the person he might have been and lived his military persona that entire time- longer, even, if you head cannon as I do that there was military boarding school involved, in which case he’s been living that persona since he was eleven years old. He’s institutionalized. He can’t think of himself outside of the military. It’s his entire identity. He can barely remember who he was before daddy decided to ‘man away the gay.’

He certainly can’t picture letting his stuffed-down repressed gay self out. That’s still against the law. That will still be against the law for another twenty-two years (male homosexuality was decriminalized in England and Wales in 1967). And if Havers is dead, the only person he might have ever considered taking the risk for is also dead. Maybe he even blames himself a little for that death: he didn’t try to stop Havers leaving, when he clearly wanted to. And it’s been eating at him for years.

In the perspective of his time, he’s too young to properly retire, and the pittance of a pension he’s being offered probably would only cover the basics anyway, he wouldn’t be overly comfortable, but he’s too old to start over with another career that he’d be better suited for, or that he’d enjoy, or that would make him happy. I personally think theater would have been his choice if he’d ever been able to make one (one of these days I’ll back that statement up), but there would have to be that voice in the back of his head telling him even if he wasn’t too old for it, he’d be no good at it: he played the role of the Captain for twenty years and still didn’t do it well enough to convince anyone.

He can’t picture any future for himself at all.

And he has to consider himself a failure. Never made major. Never saw combat. And now the army wants him gone.

He sees himself failing at his entire life’s work. The thing that composes the entirety of his identity is being taken away from him. He can’t live any sort of authentic life; that just isn’t an option in 1945. He has nothing to look forward to and nothing to live for. Which leaves one option.

I’ve been there. Luckily, it was the one point in my life where I’ve actually had access to decent mental health care (CBT is lovely, guys, or at least it did positive things for me), but solid mental health treatment didn’t really exist back then, either. Luckily, I didn’t go through with it. But I think the Captain did.  

He probably fought with the idea for a long time. Until his retirement date was nearly on him. Suicide had a significant stigma back then. It was the ‘coward’s way out,’ as it used to be looked at, and whilst he was a lot of things, a coward wasn’t one of them. But as the appointed day got closer and he couldn’t picture a future past it, he realized he just couldn’t face it.

And then the appointed day arrives, for him to leave. One way or another.

He’s a squeamish man (again, not a coward, courage is a matter of backbone, squeamishness is a matter of stomach). He can barely look at the plague victims. He was shocked by Pat’s bloodless arrow through the neck. He’d want to avoid a gory death. He probably wouldn’t shoot himself. Honestly, the army probably never gave him a gun to shoot himself with. But the forties was a time in which the deadly potential of pharmaceuticals was well known, but they still weren’t particularly well controlled yet. Given the war, he wouldn’t have been nearly the only person seeking sedatives, and the local doctor or chemist probably wouldn’t think twice about giving him a supply. Had anyone slept well since the Blitz, after all?

His uniform is already packed away in his foot locker, and he’s wearing the civilian clothes he’s supposed to leave Button House in, but he decides that isn’t right. He decides he wants to die with the uniform on. It was his whole life, after all. Even 75 years after his death, when they do the ‘what would you wear if you could’ discussions, he can’t even imagine himself in anything but his uniform.

Of course, he’s distraught. If he decided to take the common combination of alcohol and sedatives, perhaps he’s already started drinking. Either way, his mental state is such that when he puts the bits and pieces of his uniform back in place whilst looking at himself in the mirror, he fails to entirely account for the fact that the mirror reverses the image and his ribbons are backwards. When he’s done getting dressed, he salutes himself in the mirror, as you see in the opening, and then goes through with it, taking the entire supply of sedatives at once, and dying shortly thereafter. (Word of god says that both the reversed ribbons and the mirror are important, after all.)  There are no marks on his ghostly-self because the method of death didn’t leave any.

No doubt he was surprised to find himself a ghost, but perhaps not disappointed. Most people who consider suicide don’t actually want to die, they just can’t bear to go on living the life they’re leading. And as a ghost, he could continue living out his respectable military persona for the rest of eternity. The other ghosts don’t necessarily know how he died. I wouldn’t put it past the army to say, ‘let’s write this one off as a heart attack,’ to avoid the paperwork and embarrassment/scandal of having one of their officers kill themselves on the day they were supposed to retire  Maybe none of the other ghosts know better (I’ll go into this more in an upcoming post). Or maybe they at least have the tact not to say. I think he would prefer them not knowing, because of the stigma, though.

But that’s why he won’t let go of the trappings of the military even 75 years after his death; the entire reason he died is because he couldn’t let go of it. And that’s why he’s the Captain, instead of going by his name, whatever it is. The person with the name is someone he’s ashamed of, a failure and a degenerate (in the views of his time), while the Captain is the ideal he had tried to live up to. The Captain is the person he’d rather die than not be.  

Of course, this is (as Pat tries to point out to him every now and then) mentally unhealthy. But every bit of repression he put himself through or that was forced upon him in his life, including staying in the military as long as he did when he wasn’t suited for it was mentally unhealthy, too, and there was no recourse available to him for it in his time.

 To add a few points to this argument that are outside of the direct narrative: in s1e1, during his second (I think) argument with Fannie over her late-night screaming, he seems willing to hear her out until she starts hinting about her ‘actual’ death, at which point he yells over her that he doesn’t want to hear it, he just wants the screaming to stop. He seems a bit desperate about it, actually. I think he was operating under the assumption that she also killed herself, and that it comforted him a bit, that the oh-so-proper Lady Fannie Button also committed suicide (since again, there is a stigma) and he didn’t want to be told otherwise. When she brings up the topic again, when they’re discussing Julian pushing Allison out the window, he tries to stop her again (despite the fact that since they’re not in the middle of an argument, he has no reason to), but ineffectively.

Also, from the standpoint of the narrative, the writers have to explore how everyone died eventually. There are only so many variations of ‘accident’ and ‘homicide’ you can do and keep things engaging. I can’t see the writers not going with at least one suicide, if only to have a different situation to explore. Robin and Kitty are the only other deaths we have no clues about, but I don’t see either of them as candidates for suicide. And it would make sense to portray the repression and oppression the Captain faced in his life as having consequences. It did often enough in real life. The suicide rate in the LGBT community has always been unfortunately high.

 I’m going to stop here, with his death, since all seven parts together are pushing 12,000 words, not counting the interludes, or the forthcoming post-script. I’ve got plenty more to write, about events after his death, his relations with the other ghosts, and even (more) things that were happening culturally while he was alive that might have interested him that I couldn’t work into this, but I had to end this piece somewhere, and since it’s a head cannon biography, I thought the appropriate place to end it would be his death.  

 If you’re experiencing serious depression or thoughts of suicide, please seek help. Things do get better; you just have to make it that far.

 And if you actually read all seven parts, please know that I adore you. I know it’s been really, really long. When I posted the first part, it took more than a day to get its first note and I started worrying no one would look at the wall of text presented and ever want read it. So, whether you agree with me or not, thank you for making it this far.

[the-canary]

Wednesdays - L.T (3/10)

Summary: Only you had the balls to deal with his outrageous order on that day. You just didn’t know how bad it would get. (Barista!Reader/Lance Tucker).

A/N: things as coming together! i hope you are enjoying things for far. 

Feedback is always appreciated

Thursdays are easily your favorite day of the week. It’s a day that you spend the whole day at your second job and a yelling group of excited young girls are easier to handle than angry, smug customers. Ballet had always been a big part of your life and you probably would have made a career out of it, but there were too many obstacles at hand as you grew and for a long time, something you loved was something that you despised because of a certain set of ideals and images that came with the “perfect ballerina.” It was only after your old teacher, Mrs. Carlton, contacted you that the old dance studio was closing that you came to somewhat decent terms with everything that had happened -- eventually, you helped in keeping it open and became a part time staff member. 

“Miss, Miss,” some of the girls run to you in utter happiness to see you. Your class of ten girls circle around you, asking you a series of questions and telling you about their week as you try to keep up with all of them -- that’s when you see it, or them to be exact.

A dark-haired women in jeans and brown jacket holding the hand of a little girl wearing her own hair in pigtails with fluffy hair ties. She is wearing a black leotard like the other students, but with the puffiest and brightest pink tutu you have seen in awhile. You motion for the girls to start their warm-ups before going to meet your newest student.

“Hi,” you nod towards the woman returns it, before you leaning in a little to match the young girl’s height, “And why are you here today?”

“Dancing!” the girl declares as she lets go of her mother’s --you assume-- hand, her shy attitude quickly fades into excitement, “My uncle says I’ll be the best.”

“Well then, we better get started!”

“Yeah!” 

The little girl, whose name you come to learn is Claire, is an easily excited student, though she still has a long way to go.  

“We will move forward with your proposal. These are all members of the team that you will have at your disposal,  though there will be off site assistants that you don’t need to be bothered by. “

Lance Tucker is over the moon after his meeting with the public relations team of his old agency and while he knows they are still cautious and through the contract he signed he knows they will be keeping him in a tight leash when it comes to certain things -- Katherine and his others students will have an easy connection to professional photo shoots and other social media that they might need should they make it big. With that and him by their side, they would be sure to have a better start than he did.

He heads back to his gym in higher spirits than he had left his apartment this morning and truly believes that he should get a little treat after all, thus he heads to his local Starbucks with a grin on his face. Blue eyes glance up to see a familiar colorful haired Micah and someone else, but her presence doesn’t seem to bother him as much as it had done the previous three weeks. You, and the tiny annoyance he felt because of Serena, which was waning each day, were insignificant today.

“What can I do for you today?” Micah smiles, as Lance remembers the other drink on his list to try out.

“Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte with Stevia,” he states, as she rings it up with a smile.

Lance heads to his usual place in the back where the wood table meets the glass window, as you watch him from your place behind the coffee machines and proceed to make his drink. The movement today a bit slower than usual, which allowed you to spend a little more time on the drink -- you would show him today, though you couldn’t help but wonder where he got all his orders from since people were usually constant with what they drank. Lance Tucker was a strange man, if you really thought about it.  

“Grande Skinny Vanilla Latte with Stevia for Lance,” you yell out as the man, not really paying attention to you, as he comes over to your side of the counter and takes a sips. You tense up, wondering what he is going to think about it this time, but instead you are left gapping in surprise.

“Good latte, thanks,” it’s all he says before turning around and leaving the building. In the meanwhile, you are momentarily stunned with how exactly handsome the man could look with his bright blue eyes and pearly white teeth when he didn’t look like an utter douchebag. It’s a surprising and very scary thought, as you turn around to look at Micah.

“Did you fucking see that?” you exclaim, as Micah laughs.

It felt like a miracle and you had a skip to your step for the rest of your shift.

It’s another Wednesday down the drain, as your class session finishes for the night and you’re ready to head back your apartment, hopefully to eat some leftovers while trying to make sense of your notes while rewriting them -- it just helped to keep the stuff fresh in your mind. However, instead of immediately leaving the classroom like you always do -- the teacher stops you.

“Have you thought about what I told you about?” Professor Castro asks, as she smiles.

You see, Professor Castro worked with a public relations firm and on occasion had used real job assignments as homework. She made sure students were compensated for their time and some, you had heard, had even went on to work with her after graduation. You had caught her attention since you had started the program a year ago and while you help with some assignments here and there, you weren’t completely sure if this was something that you wanted to get into -- you had entered the business program for a different reason all together.

“I have been thinking about it,” you shrug, “But, I don’t think it might be my thing.”

“Just take this one assignment,” she pushes you a bit more while placing a folder on top of your books, “You have a real talent for campaigns  and reading into what people want.”

Yeah, it’s called customer service, you can’t help but think sarcastically, as you nod and say you’ll look over their profile once more.

However, you don’t do so until Friday, in the morning when you finally have the chance to take a breather between working and studying, as you lay down on your bed and rummage through the folder...and that’s when you see it.

Tucker Gymnastics.

You didn’t really know if this was potentially a blessing or a curse.  

[ravenclawgirrl]

5 years after the tassel turn, where am I?

It's graduation season!

Contrary to the usual scenario during this time of the year, commencement exercises now happen virtually and gone are the days where we line up to do the most awaited march. While it may seem different now, graduations will always be a reason to celebrate. 

It's been over 5 years since I earned my degree in communication. Looking back, it still feels like anew. I could still remember how as a fresh grad, everything feels exciting. I was so ecstatic to meet the world - to visit places, earn my own money and be a yuppie in my chosen industry.

Lucky are those who were already certain of where they intend to be the moment they stepped out of the graduation rites. Myself, not included.

I started my working career as a Customer Solutions Officer under the giant telco, Smart Communications Inc. Here, I became part of the most advanced digital hub of the company where I serve as a front liner catering to the needs of walk-in subscribers. My job here was to retain our customers and deliver great customer experience.  Yep, totally not my line. I was also puzzled how I ended up here. Perhaps, it’s the pressure, “how come everybody else is already hitching on their first job?” My bad.

Frankly, I already knew how it's going to be a temporary job from the very start. But it was certainly good while it did last. I was coerced to face and serve clients of different kinds during my time here. More than that, I was trained to be more patient and compassionate towards strangers. It also taught me to practice compartmentalization to be able to function well. My first job paid really well that it allowed me to travel often and afford luxurious gadgets and alike. As a matter of fact, I could confidently say now that should I have stayed here and never left, I might now be ready to sustain my own family.

Hence, after spending over a year with the very draining mall shifts, holiday work and endless customer service, I've decided to cut my time off and quit.

My next job kicked off around Q4 of 2017. Another high-paying job, no more mall shifts and holiday duties. In this company, I've experienced living the real makati-corporate-slave-life. Long UV queues, horrible traffic etc. But this time around, I did not last longer than three months. My reasons were simple - I don't see myself growing in this kind of environment. And so, I left.

At this point, you must say that I'm privilege enough to just leave with no back-up plans. I was and I won't lie. I still felt too young to be making serious career decisions back then. It was 2018 and I was just a young and clueless 21 year old.

I've started having problems finding my next job. I became sick of attending job interviews and my heart felt really lost on where should I go. Being unsure of where I wanna be, I opened the idea of doing something I've long wanted to do - join theatre.

I remember hearing a mass that one particular Saturday night when my thoughts suddenly wandered far. I've always been a fan of the industry but I know so little about how it works. So with all the courage from my anxious heart, I took a leap of hope. I stumbled upon a musical theatre workshop offered by Repertory Philippines where I found myself enrolling very soon.

I gambled the remaining backpay of my two previous job to this workshop. Luckily, I was in good hands. Little by little, I became more aware of the industry and the possibilities. I met a handful of people who helped me understand this world I’m trying to fit in. Soon enough, another workshop from Atlantis Theatrical transpired and I saw myself enlisting again out of the littlest money left in my pocket.

To sustain myself, I've tried applying for work-from-home jobs. I've accepted writing gigs and some freelance jobs that would make money. Although I don't earn as much as a regular job, at least, it felt productive. However, It is important to acknowledge the contribution of my parents when I've come to follow my heart's desire. Without their assistance, I could not frankly sustain any of these quite decently.

Theatre then, became my home. I was truly at my happiest. It awakened my burning passion to be on stage. At this point, around three years after the tassel turn, I finally found the place where I wanna be. It took me that long, but I'm still glad I did.

Hence, it isn't really as easy as it looks. Joining around this age, getting myself a space in the industry is a challenge. Possible, but a really difficult one. Attending a handful of auditions as a neophyte didn't really become effective too soon. I've realized how I must be more well-equipped if I really discern to stay. I need more lessons and training that would help me in enhancing my skills and increasing my knowledge. After some time, I found another theatre program that would help me in this goal. University of the Philippines Diliman offers a Master of Arts in Theatre Arts.  

After coursing through the module with high hopes, I've mustered the courage to work on the requirements and prayed to get in. My claim was simple - if this is for me, it will be. A month after my submission, I received my acceptance letter.

And so, I became a student once again. I literally went far for my dreams. Being a south girl all my life, QC is definitely a stranger to me. I found myself scouting dorm in Katipunan ready to live independently! At this point, most of my college batch mates are probably either receiving career promotions, purchasing their first huge investments or simply starting their own family. 

Meanwhile, I've only started climbing the ladder of my dreams. But one thing's for sure, I was totally happy. I never felt the need to compare myself to anyone. We all have different timelines and I totally trust mine.

I immerse myself to more plays. I observe more people who made it. I feed my soul with anything but theatre hoping to collect inspiration from these. I make sure to make use of all my available time for the goal. I remember often reminding myself before that my stay at UP should serve me well - that I should maximize all the lesson I could get from every class, interaction or even normal conversation. True enough, my stay was worth the while.

During my first year in UP, everyday became a learning experience as I got to be more involved with the community. I've also realized how I've wanted to take on different tracks and explore promising potentials. Some of the classes gave me a preview of my desire for the academe so I could go as far as teaching skillful scholars with little to no access to mainstream theatre. A totally different story perhaps. Since then, I doubled my hard work to gain more opportunities.

In the pursuit of my dreams, I've become more independent. I learned more life hacks, became more interested in kitchen works, taught myself how to do my own show make-up and further enhanced all the skills I've got to be able to make it work.

Summer of 2019, I landed on a stage management internship with Atlantis Theatrical. My first professional theatre exposure that further ignited my burning love for this craft. I never went home empty-handed but with a pocket full of worthy learnings rather. I got to work with some of my most looked-up PH Theatre icons and each day is a different kind of ride. 

Soon after finishing this internship, I was immediately offered to do a  paid gig as an Assistant Stage Manager and the rest is history. This marked the start of my freelance gigs that revolved around on-site events. I get paid to do on-site coordination, logistic works and all the kinds. Along with this, I still continued attending VTRs, showing up on auditions and joining free workshops when I can. This year also kicked start my experience of performing on kiddie parties in character costumes every weekend through PWJ.  On the side, I sometimes win small acting gigs for short films and student prods. I still earn a little compare to my two previous jobs but with all the experience I have in my hands at this point, I'm definitely happier.

To be in theatre meant facing multiple rejections normally. And having to undergo e so much in a short span, showing up on audition already takes a huge ball of courage. I was truly blessed to get myself a tight but really strong circle of support system that helps me all the time when things start to get rough. The process, the tiring process. 

So it's not surprising that by end of 2019, I felt the need to rethink. After a year of endless auditions, finally, I got my first callback! But it was a very untimely season to get rejected again afterwards. The turn of things paved the way for me to rest a little. 

The pay is not going any better and I'm running out of energy to give. The passion  and hard work that I've been devoting won't solely pay my bills. Perhaps, it wasn't something I cannot simply shrug away.  Because of this, my grad school performance also got affected. This pushed me to pause. I had a quick realignment and reality check. How long will I allow myself to stay in uncertainty?

It is a pretty painful decision. But come Q1 of 2020, I found myself taking a leave on my grad school and applying for a stable corporate job again. After a long while, I came searching my closet for blazers and skirts again when for years, I filled it with nothing but black production clothes and rehearsal attires. I saw myself attending another set of job interview inside meeting rooms after a ton of casting calls and audition venues. 

Although, I was pretty sure it's for the best. After all, I convinced myself that it's only going to be a meaningful rest. Soon enough, I'll be back on and offstage when I can freely fund my dreams.

SMDC was my first huge corporate experience. Here, as a Marketing and Events Supervisor, I was tasked to oversee CSR projects execution around SMDC properties. With a background in Stage Management, it didn't become too difficult. My Customer Service experience also helped my job of connecting to a number of residents more handy.

During my stay with the company, I was tapped to be the official voice of the SMDC hotline. Not quite sure if it pushed through after I left but all I remember is the feeling of satisfaction to be at-least doing a little talent sharing alongside my marketing job.

Being back in a stable job that pays well, I got to save more and finally invest again. Small achievements led to another until I got the hang of it. Unfortunately, things turned sour between me and my immediate head causing me to leave the good company unexpectedly. A totally different story again but for what it's worth, I'm really glad it happened.

The pandemic hit the country and getting a job is now more difficult than it has ever been. After 8 exhausting months of working for this corporation, I've decided to rest for quite some time. two months to be exact. Until, my current job found me.

I now work as an Events Specialist at a local PR agency. With various background and a pretty diverse experience, I initially thought  that I may know enough of what I'll be doing. But being in this job hastily proved me wrong - there is so much more to discover!

For some coward reasons, I never dreamed of working for an agency back in college. But the way of things brought me here pushing me to believe that I am destined to do this. My current job focuses on conceptualizing online and offline events for different brands, client servicing, sourcing suppliers and everything in between. Which is, safe to say, demands a portion of all I've learned from all the jobs I've done. Could be exhausting most times but a validation of my versatility to which I enjoyed most. 

In a span of 5 years, my career trajectory came really far. From Retail, Corporate, Marketing, Freelancing, Grad School, Production and now Agency - who would've thought? Yet, I ain't even really where I desire to be. I couldn't also grasp the fact of how far my combined spontaneity and dreams have led me sometimes.  5 years after the tassel turn, one could expect a really huge win. But I'm sorry to break it - there isn't anything grand to reveal. Hence, I'm quite satisfied knowing that I continue to be a progressive student of life.  Checking on where I am now, it feels fair.  I may not be exactly where I wish to be, but I am who I've decided to be. I've paid so much price to be the woman I am now, thus, my most important investment.

I definitely know nothing of what the future holds. But I'm certain that we are exactly where we are meant to be. So if any reader gets to this point of my story, i hope you get to embrace the job that puts food on your table. It might not be that job yet but sooner, it'll all make sense.

--

Please let me know if you've read this. Makes me so much happy that I get readers. Share me your story too and I'll gladly listen!  xx

[googlenewson]

Roger Federer, Rafael Nadal and Novak Djokovic are now heading towards the epilogue of their extraordinary careers, even if they don't want to leave the scepter without a fight. The Swiss and the Spaniard are currently tied with 20 Grand Slams each, followed by the Serbian still at 17. The world number 1 will nevertheless have the chance to close the gap on Sunday, having qualified for the ninth time in the Australian Open final. Federer has been away from the circuit for over a year due to a double surgery on his right knee and will return to the field in Doha in the second week of March. 2021 could be the last career season for the 39-year-old from Basel, who has already targeted Wimbledon and the Tokyo Olympics as his main goals. The speech relating to Nadal is different, who will try to win his 21st Major at Roland Garros. In an interview with Eurosport, snooker legend Ronnie O’Sullivan analyzed what drives Federer to continue playing at almost 40 years of age.

O'Sullivan on Roger Federer's return

"Does Roger Federer need to play? Probably not but he probably quite enjoys getting out of the house," Ronnie O'Sullivan told Eurosport. Meanwhile, O'Sullivan also mentioned Nadal and Serena Williams when explaining how he has had to alter his game to keep up with the youngsters. "Running first, food second and pitch up and playing a bit of snooker," he added. "If I can’t enjoy it now, then I don’t know why I would be playing. I can’t compete with the younger players. They pot too good and have a lot of cue power. It is like tennis, a lot of the older players like Serena Williams, Federer, Nadal. You have these young guys coming so they are not going to have it their own way as much, so you have to adapt." O'Sullivan is in action at the Welsh Open this week and he has a record of 12-0 from his opening three matches. "It was nice," O’Sullivan said. "I’ve changed my technique a bit as I wasn't able to manoeuvre the white. Was I happy to accept playing solid stuff that I did not think was good enough to win events? So I went back to the way I was playing 2011 to 2017 - a bit inconsistent but when it was good it was decent. I would rather have a few good tournaments than a load of mediocre ones. My cueball is better and I am able to manufacture breaks. I am never going to compete with these young kids at long putting and safety, and youth, so I have to play to my strengths and it is trying to be creative. I had seven years where I was striking it solid, scoring heavy and winning a lot of tournaments."

from Tennis World USA https://ift.tt/3uqTEwX

[ambris]

If you were asked to choose one episode from each of the seven seasons of MLP to hold up as the "best" of those seasons, which would you choose?

Season 1: Suited for Success

This finally introduces Rarity as the artist that she is, and it frankly integral to really understand her character for the series. Rarity being one of my faves by virtue of how relatable she is to me ALL THE TIME, this episode holds special interest to me.

Honorable mention goes to the series opener, “Friendship is Magic” though, for obvious reasons!

Season 2:  Canterlot Wedding

Not only do I think this is the best (two) episode(s) of Season 2, I think it might be the best episode of the whole series to date. Just between the pacing, drama, music, EVERYTHING--I love this episode so much. It might be one of the few episodes in the whole series where I have NOTHING to criticize. IT’S FLAWLESS

Honorable mention goes to “Luna Eclipsed”, for giving Luna much needed development.

Season 3: Magical Mystery Cure

Probably an unpopular choice. I wouldn’t have picked this then, but looking back, it’s the episode in the season that had the most impact on me, even today. Ignoring the whole Twilicorn debacle, it’s biggest flaw is just being too rushed. But there’s a ton of great music, and the plot arc itself is great.

Honorable mention goes to “Magic Duel“, because I love Trixie and I was so happy to see her return. The nature of the conflict could have been handled better, but overall, I remember this episode fondly.

Season 4: Twilight’s Kingdom

This finale does a really good job bringing Twilight’s alicorn character arc to a satisfying epic conclusion. I know some people didn’t like the laser fights, but goddamn, it felt entirely appropriate to me. It was nice to see pair with demi-god levels of power actually commit to a straight-up knock-down drag-out fight; made better by the actually conclusion of the fight staying consistent with the show’s tone in spite of the fight.

"Filli Vanilli" gets honorable mention though. This was about the time that my online art career started to really take off, and having dealt with a lot of “stage-fright” at presenting my art publicly, I found it immensely relabable. Also hell THE MUSIC WAS SO GOOD.

Season 5: Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep / The Cutie Re-Mark

Kind of a tie here. I like the extra screen time and development Luna gets in “Do Princesses Dream of Magic Sheep”. It was way overdue at this point in the series.

Meanwhile “The Cutie Re-Mark” had an epic plot arc, build-up, and climax. And seeing all the AUs though was a freaking ecstatic delight for any fan of the series. I wasn’t that into Starlight as a villain, though she always did seem like a decent foil to Twilight. But I feel her 60-second turn around from “Selfish-Dictator-Who-Nearly-Fucked-Up-Everything-Forever” to “Best-Beloved-Friend-Of-Everyone” was supremely poorly handled, and made me disinclined to like her from the start (though as I’ve said, I’ve warmed up since).

Honorable mention goes to “Amending Fences” for some much needed Twilight backstory, AND for being really sincere and genuine about it. Handled really well. (Moondancer’s mane is still stupid though)

Season 6: Newbie Dash 

Dash FINALLY fulfilling her dream on-screen. I didn’t know they’d ever really do this, but I’m glad they did. It’d be unsatisfying otherwise. The episode was sincere and significant in it’s message, while also just being tons of fun. Seeing Dash basically impersonate her friends is one of the comedy highlights of the whole series.

Honorable mention goes to “Gauntlet of Fire” because of EMBER. THIS EPISODE INTRODUCES EMBER. I LOVE EMBER. YOU LOVE EMBER. EVERYONE LOVES EMBER. EMBER

Otherwise it was merely standard fun fluff for the series.

Season 7: A Royal Problem / The Perfect Pear / Fame and Misfortune

3-way tie on the last season, all fantastic for different reasons. It’s possible this last season might have been the best season yet. It’s also possible that each of these three episodes aren’t far away enough for me to get a broader perspective on what had the most impact.

“A Royal Problem” gave us the much needed and called for Royal Sisters episode. AND IT WAS SO GENUINE. And just handled perfectly. 

“The Perfect Pear” was just. . .the perfect episode. Again, addressing an issue that has long been overdue, and doing it with the perfect blend of sincerity and emotion. WHO DIDN’T NEARLY CRY?

And “Fame and Misfortune” might be unpopular to pair with these others, but I absolutely loved it. I consider it an appropriate inverse to “Slice of Life” (which I loved too btw). Where as that episode glorified and celebrated everything Brony--this episode is an honest carefully crafted criticism of the bad parts of the fandom. As I said before, if you’re offended by what the episode had to say, you’re either being too insecure, or directly the problem.

Anyways, Honorable Mention has to go to “Shadow Play”, for attempting to give us an Avenger’s type experience. It falls a bit short of that, but I appreciate the attempt anyway. 

There are so many more episode that deserve mention though. I had to force myself to keep my Honorable Mentions limited to one entry, or else not do them at all. Or I’d have to create a “Oh and I loved this episode too” category and then we’d be here literally all day.

[justnotcricket]

Match Report: 25/11/17 WASTCA One-Day Div 2

Fremantle (8/241) def Subi Marist (9/163)

Mann Oval is a cricket ground in miniature. A tiny oval, a small man’s oval. An oval for small men… and for some, this was the first homecoming since the horrific ‘Mann Oval Massacre’…

When I arrived at the venue the last surviving veterans were at the Mosman Park Bowling Club, emotional wounds still so raw as to suggest they were drinking to forget…

Legend has it, in the first meeting between the recently estranged Fremantle Mosman Park One Day team and it’s previous fraternal masters, Sub Marist, tensions were at an all time high.

The rebellious FMPCC were looking to make a point of their desertion, and SMCC still hurt and reeling from the betrayal of their brothers, were determined to see them put in their place.

With plenty of pregame banter, the Pirates won the toss, elected to bat, and after all manner of failure, proceeded to shuffle like they had ne’er shuffled before. Subi’s opening bowler took 4 wickets and they were all out for 71.

It must have been mortifying.

Matty Angus, then captain of Subi Marist [!!!], smelled blood, promoted himself to number 3, [wasn’t required], and the opening batsmen made the runs in less than 5 overs.

Retribution. Merciless, and swift in its brutal execution. No wonder it still smarts, and is spoken of in hushed tones to this day…

Ray on the other hand, spared the indignity, wistfully reminisced about the time he won the Fred Mann Medal in under 12’s back in the 1930’s, and you felt like his was a different sort of homecoming; a washed out sky, the spires of Norfolk Pines piercing the lilac haze of Jacaranda, littered with mid twentieth century apartments where the poor people used to live. He was home, this was his country...

He then went on to joke about how Liz had some One Day International tickets, and was excited to be finally seeing some ‘real cricket’…

I’m not sure what she means by that.

What does she mean by that!?!

Sure, in second division no one ever really gives LBW, or stumpings for example, but for us the game is played with as much passion and rivalry as any Ashes Series.

Smith had just made a game-changing ton for Australia in Brisbane, and in our minds, we were there with him, facing every ball, grinding it out, warding off defeat, and sharing the triumph… 

Well, Dave Barratt was anyway. Still smarting from the slight of alleged boringness, strode out to the crease with the kind of steely determination that was ultimately even more boring.

We had won the toss and were batting.

Quinny at the other end, couldn’t help but entertain. Everyone loves a clown, but spare a thought for the sad man, whose heart and soul goes to making other men laugh.  

It’s a tough gig, and he does all his own slapstick…

Dubois opened the bowling with a haircut that would have looked quite handsome on a middle-aged woman from Claremont. Quinny blanched.

Elliot from the other, pranced in a merry dance from side on of the wicket. It was a fancy action; with a one, two, three, arms into 5th position, skip, hop, slide… and bowl. In my mind, I even see the tu-tu.

It was so distracting and Quinny had no option than to hit him down the ground. 

Dave Barratt turned 4’s into twos, and 2’s into 1’s and scintillating cricket into an afternoon nap. Quin farmed himself the strike to stay alert.

Broad shouldered Jonny came on to bowl, carrying the ball with a forward wrist that hung before his groin like a pendulous seedpod. It was kind of erotic in a way I can’t quite put my finger in.

Quinny rocked back and cut his first delivery, and followed it with a later cut, two balls later in fact.

Dave Barratt kept it sensible, head down, nothing silly, and was about as much fun as senior public servant ever really can be.

He did bring up the 50 off 10 overs but was caught for 18, closing a 63 run opening partnership.

Meanwhile, Australia approached the English total… in no small part due to Dave’s empathetic connection with the Australian captain.

I came in at number 3, and was feeling good. I saw the ball well, played some nice shots and some even more beautiful leaves, until Wynne came on and served a selection of fruity mince pies: my weakness at this time of year.

Our thinking was it was better to have Joe umpiring out in the middle annoying the opposition, than in the shed annoying us. It proved to be an oversight.

He gave me LBW with my back leg in the air to a high bouncing ball still in its way up!?! I think he fired me before it even connected…

Does he know I’m on our selection committee? Does he know I write the match report? Is the guy A COMPLETE IDIOT!?!

In the moment, I may have said a few harsh words that I will come to regret, but now that I have taken some time to think reasonably about this and let my emotions cool, I think it is time we fucked him off all together. 

It wasn’t the incorrectness of the decision, [Quinny said it was plumb, and I was playing across the line…again], but it was the sheer enjoyment of giving me out. Like he vicariously took the wicket!?! ‘How is that?’ he grinned!

You can get away with being a shit bloke like Darrell if we are really short of bowlers but not when you are in the team as part of the clubs ‘new member drive’.

I was out on 13. Unlucky for some...

Joe Dirt specifically.

He’ll be going for some long walks out of the nets on Tuesday, which will do us both good, I need to vent and he needs the exercise.

JL came in looking as relaxed as a man three beers in by midday, and set about constructing an innings. At drinks, we were two for 93. Quinny was on 49 and Australia lead by 29 runs.

Darrell made a great brew, only lacking rum and a can of Emu Export, [according to Quinny], who brought up his 50 with a couple of boundaries over mid wicket and one down the ground to take 17 runs from an over by Cranley.

Their bowling stocks largely turned to laughing stocks as Jonny fatigued and started bowling wides, or short and outside off; easy to cut, or rock back and square drive, and the boys made hay while the sun shone.

Joe, fixating on the edge of the skinny little pitch, called no ball after no ball, until the opposing Captain started to complain about the stultifying level of officiation…

‘Sorry mate, we know...’

Harley came on to bowl and Quinny was uncharacteristically patient. He was in his nervous 70’s and maybe this would be the day to convert a healthy start into a milestone century.

Harley also looked like he was in his 70’s, with even less chance of making it to 100, especially after dropping a caught and bowled attempt that could probably kill a man of his age.

JL hit one over the fence, which on a backyard ground such as this, and with calls of ‘lost ball’, surely must be 6 and out. Once the ball had been recovered, play resumed and he brought up with the 150 with a 4 that very nearly landed in a passing pram.

I’m not an expert, but surely this kind of behaviour deviates from the standard INTJ on the MBTI, and clearly indicates psychopathic tendencies.

You can imagine careers day back in high school: ‘Has he considered corporate law, Mrs Little?’

Don’t get me wrong; he also played some beautiful cut shots and fine glances off his legs. But he would then tease the fielders spooning it just in front of them, while calling, ‘Yes!’

Like the kind of kid that pulls the wings off flies...

Quinny hit a big six, fell over, was nearly stumped, fell out of a building, ducked under plank, and was run over by a little red car giggling with midgets.

Or at least that’s how I remember his innings.

JL brought up his 50 with a pull shot square of the wicket, and raised his bat, almost in remorse and embarrassment for the bowlers, almost as if remorse was in his emotional range. He then hit a six into someone’s front yard, narrowly missing their new car.

They brought up a 100 run partnership before Joe gave Quinny out, stumped on 92. I mean seriously…

Did the other team give stumpings, or run outs? No they did not.

Gobsmacked at this turn of events, we quickly lost three wickets in an over. Shrugger skied it for a golden duck. Darrell got in on the action and fired JLBW:

Justin Little Before Wicket.

New batsmen, Nav and Matty made running between wickets look like a choreographed WWE fight sequence; ducks, feints, a mid pitch clothes-lining and direct hit from the deep to remove Angus.

Ray was caught and Harley got a 5 for!

The old man can die happy. His life’s work complete…

The collapse only slowed when Weston smashed an edge to the keeper that JL signaled wide.  Sheepishly, he went on to hit two sixes to finish.

And that… is how umpiring is done in this competition.

Darrell padded up and walked out to the middle, watched Leon hit the maximums, and walked back without contribution, and was as graceful and humble about it, as you can imagine…

Other non-contributors included Joe, who was preparing to bat by doing throw downs with his son... AND DOING THE THROWING!?!

At least he was wearing actual pads, I suppose. To throw in.

We finished with a mighty 8 for 241 off the full 35 overs. What a difference 20 years makes. How the tides had turned! With the pirate flag flying from the shelter, tea was more like a family picnic if you were raised by bikie gang or an Islamic death cult. Quinny recounted the negotiations required to acquire the flag from an 8-year-old girl’s tree house.

‘Please just take the flag. And promise you will never try to make contact with our mother again…’

It was always going to be a difficult chase, and we gave them as many chances in the field as is sporting, but they lost wickets regularly and never really looked like a chance.

Darrell opened the bowling and had spat the dummy by his second over. Ray attempted to talk him down from mid on, counseling him between bursts of expletives, but it was to no avail.

He bowled 6 overs before refusing to bowl any more, frustratingly, with half decent figures of 1 for 25. 

Mind you, the only reason he still gets selected is because he’s a carrying member of a gun club, and no one has the courage to tell him otherwise.

Ray opened with a spell from the other end bowling 7 overs 1 for 34, and really should bowl more. Matt bowled 7 overs and 2 for 42 before he did a hammy and was forced to limp the plank.

Joe bowled a 20-ball two over spell. His first 11 ball over for went 10 runs, and the second; a tidy 6 by comparison, to finish with 0 for 16. Another couple of overs and he would have bowled the standard 42 balls.

I suppose if you are not going to get another over, you might as well make it last. Number 2 bowled both kinds of music: Leon, and Weston to finish with 1 for 4 off 1. Another under utilised resource.

Pedestrian Dave bowled 5 overs and took 2 for 13 at the death, [6 of those being wides] and closed out the game bowling to Lowther.

I couldn’t help myself: I was rooting for underdog, even if he had done a little poo in his pants.

He carried his bat as they ran out of overs with only 161 on the board and we won by nearly 80 runs.

The Crownies came out in the golden light of the setting sun, and the fines session was like a roll call of dropped sitters on the boundary:

Matty Angus [present], JL [present], Nav [present], Darrell?

Darrell had gone home…

Alex Quin won the ‘Hot for 12 Cold for 24’ award for his massive knock and in a move that can only be described as Jack Sparrow-esque, then spun the wheel back at the club to win the meat raffle.

It was truly his day… and a convincing win to seal 4 in a row. With as many wins as losses behind us, we have leapt from the bottom of the ladder, and into the 4.  

Our focus will now have to shift from ‘access and inclusivity’, to qualifying our best players for finals.

Which leaves two questions on everybody’s lips...

Is this curtains for Joe Dirt?

And how many holes in a straw?

[dad-power]

My Story, Part 4

Author’s note: None of this is meant to be mean or vindictive, but a true and accurate accounting of what has happened after My Story, Part 3. It’s been almost 6 years since I posted Parts 1-3.

Catherine’s mother and I have always had a decent relationship since she left two and a half years ago. We’ve been able to co-parent effectively and keep civil. I wouldn’t say we were friends, but we would send each other pics of our daughter, go to her birthday parties, chat frequently via text about her, etc. We got along great and as far as co-parenting, we were doing a lot better than most exes.

Imagine my surprise when, a few days before Christmas, I get served at work with a custody suit. She was going for full custody of my daughter plus child support.

Up until this point, for virtually our daughter’s entire life, we’ve shared custody. It’s been equal, 50/50 straight down the middle. The way it should be. Study after study shows it’s the best way for children to get through a separation. Except for cases of physical abuse, drug use, etc., I’m a huge believer in shared parenting. Why not?

Back when we were working on our parenting plan and had it nearly wrapped up, she said she was going to run it by her female attorney friend to dot the “i’s” and cross the “t’s”. I begged her not to because I knew what would happen. Female divorce attorneys will not stop until you are living out of your car.

Meanwhile, I had been going through some financial troubles. My ex-wife takes a big chunk of my income in the form of child support. My salary is in the high 5 figures. With taxes, support, SS, and medical, a whopping half of my salary is gone before I see my check. This is what I am up against.

Money matters are not something you want to make public. But it wasn’t because of a drug-fueled spiral; I simply didn’t make enough to live on my own after everything was taken from my check. When I show people the numbers they all understand and are totally sympathetic to it. The numbers don’t lie. Most of them were surprised I wasn’t living out of my car. 

She sent me an email explaining her reasoning. In a nutshell, she said I’m unfit to parent because I’ve run into financial difficulty. She also doesn’t like how I parent in general.

I begged over and over via text and email for her not to take any more support because it would put me in a worse situation than I already was. I asked her how taking this would be beneficial for Catherine. How would taking more of my income away with 3 kids benefit our daughter? Ironically, in her pleadings, it stated I wasn’t able to care for Catherine financially, but here she was, taking more money out of my paycheck. It didn’t make any sense. I was met with no reply to these questions, and finally, an email threatening harassment.

I’m a great dad. I don’t do drugs, I don’t stay up all night playing video games, I don’t party, I rarely drink. I have a steady, stable career and have only changed jobs twice in the last 20 years. I love my kids more than anything. They are my life. I just want to be left alone to raise them the best I can with the resources I need. I am not a crazy and unfit parent.

So now it probably looks like she has done a heroic thing: Rescuing her daughter from her horrible, drug-addled Daddy who can’t get his shit together. I am sure this is what everyone thinks. The reality is quite different. There are always two sides to a story.

A little history

Back in 2011, we met through my sister and had a fun, whirlwind relationship. Then she abruptly broke up with me after 4 months. No real reason, she just got tired of it and said we weren’t a good match. 

There were no hard feelings, and since her job as a real estate agent wasn’t producing, I helped her get an internship at a major ad agency where I had worked for almost 10 years. Then she told me how she was flirting with the 70-year-old CFO of this agency several times and secured a full-time job there.

I thought it was strange that she was constantly coming by my desk chatting with me, and I was very close to telling her to leave me alone, but...

... one afternoon she came by my desk with a note that said she was pregnant. In all honesty, had no idea who the real father was because she had broken up with me, telling me to give her “space” and was hanging out with her ex-boyfriend, calling into question the paternity. She claimed it was mine and I believed her, but at the same time, her actions did not make me trust her much. I found her ex-BF’s contact lenses in her guest bathroom while we were “dating”, and there were several other odd occurrences like that. None of this is meant to be ugly, but it was happening and I had no idea what to think.

But we carried on as friends and I was glad she had a full-time job. At least she would have an income. Despite my instincts telling me to run away, I stayed friends with her. Despite my friends and coworkers advising me to tell her to go away, I stuck with her. I was not going to abandon her and our child. 

We started getting closer, and paternity was established. We hung out every weekend at my house, working on the room for the baby, painting the crib, etc., and fell in love again. She asked me if she could move in. I did what I felt was the right thing and welcomed her into my home.

The time around Catherine’s birth was just amazing. Our relationship was better than it had ever been. I absolutely adored her and loved her more than life itself. Life was really good. I thought maybe it was going to turn out beautifully. It was magical, probably one of the best times of my life.

But when Catherine turned 2, she moved out. Then she came back 4 months later. When Catherine was 3, she moved out again, then came back again. Then after some counseling with our pastor, she said she couldn’t commit so I asked her to move out, which was the last time. 

But that’s all in the past. She’s in a serious relationship now and they seem like a great match. It’s awesome and I’m truly happy for her. As long as he’s good with Catherine I’m fine with it.

Custody

The whole custody dispute was very hard on so many levels. After 2 years I was healing and moving on. The suit just ripped the scab open again. I wanted to continue our good co-parenting relationship for Catherine, but it was like a switch went off with her and she made it impossible to be civil. It was awful to see our relationship destroyed.

Normally, if an ex with whom you had an amicable split with and got along with is having financial problems—a person you loved, shared intimate moments with and raised a child with—you would most likely say, “What can I do to help? You’re her father and this affects her also. Let’s find you a decent place to live. Let me help you somehow.” There wasn't a huge event that broke us up, and even though it hurt me, it was fairly mutual in that we both knew it was pointless to continue. But nothing happened to create this sudden change in her. 

But sadly, It was all scorched earth and horrendously ugly. I was immediately an adversary. I was unstable and unfit to parent. I had tried over and over to show her hard financial numbers but was ignored. 

At one point during our negotiations, she told me she would never change her mind and threatened to give me the bare minimum time with Catherine if I didn’t agree to pay her child support. 

According to my lawyer, she fired her first attorney for being too nice. She also forced me to take a drug test. I happily took a 14-panel test and passed it with flying colors.

I was prepared to go to trial and had a 90% chance of keeping our 50/50 schedule. Again, all I wanted was equal time. I wasn’t going for full custody. I just wanted to share equal time with her mother. 

Several different attorneys advised me that status quo for 2 years and the mother’s history of moving out on us were my aces and would be hard to beat, but the judge ordered mediation at the cost of $1000 a day plus my attorney fees. That was it for me, the end of the road. I didn’t have the money. So I caved and signed the agreement. At this point I just wanted it to be over. 

We were together for 4 years. I will never understand the hatefulness and the unwillingness to be reasonable, and the complete lack of empathy towards the father of her child. I will never understand how her heart could become so hardened that she would do something like this. When I have no money, I can’t do certain things with Catherine. That includes necessities. I don’t know why this is was and is so hard for her to understand. All I wanted was to be left alone to provide for my children and have financial security. 

Looking Forward

The last 7 years of my life, I have been humbled, changed, refined. I am not the same person I was before. And for this I am thankful. I am choosing to go forward positively. I pray for her. This isn’t a self-righteous prayer, but a prayer that she is happy and successful. Because it does affect our daughter. I do pray for her heart to soften. I also pray for myself that I continue to stay humble and loving towards her. I do love her and want her to be happy.

I’m going to continue to be a great dad to my kids.

God wants us to TRUST in Him and REST in him. I’m choosing this path.

The other night I had Catherine on one side leaning against me, and Daniel leaning on the other side of me. Both of them adore me. My children love me. They know I’m a good father. That’s all that matters.

God will provide for me as he always has. I am getting back on my feet one day at a time. God is good.

[jwgammuto]

Fantasy Booking for WrestleMania 35.

It’s time! It’s time! No it’s not Vader time, sadly. It’s time for a very special edition of One Chance In Hell, my fantasy booking for the Showcase of the Immortals. Unlike the WWE, I will apologize in advance for how brutally long this is likely to be but I’m all about consistency and I enjoy sharing my booking brilliance that will never happen with my fellow wrestling fans. Here we go!

The Women’s Battle Royal: In a true fantasy this match doesn’t exist. Not because these women don’t deserve a spot on the card, but because this is a cheap way to get everyone on the roster some face time and a pay day on the biggest show of the year. Winning it hasn’t meant anything so far and I don’t expect that to change in 2019. Since we are going to be subjected to this, I offer this solution. All 15 or so of these women start in the ring and it’s a cluster from the start. About 2-5 minutes in, a late entrant, Lacey Evans. She comes out and everyone at Met Life just assumes she’s going to cat walk around and leave without doing or saying anything. She struts about the ring, allowing a few of the women to be eliminated and looks at them with her patented disgust. Finally, when it’s down to a final elimination spot, between Asuka and whomever, she enters the ring, dumps them over the rope, and stands tall. No matter what the company plans to do following WM, whether ending brand split, draft, etc. Evans, finally, appears to be a player in a women’s division that needs a serious reboot following this Charlotte/Ronda/Becky obsessed last six months.

Andre the Giant Memorial Battle Royal: Argh. As if one of these isn’t enough but we will persevere. It appears obvious that Braun will pointlessly win this after hopefully severing the spines of Jost and Che so WWE never dares put celebrities in this event again. I have a different idea though. Since there is no rub for winning this damn thing, why not have the most entertainingly hilarious person win it and that, my friends, is Otis Dozovic. It doesn’t really matter to me how this has to happen, but logically Heavy Machinery hang in for a while and after Tucker gets eliminated, Otis rages and cleans the ring. This would probably require Braun to go out with the classic “everybody in the ring gang up” bit, but I’m ok with that. Otis carrying around that trophy and worshipping it for a couple months would be absolutely hilarious. I don’t see any other way to make this matter.

Buddy Murphy vs Tony Neiss’ abs for the Cruiserweight Title: Welcome to my first true pipe dream. This match will probably be good but not quite to the level that previous Murphy PPV matches have been because Tony Neiss. However, after Murphy disposes of Mr Abs, because he must, and an exhausted Murphy is collecting his belt, he is viciously attacked from behind by....Johnny Gargano. 205 Live lacks star power and a true test for Murphy these days outside of Cedric Alexander and that’s been done. Johnny TakeOver gives us our true first shock of the night and gives the crowd what will be a much needed energy spike for the next 6 hours to come. This of course would be predicated on Johnny losing to Cole tomorrow night. But how great would this be?

The USOs vs BlackOChet vs BulgarianKnee2Face vs Da Barrrrr for the Smackdown Tag Titles: It seems terribly likely that Ricochet and Black finally get their statement win here. I feel like it could be better. No one wants to see Da Barrrr win the titles for a seventh time and NakaRusev makes zero sense so for arguments sake, let’s say they can’t win. The end of what could be a great match will come with the USOs and BlackOChet in a melee with the other two teams distracted or down. Amidst the confusion, Black goes to hit Jimmy with Black Mass at the same Ricochet looks to do something insane from the ropes. Jimmy moves and Black destroys Ricochet, mid air, in what may end up being the spot of the night, by accident. Jey superkicks a distraught Black out of the ring and Jimmy pins an unconscious Ricochet to retain. Black and Ricochet have laid the foundation for an amazing feud built directly into Backlash. Everyone is happy.

AJ Styles vs Randy Orton: This one feels pretty easy to me and it obviously has the potential to either be an amazing match or a snooze fest of restholds. Ideally, I’d love to see some real action that ends abruptly with an RKO outta nowhere in an insane spot. Then Orton proceeds to destroy Styles further, picks up the mic, and launches into a tirade about how he is declaring war on all the “indie darlings” invading his house. Much like the legend killer bit he did early in his career, this could make him interesting for the foreseeable future.

Roman Reigns vs Drew McIntyre: Seems obvious that the guy who beat cancer gets to have a Wrestlemania moment right? Wrong. McIntyre winning is the only play here as far as I can see, particularly if the plan is to make Seth Rollins the champion later that night. Now, I’m not sure thats going to happen but let’s just assume it for now. These two guys should be able to put on a decent match with some pretty viscous hard hitting stuff. Roman hasn’t wrestled much since his return and is likely a bit rusty, even for him. This gives an opportunity for Drew to really shine here and just wear down Reigns and brutalize him while thwarting every effort to Oooaahh Up or throw ridiculous flying punches. McIntyre should be booked very strong here and should be the unquestionable winner. We won’t kid ourselves and assume Reigns isn’t going to get into this title picture sooner than later but this plants potential seeds for a big match later in the year where Roman will get his nauseating revenge.

Miz vs Shane O. Falls Count Anywhere: All signs point to Miz here. Nobody really wants to have this borderline terrible feud continue but bear with me. Shane and Miz almost never need to be in the ring for this. Have it get to outside or backstage where Shane can get his assistance in the form of Sanity. Miz, like this last week on Smackdown, manages to fight off Young, Wolfe, and Dain temporarily and as he gives chase to a shocked Shane, he meets the newest member of Sanity, Luke Harper. Harper proceeds to destroy the Miz with various objects and slamming him into everything available and then the foursome drags Miz back to the ring where they clear the Turkish announce table and hold Miz so Shane can hit the elbow from the ring and finish the job. Shane has his “corporate thug” faction, Sanity has a spot on the card, and the Miz remains our underdog babyface hero for now.

HugBoss vs The IIconics vs GlamaKitty vs Samoan SuckFest for the Women’s Tag Titles: It feels unlikely that Bayley and Banks lose here but let’s try for the hell of it. Much as I think it’s admirable that Beth Phoenix can still keep up and looks to be in great shape, I can’t see the point in her and Nattie winning the titles either. Nobody may be meaner than Taminer, but absolutely nobody wants her to be a tag champion either. This leaves us with the obvious choice and the only true tag team here. Peyton Royce and Billie Kay. The IIconics won’t lend a ton of credibility to the tag titles but have HugBoss really done that? At least if the IIconics have the titles, coming out and talking about it while avoiding defending them makes perfect sense as they are complete chicken shit heels. The best way for this match to go is to have Beth and Nia most definitely in the ring together which culminates in Phoenix having an incredible show of power over the Irresistable Force. This creates a melee outside the ring with Nattie and Taminer too, opening a window for a blind tag or some kind of confusion to give the IIconics a chance to steal a cheap roll up win from Banks or Bayley. Every time I do one of these, I’m certain I talk about Bayley and Sasha breaking up and feuding and this will not be the exception to that rule. Losing the tag titles is yet another perfect opportunity to plant seeds for Banks to go full bitch heel as she is meant to be and they can feud until what will be a fan dream matchup at SummerSlam. Meanwhile, the tag titles are.....ICONIC!

Bobby Lashley vs The Demon King for the IC championship: SSSSQQQQUUUUAAAAAASSSSSSHHHHHH! There is no other way to book this. We’ve seen it a dozen times already. Balor wins in less than 60 seconds and afterwards they both sign a contract stating that they promise to never fight ever again.

Samoa Joe vs Rey Mysterio for the US Title: Let’s assume Rey is actually too hurt to compete. It’s a shame but it plays to my advantage. Joe comes out and cuts a vicious promo about his path of destruction and how the title has never meant more to any champion. He is cut off by R-Truth’s music. Truth comes out and says he wants his title back so he can give the United States all the dance breaks they desire. As he is face to face with Joe, Cena’s music hits and he hits the ring. Truth’s facial expression will be worth the price of admission here. A triple threat for the title it is. Truth and Cena end up doing a couple of team spots with Cena’s moves of doom on Joe but he eventually finds an opening (perhaps a dance break) where he can knock Big Match John out of the ring and lock in the Coquina Clutch for the win. Joe retains but we get our overdue laugh out loud moment with Cena and Truth.

Kirk Angel vs Banker Corbin: Since I already blew the wad on Cena for the US title fun, I have a better idea here. Angle comes out first to a huge ovation and is overcome with emotion as he talks briefly to the live crowd about how honored he’s been on this retirement road by his opponents and such. Corbin’s music hits. He yaps for a few seconds disrespecting as many people as possible and then he is attacked from behind by Gable, Apollo, Mysterio, and potentially a couple others. They drag him to the ring and beat him down, hitting respective finishers before feeding him to Angle, who hits one more Angle Slam and taps out Baron for his finale in a WWE ring. Corbin gets to cry going forward that it was unfair and keeps his heat, we don’t have to watch the sadness that is Kurt in the ring still, and Angle gets to win and stand tall and proud like the legend he is on the biggest stage.

Triple H vs Batista. No Holds Barred: By the end of this we are going to wish rest holds were barred. The build up was always going to be better than the execution. Dave freakin Batista is not going to be the guy who closes the door on Triple H’s career. Let’s be honest with ourselves. This is just a way for HHH to say there was nobody he didn’t beat. I really don’t know how you can possibly make this terribly interesting unless somehow Flair gets involved and helps Trips win. Obviously WWE nor I want a 70 year old guy out there doing too much but the dirtiest player in the game doesn’t need a large window to make an impact. Eye poke, dick shot. Whatever it takes. Wooooooooooo!

Daniel Bryan vs Kofi Kingston for the WWE Title: Yeah. KofiMania. Blah blah blah. It is arguably necessary after all this build to give Kofi the title. I have made it clear I don’t think he’s a feasible long term champion. So, in the interest of going against the grain as I do, here we go. Before the match, Kofi expressly tells Woods and E that he wants to do this on his own. Kofi and Bryan put on a hell of a contest. Tons of back and forth stuff with neat falls and all. Kofi fights off the occasional interference from Recyclable Rowan as well. Eventually the outside stuff begins to mount and the New Day comes down to even the odds. While the ref is distracted by Rowan, Bryan hits the Ric Flair Memorial move on Kofi and sets up in the corner to finish him with the knee. E and Woods get up on the apron, Rowan comes over to them, and the ref takes a bump while they fight with Rowan. Meanwhile Bryan attempts to end it but Kofi springs up and hits Trouble in Paradise out of nowhere and covers the champ. The ref is out while the crowd counts to 3. Kofi gets up and comes over to the corner to get an explanation as to why his tag partners are even out there, he turns around to meet the Vegan Knee of Doom. 1-2-3. Bryan continues his reign of Green Tyranny, the seeds are planted for a long overdue New Day spilt, and Kofi can become a much more interesting character on the road to SummerSlam where he will get his rematch with Bryan and finally win.

Brrrrroooocckkk Lesnar vs Seth Rollins for the Universal Title: In the interest of keeping the title picture clear of Roman for the time being, let’s have ol Seth burn Suplex City to the ground. The problem lies with Vince’s very probable need to make Lesnar look strong for an eventual return. For that to happen Rollins probably won’t be able to win clean. Insert Reigns and Ambrose helping in various ways for Seth to climb the mountain and win the strap. Also provides those people who have a fan boner for the Shield to go full Farmer Fran from The Waterboy one last time before Dean leaves the company. Rollins must win the title for the Drew McIntyre push to make any sense and this keeps Roman a reasonable distance from the Universal Title until at least later this year.

The Queen vs The Man vs the Mayor of Armbar City to inexplicably unify the Women’s titles: This ends the show. Wrestlemania always ends with a hero getting an absurd amount of confetti dropped on them. This narrative screams Becky Lynch. Let’s assume the rumors about Ronda Rousey leaving are just that. This is an absolutely perfect opportunity to start the Four Horsewomen feud. The classic action packed contest we are all expecting will happen. Lots of back and forth between the three. Near falls and submission escapes a plenty. As things slow down a bit, Charlotte takes a nasty cheap shot from Ronda and is down on the outside, Rousey then appears to be in serious trouble with Lynch taking her to ArmBar Village, and we get a visit from an angry ex champion, Shayna Bayzler, Jessamyn Duke, and Marina Shafir. The ref is tending to Flair, who appears hurt, while Bayzler and Co decimate The Man, allowing Rousey to slap on the arm bar. Becky resists more than anyone else ever has to the devastation of ArmBar City and passes out from the pain. Rousey pins her for the 1-2-3 and her new heel faction continues to destroy Charlotte to send a message. Ronda’s heel turn feels more natural now. She has a brutal faction of likeminded bad bitches. And we don’t get another year of Becky/Charlotte mortal enemies. They now have a common enemy.

Will any of this happen? Probably not. Certainly not most of it. But it’s fun to dream right? Enjoy a big weekend for us fans, everybody! Top Guy...OUT.

[socsciblog]

Blog Entry #2.

I like to think I grew up okay. I grew up in a predominantly Catholic area with a relatively affluent yet loving family, graduated elementary and high school from a private (also Catholic) institution, and now I’m taking undergraduate studies in a private university, my entire future laid out before me with many more possibilities to come. I was, and still am, grateful.

Even at a young age, I was taught to be a person for others. My grandparents are the ones I have to thank for continuously instilling the values that make up a “good” person in me. But over time, I wondered if those were enough. Nowadays, society demands for more than what a person is capable of giving, and I often thought if I could keep up with their expectations or if I’m already falling behind.

Gaining a multitude of personal achievements is probably one of them. I’m not exceptionally skilled at any subject or sport, I get decent grades (mostly out of luck, surprisingly) and I just want to pass, if anything. I don’t set any definite goals and I myself lower expectations just to not disappoint anyone in the process. I think my family got too used to that, which is why any achievement— whether big or small— matters to them. I’m usually really unmotivated, too. I told my dad about this once, and he just said, “As long as you pass, that’s enough for us. We know you try and that you do your best” with the warmest smile a father could possibly pull off. I promised myself to do better after that, though there are some instances wherein I still choose to procrastinate.

Growing up wealthy is another. I hated it at times because people always expected me to cover most expenses and reasoned it out with “afford mo naman kasi eh.” That went on until high school. People thought I’d give the most in school donations, that I’d pay for the materials utilized in group projects, that I’d even treat my classmates to food whenever they had to come over to my house. I didn’t like it, but I didn’t have the heart to refuse. That is, until my 12th grade seatmate wrote me a letter before our school retreat and said she knew about the problem, and that it was okay to say no. I’ve said it more often ever since.

Gender-wise, firsthand experiences tell me that some girls do have it harder than some guys. I grew up with guy playmates and my girl cousins weren’t born until much later. At some point they stopped including me in their games because they said I was too girly. I often get told I’m too fat yet they’re okay with my brother being big for his age, too. I wasn’t allowed to hang out with my friends and if I did, I couldn’t stay out too late. Meanwhile my brother stays out until midnight and my family doesn’t mind. It was unfair, and I voiced out my concerns with my parents. All they said was, “Well, it’s because you’re a girl.” I never thought it was a logical argument, but I just dealt with it because pressing on the matter further felt like talking to a wall sometimes.

In terms of sexuality, I think my family had hoped I’d turn out straight because of their Catholic background. My uncle also told me being gay was going against the Church and its teachings. Now if that was bad, imagine how worse it was in high school. Not that any of the girls cared either because they dated each other, but it had to be done in secret. Nothing too showy because it would mean trouble. It was suffocating and I just wanted to come out without having to worry about the possibility of me being disowned (an exaggeration, but not untrue). I did, though, at some point. My grandparents knew about it first, and they admitted to being homophobic from the get-go, but that changed when I opened up to them (in tears, even, hahahaha) and they’ve learned to be more open-minded and accepting towards the LGBTQ+ community. On the other hand, my parents were furious when they found out. Wouldn’t talk to me for an entire day until they’ve finally calmed down and realized that things couldn’t go on like this forever. They were gentle this time and they wanted to understand me better, because it was here when they realized that they didn’t know as much about me as they thought they did. It was nice.

I think my stories turned out pretty well in the end, but some people still have their expectations. I do have my own so I just do what I can to make myself and the people around me proud. These expectations affected me in many different ways, and even though they often made me question who I am and what I’m truly capable of, I can’t say that they weren’t helpful in developing and shaping the person that I am today.

College, however, is a different story.

Being born into a family of doctors was something I was always proud to share. Mostly because the follow-up question was something related to what I want to be when I grow up. Back then, I was so sure I wanted to become an OB-GYNE just like my father, and to tread the path he took up for years. Now, I don’t even know if I’m taking up the right course or if I’m happy being in it. I’m not sure if it’s something I’ll come to love in the near future. I guess I was more so conditioned into thinking being a doctor is the only career path suited for me given my family background. That’s what my grandmother says, at least. I often asked questions such as, “Is Bio even the right choice for me?” whenever I had time to sit down and talk with her, but she’d always say, “Who’s going to take over the hospital if you won’t? You’re the eldest. Everything you need is right here, you just have to take it.”

My closest friends know about this problem more than anyone. Day by day I feel sapped and unmotivated and that’s something I can never tell my family. Being in Ateneo itself is a privilege and we both know that. I can’t mess up now, or even think about quitting. I keep telling myself to just stick with it until I find something better.

I guess that’s a notable hindrance to my four years in college. I have no idea what drives me to be the best that I can be after realizing that this isn’t what makes me happy. I can’t give my 101% effort into something I’m unsure of, making it hard for me to accomplish certain tasks. That doesn’t mean I don’t try, though. It’s just hard.

Thankfully, I have an understanding family. Even when I’m tired or having a hard time, they encourage me to do my best and simple reminders such as “don’t forget to eat dinner” or “sleep early tonight and rest well, you’ve worked hard today” are enough to get me through an evening of continuous studying.

I have friends, too, both from high school and in college. I’m just lucky my best friends from high school are also in Ateneo, but as for those who went on to other colleges, we try to plan meetups as much as we can to catch up with one another. It’s nice knowing that people care about you enough to check up on you. As for college, I hang out with my blockmates often. We share the same frustrations so we confide in each other whenever we struggle with certain things. I often tell them I’m sorry I ask for notes often because mine tend to be incomplete or if I need a lot of help when it comes to understanding various topics, but they don’t mind one bit. A friend even said, “It’s okay, Justine, magtutulungan naman tayo.” and I wanted to cry then and there. Friends like them are a reminder that good people do exist and you can have nice things in life.

I also have a very supportive girlfriend whose unfailing love and support keeps me going whenever my confidence starts to falter. She reminds me to take care of myself when I forget to do so and is proud of me regardless of the things I’ve achieved. I literally can’t name anyone better.

Having these kinds of relationships with people is the best resource we can be gifted with. You may lose your way from time to time, but surrounding yourself with good people makes it easier for you to get back on track. Despite all these negative feelings, setbacks, and uncertainty, I know I’ll get through them with the support I receive from the people around me.

And sometimes I like to sit and dwell on life as a whole, how short it is yet sometimes so unbearably prolonged. I wonder who I’ll turn out to be, if I’ll be proud of myself in the long run. As if the entire world rests on the tip of my tongue and it is up to me to roll it around and taste all that it has to offer.

[flauntpage]

Time is Already Running Out For The Los Angeles Clippers

Blake Griffin exits the shower, kicks off a squeaky pair of blue flip flops adorned with the Los Angeles Clippers logo, and starts to dry himself off. He eases his way into a pair of light blue jeans that are intentionally shredded just above the knee, then takes a seat at his locker—two small oranges rest by his side while a baby-sized red Powerade sits half empty on the floor.

Cloaked in a shearling coat and milk-white sweater, Griffin saunters across the room to face about a dozen media members. In what can most politely be described as dry, filtered analysis of the 22-point loss Los Angeles just suffered against the New York Knicks, Griffin squints through a series of questions about his team’s now nine-game losing streak, the longest of his eight-year career.

On this night, and for the foreseeable future, he's the organization's sole mainstay. Chris Paul is in Texas. DeAndre Jordan is an unrestricted free agent whose name will swirl in rumors until he’s either dealt or the trade deadline passes. Doc Rivers was demoted from his President of Basketball Operations duty a few months ago, and entered the season with Las Vegas believing he was likely to soon lose his head coach job as well. The harsh reality of NBA life with one, and not two, top-20 players battling on your behalf has officially smacked Griffin and the Clippers in the face.

All three of their most important offseason additions—Danilo Gallinari, Patrick Beverley, and Milos Teodosic—have already missed significant time, forcing Rivers to not only throw Wesley Johnson, Austin Rivers, and 23-year-old rookie Sindarius Thornwell into the starting lineup, but also piece together bench units that feature several new faces who’re unsure of their role in a fresh environment.

“I fell into a good situation in Houston where I was a main catalyst for the second unit,” new Clippers forward Sam Dekker told VICE Sports, right as Jordan strode by flashing a genial middle finger in our direction. “And now I’m trying to work to get into that role here in L.A., and at times it hasn’t gone as quickly as I’d like. But that’s okay. That’s basketball.”

Now 5-11 and at the mercy of a cutthroat Western Conference, Los Angeles’s season might have derailed before it could leave the station. According to FiveThirtyEight—a prognostication that doesn’t factor in poor health—the Clippers have a 27 percent chance to make the playoffs. They’re on pace to win 36 games (one fewer than the Knicks and the same as the Orlando Magic), and finish 11th in their conference.

With Paul and J.J. Redick gone, they lack a nightly identity, curiously attacking the offensive glass despite transition defense being a core tenet of Rivers-coached teams for the past decade. They rank fifth in offensive rebound rate, after placing 24th, 29th, and 24th in the three previous seasons, and one side effect is that the percentage of their opponent’s possessions that start in transition leads the league. (Not good.)

Even though they manage decent looks whenever an opponent doubles Griffin on the block, only two teams have a lower assist rate than the Clippers: the Portland Trail Blazers and Phoenix Suns. “When the ball sticks we aren’t as good of a basketball team,” Dekker said. “When the ball is not moving you’re easy to guard, and we know that. So we have to do a better job of moving the ball and cutting and playing with pace and putting energy in the ball. That makes the game so much easier.”

The uphill climb is understandable—considering almost every player on the team, healthy or not, is making some kind of adjustment inside this overhauled roster—but still worrisome. Griffin’s True Shooting percentage is at a career low and he’s shooting 41.3 percent from the floor, in large part because only 19.8 percent of his two-point field goals are assisted (down from a career average of 63.3 percent before this season began).

That 19.8 percent is nearly 10 percent lower than LeBron James right now, and anyone who’s watched the Cleveland Cavaliers play basketball this year knows how much offensive responsibility weighs on the four-time MVP’s shoulders.

Griffin’s situation isn’t dissimilar. The percentage of his shots launched with seven or fewer seconds on the shot clock is up approximately eight percent compared to a couple seasons ago, L.A.’s offense is 9.5 points per 100 possessions worse when he sits, and he’s surrounded by inexperience and unfamiliarity for the first time in over half a decade. Different teammates are learning how to contribute in a new system before they can grasp how to accentuate their franchise player’s strengths.

“I’ve always been that go-to guy, whereas now I’m learning to be that role guy,” Thornwell told VICE Sports. “It’s good because I get to see the other side of the game, and learn how to play off the ball and stuff like that, but it’s kind of frustrating in a sense because I still want to score.”

Before Monday’s loss, I asked Doc Rivers if there was anything he could point to, besides the injuries and late-game woes (L.A.’s crunch-time offense is worst in the NBA—a predictable script that droops between Griffin post-ups and Austin Rivers unhinging himself from reality), that might explain his team’s inability to end their streak.

“Probably what you just said, the injuries and the crunch-time woes,” he chuckled. “Because of the injuries, there’s not much you can do, but I like the fact that we’re still in every game. You take three of your top six players out of your lineup, you’re gonna probably struggle. But we’ve had a chance in all but two I would say, and two of them we should’ve boarded the bus before the game.”

Despite their unlucky health, New York represented a golden opportunity for the Clippers to turn things around and sink their teeth into a marshmallow-soft schedule. Their next five opponents are NBA punching bags (the Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Lakers, the Rudy Gobert-less Utah Jazz, and Dallas Mavericks), and Beverley is finally back in the starting lineup.

They’ve outscored opponents by 9.7 points per 100 possessions when Jordan, Gallo, and Griffin share the floor, and Teodosic’s intoxicating pass-first mentality may singlehandedly reverse the team’s self-serving modus operandi. But a long-term solution for some of this team’s problems might not exist. Their defense, for example, is filled with miscues, hesitation, and physical shortcomings.

Only 8.1 percent of their opponent’s shots are attempted with a defender inside two feet of their airspace (coverage defined as “very tight” by NBA.com), which is a league low. Meanwhile, 29.7 percent of their opponent’s shots are “open,” and just two teams allow a higher percentage. This is bad. Watch below as Griffin and Johnson needlessly miscommunicate a switch, leading to an open three for Jae Crowder.

And here’s Rivers turning into a statue as the weakside defender who shouldn’t be afraid to help off Dwyane Wade to prevent LeBron from waltzing in for an easy dunk.

The personnel doesn’t help. Whenever it makes sense to do so, offenses are happy to throw their playbook out the window just to exclusively set ball screens with whoever Lou Williams is guarding. They then watch with Mr. Burns’s finger-tapping delight as the Clippers combust into ashes. (The Clippers play like a 55-win team when Williams is on the bench, per Cleaning The Glass.)

Add everything up and it’s both hard to envision Los Angeles making the playoffs and unfair to count them out. It’s a long season, and who’s to know if the Denver Nuggets, New Orleans Pelicans, or Portland Trail Blazers won’t suffer a series of crippling injuries right as the Clippers find themselves on the mend.

But this is a contract year for Williams, and both Jordan and Austin Rivers can opt out of their deals in July. Doc's job security isn't great, and just like last year, L.A. may soon find itself in a situation where too many players have one eye on the future instead of being all in on today.

“It comes down to playing hard and sticking together, and when things are going good, staying level headed, and when things are going bad, staying level headed.” Dekker said. “There’s some times we could do that better, and that’s where teams have taken advantage of us. We’ve got to stay positive, keep working, and know that things will turn around. And they will.”

Time is Already Running Out For The Los Angeles Clippers published first on http://ift.tt/2pLTmlv

[amtushinfosolutionspage]

Time is Already Running Out For The Los Angeles Clippers

Blake Griffin exits the shower, kicks off a squeaky pair of blue flip flops adorned with the Los Angeles Clippers logo, and starts to dry himself off. He eases his way into a pair of light blue jeans that are intentionally shredded just above the knee, then takes a seat at his locker—two small oranges rest by his side while a baby-sized red Powerade sits half empty on the floor.

Cloaked in a shearling coat and milk-white sweater, Griffin saunters across the room to face about a dozen media members. In what can most politely be described as dry, filtered analysis of the 22-point loss Los Angeles just suffered against the New York Knicks, Griffin squints through a series of questions about his team’s now nine-game losing streak, the longest of his eight-year career.

On this night, and for the foreseeable future, he’s the organization’s sole mainstay. Chris Paul is in Texas. DeAndre Jordan is an unrestricted free agent whose name will swirl in rumors until he’s either dealt or the trade deadline passes. Doc Rivers was demoted from his President of Basketball Operations duty a few months ago, and entered the season with Las Vegas believing he was likely to soon lose his head coach job as well. The harsh reality of NBA life with one, and not two, top-20 players battling on your behalf has officially smacked Griffin and the Clippers in the face.

All three of their most important offseason additions—Danilo Gallinari, Patrick Beverley, and Milos Teodosic—have already missed significant time, forcing Rivers to not only throw Wesley Johnson, Austin Rivers, and 23-year-old rookie Sindarius Thornwell into the starting lineup, but also piece together bench units that feature several new faces who’re unsure of their role in a fresh environment.

“I fell into a good situation in Houston where I was a main catalyst for the second unit,” new Clippers forward Sam Dekker told VICE Sports, right as Jordan strode by flashing a genial middle finger in our direction. “And now I’m trying to work to get into that role here in L.A., and at times it hasn’t gone as quickly as I’d like. But that’s okay. That’s basketball.”

Now 5-11 and at the mercy of a cutthroat Western Conference, Los Angeles’s season might have derailed before it could leave the station. According to FiveThirtyEight—a prognostication that doesn’t factor in poor health—the Clippers have a 27 percent chance to make the playoffs. They’re on pace to win 36 games (one fewer than the Knicks and the same as the Orlando Magic), and finish 11th in their conference.

With Paul and J.J. Redick gone, they lack a nightly identity, curiously attacking the offensive glass despite transition defense being a core tenet of Rivers-coached teams for the past decade. They rank fifth in offensive rebound rate, after placing 24th, 29th, and 24th in the three previous seasons, and one side effect is that the percentage of their opponent’s possessions that start in transition leads the league. (Not good.)

Even though they manage decent looks whenever an opponent doubles Griffin on the block, only two teams have a lower assist rate than the Clippers: the Portland Trail Blazers and Phoenix Suns. “When the ball sticks we aren’t as good of a basketball team,” Dekker said. “When the ball is not moving you’re easy to guard, and we know that. So we have to do a better job of moving the ball and cutting and playing with pace and putting energy in the ball. That makes the game so much easier.”

The uphill climb is understandable—considering almost every player on the team, healthy or not, is making some kind of adjustment inside this overhauled roster—but still worrisome. Griffin’s True Shooting percentage is at a career low and he’s shooting 41.3 percent from the floor, in large part because only 19.8 percent of his two-point field goals are assisted (down from a career average of 63.3 percent before this season began).

That 19.8 percent is nearly 10 percent lower than LeBron James right now, and anyone who’s watched the Cleveland Cavaliers play basketball this year knows how much offensive responsibility weighs on the four-time MVP’s shoulders.

Griffin’s situation isn’t dissimilar. The percentage of his shots launched with seven or fewer seconds on the shot clock is up approximately eight percent compared to a couple seasons ago, L.A.’s offense is 9.5 points per 100 possessions worse when he sits, and he’s surrounded by inexperience and unfamiliarity for the first time in over half a decade. Different teammates are learning how to contribute in a new system before they can grasp how to accentuate their franchise player’s strengths.

“I’ve always been that go-to guy, whereas now I’m learning to be that role guy,” Thornwell told VICE Sports. “It’s good because I get to see the other side of the game, and learn how to play off the ball and stuff like that, but it’s kind of frustrating in a sense because I still want to score.”

Before Monday’s loss, I asked Doc Rivers if there was anything he could point to, besides the injuries and late-game woes (L.A.’s crunch-time offense is worst in the NBA—a predictable script that droops between Griffin post-ups and Austin Rivers unhinging himself from reality), that might explain his team’s inability to end their streak.

“Probably what you just said, the injuries and the crunch-time woes,” he chuckled. “Because of the injuries, there’s not much you can do, but I like the fact that we’re still in every game. You take three of your top six players out of your lineup, you’re gonna probably struggle. But we’ve had a chance in all but two I would say, and two of them we should’ve boarded the bus before the game.”

Despite their unlucky health, New York represented a golden opportunity for the Clippers to turn things around and sink their teeth into a marshmallow-soft schedule. Their next five opponents are NBA punching bags (the Atlanta Hawks, Sacramento Kings, Los Angeles Lakers, the Rudy Gobert-less Utah Jazz, and Dallas Mavericks), and Beverley is finally back in the starting lineup.

They’ve outscored opponents by 9.7 points per 100 possessions when Jordan, Gallo, and Griffin share the floor, and Teodosic’s intoxicating pass-first mentality may singlehandedly reverse the team’s self-serving modus operandi. But a long-term solution for some of this team’s problems might not exist. Their defense, for example, is filled with miscues, hesitation, and physical shortcomings.

Only 8.1 percent of their opponent’s shots are attempted with a defender inside two feet of their airspace (coverage defined as “very tight” by NBA.com), which is a league low. Meanwhile, 29.7 percent of their opponent’s shots are “open,” and just two teams allow a higher percentage. This is bad. Watch below as Griffin and Johnson needlessly miscommunicate a switch, leading to an open three for Jae Crowder.

And here’s Rivers turning into a statue as the weakside defender who shouldn’t be afraid to help off Dwyane Wade to prevent LeBron from waltzing in for an easy dunk.

The personnel doesn’t help. Whenever it makes sense to do so, offenses are happy to throw their playbook out the window just to exclusively set ball screens with whoever Lou Williams is guarding. They then watch with Mr. Burns’s finger-tapping delight as the Clippers combust into ashes. (The Clippers play like a 55-win team when Williams is on the bench, per Cleaning The Glass.)

Add everything up and it’s both hard to envision Los Angeles making the playoffs and unfair to count them out. It’s a long season, and who’s to know if the Denver Nuggets, New Orleans Pelicans, or Portland Trail Blazers won’t suffer a series of crippling injuries right as the Clippers find themselves on the mend.

But this is a contract year for Williams, and both Jordan and Austin Rivers can opt out of their deals in July. Doc’s job security isn’t great, and just like last year, L.A. may soon find itself in a situation where too many players have one eye on the future instead of being all in on today.

“It comes down to playing hard and sticking together, and when things are going good, staying level headed, and when things are going bad, staying level headed.” Dekker said. “There’s some times we could do that better, and that’s where teams have taken advantage of us. We’ve got to stay positive, keep working, and know that things will turn around. And they will.”

Time is Already Running Out For The Los Angeles Clippers syndicated from http://ift.tt/2ug2Ns6

[yahoo-puck-daddy-blog]

Training camp preview: Coaches, rookies and lines, PTOh my

Will Matt Duchene make it to training camp with the Colorado Avalanche? (AP Photo/David Zalubowski)

All 31 NHL training camps officially open today, and that means that after a long, bad summer, hockey is officially back.

And despite the overall quality of the summer (which, again, was bad) you can’t say the NHL is wanting for storylines as camp official begins. Even leaving aside what a catastrophe the inaugural season of Vegas Golden Knights hockey will be, there’s a whole hell of a lot to talk about over the next few weeks.

Let’s run down just a few of the bigger storylines around the league:

So many new coaches

Right now, only three NHL head coaches have had their jobs for more than four years. Joel Quenneville (no surprise) is the longest-tenured, having been hired mid-October 2008. But after that, Jon Cooper and Alain Vigneault only barely make the four-year cut-off, having been hired in their teams’ 2013 offseason.

But the number of coaching changes made in the 2017 calendar year is staggering: 10, not including the Vegas Golden Knights making their first hire ever.

So that’s 11 coaches — more than a third of the league — entering their first full seasons with new clubs? A lot of them take over with their teams in unenviable positions. Just the last five hired (Rick Tocchet in Arizona, Phil Housley in Buffalo, Bob Boughner in Florida, Travis Green in Vancouver, and John Stevens in LA) have tough hills to climb if they want to get their teams all that close to the playoffs. I don’t think anyone expects Gallant to work a miracle with what he’s got.

Some others are better off: Ken Hitchcock will almost certainly get Dallas back to the postseason. Claude Julien has a pretty good club in the Canadiens, and frankly they’re lucky to have him. Mike Yeo in St. Louis should likewise have a nice go of things.

That leaves two more unmentioned: Bruce Cassidy in Boston and Doug Weight in Brooklyn. That feels like two teams that could really go either way, irrespective of what their coaches can do. Just weird rosters on both fronts, and if either club wants to make the playoffs, they have the talent but maybe not the depth.

When 1 in every 3 teams league-wide has a new face behind the bench, there’s a lot to keep track of, but it should at least provide some enjoyable chaos.

Top 2 picks could change their teams’ fortunes

What role will Nico Hischier play with the Devils this season? (AP Photo/Seth Wenig)

Very fun that the top two picks in the league went to two of the longer-standing Metropolitan Division teams that don’t seem to have a particularly large amount of enmity toward each other, but their impacts could both prove significant.

And like a lot of top-two picks, their teams are in a position to give them plenty of opportunity.

Not that either the Flyers or Devils want to be in position to give Nolan Patrick or Nico Hischier second-line minutes, but they might end up doing just that. In Philly, at least, there’s a cushion of Claude Giroux and Sean Couturier in front of Patrick, who looks like he should be good to go at the start of the season. But if something happens to either of them, or if Patrick really proves something, there could be a bigger role for him.

The Devils have no such luxury, as Travis Zajac is out long-term and the only other centers on the roster who have proven they’re top-nine NHL players are Adam Henrique (who, by the way, played a decent amount of last season on the wing) and Brian Boyle (who, by the way, should be nowhere near second-line minutes). If it’s down to Hischier or, oh god, Pavel Zacha, you’d think John Hynes would go with the rookie. You don’t want to put him in that position, of course, but they might not have much of a choice.

Neither is likely to be a Calder Trophy candidate, simply because they’re so young and they’re not likely to be in positions to succeed over 82 games, but if nothing else they’ll provide a glimpse of things to come.

Goaltending battles?

Speaking of the Flyers, they’re one of the handful of teams league-wide with no clear answers for who will be the starting goalies.

They have to choose between Brian Elliott (who was awful last year in Calgary after years of low-key great hockey under Ken Hitchcock; wonder what changed ha ha ha) and Michal Neuvirth, who was an atrocious backup last year after a mostly decent career as a 1b. Neither seems like a great choice! Maybe they’ll platoon it!

Other teams with a potential goaltending controversy on their hands: The Red Wings (Howard vs. Mrazek), Islanders (Halak vs. Greiss), and Florida (Luongo vs. Reimer). There are also a few maybes here, depending on how things work out, including: Winnipeg (Mason vs. Hellebuyck), Dallas (Bishop vs. Lehtonen), Anaheim (Gibson vs. Miller), and perhaps even Calgary (Smith vs. Lack? Yikes.)

But again, that’s a good chunk of the league with iffy-at-best goaltending situations. Pretty fun!

Finding chemistry

In addition to all the coaching changes, some fairly big shakeups came for star players’ situations as well, with trades, new contracts, and other issues cropping up to dramatically impact the way some marquee lines might have to work.

Probably chief among them is Chicago shipping out Artemi Panarin and bringing back their old friend Brandon Saad. It’s clear that Saad will play with Jonathan Toews and, as I’ve talked about before, it’ll be interesting to see what Patrick Kane looks like without the guy who seemingly made his production shoot into the stratosphere. Maybe the added offense for Toews makes up the difference, but it’s tough to say, especially since they also have to replace Marian Hossa’s two-way quality as well.

Meanwhile, the new-look Washington Capitals are likely to look a lot like the old Caps, only a little worse. They kept TJ Oshie and Evgeny Kuznetsov with big extensions, but it cost them crucial depth in the form of Kevin Shattenkirk, Marcus Johansson, Karl Alzner, and Justin Williams. They’ve still got plenty of talent (as you might expect given their status as Presidents’ Trophy winners two years running), but boy, they sure did lose a lot of it as well. How they navigate that will go a long way toward determining how the best division in hockey looks this year.

Then in Edmonton, the thinking is now pretty clear: If they’re paying big, big money to Leon Draisaitl, he’s gotta be the No. 2 center behind Connor McDavid. That creates some interesting questions. Pushing Ryan Nugent-Hopkins down to be your No. 3 (or maybe trading him, who knows?) ain’t bad at all, but it opens up a slot next to McDavid. Who takes that? Could be anyone.

And maybe it’s just morbid curiosity at this point, but I kind of want to see what happens with the Sedins. So far, it seems the plan is to throw Sam Gagner on their line. Not a bad idea. Gagner is a bit of a player and he’s certainly better than some of the stiffs with whom the Sedins have been saddled the past few years. And if that doesn’t work, might I suggest: Brock Boeser? Gone are the days when the twins can make even, say, Jason King, look like a borderline-useful forward, but Gagner can play a bit, especially on the power play. Boeser’s CV as a scorer at the lower levels speaks for itself. It’d be nice for Daniel and Henrik to ride into the sunset with one last 65-plus-point season under their belts.

Interesting PTOs

Cody Franson seems to be a pretty strong candidate to stick with the Chicago Blackhawks. (AP Photo/Mark Humphrey)

As discussed before, most PTOs are cynical pieces of business intended to skirt roster rules. However, there are a few NHLers on tryout deals who could crack their teams’ lineups. You can choose for yourself whether that speaks better for the player or worse for the team.

Probably the slam-dunkest of these deals — in terms of, “He should absolutely make that team” — is Cody Franson in Chicago. Decent No. 4 defender, good bottom-pair guy. And man, Chicago needs help on the blue line.

Other intriguing PTO deals: Jimmy Hayes in New Jersey (he doesn’t score a lot of goals, but neither do they, so let’s not throw stones here) and PA Parenteau in Detroit (he might legitimately be the fifth-best forward they have in camp). Maybe maybe Eric Gelinas in Montreal and Alex Chiasson in Washington (tough to get a read on those guys as far as I’m concerned, but I think they might be cheap fringe NHLers).

Unsigned RFAs

And yeah, training camps are opening, but there’s still a handful of unsigned RFAs out there nonetheless.

Let’s start with the happy news: Marcus Foligno doesn’t have a deal from Minnesota yet, but all indications are it’ll happen soon.

The biggest of these is David Pastrnak in Boston, which has been talked about at length on this website. There seems to be a fundamental misunderstanding on the team’s part about what the market bears for a player of Pastrnak’s caliber, and one wonders exactly when light will dawn on Marblehead here. Just pay the guy. Good lord, how do you let it get this far?

Same is true of Andreas Athanasiou in Detroit. Last I saw the team was offering him an incredibly low-value bridge deal. Something less than $2 million, if I’m not mistaken. That’s an insult of an offer on a team that pays Justin Abdelkader whatever Justin Abdelkader makes. (What’s that? It’s how much? Come on.) Athanasiou reportedly has a KHL offer on the table, and I bet you it’s for more than $1.9 million pre-tax.

Josh Anderson and Columbus don’t seem lined up on a deal quite yet and the player won’t show up to camp without one. In fact, he’s apparently prepared to go to Switzerland to skate instead. Maybe that’ll get the contract talks moving along more seriously.

Finally, no progress on Nikita Zadorov re-signing with Colorado. Hey, I wonder what country this Zadorov character is from, and if they have a big-money professional hockey league there. Probably not. I bet Joe Sakic is playing this exactly right.

Oh, and now that I mention the Avs…

Duchene Watch

Your guess is as good as mine. I can’t know the mind of Sakic. Perhaps no one can.

Tavares Watch

Your guess is also as good as mine here.

Will someone sign Jagr?

I DON’T KNOW BUT I’M MAD ABOUT IT.

Ryan Lambert is a Puck Daddy columnist. His email is here and his Twitter is here.

More NHL offseason coverage on Yahoo Sports:

[junker-town]

How Notre Dame went 4-8, and why things will get better in 2017

Get your jokes in now, because the turnaround is likely on its way.

This preview originally published May 9 and has since been updated.

We never had a problem with Notre Dame officials, but after the war, some of their fans began driving us crazy. They began writing letters saying that other schools should imitate Notre Dame, not just in winning, but by winning absolutely cleanly and honestly. Sure, who doesn't want to do that? But no one could get players like Frank Leahy could...

Also the fans said that Notre Dame sets an example that other schools could follow if those schools didn't like cheating so much. I really got angry when they started applying that to Purdue, as if we [Purdue] cheated.

— Lafayette Journal & Courier sports editor Gordon Graham, Onward to Victory: The Creation of Modern College Sports

One of the things I enjoyed about writing my latest book, The 50 Best* College Football Teams of All Time (and hey, if you don’t enjoy your own book, who will?) is how you can trace how perceptions of certain programs changed over time. Notre Dame is the best example.

There are two Notre Dame teams in the book (which, in anti-social fashion, isn’t actually about the best teams at all): the 1924 team that won the Irish’s first Rose Bowl and the 1947 team that is typically called one of the most talented of all time. In between the first and the second team, all of college football began to look at Notre Dame in a completely different light.

The 1924 team was a plucky squad, abused in some stadiums for the school’s Catholic backbone and going out of its way to put a good face forward for both school and religion. Look at these wholesome boys who will pray before the game and help you up after bowling you over!

The 1947 team was, by any account, no less wholesome. But the Irish were the heavyweight champion of the world by this point. Their connections with the Naval academy had helped to allow the school to maintain a high level of talent during World War II, and with loose postwar transfer rules and the name of NOTRE DAME lording over the sport, Frank Leahy was able to amass so much talent in South Bend that third stringers who never saw the field would find success in professional football.

Plus, as with any program or coach who purports to represent more than just football, the Irish brought some pretty irrepressible fans with them as well.

All of this is a long way to say that, even seven decades after that 1947 team and its fans lorded Irish perfection over all the land, when Notre Dame suffers a frustrating season — say, losing a ton of close games on the way to a 4-8 record — fans of other college football teams are going to enjoy it immensely. That’s just how things go.

Fun fact: Brian Kelly’s Notre Dame Fighting Irish went 4-8 last season. It really happened. Buy rings if you want. Definitely make posters and memes. Lord knows plenty on this little corner of the Internet have. But don’t expect it to happen twice.

I have long noted how, when you look at a given year’s S&P+ rankings, you can pretty quickly point out the teams that are likely to rise and fall the next year (from a records standpoint) by simply looking at the standout records. My favorite example is 2011, when both 7-6 Texas A&M (eighth in S&P+) and 8-5 Notre Dame (11th) seemed out of place, ranking much higher than their records suggested they should have. The next year, the two teams went a combined 23-3.

It doesn’t always work out in such a clean manner, but the bottom line is, sometimes your record doesn’t match your on-paper quality. That usually rectifies itself quickly.

That Notre Dame went 4-8 last year is certainly unique; it was only the second time since 1963 that the Irish won fewer than five games. The Gerry Faust era of the early-1980s is notorious for its mediocrity, but Faust’s Irish never went worse than 5-6.

That the Irish went 4-8 with a pretty good team is even more remarkable.

Best teams to finish with four or fewer wins (per S&P+), 2005-16:

2016 Notre Dame (4-8, plus-10.5 S&P+ rating, 26th)

2007 Washington (4-9, plus-9.8, 26th)

2013 Florida (4-8, plus-9.7, 33rd)

2005 Arkansas (4-7, plus-7.5, 33rd)

2012 Arkansas (4-8, plus-7.4, 39th)

2009 Virginia (3-9, plus-6.8, 35th)

2013 TCU (4-8, plus-5.1, 50th)

2008 Arkansas (4-8, plus-4.8, 41st)

2005 Washington State (4-7, plus-4.3, 46th)

2008 Baylor (4-8, plus-4.3, 42nd)

This list is both a warning sign and reason for hope. Of the nine non-Notre Dame teams above, five saw their records improve, sometimes dramatically, the next season.

In 2014, TCU’s Gary Patterson made some assistant coach changes, freshened up his offense, and went 12-1.

2009 Arkansas improved to 8-5 in Bobby Petrino’s second year in charge.

2006 Arkansas improved to 10-4.

2014 Florida improved to 7-5.

2006 Washington State improved to 6-6.

2009 Baylor didn’t improve because of a quarterback injury, but 2010 Baylor improved to 7-6, and 2011 Baylor soared.

At the same time, of the seven non-Notre Dame teams on the list that didn’t dump their coaches immediately, four had done so within two years. The bad feelings a season like this engenders are hard to overcome.

2016 in review

2016 Notre Dame statistical profile.

Here’s the most positive spin I can put on last season: Kelly didn’t lose the team. The Fighting Irish stuck together well enough that they continued to lose close games to good teams deep into the season. Sometimes a team collapses; Notre dame did not. In fact, it did the opposite.

First 4 games (1-3): Avg. percentile performance: 60% (~top 50) | Yards per play: ND 6.4, Opp 6.2 (plus-0.2)

Next 4 games (2-2): Avg. percentile performance: 74% (~top 35) | Yards per play: ND 5.6, Opp 4.4 (plus-1.2)

Last 4 games (1-3): Avg. percentile performance: 78% (~top 30) | Yards per play: ND 6.2, Opp 5.6 (plus-0.6)

After a dreadful defensive start, Kelly fired defensive coordinator Brian VanGorder four games into the season. That he hired him in the first place was a bit of an indictment, but there’s no question the defense improved after the change. The offense, meanwhile, remained mostly steady aside from a monsoon-addled 10-3 loss to NC State.

Notre Dame played at a top-30 level or so for most of the last two-thirds of the season. But the losses continued — by seven points to Stanford, by one point to Navy, by three points to Virginia Tech. The season finished with the first not-so-close loss (45-27 to USC), but even in that game the Irish created more scoring chances and won the field position battle, creating a decent opportunity for a win that didn’t come.

Kelly has had a fascinating relationship with close games at Notre Dame. His Irish lost five of their first seven one-possession finishes, then won 15 of 18. They lost three in a row and won five of six and have now lost eight of nine. Do the Irish have another drastic change in direction left?

Offense

Full advanced stats glossary.

Todd Graham has struggled the last couple of seasons as Arizona State head coach; after going 20-7 in 2013-14, he’s gone just 11-14 since. Defensive collapse has been the major cause — ASU ranked 114th in Def. S&P+ in 2016 — but losing assistants hasn’t helped.

Graham has churned out aggressive, speed-happy assistants throughout his career; he employed Chad Morris (now SMU’s head coach) and Gus Malzahn (Auburn) long ago at Tulsa, and it’s probably not a coincidence that his ASU offense regressed a bit in 2016 following the departure of longtime assistants Mike Norvell and Chip Long to Memphis. Norvell became head coach, Long became offensive coordinator, and despite losing all-world quarterback Paxton Lynch to the NFL, the Tigers continued to play at a top-40 level offensively last fall.

Long only has the single year of coordinator experience, but you could see how Kelly might be attracted to him as a potential energy booster.

With a pass-first attack, Memphis ranked 46th in Adj. Pace and excelled at creating one-on-one matchups and solo tackle opportunities. A trio of rushers (including two freshmen) combined for 1,838 yards at 5.9 per carry, and the combination of quarterback Riley Ferguson and receiver Anthony Miller combined to connect 95 times for 1,434 yards.

One could see similar numbers from Notre Dame this year. Running back Josh Adams combined decent efficiency (42 percent of carries gaining five-plus yards) with above average explosiveness, junior backup Dexter Williams was a bit all-or-nothing, and four-star freshman C.J. Holmes could be ready to play a small role.

Adams and company will be running behind a well-seasoned line that ranked 18th in Adj. Line Yards and returns five four of last year’s starters. Three of the four have started for two years, and the line could get a boost from young talent in the form of redshirt freshman blue-chippers Tommy Kraemer and Liam Eichenberg.

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Equanimeous St. Brown

Meanwhile, it’s easy to think that the Brandon Wimbush-to-Equanimeous St. Brown combination could thrive. St. Brown averaged 10.9 yards per target as a first-time No. 1 target, combining big-time efficiency (57 percent success rate) with high-end explosiveness (16.6 yards per catch).

Most of last year’s battery mates — sophomore Kevin Stepherson, junior C.J. Sanders, tight end Durham Smythe — return, as does tight end Alizé Mack, who averaged 10.6 yards per target in 2015 before missing last year because of academics. And if the spring is any indication, four-star sophomores Miles Boykin and Chase Claypool could be ready to play steady roles as well. [Update: Notre Dame also added Cameron Smith, a former 596-yard receiver at Arizona State, as a grad transfer.]

This offense should have all the pieces Long craves for creating mismatches and big plays. Wimbush’s only real experience so far came in going 3-for-5 passing and ripping off a 58-yard touchdown run against UMass in 2015. His athleticism is obvious, and if he’s ready to live up to his blue-chip status, this offense will hum. That’s still an “if” until proven otherwise, though.

Photo by Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images

Brandon Wimbush

Defense

It’s even easier to see what Kelly saw in Mike Elko. The longtime Dave Clawson assistant produced high-caliber defenses as Bowling Green defensive coordinator (31st in Def. S&P+ in 2012, 52nd in 2013) and found immediate, sustained success following Clawson to Wake Forest. While Wake’s offense hasn’t been good in what feels like decades, the Demon Deacons ranked 28th in Def. S&P+ in 2014 and 22nd in 2016.

With an experienced front seven and an ultra-young secondary, Wake created havoc up front and played things safe in the back. The Deacs also had one of the best red zone defenses in the country, allowing just 3.8 points per scoring opportunity (first downs inside the 40).

Elko inherits a defense that was so young last year that it’s still pretty young. He’ll be relying on sophomores in the front (tackles Jerry Tillery and Elijah Taylor, end Daelin Hayes) and back (corners Julian Love, Donte Vaughn, Troy Pride Jr., and Shaun Crawford, safeties Devin Studstill and Jalen Elliott). And while there are blue-chippers galore on the roster, few of them reside in the secondary. [Update: Star Navy transfer Alohi Gilman would compete for a starting safety job, if his unique eligibility waiver request went through.]

Still, this was a legitimately strong pass defense in the middle of the season, from when VanGorder was fired until the last two games against Virginia Tech and USC.

First 4 games: 64% completion rate, 14.3 yards per completion, 154.2 passer rating

Next 6 games: 57% completion rate, 10.8 yards per completion, 110.7 passer rating

Last 2 games: 69% completion rate, 11.5 yards per completion, 155.7 passer rating

Granted, that midseason sample includes the monsoon game against NC State and the Army and Navy games, but there’s still obvious potential here, especially the Irish can keep the same first string on the field for a longer period of time. Eleven different DBs averaged at least 0.8 tackles per game last year; only six played in all 12 games. That’s a sign of a rotation that is larger than a coach wanted it to be.

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Drue Tranquill

The front seven only has to replace three contributors, but end Isaac Rochell, tackle Jarron Jones, and linebacker James Onwualu were maybe the Irish’s three best havoc guys last year, combining for 29.5 tackles for loss, six sacks, and 10 passes defensed. The linebacking corps is particularly experienced, and between Nyles Morgan, converted safety Drue Tranquill, Greer Martini, and Asmar Bilal, he should have the attackers he needs there.

Firing VanGorder had an immediate effect last year. After allowing 200-plus rushing yards in three of their first four games, the Irish only did so three times in the last eight, and two of those instances were against option-heavy Army and Navy, who combined to pass for just 61 yards.

Even without Rochell, Jones, and Onwualu, this should be a strong front seven. The question is, how quickly can Elko come to trust the secondary? I would expect him to play things conservatively in the back, as he did at Wake.

Matt Cashore-USA TODAY Sports

Nyles Morgan

Special Teams

Special teams didn’t really help the cause. After ranking 35th in Special Teams S&P+ in 2015, the Irish fell to 80th because of shaky place-kicking range and woeful punt coverage. Tyler Newsome averaged a booming 43.5 yards per punt (26th in FBS), but opponents averaged 15.1 yards per return (123rd).

Ace return man C.J. Sanders was able to make up some of that difference, but if Newsome can avoid outkicking his coverage quite so much, this could theoretically be a top-50 unit even if kicker Justin Yoon’s range doesn’t change much.

2017 outlook

2017 Schedule & Projection Factors

Date Opponent Proj. S&P+ Rk Proj. Margin Win Probability 2-Sep Temple 67 15.5 81% 9-Sep Georgia 20 3.8 59% 16-Sep at Boston College 76 14.7 80% 23-Sep at Michigan State 44 7.1 66% 30-Sep Miami (Ohio) 88 23.9 92% 7-Oct at North Carolina 38 5.7 63% 21-Oct USC 7 -4.7 39% 28-Oct N.C. State 27 7.8 67% 4-Nov Wake Forest 64 14.8 80% 11-Nov at Miami 18 -1.3 47% 18-Nov Navy 71 18.3 85% 25-Nov at Stanford 12 -6.3 36%

Projected S&P+ Rk 17 Proj. Off. / Def. Rk 24 / 25 Projected wins 8.0 Five-Year S&P+ Rk 14.3 (9) 2- and 5-Year Recruiting Rk 10 / 8 2016 TO Margin / Adj. TO Margin* -4 / 0.7 2016 TO Luck/Game -1.9 Returning Production (Off. / Def.) 57% (58%, 56%) 2016 Second-order wins (difference) 7.2 (-3.2)

In terms of trust with the fan base, it’s possible that having such a bad year with such a demonstrably solid team is harder to overcome than a random collapse like, say, 2016 Michigan State’s. Notre Dame lost close games in about every way a team can lose a close game. It’s a new year, and Brian Kelly has two new coordinators with him to right the ship. But until the Irish indeed turn things around, then they remain the absurd underachiever that went 4-8 last year.

Still, a turnaround is realistic at worst and likely at best. Notre Dame dealt with preseason turnover in the defensive backfield and was juggling freshmen and sophomores in the back all year. The Irish encountered setback after setback but were as good in November as they were in September. Kelly brought in an exciting new defensive coordinator and an offensive coordinator with energy to burn.

It’s really easy to talk yourself into a significant Irish bounce back in 2017, in other words, and the numbers have your back if you choose to do so. S&P+ projects Notre Dame 17th in the country, and despite a schedule that features five opponents projected 27th or better (and only one projected worse than 76th), the Irish are the projected favorite in nine games and are expected to win eight on average.

This is all well and good. But it’s hard to forget that Notre Dame was projected 11th, with a likely 9-3 record, last year. The Irish underachieved the rating by a little and the record by a lot. And seasons that are disappointing to this degree are hard to overcome.

I wrote in last year’s preview that, in overcoming quarterback injury and remaining in the Playoff hunt all the way to the end of the year, Brian Kelly had pulled off his best coaching performance in 2015. He followed that up with his worst. His recent performances have flipped as significantly as his close-game fortune. Can they both flip back this fall?

Team preview stats

All power conference preview data to date.

[auburnfamilynews]

Have you ever wondered what might have happened to Tommy Tuberville if he, say, hired Gus Malzahn instead of Tony Franklin? In this edition, Oscar makes his best guess at such a scenario.

It was just two weeks ago that the University of Connecticut announced that Rhett Lashlee would be their new offensive coordinator for the Huskies football team. Of course, the announcement surprised Auburn fans all over as well as caused speculation as to why Malzahn's long time protégé would be leaving and who would be replacing Lashlee at the position. I am of the opinion that Rhett left of his own accord. Only once in Coach Lashlee's career has he been away from Malzahn as the Co-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach at Samford in 2011. He quickly rejoined Gus at Arkansas State as the Red Wolves offensive coordinator at the ripe age of 29.

However, I am not here so much to talk about Lashlee as I am about Malzahn. More specifically, to talk about Gus during his time when he was still an offensive coordinator and ask a big "What if" question. It is the type of "What if" that could have changed the fortunes of many Auburn figures and football seasons. It is the kind of "What if" that could have rewritten a big part of Auburn football's narrative over nearly the past decade.

What if Tommy Tuberville had hired Gus Malzahn as Auburn's Offensive Coordinator at the end of the 2007 football season?

REALITY

I don't want to spend too much time reminiscing and rehashing the Tigers' 2007 season so here is a brief summation that I wrote up from almost four years ago:

To say Auburn's 2007 season was crazy would be an understatement. It was a season chock-full of come-from-behind-triumphs. Six times the Tigers mounted late fourth-quarter drives, and four of those were enough to seal victories. They include moments we never want to forget and moments we've done everything to forget.

It was a season in which Auburn tacked on its sixth straight victory over Alabama, but at the same time, the Tigers watched their all-time lead over Georgia being to slowly chip away. This was an Auburn team that showed so much promise and found ways to come up short.

The 2007 season came to a close with a win in the Chick-Fil-A Bowl against Clemson. Before heading into that game, Tuberville released fan-favorite offensive coordinator Al Borges and brought in spread-no-huddle-air-raid guru Tony Franklin from Troy. While only installing the foundation of the scheme, it was enough for Auburn to produce its highest offensive performance for the season. Also leaving the team was Auburn's other fan-favorite coach, defensive coordinator Will Muschamp, whose departure was reportedly due to a disagreement with assistant athletic director, Tim Jackson. Muschamp was replaced by Paul Rhoads, then-defensive coordinator for the Pittsburgh Panthers.

Years later I have caught myself wondering as to why Tuberville hired Franklin. According to a quote that I was able to find from Auburn's official website, it is almost like he viewed Franklin's career the way an unfamiliar fan would:

"Tony has had a tremendous amount of success offensively in the Southeastern Conference and during his most recent position at Troy," said Auburn coach Tommy Tuberville. ``He teaches an exciting brand of offense that has posted some very impressive numbers, statistically."

Now, I am not about to make too much more assumptions behind Tuberville's reasoning for making the hire beyond that quote. College football had been changing dramatically as spread variant offenses made their way into the playbooks of major college programs. It could be speculated that Tubs saw this evolution taking place, decided to take a chance, and to evolve with it.

His desire to change up his offense wasn't wrong. Auburn's offense had started to stagnant in 2006 and eventually slid all the way down to 85th nationally in total offense by the end of 2007. There were contributing factors such as injuries and recruiting busts, but some have viewed that Al Borges's system might have been too rigid to adapt to the personnel he no longer had available to him. A change was needed, but Tuberville's choice as to who to change that offense, though, maybe wasn't the best.

Auburn's offensive identity has long been associated with running the football and fans have taken to referring to the program as "Running Back U" for that reason. What is amusing, though, especially during Tuberville's tenure, is the OC's hired to call Auburn's offense for Tubs were coordinators known for passing. Mazzone, Petrino, and Borges: each of them pro-style guys who, at some time or another during their respective careers, coached quarterbacks as well. Also, it wasn't like Tuberville was unfamiliar with these styles of offense before their hiring. During his time at Miami, the Hurricanes were just as well known for their pass-heavy-high-scoring offenses as their soul crushing defenses. So tapping Franklin to install his air raid offensive system at Auburn makes sense in its own way. However, 650 miles west of Auburn, another bright and upcoming pass happy offensive coordinator was lighting up the non-power conference world.

MEANWHILE, IN OKLAHOMA...

Gus Malzahn, in his second year as a college coach, had relocated from the University of Arkansas to the University of Tulsa. There, under Todd Graham and aided by Herb Hand, Gus took the Golden Hurricanes to new heights. Tulsa, in one season with Malzahn, had a 5000-yard passer, three 1000 yard receivers, and one 1000 yard rusher. It was also the first time in NCAA football that a team had accomplished such a feat.

Senior quarterback Paul Smith, a three-star pro-style prospect from Owasso, Oklahoma, completed 60% of his passes, threw 47 touchdowns and rushed for 13 touchdowns. In a 2008 interview with the New York Times, Todd Graham said of Malzahn, "If I just let him do whatever he wanted, he'd throw the ball every play." This Gus sounds far different from the Gus we know today. A Gus more known for spread option running attack than bombing defenses into oblivion. But maybe it is the same Gus, but a Gus who has not run headlong into SEC administrators and fanbases yet.

Junior running back Tarrion Adams, a two-star prospect from Moore, Oklahoma, exploded under Malzahn's system crossing the goal-line eleven times by rushing for 1225 yards and receiving for 301 yards. He also threw two touchdown passes of his own that season, because you know, Gus use to do tricky stuff like that.

It is here that Malzahn begins to really further develop his reputation as an offense guru. In 2008, Tulsa will again take the top spot in total offense and move up to second in scoring offense. At Auburn that same year, well, we already know what happens to Tuberville and his Tigers that season.

ALTERNATE AUniverse

So from here on out everything will be speculation based on results and trends from previous years and correlating them to what did take place in 2008. This is just one possible scenario:

After finishing the regular season 8-4 and the bowl game announcement against Clemson, Tuberville begins searching to replace Al Borges. He gets in touch with Malzahn through shared agent, Jimmy Sexton and offers him Borges's job with the promise that he (Tuberville) will not interfere with Malzahn's play calling. Gus agrees, but under the condition that he will still coach Tulsa in their bowl game against Bowling Green State University. Tubs explains to Malzahn that he wants to employ Gus's offense for Auburn's upcoming bowl game, but Gus reiterates that he will not leave until the season is done at Tulsa. Tuberville unwillingly agrees and as a result, Auburn loses in overtime to Clemson finishing the year 8-5.

Malzahn arrives on campus in January, meets the offensive staff (who probably aren't all that excited about him) and hits the recruiting trail. In this timeline, the incoming class remains pretty much the same with the exception of Chris Todd not being recruited. Instead, Malzahn plans to focus on fellow Arkansas native, Kodi Burns, Neil Caudle, and further develop three-star dual threat QB Barrett Trotter as well as four-star athlete, Deron Furr.

Gus begins implementing his offense in the spring spreading first team snaps between Burns and Caudle. Beat writers and bloggers are abuzz regarding Auburn's new uptempo offense with plenty of quotes from coaches and players alike about the fast-paced, high-flying offense. A modest crowd shows up for A-Day to see for themselves only to get a decent performance, but nothing truly exciting. Auburn heads into the doldrums of the offseason with a top 10 preseason ranking.

Soon enough fall camp arrives and the Tigers get to work for the upcoming season. Malzahn has Burns and Caudle split reps with the first team unit and has Furr and Trotter working with the second team and scout units. Eventually, the coaching staff decides to redshirt Trotter. Also, in this timeline, Furr is never booted from the team due to a confrontation he had with teammates after moving to defense. As the season nears, Burns, Caudle, and Furr all get an equal chance with the starters, but Malzahn and the staff settle on Kodi as the starting quarterback on game day against Louisiana-Monroe.

In the first two weeks, the Tigers offense is effective and Auburn cruises past the Warhawks and Golden Eagles without too much trouble. The Tigers have a bit of a turnover bug, but it isn't anything that Auburn's defense can't overcome. Much like Graham, Tuberville has Malzahn keep his offense as balanced as possible and the running game churns up the sod with a passing attack that keeps opposing secondaries on their toes.

Auburn hits the road for their third game against conference and West Division opponent, Mississippi State. Turnovers and penalties really hamper Auburn's offensive efforts, but the Tigers' defense is able to respond and keep the Bulldogs at bay. Auburn mounts a few successful drives and is able to leave Starkville with a 21-3 victory.

Week 4 arrives and Auburn faces another conference and divisional match-up against LSU in Jordan-Hare Stadium. The orange and blue Tigers struggle much of the first quarter, but a couple of big plays and penalties in the second give Auburn the lead heading into the half. LSU's defense really comes alive and stuffs Auburn's offensive efforts at every turn while the Bayou Bengals offense chip away at Auburn's lead. Late in the fourth quarter, Auburn mounts a drive that ends with Wes Byrum putting the ball through the uprights in what will surely be the game winner. However, Les Miles, the Mad Hatter himself once again pulls off the seemingly impossible and LSU escape with the victory. Auburn falls back a few spots out of the top 10.

The next week, Auburn hosts listless Tennessee and drops a beating on the Volunteers similar to the 2004 regular season beat down. Tuberville has Malzahn rein it in and some careless turnovers help out Tennessee some, but not enough to get back into the game. The Tigers get a solid win over a cross-divisional SEC opponent and pretty much put one of the final nails in the Phillip Fulmer's coffin.

Auburn goes on the road for the second time in 2008, this time up to Nashville to take on Vanderbilt. The Tigers hit the Commodores early and often, but Vandy is not about to go down easy with the help of some badly timed turnovers on the part of Auburn. The Commodores give the Tigers a real good scare, but Auburn avoids a potential upset and the Tigers are halfway through the season at 5-1.

The Arkansas Razorbacks with new head coach, Bobby Petrino, come to Auburn and the errors and miscues that the Tigers have managed to avoid for the most part catch up with them in a bad way. Time and again, drives are killed by penalties, sacks, and turnovers. The Hogs jump on every opportunity and keep the came way too close for comfort. In the fourth quarter, Arkansas takes the lead sending Auburn into panic mode. Malzahn pulls out all the stops and with some clever, well-timed "trickeration" the Tigers are able to snatch victory away from almost certain defeat.

After a week off, the Tigers travel to Morgantown to take on the Mountaineers of West Virginia. The match-up turns into one of the premier games of the year with both team's offenses gobbling up yardage. Unfortunately, WVU gets some critical second half stops and Auburn picks up their second loss of the season.

Auburn is back on the road again, this time out west to take on Ole Miss. Where the game against WVU had been a wide open affair, this game is the complete opposite. Solid defensive play mixed with penalties keep both teams out of the endzone till the end of the first half where Ole Miss is able to punch through. The Tigers' offense hits back in the beginning of the second half, but the Rebels are able to answer back. In what turns out to be an utterly insane fourth quarter, three times the Tigers' defense makes heroic stops only to literally throw each opportunity away with three interceptions near the endzone. The Tigers head back to the Plains with a third loss.

Auburn takes down UT-Martin with little effort in a game played mostly by graduating seniors and second/third stringers.

Preseason favorites, Georgia, comes to Auburn and both the Bulldogs and Tigers play a gritty game of football with each team's defense playing extremely well. The Tigers catch a couple of lucky breaks in the way of two Dawg fumbles, which Auburn is able to convert into points. The rest of the game is a nail-biting affair, which sees another late game lead change given up by Auburn. However, Malzahn is able to string a series of plays together that puts the Tigers over the goal-line for the winning touchdown in the final seconds.

The Iron Bowl. Auburn heads up to Tuscaloosa to take on undefeated Alabama with the hope of pushing the Tigers six-game streak to seven. Again, some great defense played by both teams, but a poor punt by Bama gives Auburn decent field position for an early strike and a touchdown. The Tide are able to counter with a clock-killing drive for a field goal followed by a couple long runs in their next series to give Bama the lead. Auburn races against the final minutes of the first half to have their drive stall outside the red zone. A last second field goal is blocked and the half ends. The third quarter is a disaster for Auburn. Saban's defense is smothering Malzahn's offense and a couple of poorly timed fumbles aren't helping the Tiger's cause. The Tide capitalize on each mistake and are starting to put the game out of reach. The fourth quarter sees Auburn respond with a couple more quick strikes, but in the end, it is not enough to overcome the third quarter deficit. The Tigers lose and Auburn's longest win streak over Alabama comes to an end. Auburn finishes the regular season with 8 wins and 4 loses.

Epilogue

Tuberville's bold move to revitalize Auburn's offense by moving to a spread-based system pays off, more or less. While the number in the "wins and losses" columns relatively stay the same from the previous season, the offensive output under Gus Malzahn is enough to get fans excited about the future for the Tigers. Other programs in the conference begin to look closely at Auburn's system and begin implementing similar schemes or variations. However, internally, Tuberville's longtime offensive staff are still apprehensive in completely changing over to the system completely despite the results and successes that Malzahn has shown to be capable. Face value compromises are agreed upon, but tension remains throughout the offseason and into the start of the 2009 season.

Final Thoughts

If you have read this far, congratulations! As I stated earlier this was all just one possible scenario. In my opinion, I don't think Auburn's defense would have fallen off in 2008 with Tuberville and his staff despite implementing Gus's offense the way it did in 2009 with Chizik. This would have helped through a lot of the growing pains and fatigue as experienced in the middle of the 2009 season. I do believe, though, that Malzahn was not going to be able to completely recreate what he did at Tulsa either. It's hard to imagine that the likes of Nall, Ensminger, and whoever else, would readily give in to listening to another outsider. Especially an outsider with ideas like Malzahn. The infamous "Tubershell" still would have taken place, but probably much sooner, and at times to possibly to the defense's detriment.

If you think this could have turned out differently or just want to post "LOL TL;DR" please do so in the comments below. Stay tuned for another exciting "What if?" in the near future, same Whiskey time, same Whiskey channel, College and Magnolia dot com!

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