No, that was the time before last. We meet every 4 years. The real previous time we met, we nearly had y'all but the famed TB12 4th quarter comeback fucked us in the ass.

Ooooooh snap, you're right, I forgot about that!

The Packers are getting absolutely destroyed, holy shit. This is Seahawks v. Broncos territory. They only just now got on the board, almost halfway through the third quarter.

And the start of the 4th in the Pats-Steelers game is giving off similar (if not even bigger) blowout vibes.
I know everyone says defense wins championships (and the Pats D is certainly better than the Packers D), but I'm almost inclined to say the Falcons will win just on the merit of their offense. It's just so goddamned good. Matt Ryan has probably solidified himself as the MVP today.

Gimme a minute to clean off my crystal ball

Any Australians watch the Big Bash? Yesterday's game between the Heat and the Sixers was an absolute classic. The whole tournament is great. Looking forward to watching the Scorchers take on the Sixers in the final.

Looks like no NHl players at the Olympics in 2018: https://beta.theglobeandmail.com/sports ... ice=mobile

Obviously removing the world's best hockey players from the tournament will lower the quality of play. However, it might even up the competition, allowing the potential for more epic upsets rather than the same countries running over all opponents.

I personally prefer it to be amateur only, but it is admittedly easier to root for another country as a backup or if your team gets eliminated early simply because you know the players from that country. Oh well, if USA gets wiped out early I'll just root for Slovakia or something.

I prefer the amateur-only format as well. I'll get a chance to see certain players play that I otherwise wouldn't get to.

Amateur-only was fine back when the Olympics were a few dozen Ancient Greek dudes in loincloths whipping out their discus. But nowadays, the Olympics are an enormous corporate bureaucracy that bans piddly-assed backwater high schools from using their trademarked symbols: http://wnep.com/2015/03/17/olympic-ring ... trademark/

So I feel that removing professional athletes from the Games would be pretty hypocritical.

Back in ye olde days, amateurism itself was the tool used to keep the lower classes and undeserving races out of the games, since they could always find some instance where a player wore a free shirt or something and say that constituted being paid for the sport, which makes them professionals, which makes them unworthy of Olympic glory. Pick your poison...

I too am fascinated by the weird mental gymnastics that late-19th and early-20th century sports performed in trying to define who's amateur and who's pro. What is really payment and what is just semi-shady incentives and favours? Some fun stuff there, like the Ottawa "Silver Seven" - was their post-Stanley Cup silver nugget just a gift, or payment which rendered them ineligible?
I fail to see how you can dredge up a racist or classist motive behind any of that though...

So I don't know much about the Super Bowl or the NFL in general, but this is a hell of a comeback from New England! Wow!

That game was fucking awesome.

That was the craziest Super Bowl I have ever seen in my life and it definitely feels like a capoff of how crazy last year was as well. The team that I was rooting for didn't win but boy the game had an exciting ending. Finally a Super Bowl that has went into overtime... I never thought that would ever happen in my lifetime and boy was it great that it did.

In hindsight those info graphics about how many championships Atlanta vs. Boston has won is really rubbing salt in the wound. Buck/Aikman were talking already in the 2nd quarter about how no team had come back from a 14 deficit, and Atlanta was up by 25 points in the 3rd quarter.

Absolutely unbelievable. I can't wait to see all of my Jets/Giants fan coworkers tomorrow. Brady = GOAT.

I absolutely hate Tom Brady and the Patriots as a whole, but he's cemented his legacy as the undisputed GOAT.

Been a Falcons fan since the early Vick years. I actually fell asleep around 9:30 because I assumed it was over.

Fuck.

The big, epic comeback is only exciting drama when it's the good guys doing it. Otherwise god dammit who wants to see that? This was like when Booker T had that huge run in 2003, overcoming his past and having a huge redemption and Triple H just spent months beating him down psychologically and making his life hell, only for Wrestlemania to come around and Haitch just buries Book after one Pedigree. It's like watching a 007 movie where the nefarious villain constantly has the upper hand over Bond, then in the climax they actually kill Bond and escape unscathed. THE END! NO MORAL!

Fuck, kicking myself right now because I stopped watching after the Falcons got their fourth touchdown. Assumed that was the game right there.

I work 10 minutes away from Gillette Stadium. Seeing the Pats as HHH in this scenario is crap. I'm not a Pats fan beyond the usual "home team" perspective, I don't care for football (or most sports), but the Pats can get things done without marrying the boss's daughter.

Nah, they're more like John Cena. In fact, if you had Brady sporting a throwback shirt with some ugly-as-sin color scheme...

Hehe yeah it's so true! Never give the other guys credit or blame. If your team pulls it off, it's an epic comeback. Other way around, it's "we fucked up."

I absolutely loved it and I had no horse in this race. Fuck Goodell, that was the greatest thing I've ever seen. He was booed so furiously you couldn't even hear his words.

A couple details that make that result even worse:

-The time between the one Pedigree and the 3 count to Booker was I believe 37 seconds. He was basically murdered by that one move.

-Triple H spent the whole buildup to the match talking about how "people like Booker T" couldn't be World Champion, basically saying Booker can't be champion because he's black. And then Triple H wins the match anyway in the manner he did and Booker never made it back to the main event scene as a serious challenger until he became King Booker 3 years later.

Actually I think Booker was meant to win the title at Mania. Watch those promos again and it seems obvious Booker was meant to win... but then WWE signed Goldberg and they decided to make new plans and let Triple H win at Mania. They wanted Triple H's reign to last a long time for Goldberg to be the one to terminate that reign of terror. So yeah just kind of wrong timing. Also, Goldberg should have won that SummerSlam EC. Trips was injured and barely did anything in that match and that killed Berg's momentum. Then he'd win it one month later and lose it two months later again in a triple threat against Triple H and Kane. 2003 was a pretty shitty year for Raw with Triple H's reign of terror in the literal sense with AWFUL matches against Scott Steiner(2 FUCKING PPVs?!) and Kevin Nash.People who praise Evolution just remember the way they unfolded, which admittedly it was great. But from 2003 to mid-2004? They were boring and just dominated Raw with Batista and Orton being Trips' thugs.

Oh and btw, King Bookah was awesome!

See what you've done, BH? You spoke of wrestling and now the wrestling thread's nerds are invading.

**rips off jacket, reveals nWo shirt**

WE'RE. TAKING. OVER.

Back on-topic, gotta love the "Roger that" headlines today. God, Goodell is such a prick that I laugh at his displeasure and don't even care about football.

At the Superbowl, NBA legend Shaquille O'Neal and gold winning gymnast Simone Biles:

Jesus she's even in heels!

For real though, the WWE comparison was more to showcase how much it sucks when David finally has his chance and has glory in his grasp only for Goliath to just suddenly and irreparably buttfuck them to death and crush everybody's dreams in the process. Lesnar squashing Taker was a shock and a bummer but it had a narrative upside, HHH pummeling Booker T into dust off one move was just devastating (and from what I've read/heard, it had less to do with Goldberg being signed and more to do with that just being the era where HHH was in Shawn Michaels mode and was just flat out refusing to drop the belt, and with his clout he had the sway to get away with it).

In all honesty though, I think the reason the Pats making that crazy comeback is such a downer for a Pats hater like me is because they did earn it, they did have an angle that was easy to root for. Part of me loves seeing Goodell having his nose rubbed in it after he insisted on playing sheriff and dragging the whole league's reputation through the mud, but the part that sucked was that of course it was the Patriots. Of course it just fucking had to be the team that gets caught cheating and cutting corners all the time, of course it had to be Brady refusing to cooperate and doing everything in his power to prove he was guilty without just flat out saying it. Was the Deflategate thing really that big of a deal? No, but the fact that it was god damned Brady and the Pats made it suck. It wasn't a redemption story, it was two mega powerful bullies playing chicken with each other and both of them flat out refusing to admit they were doing anything wrong no matter how incredibly obvious it was. I wanted them both to lose. Go Whalers.

But yeah, there's no way to say the Pats didn't win this on pure skill and moxie. There weren't bullshit calls going their way (hell if anything I thought Atlanta was getting all of the calls, at least early on), there was no tuck rule, there was no spygate, there was no headsets mysteriously cutting out, it was just Atlanta getting complacent and blowing a massive lead because they were stupid and let their guard down against the most dominant team of the last two decades. Between the drive where Atlanta gave up three consecutive third down conversions on dumb, indefensible penalties, Ryan getting sacked for like negative eighty yards and knocking them out of field goal range, and Edelman's completely ludicrous catch, there's nobody to blame for the loss but Atlanta and nobody to praise for the win except New England. God dammit.

I don't wanna be the guy that points at conspiracy theories saying "actually, the Pats did cheat", buuuuuuuuut...saying there weren't headset problems is inaccurate. Matt Ryan's headset most certainly fucked up and they most certainly had to burn a timeout over it, one they definitely could've used on that final drive of theirs.
Pats still 100% won the game on their own merit, just a little note

I love some of the (NFL) images in this article, such as...

Atlantic Division is such a joke this year. Montreal has already hit the snooze button atop the standings, and who's gonna catch them? It's midnight in Ottawa and the Senators have turned back into a pumpkin. The Leafs are interesting, but still a bunch of noobs. Boston slipped one point out of a playoff spot and immediately surrendered, firing Claude Julien who's one of the better coaches in the league today. Florida, Tampa and the Detroit Dead Things are all pretty pathetic; and Buffalo's recent contributions to the All-Star Game include Zemgus Girgensons and Kyle Okposo - for real.

This pissed me off. Any Bruin fan will tell you, Julien has been a scapegoat for our shitty front office for a while now, and they finally axed him. Neely and Sweeney should've been let go. Tuukka is spent, we have no real backup goalie, and for some fucking reason Jimmy Hayes and Matt Beleskey are still allowed on the ice while promising young talent like Austin Czarnik get to sit every other night. If Sweeney trades away the rights to McAvoy and Forsbacka-Karlsson before the deadline, I'm calling for his head.

That's why hiring beloved former players to management positions is a double-edged sword. If they turn out incompetent, it's harder for the higher-ups to balls up and turf em out, because they're part of the team's identity or some such pablum, whereas the coach is just some guy.

Yup. We'll see what the future holds.

If the Caps don't win the Cup this year, I'm never going to take that team seriously ever again. On paper, they should've won like four times already. The NHL doesn't play out on paper, I get that, but goddamn...a team that stacked and consistent needs to bring home some hardware (and not just a President's Trophy).

Dallas' Jiri Hudler scores on own empty net, goal awarded to Chris Kelly of Ottawa:

http://thecomeback.com/nhl/dallas-stars ... nalty.html

"You always miss 100% of the shots you don't take..." Unless you're Chris Kelly.

haha yeah. The 2nd Czech player to do that with the Stars after Patrik Stefan!

A real shame about Claude Julien, he's a great coach who had to deal with bad décisions from his GMs. I'm pretty sure he'll be the first Vegas coach.

Claude Julien is a great coach indeed. However, after almost ten years with the same team, it's time to move on because the fire won't burn forever. If I were one of the bottom teams, I would try anything to get such an experienced coach. Dave Tippett is a solid coach as well but hasn't been very successful lately. Maybe Julien should go coach the Coyotes and Dave Tippett the Bruins. I'm sure such a change would be beneficial for both coaches and both teams.

Hey, what do y'all think of this: https://ca.sports.yahoo.com/news/hartfo ... 20258.html
It seems clear that the Barclays Center wants to toss the Islanders out by 2019, possibly even 2018. But Hartford... that's a minor league city. They proved that in the 90s, when the Whalers' attendance barely outpaced the Ottawa Senators who at the time were playing in a junior-sized rink. I'd be sad to see the Isles get the boot - unless maybe they become the revived Quebec Nordiques!

I think it'd be perfect to have another team out west, specifically Seattle, but I guess the hold up there is they don't have a venue and aren't really in a rush to build one...so Quebec, to me, would be the next best spot. You've already got your fan base and a venue.