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John Oliver's main piece this week was on the NCAA and "student-athletes". Nothing that most of us don't already know, but still a good delivery of core issues.

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I was watching that yesterday morning at the office and one of my coworkers goes "I'd like that show if he wasn't such a socialist bastard" and "European political pundits? No thanks" and it was an awkward moment.

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Sounders season is a couple of games in and I just haven't had time to even watch the highlights. I hope I make it to more games this year, but I have a feeling I won't.

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I was watching that yesterday morning at the office and one of my coworkers goes "I'd like that show if he wasn't such a socialist bastard" and "European political pundits? No thanks" and it was an awkward moment.

 

Socialist bastards are the best kind of bastards.

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Sounders season is a couple of games in and I just haven't had time to even watch the highlights. I hope I make it to more games this year, but I have a feeling I won't.

As a pretty big San Jose fan I was so happy when we beat the Sounders last weekend. I wasn't expecting much this season (we were last place last season) and lost our first game. When we got a red card 50 minutes in I figured it was over, but we managed to pull it out (and by we I mean the Sounders gave us a free goal).

I'm still not hoping for much, but we have our new stadium, a new (technically old) manager, and some new players so maybe things will turn around this year.

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They're just back to normal. This ownership group has been incompetent since buying the team in '81, and now that the players they got during their lucky drafting streak are past their primes, they're right back to screwing everything up.

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Seriously what are the Phillies even doing

 

Honest, relatively informed answer, they're rebuilding. Pat Gillick (probably the best GM since 1960 or so, author of the 2008 World Series winner) took over as interim President when David Montgomery was sick about a year and a half ago, and ever since the roster decisions seem to make sense. There's a a general feeling among smart baseball people I trust that his thumb is definitely on the scale of roster decisions.

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As a pretty big San Jose fan I was so happy when we beat the Sounders last weekend. I wasn't expecting much this season (we were last place last season) and lost our first game. When we got a red card 50 minutes in I figured it was over, but we managed to pull it out (and by we I mean the Sounders gave us a free goal).

I'm still not hoping for much, but we have our new stadium, a new (technically old) manager, and some new players so maybe things will turn around this year.

 

I like watching San Jose play and I hope they do well this season. I feel like there's a lot less of the dirty play that I've gotten used to seeing when they are on the field.

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Badfinger, as an Eagles fan what is your opinion on the Kelly rebuild?  As a neutral observer I liked the McCoy trade and some of his early decisions but then things started to stack up against him.  Not sure I would trust the injury prone trio of Mathews, Bradford, and Murray every Sunday.  I've read that others Eagles coaches will revamp their teams significantly by year three but this seems like an extreme overhaul.  What are your thoughts?

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Every year my NCAA March Madness brackets are systematically dismantled. Usually it takes more than the first half day of games though.

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The Big 12, fucking things up like no other this year.  Seriously, both of you?  You were 3 seeds. 

 

Edited to add: I didn't realize how many ISU grads I knew.  The public gnashing of teeth on Facebook is actually pretty entertaining. 

 

Also, if Embiid jinxes KU by picking on Cyclone fans, I'll be pissed. 

 

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Badfinger, as an Eagles fan what is your opinion on the Kelly rebuild?  As a neutral observer I liked the McCoy trade and some of his early decisions but then things started to stack up against him.  Not sure I would trust the injury prone trio of Mathews, Bradford, and Murray every Sunday.  I've read that others Eagles coaches will revamp their teams significantly by year three but this seems like an extreme overhaul.  What are your thoughts?

 

I was happier when the rumors were flying that the Eagles were getting a 2nd round pick rather than giving in the Foles trade, but overall I'm happy with it. For McCoy's cap hit, the Eagles basically got Bradford, Kiko Alonso, and Murray. I'm a little unused to the crazy spending spree because the Eagles have been so disciplined about salary cap since Lurie bought the team, but overall I think they've improved with the deals they made. In a vacuum I absolutely choose Bradford over Foles. I would have liked to retain Maclin quite a bit, and from all sounds of it they did very much attempt to keep him, but KC offered quite a bit more. I'll also miss McCoy! I think he was a phenomenal back! But I think they will get good production out of the backfield they have now, and Kiko Alonso is for all intents and purposes the best interior linebacker (on paper) they could have gotten. I also like Byron Maxwell quite a bit better than Cary Williams, although he's obviously an overpay.

 

I just hope they have a plan for wide receiver, because screw Riley Cooper.

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For McCoy's cap hit, the Eagles basically got Bradford, Kiko Alonso, and Murray.

Are you thinking that the cap hits for those 3 are less than the hit from McCoy? Because Bradford's cap hit for 2013 alone ($12,985,000) is bigger than what McCoy's hit was going to be ($11,950,000).

Basically, losing Foles and McCoy and gaining Alonso and Bradford amounts to the Eagles freeing around 700k in cap room.

EDIT: Sorry, miscalculated. McCoy had $3.4m in pro-rated signing bonuses as yet unpaid that accelerated onto the cap when traded. So not 700k up, but 2.7m down.

EDIT 2: For precision, really only 1.7m accelerates onto the cap. The other 1.7m was part of the 11.95m but remains on the Eagles' cap despite the trade.

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Oh I know, it's not direct. Bradford is a big chunk of change on the cap this year. On the other hand, it's only salary. No roster bonus, signing bonus, whatever extras. If they ship him off (I don't believe they will) they don't pay his salary. Smarter people than me were framing it that way. Maybe they didn't use cap, maybe they said money.

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I'm kinda at a loss to what they might be talking about.  Bradford's money is all salary, true, but in the last year of a deal the only real difference if the money is in salary/bonus or a signing bonus is if you want to cut or trade the player (and I doubt that).  Foles was also in the last year of his deal, so it's not like they opened up more cap space in 2016 by doing that.

 

Since Bradford is all salary, it means that he's actually owed almost $13m in cash from the Eagles.  Combine that with the $9m they're going to pay out to Murray this year ($1m salary, $3m roster bonus, $5m signing bonus) and it's already significantly more in cash than they would have paid to Foles (~$1.5m) and McCoy ($10.25m), although a potential McCoy extension could have gotten them to the same costly range.

 

The only real money dump move in the pack was McCoy for Alonso.  Alonso's in the last year of his deal, but he's an RFA at the end of the year, and that combined with having missed all of last season with an ACL tear will probably depress the market for him unless he's a world-beater this year.  McCoy was a money dump, but his cap hit for Murray in 2016 and 2017 will be higher than McCoy was under either his old deal or his new deal, and under McCoy's new deal, his 2015 cap hit matches Murray.  The big advantage in the Murray contract over McCoy is that the small-ish signing bonus and guaranteed money being in the form of his 2016 salary minimizes dead money on the back end, meaning that he can be cut to save $4m in 2017 or to save $7m in 2018.

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I now realized that the reason that comment makes no sense is it's not what was actually said!

 

http://www.csnphilly.com/football-philadelphia-eagles/what-chip-kelly-doing-eagles-money

 

“The way we looked at it,” Kelly said, "is we got (LB) Kiko Alonso and (CB) Byron Maxwell for LeSean McCoy and the bottom line is almost every decision that you have to make is governed by money."

 

Then they went and traded and signed a bunch more players.

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The playoffs in the Swedish Hockey League are in full swing, and as the Sharks are playing terribly in the NHL I am paying way more attention to my hometown team. After a bad start, going down 1-3 in games against their opponent, they've now won the last two games in Sudden death to force a final 7th game at our home arena.

If they can complete this comeback I will be so happy.

Sad part is that if we manage to go on and win even more, the NHL will just steal away all our good players for next season :/

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KU plays Wichita State in about an hour.  Which just blows, nothing good comes from that matchup for me.  KU is my alma mater, and a kid from my small hometown plays on the WSU team. 

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The playoffs in the Swedish Hockey League are in full swing, and as the Sharks are playing terribly in the NHL I am paying way more attention to my hometown team. After a bad start, going down 1-3 in games against their opponent, they've now won the last two games in Sudden death to force a final 7th game at our home arena.

If they can complete this comeback I will be so happy.

Sad part is that if we manage to go on and win even more, the NHL will just steal away all our good players for next season :/

 

So I presume you're from Gothenburg, right? I spent a year living there, but at the time the Indians were not particularly good and I ended up not going to see any of their games. I also ended up not seeing any football matches from any of the teams in town, even though I meant to. In retrospect I just felt like staying at home a lot that year. 

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KU plays Wichita State in about an hour.  Which just blows, nothing good comes from that matchup for me.  KU is my alma mater, and a kid from my small hometown plays on the WSU team. 

 

KU has been dodging WSU for years.  I'm sure they played with a huge chip on their shoulder.  Either way, KU had another good season with another regular season title.  No shame in that.  As an OU fan I definitely still think KU are the big dogs in the conference and will be next season as well.  I'm just glad OU managed to make it past Dayton.  It's our first Sweet 16 since Blake Griffin was here.  The last time we played MSU in the Sweet 16 they beat us.  It could happen against.  Mich St is so good in the NCAA.

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I'm happy WSU is advancing, and would love to see them be the ones to bump off Kentucky (ha, yeah, right).  Just simultaneously bummed about the 'hawks biting the dust in opening weekend for the second year in a row. 

 

Overall I'm super disappointed in the Big 12's showing in the tournament this year though.  7 teams made the tournament, and only 2 got past this weekend. 

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