Wednesday’s Den: Mid-week musings………

— I’m wondering about how they compute TV ratings; Monday night, I had the split-screen on YouTubeTV the whole night, with the Raiders-Lions game on one side and the World Series game on the other.

Does each game get half-credit for me watching them? Inquiring minds would like to know.

— Rangers 11, Diamondbacks 7
Texas scored 5 runs in 2nd inning, 5 more in third.
Marcus Semien scored twice, knocked in five runs.
Rangers are now 10-0 on road in the playoff.
Texas leads series 3-1, can win first World Series title tonite.

From July 8-August 11, Arizona had the worst record in the major leagues, but they still made it this far, so even if they lose this World Series, they’ve had an excellent season.

— Around 1:10am, it came across the Interweb that the Las Vegas Raiders fired both their coach and general manager.

Raiders lost 26-14 in Detroit Monday night; game wasn’t nearly as close as the score indicated. Las Vegas is 3-5 this year, 9-16 in its 1.5 years under coach Josh McDaniels.

McDaniels is now 20-33 in two head coaching stops, Las Vegas/Denver; he didn’t finish his second season in either place. Another guy who got rich because he knows Tom Brady, who ironically, is now a minority owner of the Raiders.

— Central Michigan 37, Northern Illinois 31
Chippewas led 24-3 at halftime on a snowy night in Michigan.
Northern Illinois gained 506 yards, but was 0-10 on third down.
CMU ran the ball 47 times for 331 yards; they were +3 in turnovers.

— Toledo 31, Buffalo 13
Toledo ran the opening kickoff back 97 yards for a TD.
Rockets are 8-1; they turned ball over four times, were 3-10 on third down.
Buffalo completed only 14-41 passes on a snowy night in Ohio.

— NFL trading deadline was Tuesday- there were 15 trades:
Arizona traded QB Joshua Dobbs to the Vikings, who lost Kirk Cousins for the year Sunday. This week, Cardinals will probably start rookie QB Clayton Tune in Cleveland.

Washington traded DE Chase Young to the 49ers for a 3rd round draft pick.

Washington also traded DE Montez Sweat to Chicago for a 2nd round pick— Commanders now have five picks in the first three rounds of April’s draft, the first time in the last 60 years they’ve had that many draft picks in Rounds 1-3.

Minnesota traded G Ezra Cleveland to the Jaguars for a 6th-round pick.

— Word of the Day: precipice— a situation in which someone is very close to disaster or failure.

Diamondbacks are on the precipice of defeat today, down 3-1 in World Series.

— Time flies; college basketball season starts Monday. Earlier this week, Louisville lost an exhibition game to D2 Kentucky Wesleyan 71-68, which hasn’t increased the optimism for the upcoming season any.

Louisville was 4-28 last year after an 0-9 start; they were 24-7 under Chris Mack only four years ago, so the natives are restless. This is a school with a tremendous basketball tradition; another dismal season like last year, and it would seem that a coaching change will happen.

— Spurs 115, Warriors 114— San Antonio stole the ball and got a layup with 0:01.2 left, giving the Spurs a great comeback win— they trailed by 20 points at one time. The layup/steal was the only time the whole game San Antonio was in the lead.

— Now that James Harden has been traded, here is a look at some of the highlights of the 76ers’, Clippers’ payrolls:

76ers
Joel Embiid $47,600,000
Tobias Harris $39,270,150
Marcus Morris $17,116,279— doesn’t start
Nicolas Batum $11,710,818— doesn’t start
Robert Covington $11,692,308— figures to start

Clippers
Paul George $45,640,084
Kawhi Leonard $45,640,084
James Harden $35,640,000
Norman Powell $18,000,000- doesn’t start
Ivica Zubac $10,933,333

If you have a son with some athletic ability, buy him a hoop, a ball and tell him to practice. A lot.

— They announced the college football playoff rankings Tuesday night:
Ohio State, Georgia, Michigan, Florida State

Then there are the Caesar’s Palace odds to win the playoff:
Michigan, Georgia, Florida State, Ohio State

— If the NFL Draft were today, the first five picks would be:
Cardinals
Bears (from Carolina)
Bears
Giants
Patriots

— Showtime wrapped up the great series Billions over the weekend: seven seasons over eight years, 84 episodes. Excellent series; if you haven’t seen it, it is worth finding on Showtime Anytime.

I’m envious that the writers are so creative, they come up with great story lines and references from all walks of life. Has to be difficult to decide how to end a series like this; they chose the nice way- the two main characters hated each other for 80 episodes, then were civil with each other the last 3-4 shows, which seemed odd.

— Raiders’ WR Davante Adams was targeted seven times Monday night, caught only one pass for 11 yards. To put it mildly, he wasn’t happy on the sidelines, which is probably a factor in the coaching/GM change that happened in Las Vegas Tuesday night. 

Author: Armadillo Sports

I've been involved in sports my whole life, now just write about them. I like to travel, mostly to Las Vegas- they have gambling there.