Come on Stuffy, who among us is too exalted not to have a hankering for a sack of White Castle burgers? A little drive-by makes for instant pleasure and nobody’s-business guilt. No one has to know.
So today is White Castle Day, one for quick-hitters that might be more easily swallowed than stomached.
1. It’s still both beyond belief and totally unsurprising that pandering NFL Treasurer Roger Goodell hasn’t declared Chiefs wide receiver Kadarius Toney suspended indefinitely for his beyond vulgar, N-word-heavy Instagram Live message after last week’s AFC championship. Suspended, as in immediately!
Then again, perhaps Goodell is weighing whether to suspend Toney or add him to the Super Bowl halftime show.
2. Graphic of the Week: Fox, during last Saturday’s Arizona-Oregon, noted that Arizona’s Caleb Love’s major is “Social Behavior & Human Understanding.”
But what has he misunderstood?
3. Kevin Williams, longtime sports director and host at WOBM-Radio down the Jersey Shore, has retired. Special man, Williams. He’ll continue to run the popular, 32-team boys and girls Christmas Classic high school hoops tournament he founded.
4. Rutgers South: So what did a 13-0 regular football season accomplish for Florida State? A $2.57 million athletic department operating deficit, that’s what.
But head football coach Mike Norvell has been re-signed with a raise to over $8 million per.
5. Reader Mike Natale asks our — and Goodell’s — help to solve a dilemma:
“I’ve always looked to the back of NFL players’ helmets for spiritual guidance, but last week I watched a playoff game in which both teams had their team name on the backs of their helmets.
“How am I supposed to know how to act appropriately now?” Signed, “Troubled”
6. Stepping down in class: Not only did Mike Repole, owner of the standout 2-year-old Fierceness, win a coveted Eclipse Award last week, he used his acceptance speech to holler two F-bombs while his young daughter stood next to him.
Given today’s badly diminished public civility, he brought fresh meaning to the term standard-bred.
7. Sunday, As Chiefs kick-returner Richie James returned one with the ball extended in one hand as per his style, he might have rekindled memories of last season, when in limited play with the Giants he fumbled three times.
8. CBS’ “60 Minutes” on Sunday will include a segment on the epidemic of (sucker) sports gambling and the ruin it has caused in young men, the primary target of sports gambling.
In answer to the question where these newly created addicted gamblers get the money to invest in a business predicated on investors losing their dough, a gambling treatment counselor explains anywhere and everywhere they can.
He says his patients have gambled away their student loans and even their entire inheritances. Odd, we only see winners in the TV ads.
9. Paulina Gretzy, wife of Saudi government-funded LIV golf money-jumper Dustin Johnson, last week was seen in another of her sexy, come-hither outfits. If she wore that on the streets of Riyadh she might be “disappeared” for a long, long time.
10. Last week Big Ten Network replayed the Purdue-Rutgers game, originally seen on Fox. Of course, because quality control is another lost art, the winner could be easily gleaned from the info scrolled beneath the game.
It showed Rutgers to be 10-9, 2-6 in the Big Ten, while the game telecast showed RU to be 10-8, 2-5 in the Big Ten.
11. Tough to stomach “straight-shooter” John McEnroe’s work for ESPN from the Australian Open. McEnroe cowardly allowed ESPN colleague Doug Adler to be fired as a racist during the Aussie Open for complimenting Venus Williams’ “guerilla” tactics.
McEnroe was among many who could have made a difference to allow Adler, a totally innocent man, to be destroyed — as if McEnroe had never heard the term “guerrilla tennis.” He’s gutless, and I suspect he knows it.
12. Reader Jack Adler writes that the MIP — most important play — in Sunday’s Chiefs win over the Ravens was the act of Kansas City cornerback L’Jarius Sneed late in the third quarter.
As Zay Flowers was about to enter the end zone, Sneed, in one diving motion, tackled him while using his one arm, knocking the ball out with his other.
After further review, Adler’s right.
13. Once again the Nets threaten to have more uniforms than wins.
14. Here’s hoping CBS, in its Super Bowl pregame, recognizes it has a neat story on its own staff in Gary Danielson, who had a leading role in a mostly forgotten NFL playoff classic.
As historian/reader Herb Eichen writes, on Dec. 13, 1983, the Lions playoff game at San Francisco featured Joe Montana as the Niners’ QB and Eric Hipple for the Lions.
When Hipple was injured early, Danielson replaced him. He then threw five interceptions, yet the Lions stayed close, losing, 24-23, when reliable kicker Eddie Murray (“Murray the K”) missed a 42-yard field goal with 10 seconds left.
15. Time for “The Michael Kay Show’s” tough-talking Peter Rosenberg to explain how he could be a WWE insider, shill and contributor for so long while ignoring Vince McMahon’s ways and means, that have included allegations of indulging and defending known on-staff pedophiles, the almost countless drug deaths of the massively and unnaturally muscled performers on McMahon’s watch, his vacillating, self-serving drug “policies,” the rampant sexual abuse and casting couch demands made of staff (underaged boys included).
The pornographic skits performed on WWE shows, X-rated merchandise sold to kids by Mr. and Mrs. McMahon, and Vince McMahon’s eagerness to circumvent state athletic commissions that performed drug testing.
Come on, Tough-Talk, facts got your tongue?
16. The Mets’ 2024 promotional games release concludes with: “Promotion dates, items and distribution are subject to change and/or cancellation.”
In other words, be prepared for the usual baits-and-switches as Rob Manfred’s TV money-first, last-minute rescheduling will continue.
17. FOX’s Greg Olsen early in Lions-49ers said San Francisco QB Brock Purdy isn’t a threat to run. In the fourth quarter, after Purdy ran (scrambled) for 21 yards, Olsen: “He doesn’t get enough credit for using his legs.” Oh, OK.
18. Imagine being an ESPN staffer who legitimately won an Emmy without the Disney network’s 13 years of bogus candidates as seen in phony names submitted then scratched off statuettes, replaced with the names of non-winning on-air talent.
Must you now explain that your own network’s scandalous malfeasance places you on the defensive?
19. Reader Kevin McGroary suggests that with so many players attending so many colleges, the early game TV insertion of NFL players stating where they played soon could take forever.
Of course, those who choose to instead say where they played high school ball may think they’re being slick, but only carry the suggestion that high school was the last school they actually attended.
20. Hungry? Say, is that a White Castle up there on the right?
NEWS CREDIT
