Football, Etc.
You can combine anything you want
In Monday's newsletter, I recapped the games I went to over the weekend. And as promised, Jarod Richmond from WHOU joined me to go over the rest of the slate in the weekly overreactions podcast.
As always, Jarod was a fount of knowledge. We went through the entire state, class by class, to try and get a sense of who's a contender and who isn't. We also took a side trip down the road of the current state of sports broadcasting (conclusion: mixed), Jarod broke down the pros and cons of Heal Points vs. Crabtree, and I encouraged Jarod to tell the story of his recent hole-in-one on the golf course.
After the interview, I debuted a new segment called "Movie Corner" with thoughts on the new Spinal Tap movie and a Henry Fonda poker movie from 1966 that surprised me. Why am I adding a movie segment? Because I want to.
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As always, you can listen to it on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
If you think Jarod's wrong about your team, put it in the episode comments!
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Football Rankings!
The football rankings are updated after week 2. As always, the rankings start with last season as a baseline. The results after week 1 are pretty wonky for a bunch of reasons, but the short version is: if you beat someone 42-0, does that mean you're really good or is the team you beat really bad or is it somewhere in-between? There's no real way to know, from a pure math standpoint. Now, if next week that team loses 48-0, they probably aren't good and your Week 1 win isn't that impressive. But if they win 20-18, suddenly your Week 1 win looks a lot better. Anyway, here's where we stand after 2 weeks. There will be a lot of movement after this week, I suspect.
Check out where your team ranks.
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Stickers!
For a while now, I've wanted to get stickers, because who doesn't love stickers? But the thought of selling and mailing them and all that seemed like such an unnecessary hassle.
But I had to order stickers for the half marathon I'm in charge of, so I added some stickers to the order.
But mailing them is still a hassle, so instead I'm going to just give them away. Here's how it's going to work: I'll have some on me at games. Come say hi and I'll give you a sticker!
Down Under
Mackenzie Holmes will play winter ball in Australia. This is very common with WNBA players, because the W infamously doesn't pay nearly as much as foreign leagues.
Larry Mahoney
You can already buy a jersey.
Via Chicago
As part of my day job, I produce the Lincoln County News' weekly podcast "Beyond the Broadsheet" and occasionally make an on-mic appearance. This was one of those weeks. I had the pleasure of interviewing John Stirratt, bass player of Wilco, which just happens to be my favorite band.
For the unfamiliar:
We talked about his early days in Louisiana, how he got a gig as a roadie for Uncle Tupelo, which led to him playing with Uncle Tupelo, which led to him forming Wilco with Jeff Tweedy. The rest is rock and roll history.
It was a super fun conversation and I even learned something new about Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Check it out!
Game of the Week
Varsity Maine and Michael Hoffer each have Deering/Portland as the Game of the Week, but the Model disagrees! I sort of suspected Falmouth @ Greely might be the Model's pick, but the spread is too big.
Windham is 0-2, but the losses are both close losses, one of which against #1 overall Portland (the Model LOVES when you play the #1 overall team close). They're clearly better than 0-2. Are they ranked too high? Almost certainly. Quirks of the early season and all that.
The Eagles will head to Standish for a battle with Bonny Eagle. The Scots are 2-0 and already +62 on the season. Why is Windham ranked higher? It's pretty simple. They're 4th in the state in Strength of Schedule through 2 games. Bonny Eagle is 56th. But they've got the 4th hardest remaining schedule. We're about to learn just how good they are.
They Model thinks Windham can get in the win column, but it's basically a toss-up.
The Model says: Windham +1.6
The rest of the Model's picks for football, soccer, and field hockey are after the jump.