Those are straight up Madden numbers that would cause your roommate to fire the clicker off the wall and quit in disgust. Jaret Patterson just put on a clinic and this wasn’t like Alabama beating up on some Division 2 school, these teams are pretty comparable. So for him to bust off 400+ yards and eight touchdowns is absolute banana land. I’m surprised the dude even had the stamina to finish the game after he had 36 carries including four touchdowns of 40+ yard runs. I forgot my putter head cover on the previous hole on Saturday and had to do a 100 yard wind sprint to pick it up and get back and I was smoked for the rest of the afternoon.
Although to be honest I do feel bad for Julian Edelman, who is still out with a knee injury so he probably was watching his alma mater get crushed. This is a man who’s school spirit runs so deep, to this day he still wears a Kent State shirt underneath his pads at every practice. So cheer up Jules, we’ll see you soon.
There are so few, true, fleeting opportunities in life when a teachable moment materializes, hidden in plain view, and those wise enough recognize it and are able to use it.
For me, a passionate, lifelong fan, player and student of the game of hockey, one of those moments occurred in the days and weeks proceeding the tragedy that struck on October 20, 1995. That night, Travis Roy, considered at that point to possibly be the greatest player to ever come out of Vermont and maybe New England, tied his skates to play in his first college hockey game for Boston University. He would achieve his dream, but would ultimately see it derailed and become a nightmare. Eleven seconds into his very first shift Roy would miss a check on an opposing player, fall headfirst into the boards, and suffer a catastrophic spine injury. He would be left a quadriplegic, gaining some use of his right arm years later.
The injury, how it occurred, to whom it occurred, and the reality of what could happen in what amounts to a child’s game, shocked and horrified not just hockey but the entire sports world. Here in Boston, home to a number of college powerhouse conference Hockey East’s teams, the effects were tenfold. Every rink, every stick, every puck, every mention of the game was tainted for a little while with the taste of tragedy, or dejection, of almost mourning for a kid who was damned to a life so unlike the one he had earned. Not even old enough to check with, I remember it crystal clearly.
Everyone felt this way. Except for Travis Roy I guess. Roy almost immediately clung to those eleven seconds. Because for those eleven seconds he achieved his ultimate dream of playing major college hockey. For those not quite in the know, in the Northeast, while dreams of playing in the NHL are abundant, college hockey is actually pretty huge given the presence of the Hockey East, which includes BU, BC, UMass etc. For Roy, he had been able to reach that huge peak, if only for just over a sixth of a minute. From just after his injury to his death, yesterday, at the age of 45, he was quick to mention how fortunate he was, how hopeful he was, and how he refused to see himself as anything but a guy who had lived his dream, regardless of the outcome.
To reach the heights of playing for the Boston University hockey team, you have to work extremely hard. So one can assume Travis Roy was no different in that regard. His efforts after his injury were no different if not even greater. Not only did he log arduous hours of PT to regain the aforementioned use of one of his arm, but he started the Travis Roy Foundation and was tireless in his endeavors to raise money for research for and assistant with spinal cord injuries. Millions of dollars have been dispersed since the foundation was founded to not only try and find either cures or to improve treatment for spinal cord injuries, but for the things we don’t think about like modifying family vans to accommodate those who suffer these enigmatic, mysterious, barbarous maladies.
That, I honestly think, will be Travis Roy’s legacy. His enduring legacy. He was a hockey player. He was a hockey player that got terribly hurt. But he was a hockey player that got terribly hurt and used that hurt to make sure people that suffered the same fate were not alone and had people standing by them. He was grateful, he was optimistic, and he always kept going. He never stopped.
Rest in peace Travis Roy. Because of you my Dad got to teach me at age six that you should always be grateful for what you are able to experience, no matter how briefly. And no matter how you get knocked down, there is always a way, some way, to get back up.
With everyone either remote or part-time, we know you’ve got some time on your hands so The 300s is looking for interns and part-timers to blog about Boston sports, national sports, golf, TV, movies, video games etc. We’ll give writers a platform, promotion on social media, and the opportunity to write about what you like.
If you’re interested send an email to Red@The300s.com and let us know what you want to write about and any samples you might have.
Yahoo – With Jalen Green announcing he’s bypassing college and joining the NBA’s G League for the 2020-21 season, he’s attempting to forge a new path for elite prospects.
The five-star recruit who is ranked No. 2 in the 2020 high school class by Rivals.com has reached a substantial six-figure deal, sources said, to partner with the G League for a year before entering the 2021 NBA draft, where he’s a candidate to be the No. 1 overall pick.
I know I’m in the minority here, but I just have never been a big college basketball fan. March Madness is great sure, but I just could never get into college basketball and I think a big reason is because all the best players are only around for a season, maybe two. If you play all four years of college ball, chances are you’re not going to be an NBA player unless your name is Draymond Green.
This isn’t the NFL where athletes legitimately need time to physically mature to handle the league. No, 18-year-olds can physically play in the NBA no problem. Thats not to say many of them would be elite right off the bat, but Kevin Garnett, Kobe Bryant, and LeBron James proved going to college is not required to be a successful NBA player. Not to mention the NCAA looks more and more crooked each and every year as it finds new ways to screw athletes out of money. So if a kid is good enough to play professionally, then why should anyone be able to tell him no you need to go to Duke to pretend to do homework for 6 months, then you can go pro. Cut the crap.
I blogged about this back in March 2018 as the NBA has long been considering a solution for grooming young players that don’t want to go to college, but aren’t exactly floored about playing overseas. What I said back then:
If you’re going to require that players are at least a year removed from high school and the NCAA continues to be the money grubbing scheme that it is, it only makes sense to make the G-League a legitimate alternative to college. A place where players can get actual NBA level coaching and make a little coin without getting athletic directors and coaches everywhere investigated by the FBI.
Chris Haynes continues in the Yahoo article and mentions the idea of a “Select Team.”
“The G League will create a “Select Team” in a designated city with a few roster spots for elite high school players who want to play professionally instead of going to college, sources said. The rest of the roster will be made up of veteran players.”
Go hang around campus in your iSlides, get your National Championship on, take down a couple co-eds…not a bad gig. Or go pro in the States making six figures a year with nothing but a high school diploma? Ok, still not a sweet enough deal?
“The G League is also offering Green a full scholarship if he wants to obtain his college degree.“
LOL kick rocks, NCAA.
Adam Silver will go down as one of the great sports commissioners for a lot of reasons (integration of social media, e-sports, progressive views on marijuana, ousting Donald Sterling), but he may make his biggest mark in history for righting the wrong that was his predecessor’s baby: the One and Done rule. The One and Done rule has been in effect since 2005 so it’s “only” been 15 years, but Silver may have just found the solution to this tricky question. Rather than throwing kids straight into the fire that is the NBA or forcing them to go to college, Silver and co. came up with the idea of giving athletes a legit salary to play in the G-League while they level up. If you ask me, 9/10 kids are going to take that offer over playing for free at college and risking an injury.
Another huge perk to going this route is that this “Select Team” will only play about 20 games instead of the usual 50 in the G-League or 30+ in college or 82 in the NBA. Workload is probably a bigger factor than anything else as young players can gradually get used to a longer schedule.
We’ve seen a lot of guys look for ways around the One and Done rule. Back in 2018 Darius Bazley actually passed on this exact idea of joining the G-League in favor of an “internship” (with a $1 million salary) right in my neighborhood at the New Balance HQ. Bazley ultimately went No. 23 overall in the following NBA Draft so while he earned some serious money in the short term, the argument could be made he hurt his longterm career earnings by not getting the on-court experience in the G-League (or college).
None of this will really matter if Jalen Green flames out in the G-League and drops in next year’s draft, but this could be the start of something big.
The Roni strikes again. This now makes the NBA, NHL, MLB, MLS, XFL, Fast and the Furious, March Madness, the Boston Marathon, and now the biggest golf tournament in the world all postponed and/or cancelled. I literally prayed to the golf gods and the twitter gods yesterday when a commercial for The Masters came on…while I worked from home amid mass hysteria.
What the hell are we all going to watch now? Everybody better start enjoying books real quick because there’s not much else left. I’m not a doctor or a scientist so I’m not going to question the decision because there is obviously a massive health crisis happening in this country right now. It’s probably for the best to just punt on the spring and we’ll all regroup for the greatest summer of TV programming ever created. Imagine the NBA Finals, Stanley Cup Finals, The Masters, MLB, and NFL Training Camp all going on at the same exact time? It will make Sweeps Week look like public access television in comparison.
With that being said I am left here to twiddle my thumbs and scroll through twitter all day and night. Theres only so many World Star videos a man can watch and I’m already pretty over the Toilet Paper heist stories. My advice is to watch *everything* in your Netflix queue, even that shit you don’t actually care about, but tell yourself you do because you’re cultured. Like that documentary on yoga thats been sitting in my queue for months. I’ve done yoga once in my life so why did I save a documentary on yoga in my queue? Because I had zero intention of watching it unless oh ya know the entire country shut down and every sports league ceased to exist for the foreseeable future.
So that and mass amounts of video games will be played. The big guns at EA, Sony, Activision, Microsoft, Nintendo, Rockstar etc. would be wise to offer some discounts on their titles because I am liable to buy half a dozen vidyagames right now.
This is like the reckoning for all of our short attention spans. We’ve all been constantly stimulated by TV, internet, sports, and our phones 24/7 for the past decade and now we’re all being forced to entertain ourselves for the first time. Godspeed boys.
NY Post – Jerry Jeudy was a five-star recruit coming out of Deerfield Beach, Fla., but that does not explain why he proudly and boldly wears a gold six-pointed Star of David around his neck.
Jeudy sported the necklace Tuesday as he took the podium at the NFL Combine, with the Jewish star on full display. Jeudy got the idea after hearing how many people shorten his last name when they referred to him.
“People call me ‘Jew’ for short,” he explained. That prompted him to get the Jewish star, which he wore while playing at Alabama.
“I’m not Jewish, though,” he said.
So this happened at the NFL Combine last week, but I never got a chance to blog it and I couldn’t let the story pass without touching on it. The Alabama product is the top rated wide receiver and is projected to go in the first handful of picks in the draft so this became a headline. Now I don’t watch a ton of Bama games so I have no idea if this nickname is a long time thing or not, but Jeudy was rocking a blinged out Star of David necklace at his combine press conference. Plenty of athletes have diamond encrusted Jesus pieces so this is no different. Except Jeudy isn’t actually Jewish. Nope, he said he wears the chain because his nickname is “Jew/Jeu.” Predictably Jeudy had to apologize on twitter for potentially offending anyone, but when I heard this I was howling. This is an episode synopsis right out of Curb Your Enthusiasm.
“Larry’s long suffering football team the New York Jets drafts Jerry Jeudy, but when Larry learns of the receiver’s Star of David necklace he must decide between his religion and his football team.”
Legitimately laughed out loud when I heard this spot on Mel Kiper Jr. impression. This guy just nails the idiosyncrasies of Kiper that we’ve all been hearing on ESPN for the past 20 years without even realizing it.
The Colin Cowherd impression is pretty good, but its the delivery and the content of the clip that really brings it home. Cowherd LOVES dragging guys that wear their hats backwards for some reason.
I couldn’t care less that Odell Beckham gave out cold hard cash to LSU players after their National Championship win. Besides being laugh out loud funny, I actually think it’s awesome. I’ve long been a proponent of letting NCAA athletes make money off their own names, but I also am an adult and realize that there are some pretty well known rules around college athletes and paying them. All Odell did was put these kids in a shitty spot. Sure Joe Burrow just played his last game, but some sophomore might get hosed by the archaic NCAA because Odell gave him a few crisp benjamins.
OBJ takes a lot of shit in the media, but he does bring a lot of it on himself. However, this is another instance of why Twitter is the best website in the world. I’ve been laughing my ass off instead of working for like 20 minutes at all the NCAA tweets.
I think to classify as a “random” shirt or jersey it has to be a guy that was elite for a short period of time, a cult hero in no way due to their actual athletic prowess ( I was *this* close to buying a Gabe Kapler Yomiuri Giants jersey in 2005), a player that was only on a team for a hot minute (I’ve seen two John Lynch Patriots jerseys in Allston over the years), or a jersey that is so obscure that it should not realistically belong to you.
I am an unabashed jersey guy so I have a closet full of obscure pieces beyond just the Boston teams. The Priest Holmes jersey I bought in a Connecticut Marshalls in 2007, Byron Dafoe, Antoine Walker (shirt and jersey), Tim Tebow Patriots shirt, Sergei Samsonov shirt, banana yellow Marcus Mariota Oregon jersey, JR Redmond Patriots jersey, Pedro Mets shirt, a literal blank Athletics jersey, the list goes on and on.
Ya know, now that I think about it, this $12 purchase at the downtown Minneapolis Marshalls may have to take the cake.
So I pose the question, whats the most random sports shirt or jersey you own?
This Dabo baby tiger illustration from ESPN is the cutest goddamn thing I’ve ever seen. So pure, so simple, yet so dead on. Its from a story ESPN published today on how Dabo built Clemson into a monster of a program. Dabo is such a chill dude that probably would befriend a baby tiger, both on their path to global domination. I love Dabo and am a huge Deshaun Watson guy, but I’m not necessarily a Clemson stan and even I want to frame this picture.
So I pose the question, whats the most random sports shirt or jersey you own?
The 300s 