Tag: AAF

Miss Football Already? Well the XFL Kicks Off This Weekend!

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Two long years since its announcement, Vince McMahon is finally set to unveil yet another football league to compete with complement the NFL. Unlike the AAF, which flamed out in spectacular fashion, the XFL at least has the benefit of not competing directly with the NFL by kicking off after the Super Bowl.

The first XFL commercial I’ve seen has been *extremely* generous in it’s description of the talent playing in the league. With a roster led by the likes of former Ohio State QB Cardale “We didn’t come here to play school” Jones

and Connor Cook, who’s best known for unceremoniously snatching the Big Ten Championship game MVP trophy.

Not exactly the stuff of fantasy football dreams so expectations need to be tempered.

I will say however, I am pretty excited for some of the rule tweaks the XFL will utilize. Most of the rulebook is the same just with a focus on speeding up the game. There are a few minor tweaks like moving back the kickoffs and eliminating extra point attempts, but the biggest rule tweak I’m most excited for is the double forward pass.

Yup, something that is not legal in any level of football and would even get you flagged in a pickup football game is about to, hopefully, become a staple in XFL playbooks. Just think of the possibilities if you’re a team running the RPO with the ability to then throw a double forward pass. My mouth is watering just thinking of the ridiculous plays we’ll see on SportsCenter Twitter.

I think the biggest selling point for the league is actually this: what the hell else are you doing on Saturday afternoon? The XFL schedule will play two games each on Saturday and Sunday for the next 10 weeks until the playoffs start, assuming the league has not gone out of business by that point. If nothing else this makes for great day drinking background noise at worst and an entertaining 90 minutes at best.

I’ll give it a shot.

Chad Ochocinco is Trying Out for the XFL. As a Kicker.

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So Mattes and I were discussing the XFL earlier and the one question he asked me was, “will you watch?” My answer was the same as it was for that disaster that was the AAF: I’m going to try. Where the AAF was just bad NFL football, at least the XFL will be playing with some rule tweaks to make the game quicker and differentiate it from the NFL.

Now Vince McMahon does sees much more wary of turning the XFL into a circus act like it was the first time around so you don’t see many big name former NFL players in the league just to grab attention. It looks like they’re trying to build something semi legitimate so maybe he doesn’t want former wide receivers joining the league as kickers, but hey lets see what he’s got at least.

I mean it’s not a total gimmick either; the man has legitimately kicked field goals in NFL games before. Against the Patriots no less.

As a well known FIFA diehard Ochocinco is no stranger to striking and apparently he can boot the ball.

Unfortunately for Ocho, the XFL nearly eliminated the need for a kicker by removing extra point field goal attempts. They also pushed the kickoff back 10 yards from where the NFL and college does it so unless you’re kicking it 75+ yards you’re probably not getting many touchbacks.

All I know is football is more fun when Chad Ochocinco is a part of it so I’m pulling for him.

Christmas Came Early, the XFL Team Names and Logos are Here

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So the XFL announced the names of every team and unveiled their official logos today, which is pretty exciting considering its August 21st and the Patriots are still playing fauxball.

February 2020 cannot come soon enough. The Patriots will be coming off their 4th Super Bowl title in six years after repeating as champs and then we can coast into Vince McMahon’s little football experiment. The AAF failed because it was financed and run by people who had apparently never run a business a day in their lives. Vince has been running one of the most successful entertainment organizations ever for the past 30+ years. If nothing else the man knows how to put on a show.

I was cautiously optimistic about this announcement because these expansion leagues always seem to have the WORST team names. (Looking at you, Atlanta Legends)

So how’d Vince do? Lets break em down.

Houston Roughnecks – First off, I absolutely LOVE the Roughnecks logo, an excellent shoutout to the Oilers of the old days. We have an early favorite folks.

Dallas Renegades – Obviously you have to put at least one team in Texas considering high school football games in Texas draw bigger than some professional teams. The name Renegades screams expansion team though, weak name. Give me something spicy.

LA Wildcats – This sounds like the name of the Rams’ cheer squad. Boooo

New York Guardians – Meh. They’re a silent New York Guardian, a watchful protector, a dark knight that will probably lose a bunch of games by the sheer fact of being too close to the Knicks/Jets/Giants/Mets.

St. Louis BattleHawks – I have no idea what a BattleHawk is, nobody does really, but I fuck with it. Bad ass name.

Seattle Dragons – Any time a new team pulls the ole reliable “Dragon” name off the shelf, I can’t help but go back to Papa Giorgio’s hilarious story of how the Islanders came to have a bastard dragon for a mascot.

Tampa Bay Vipers – I will say the name Viper has come back into vogue thanks almost entirely to one Oberyn Martell before he (spoiler alert) met his untimely demise. Plus its Florida so encountering a pack of Vipers is a very real possibility. Vipers are OK by me.

DC Defenders – Alliteration! Decent idea, but poor exectution. What are they defending? Are they defending Vince McMahon’s idea to launch a bootleg football league for the second time in 20 years? Are they the Marvel Defenders? Prop bet idea: What gets cancelled quicker? The Defenders on Netflix or the DC Defenders of the XFL?

Now I just have to decide which team to stan for so I would like to announce that my XFL fanhood free agency period has officially opened. Let the bidding commence.

The BIG3 Just Announced Its Team Rosters and Boy Oh Boy They Are STACKED

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The BIG 3 is returning for its third season this summer and it seems to only be growing as it released their team rosters today and they are STACKED.

Just in case you forgot, we are quite fond of the BIG3 here. We even had Mattes go cover a game in person last year. And that was before they stacked the deck with some big time names.

Top names playing in the BIG3 this year include Kendrick Perkins and Greg Oden on the same team to create maybe the biggest “What if these guys never got hurt” duo in basketball history. The Celtics win 2 out 3 NBA titles, the Trailblazers are still one of the best teams in the league, going to war with KD and whatever team he’s playing for at the time.

Mario Chalmers!

Brian Scalabrine returns of course and should probably have equity in this league if he doesn’t already because the White Mamba puts asses in the seats.

Agent Zero himself Gilbert Arenas joins the BIG3 this season and I could not be more excited. Arenas, before all his gunplay problems, practically invented the 28 foot pull up jumper that is so common today. Where you think Damian Lillard learned that move?

Lamar Odom is returning from the grave/the clutches of the Kardashians to play some ball and you gotta think that guy is happy to just be alive at this point. Good for him.

Mike Bibby, Ricky Davis, and Carlos Boozer just seem like a pretty solid, well built team. Plus, if they get into any scuffles Mike Bibby 2.0 will just start beating people up as all he’s done since retiring is lift anything and everything.

Stephen Jackson and Metta World Peace are teaming up to become the bad boys of the league. Coached by the goddamn oak tree himself Charles Oakley no less. Nobody is messing with that team.

The Power will be a trip down elite bench player memory lane for anyone my age with guys like Corey Maggette, Chris Birdman Andersen, Ryan Gomes(!) and Glen Big Baby Davis who somehow avoided going to federal pound me in the ass prison after a drug arrest.

Jason Terry is also playing this year, which raises the question is Jason Terry finally retired orrrr

Nearly spit my drink out when I saw Terry pulling up for 3 in a game for Milwaukee last season.

Former Celtics draft picks Joe Johnson and Big Al Jefferson will be joining forces to be the favorite team of any Celtics fan over the age of 30.

To round it all out we have Jermaine O’Neal, Amar’e Stoudemire and Nate Robinson, but I have to say it is an absolute crime that Ice Cube doesn’t have Nate Robinson and Glen Davis on the same team. Does he not remember the days of Shrek and Donkey??

They even got legit AF names coaching as well with Gary Payton, Rick Barry, Rick Mahorn, Charles Oakley, Kenyon Martin, Lisa Leslie, and Dr. freaking J just to name a few.

How about the BIG3 being the only new sports league to not only avoid going out of business, yet actually thrive? The AAF went out of business before I even needed to refill my car’s tank of gas, the XFL is looking to improve upon its high score of 1 season completed, meanwhile the BIG3 is just adding teams and big time names left and right.

Maybe we’ll send Mattes back out to another BIG3 game this year with a real mic so he can actually get Scal namedropping The 300s Podcast on tape.

The AAF Has Officially Folded. We Hardly Knew Ye

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SI – The Alliance of American Football will suspend football operations on Tuesday, reports ProFootballTalk. The league is just eight weeks into its inaugural season.

SI’s Albert Breer reported AAF team officials have a conference call with the league office at 1 p.m. ET. Breer reported there’s a perception inside the league that AAF majority owner Tom Dundon bought a bought a stake in the league for the gambling app being developed with one source saying, “Dundon got the technology he wanted and he’s now minus one rather large headache.” SI’s Conor Orr reported league heads were stunned and still working on a solution.

According to ProFootballTalk, the league is not folding yet but it is heading that way.

The writing has been on the wall for a while now as I’ve already written a few blogs over the past month about the AAF nearly going out of business and it’s barely Month 3 of the league’s lifespan. Welp, that’ll do it for the AAF apparently, who is heading the way of the dinosaur.

I won’t rehash the same things I said in my last blog on this, but here’s what I had to say on a league not having a plan to make it through even one season:

“Who is running these leagues? Obviously we’ve seen football leagues come and go over the past 20 years as the NFL has maintained its stranglehold on consumers’ attention without even lifting a finger. Most of these leagues fail because its just morons running the business side of things it would seem.

In marketing they say the average person needs to see an ad or a brand message seven times before it sticks. Now apply that to the AAF. How many AAF games do you think the average sports fan has watched? One? Maybe two? The AAF *had* to be prepared for slow adoption, otherwise it was a stupid business venture.”

But then there’s that tidbit from Bert Breer’s report that Tom Dundon, the Carolina Hurricanes owner that invested $250M to save the league last month, has basically sold the league not for its football but for it’s technological IP.

If thats true that is wild and I can imagine the other owners are bullshit. Those other owners probably feel swindled for paying to build up this football league only to have an investor come in and sell the whole thing for parts. But hey thats what happens when you sell majority ownership to a billionaire; you give up control. It’s fascinating just because I’ve never heard of anything like it. For all of its failings, the AAF was at least trying out innovative things, like the makings of a gambling app apparently.

Then on the other side of the Football Leagues Competing With the NFL coin is Vince McMahon who smells blood in the water now.

“Vince McMahon, who plans to give the XFL another shot next year, has sold $272 million worth of WWE stock, and company filings say that money will primarily go toward the XFL..McMahon has said he’s ready to spend $500 million over the first three years of the XFL to get the league off the ground, suggesting that even if the league struggles to gain traction at first, he’ll stick with it rather than pulling the plug after one season”

Vince seems to be pretty confident, cocky some would say, that he has fixed the issues that plagued the XFL the first time around. Despite the fact that a very similar concept just failed spectacularly, Vince has doubled down and is apparently ready to pour $500 million into the XFL.

Who knows if the XFL will be any more successful than the AAF, but I’ll tell you one thing, Vince will not fail because of a lack of marketing and promotion. Thats his bread and butter so don’t be surprised to see mass media promotions and gigantic billboards featuring Johnny Football, maybe Colin Kaepernick and whatever other fringe NFL players with a big name that they can find. Either way, this whole 2-3 year drama of new football leagues popping up and dying off will be a fascinating case study of monopolies in American business as the NFL crushes these competitors without even lifting a finger.

Speaking of Manziel, he’s the voice of reason and restraint here today, which was refreshing to see. My man is once again a free agent and as I’ve said before, it’s probably XFL or bust for his football career at this point.

The AAF is Once Again in Danger of Going Out of Business

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Update: They finally did go out of business. 

 

ESPN – The majority owner of the Alliance of American Football told USA Today Sports that league is in danger of folding without help from the National Football League Players Association. Tom Dundon, who became the AAF’s chairman last month, told USA Today Sports in a recent interview that the NFLPA is not cooperating with the AAF by refusing to allow the first-year league to use young NFL players.

“If the players union is not going to give us young players, we can’t be a development league,” Dundon told USA Today Sports. “We are looking at our options, one of which is discontinuing the league.”

Dundon said he expects to make a decision about the league’s future over the next two days…The eight-team AAF, billed as a development league, kicked off the weekend following the Super Bowl. The league is seven games into its 10-game regular season.

What kind of business model pumps its own tires as much as the AAF did prior to launching only to make it barely 2 months before nearly going out of business TWICE? In case you forgot, they almost couldn’t make payroll in Week 2 of the first season. Who is running these leagues? Obviously we’ve seen football leagues come and go over the past 20 years as the NFL has maintained its stranglehold on consumers’ attention without even lifting a finger. Most of these leagues fail because its just morons running the business side of things it would seem.

In marketing they say the average person needs to see an ad or a brand message seven times before it sticks. Now apply that to the AAF. How many AAF games do you think the average sports fan has watched? One? Maybe two? The AAF *had* to be prepared for slow adoption, otherwise it was a stupid business venture.

First off, if the AAF’s thinly veiled expectation was for the NFL to welcome them with open arms and create yet another item on their budget sheet then they were sorely mistaken. Sure the NFL needs a minor league system….but they already have one.

It’s college College Football.

Does College Football’s love of wishbone offenses, pistol offenses, air raid offenses, shotgun only offenses, and run pass option offenses prepare players for the NFL? Well five years ago I would have said no, but now…um yea it kind of does. So many coaches are taking College Football offensive plays, concepts, and entire schemes and running them as is in the NFL now. Belichick does it, so does Andy Reid, Matt Nagy, Doug Pederson and Sean Payton.

So if the AAF was hoping to be a way of preparing young players for the standard operating procedure in the NFL, well then they’re fucked because the market has shifted.

To just expect this league full of no name players would be a mega hit from Day 1 is so shortsighted it’s almost funny. Did anyone in that league go to business school? Isn’t Bill Polian supposed to be one of the smartest football execs ever? Yet somehow they don’t have a plan to make it through even one full season without fears of going out of business?

I was texting back and forth with Mattes about this story and he summarized his opinion succinctly, if not spitefully, after getting roasted by AAF Reddit for somehow not believing in this league:

“As Dashboard Confessional once said: I AM VINDICATED.” – Mattes

Real talk though, this is not a good turn of events for my guy Johnny Manziel. After flaming out in two different football leagues, it would be some shit luck for the third one to just straight go out of business. Looks like it’s XFL or bust baby.

 

Johnny Manziel Released, Barred from Playing in CFL for Violating His Contract. Sigh.

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ESPN – The Montreal Alouettes released quarterback Johnny Manziel on Wednesday, saying he “contravened the agreement which made him eligible to play” in the Canadian Football League. The CFL said Manziel is not eligible to sign with another team in the league, which had his full rights for two seasons.

“We are disappointed by this turn of events. Johnny was provided a great deal of support by our organization, in collaboration with the CFL, but he has been unable to abide by the terms of his agreement,” Alouettes general manager Kavis Reed said in a statement. “We worked with the league and presented alternatives to Johnny, who was unwilling to proceed.”

It is unclear what Manziel did to violate the agreement with the Alouettes and the CFL.

Manziel, 26, played for the Alouettes last season in an attempt to resurrect his career. In eight games, he completed 106 passes in 165 attempts for 1,290 yards, with five touchdowns and seven interceptions. Montreal traded two players and two first-round picks to Hamilton last July for Manziel’s rights.

Next stop XFL? I don’t know what Johnny may have done here, but it’s probably not a great sign that a guy with a long and checkered past filled with drinking and drug problems randomly gets cut on a Wednesday afternoon.

Manziel has not played well in the CFL either, which was disappointing with the lesser competition he was facing north of the border, but he did suffer a concussion early on last season so that couldn’t have helped. Normally I would say this is probably the end of the line for a player, but as luck would have it not one but TWO new football leagues have recently sprung up as options.

It might be a little late in the season for a quarterback to jump into the AAF seeing as its already Week 3 of a 10 game season, but hey bums like Christian Hackenberg are getting benched as we speak so  you never know.

However…the XFL begins play in 2020. You know Vince McMahon loves a star and the bad boy persona of Johnny Football could be the perfect poster child for the XFL’s inaugural season. With just under a year until XFL play begins it would give Manziel a full offseason to get in shape, learn the playbook and ingratiate himself with a new team. All of which is a moot point if he is dealing with some bigger life problems. Who knows, but the guy was so fun to watch at A&M, I hope he gets his life back on track, even if it’s XFL or bust at this point.

The AAF Apparently Needed a $250M Investment Just to Make Payroll in Week TWO

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Yahoo – For all the good publicity the Alliance of American Football received early on, it’s still a startup business. Like plenty of other startup businesses, the AAF might have been underfunded to start. The Athletic’s David Glenn, citing multiple sources, reported that the league was in danger of not making payroll last week, just the second week of the league’s existence.

The crisis was averted. Glenn wrote that Carolina Hurricanes majority owner Tom Dundon will be introduced as the AAF’s new chairman after investing $250 million to the AAF. The NHL owner’s investment allowed the league to meet its financial obligations...

“Without a new, nine-figure investor, nobody is sure what would have happened,” one source told Glenn at The Athletic. “You can always tell people their checks are going to be a little late, but how many are going to show up on the weekend for games when they don’t see anything hit their bank accounts on Friday?”

Isn’t this the first thing they teach you in business school? How to fund your business and keep the doors open? Thats like Day 1 stuff.

Look I am all for capitalism and people trying to make money and I really want the AAF to succeed, but without any big names like Tim Tebow playing, the only chance this league ever has of making it is if the NFL acquires it. The NFL would have to decide after over a decade of having no minor leagues (RIP NFL Europe) that they want to buy the AAF as a talent pipeline.

But I also find it hilarious that they’re almost going out of business in Week TWO after the peacocking about beating a regular season NBA game in the ratings on a random Saturday night and after Mattes faced the wrath of AAF Reddit (yes its a thing) for saying he wasn’t watching.

 

It’s a decent concept, but not exactly anything groundbreaking. I’d be curious to see the market specific TV ratings as it compares to competitors’ programming in the same time slots. Because not to sound like a complete arrogant dickhead, but we watch the New England Patriots up here. They have the greatest quarterback and the greatest coach of all time. So I’m not exactly fighting over the remote to watch Christian Hackenberg throwing ducks for 2 hours.

My point being, the smartest thing the AAF did was put these teams in cities where there isn’t established NFL competition. I know they’ve said they’re not competing with the NFL; they’re complimenting it. But even if they’re not competing with the NFL directly, they’re still competing for the attention of the NFL fan, which is why I’d be curious to see the TV ratings in those non-traditional football markets. Markets that are starved for the sport. It’d be like putting a Big 3 League residency in Seattle. There’s an appetite for it.

So while I wish the AAF all the best, aside from watching a few minutes of a game at the bar, this whole story doesn’t exactly inspire confidence. Not to mention they got Vince McMahon licking his chops with the XFL closer to kicking off every single day.

Tim Tebow Turned Down a Chance to Play Football in the AAF. Likes His Chances to Make the Mets

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Yahoo – Tim Tebow, the former Heisman Trophy-winning college and NFL quarterback, is happily ensconced in the New York Mets minor league system, and eyeing a possible promotion to the majors in 2019. But there’s always that lingering question: could he ever return to football?

While we don’t know the final, definitive answer to that question, we do know that Tebow is so committed to baseball right now that he turned down an offer from Steve Spurrier, the coach of the Orlando Apollos of the Alliance of American Football, to join his team.

Spurrier, the former Florida and South Carolina football coach, confirmed to “PFT Live” that he reached out to Tebow in 2018 about playing for the AAF, but Tebow passed. And Spurrier understood why.

“No, and I don’t blame Tim,” Spurrier said. “Tim’s got a chance to go to Major League Baseball. I think Tim’s probably headed in the baseball direction. I don’t blame him. If I were in his situation I’d probably do the same thing.”

At least we’ll always have that Fantasy Football championship you won me in 2011, Tim. But hey in all seriousness if I had the opportunity to maybe get called up and play for the New York Mets (warranted or not) vs the opportunity to play in the illustrious AAF? Ummmm probably sticking with the Mets, even if they are run by dopes in the Wilpons.

I really do hope to see Tim Tebow playing Major League Baseball, even if it is a sham so the Mets can sell tickets. I mean whats Tebow supposed to do? Say no? Build that brand baby. While he has a career .244 batting average in the minors, in true Tebow fashion, he’s actually gotten better the closer he’s gotten to the big time. After hitting .220 in A ball, he then somehow got promoted and proceeded to rake with a .273 avg in AA. Now he’s been invited to spring training by the Mets and as we all know, AA is where all the prime prospects come from.  Granted you don’t see a lot of successful players making their MLB debut at 30-years-old, but I’ll never doubt a guy that has Jesus in his corner.

PS – I still wear my Tebow Patriots t-shirt jersey with pride. Top 5 piece of obscure memorabilia that I own.

So Apparently the Alliance of American Football is Getting Good Reviews?

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Image result for alliance american football

Well, I did not see this coming.

Back in November, I presented my pretty frank thoughts regarding the upcoming, brand-new “professional” football league, the Alliance of American Football, which made its grand debut this past weekend. (Quick recap: I was NOT all that excited about it).

But all eight teams in the league saw their first round of action over the past few days, with varying degrees of success. And according to the numbers, people actually watched it:

Some reports even stated that close to three million viewers were tuned in at one point on Saturday night. A lot of things factor into those numbers, and it’s tough to pin down an exact total, but regardless: color me completely shocked.

ESPN’s Ben Cafardo responded by saying that the Houston/OKC game did peak with a rating of 3.2 from 11 p.m. to 11:15 p.m. that night, but the fact that they were lagging behind the AAF at any point on a Saturday night is still noteworthy.

Now, much of the initial interest could be due to simple curiosity. It’s new. It’s (slightly) different. And it was another way to get a football fix after the high from last week’s Super Bowl wore off. But, if we’re being honest, the XFL was the talk of the town when it first debuted in 2001 before flaming out in a flash, lasting just ONE season.

Image result for xfl meme

So while there is some reason for optimism for the AAF – much more so than I thought there would be – let’s all still pump the brakes here. Everyone has also been pointing out the “high quality” of football that was featured, but they fail to mention the following:

  • All four road teams lost.
  • One team was shut out entirely, and another two could only muster up six points.

Sure, these teams could still be trying to jell and work out the kinks, and I will admit that I did not watch one blessed second of any of the games this weekend. So how can I really say anything, right? OK. That’s fair. But maybe, just maybe, the level of talent in the league actually runs the full spectrum – from really bad to really good – and we could be seeing the first signs of a big competitive imbalance issue. (Remember, the league is made up of a bunch of NFL castoffs or former college players who couldn’t make it at the pro level.)

Or, maybe I’m just speculating too much and trying to save face for what I said in November. Only time will tell, but even after all the positive reviews I’ve seen over the past couple of days, I’m still not ready to dive in.

Also, let’s not forget that the aforementioned XFL will be making its comeback in 2020. The AAF has only this season to solidify its place in the hearts of fans throughout America until they will be squaring off against entertainment legend Vince McMahon, who will be determined that the league does not see the same fate it saw during the first go-round. Either way, it will be just one more obstacle this league will need to overcome not so far down the line.

Still, in an effort to be as unbiased and objective as possible, I want to point out a few things I liked upon perusing through roundups of the league’s inaugural weekend. It’s going to take a lot more than the following to rope me in, but without further ado:

(The Game is Much Quicker): As much as I love the NFL, some games, especially those in prime time, can have you in for quite the long haul. With all the commercials and replays, it can actually drag at points. Only Major League Baseball comes with comparable length times, and both leagues have been trying to do everything in their power to speed things up over the past few years. I don’t have the exact numbers for each AAF game this weekend, but most of the games wrapped up in just under 2.5 hours. Much of this has to do with less advertisements, but eliminating kickoffs, extra points, and shortening the play clock to 35 seconds (from 40) were also big factors as well.

 

Image result for kickoff nfl

You won’t be seeing any of this in the AAF.

(The “Sky Judge”): No, this is not some cool new Marvel character. It’s actually just the nickname for the ninth member of the officiating crew who sits up in the press box and has the ability to overrule bad calls made by their peers in real time. There is no stopping of the action, going to the hood, painstakingly analyzing some still shots, deliberating as a unit afterward, and THEN finally announcing a decision after a few painful minutes. Coaches do still receive two challenges, but the hope is that the sky judge will catch most of the bad calls and head off most disputes. (This is just another way to help speed up the game, too.)

(Everyone is Mic’d Up): Over the past few years, the NFL has started to provide fans with a few opportunities to listen into some of the action on the field. But in the AAF? Fans will be treated to that type of stuff all game long, even getting some on-the-spot insight into the mind of some officials:

As well as other cheeky shenanigans:

Pretty cool stuff there.

So, look, while the AAF had a great kick-off weekend and has I guess some potential, it’s still got quite a long way to go. While I’m not ready to go out and buy my Orlando Appolos jersey yet, I will be keeping a tepid interest in it for now, just in case.

What do you guys think? Have any of you watched it? We’d love to hear your thoughts on the AAF in the comments or on Facebook.