Film Review: Wildcats (1986)

Also known as: American Wildcats, First and Goal (alternative German titles)
Release Date: February 14th, 1986
Directed by: Michael Ritchie
Written by: Ezra Sacks
Music by: James Newton Howard
Cast: Goldie Hawn, James Keach, Swoosie Kurtz, Robyn Lively, Brandy Gold, Jan Hooks, Bruce McGill, Nipsey Russell, Mykelti Williamson, Tab Thacker, Wesley Snipes, Woody Harrelson, Nick Corri, M. Emmet Walsh, LL Cool J, George Wyner, Ann Doran, Gloria Stuart

Hawn / Sylbert Movie Company, Warner Bros., 106 Minutes

Review:

“Fuck you!” – Marvel, “Fuck you what?!” – Molly McGrath, “Fuck you… Coach McGrath.” – Marvel, “Better.” – Molly McGrath

I know that Wildcats isn’t the greatest football movie ever made but it’s always been my personal favorite and my favorite movie starring Goldie Hawn, who I thought was awesome in pretty much everything, back in the day.

This film also gave us Woody Harrelson and Wesley Snipes, two actors I’ve thoroughly enjoyed over their decades long careers. In fact, they’d even work together again, multiple times. I kind of wish they’d still do stuff together on the regular. C’mon guys, can we get a Money Train 2 or White Men Can’t Walk?

Overall, this movie did more to sell football to me as a kid than my football fanatic uncles and growing up in Florida ever did, where high school and college football team allegiances were like religious cults.

I love that this movie takes a strong woman, dealing with real struggles as a single mother, and pushes her to the limit, where she overcomes all of her challenges and proves that she’s got what it takes.

I also like these stories where the right kind of mentor comes in and helps troubled kids that society has already given up on and pushes them towards a much better life. There were a lot of these types of films in the ’80s, many of them serious but also some of them funny.

This is one of the funny ones but that doesn’t make what Hawn’s Molly McGrath accomplishes any less impactful or important. And while real life often times leaves kids like these without the right sort of mentor or guidance, as a kid in similar situations, I always found encouragement in stories like this. This also might explain why some of my favorite movies growing up were Lean On Me, Stand and Deliver and Summer School, which many adults and critics just dismissed as a stupid stoner comedy. 

Now the story and sequence of events in this are far from perfect but the heart and soul in the picture really elevates it. You like these kids, you like all the characters except for the ones that are supposed to be shitty but in the end, the angry ex-husband sees the light and the scumbag rival coach gets what he deserves.

This is a feel good movie and even if some of it feels paint-by-numbers and formulaic, that doesn’t make it a bad or even a derivative movie. This has enough unique flourishes in it to make it stand out.

Plus, Goldie Hawn is just so damn likable and adorable but she’s also driven, strong and earns the respect of her players, her critics and the film’s audience. And she does it the hard way.

It’s also kind of sad that Hollywood seems incapable of telling these stories well, anymore.

Rating: 7.75/10

Film Review: Dazed and Confused (1993)

Release Date: June 4th, 1993 (Seattle International Film Festival)
Directed by: Richard Linklater
Written by: Richard Linklater
Music by: various
Cast: Jason London, Wiley Wiggins, Sasha Jenson, Michelle Burke, Christine Harnos, Rory Cochrane, Ben Affleck, Adam Goldberg, Anthony Rapp, Marissa Ribisi, Catherine Avril Morris, Matthew McConaughey, Shawn Andrews, Cole Hauser, Milla Jovovich, Joey Lauren Adams, Christin Hinojosa, Parker Posey, Deena Martin, Nicky Katt, Esteban Powell, Jason O. Smith, Mark Vandermeulen, Jeremy Fox, Renee Zellweger

Detour Filmproduction, Alphaville Films, Gramercy Pictures, 102 Minutes

Review:

“That’s what I love about these high school girls, man. I get older, they stay the same age.” – Wooderson

I always viewed this movie as a spiritual successor to Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Mainly, because it is a coming-of-age high school movie but it is just as serious, as it is comedic. While it is goofy and funny, it’s a much better film than what it appears to be on a surface level, similar to Ridgemont High.

Also like Ridgemont, it has a stacked cast that features a ton of young stars. These stars would become big names as the ’90s rolled on and the turn of the new millennium took many of them to the heights of Hollywood. There are future Academy Award winners in this cast.

It’s also directed by Richard Linklater and it has similar beats to his other coming-of-age films, although it doesn’t have as hard of an edge as the really dark, SubUrbia.

The story starts on the last day of school and it follows several characters over the course of that day and night. Each one is faced with an uncertain future, new changes and challenges on the horizon but ultimately, everyone wants to forget about their problems and just enjoy the night.

The film takes place in the mid-’70s, even though it came out in the ’90s. But it’s also timeless and regardless of the timeframe in which it takes place, it’s also really true to what the ’90s were like. I know, because I was this age in the ’90s. I can’t speak on how this will play for modern high school students but the world is a weird, incredibly soft place now.

What makes this movie so much better than most of the films like it is the performances of the cast and how genuine everything feels. Linklater obviously wrote this based off of his own high school experiences and his personal intimacy with the material comes through in every scene. And frankly, there isn’t a single unnecessary or dull scene in the entire film.

Additionally, all the big plots are well-balanced and organized, as the night plays on and several characters weave in and out of the larger story, overlapping.

Dazed and Confused has stood the test of time incredibly well. I feel like it’s material will always be relevant and because of that, it is one of the greatest motion pictures of its type.

Rating: 9/10
Pairs well with: other Richard Linklater coming of age films, as well as other good coming of age high school movies.

Retro Relapse: Jerry Jones Is A Piece of Shit But We Already Knew That

RETRO RELAPSE is a series of older articles from various places where I used to write before Talking Pulp.

*Written in 2015.

Fuck Jerry Jones. Fuck his Dallas Cowboys. Fuck the fucking NFL too.

I’m sick of this bullshit.

While I do feel bad for the Cowboys fans who want Greg Hardy (and Jerry Jones) gone for good, I have no respect or kind words for the fans who support the way their beloved football club is ran.

Truthfully, if I was a Cowboys fan, I would have either denounced the organization, at this point, or be banding together with other Cowboys fans that want to see their team no longer represent reprehensible shit.

But we live in a world where sports is a religion and football is God. There are sick people out there who don’t seem to understand that life is rich with so many other things and at the end of the day, all of this sports stuff is just a game anyway.

This Greg Hardy situation is disturbing and just adds to the pile of garbage that is the Dallas Cowboys’ and the NFL’s image. If football is God, Jerry Jones is the Antichrist – enchanting cultish fans with his evil deeds that are paraded around as noble actions for the greater good. The culture of the NFL has become a cancer to American culture.

Greg Hardy is a coward. He beats women. He beats them to a pulp. While he has seemingly gotten away from it from a legal standpoint and while the Cowboys claim to not have seen the photos of Hardy’s victim, giving this guy a shot on a team that coins itself as “America’s Team” is beyond insane. It goes to show how out of touch Jerry Jones is with reality. It proves that he has no morals and is willing to sign all the scum of the Earth to contracts, if it somehow helps the Cowboys win.

Jerry Jones is enabling a horrible person and rewarding them in the process.

Since that time, Hardy has gotten into a physical altercation with the Cowboys’ special teams coach and star wide receiver Dez Bryant. That should be grounds for his firing or at the very least, a hefty suspension handed out by the organization. Did the Cowboys do anything? No. Did they even fine him? Fuck no.

So Jerry Jones will let his own employees be assaulted by this maniac. I guess winning is that important. Especially when your star quarterback Tony Romo is missing for half the season and you’re most likely not going to come anywhere near the playoffs in a season that is already halfway over. The Dallas Cowboys are currently 2-6.

The thing is, Greg Hardy hasn’t even proven himself to be that great this season. He’s not an uber-talented megastar that the Cowboys should feel that they need to fight for and justify their actions over. Does he contribute? Sure. Can they live without him? Again, they’re 2-6!

Jerry Jones claims he was giving Greg Hardy a “second chance” and a “fresh start”. I’m sorry, but it is a little too soon for second chances. He has shown that he can’t control his rage since being given a fresh start and there are no signs that he’s going to change.

But this is that same Jerry Jones that allowed a bunch of players from his successful ’90s team continue to be employed after a bunch of criminal activity, which saw some of them do real prison time. Jones only cares about the bottom line: money. I don’t think he even cares about winning, other than winning leads to more money. Jerry Jones is the vile, sinister, evil businessman that is the epitome of every liberal college kid’s greatest fear.

Hey woman-beating Ray Rice is available and the Cowboys need a running-back. Why not give him a “second chance” and a “fresh start”, Jerry? If you’re going to go full Palpatine, embrace it.

Realistically, the National Football League is in a tough position, as Greg Hardy pretty much got away with beating up a woman. Even though there is a mountain of evidence against him, I understand their inability to not kick his ass out of the league. And the only reason he is free to walk around today, is because the victim didn’t defend herself in court. She wasn’t there. That certainly makes me wonder what kind of shit went down to stop her from following through.

But despite the legal outcome, the NFL needs to change. It needs to take these things a lot more seriously. Roger Goodell needs to not pussyfoot around these issues and lay down the law. The NFL cannot have tolerance for domestic violence or any violence, whatsoever. We have Neanderthals running wild, ruining the game and the League’s image. Their behavior proves they have no respect for themselves, their loved ones or the heritage and history of the National Football League – the place where they ply their trade. Well, the NFL shouldn’t respect them either. It’s time for some tough love. Sometimes you’ve got to kick the kid out of the house.

The NFL is a business. If an employee of any other company put a woman in the hospital, more often than not, that employee wouldn’t have a job. If that employee remained employed and people knew about it, that company would be in a lot of hot water, publicly. And what company is under a bigger microscope these days than the NFL?

Team owners and the League, need to get together and write a constitution. One that serves as a code of conduct that their employees must obey while employed. One that makes the League and team owners accountable and responsible for that player’s employment status if they can’t follow the rules. Every other company, especially ones the size of the NFL, has this.

Sure, I believe in second chances. But not immediate second chances. Players like Greg Hardy need to get help and help takes time. They need to show that they aren’t going to do these horrible things again. They need a good amount of time off to think about their situation and how they got there. Look at how long Michael Vick was out of the League after the dog fighting scandal. Did he eventually deserve a second chance? It’s debatable but I say “yes”.

The thing is, people make mistakes and some are haunted by those mistakes to the point that they change for the better and deserve a chance at redemption. Greg Hardy hasn’t shown that he deserves anything. At least not in the immediate-to-near future. He hasn’t even apologized.

Greg Hardy deserves prison time. Greg Hardy doesn’t deserve a multi-million dollar job.

But we can all thank Jerry Jones for that.

Retro Relapse: That NFL In London Project

RETRO RELAPSE is a series of older articles from various places where I used to write before Talking Pulp.

*Written in 2014.

Today was another day where we got to watch an NFL game in London. Sorry, I am just not impressed.

Look at that photo there (*now replaced by an unrelated GIF). That is a photo taken of the crowd at today’s game. Today’s London game was between the Detroit Lions and the Atlanta Falcons. You wouldn’t necessarily know that though by looking at this picture as almost every person is wearing gear from a different team.

I’m not criticizing the Londoners per se but this just feels like a group of people that went out and bought a ticket to see this strange sideshow and out of respect and wanting to embrace the experience, they ran down to the closest sports store that just happened to sell NFL shit and they bought whatever jersey was available in their size. Kind of like when I see some random American person going to watch a soccer match in a bar for the first time in America, only to stop off and buy any random British football a.k.a. soccer shirt that they can find.

The American sports media has a tendency to piss me off. This is really no different, as the idiots in my idiot box love pimping out this NFL in the UK idea. I mean if you watch a game, they spend more time selling the idea of the UK than actually calling the action in the damned game. And why? Well, NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell has made it no secret that he wants an NFL team in London. This project is an experiment leading to that eventual goal.

I think that goal is a pretty asinine one. As far as I can tell, the British people really don’t give two shits about the National Football League. In fact, most of the ones I have ever met or talked to, hate the fact that Americans call their big barbaric sport “football” and refer to true football as that weird word “soccer”. To every sports-loving Briton that I have met, they love their football. Again, their football. Sure, some may casually watch our football but you aren’t going to get the passion you see at a Chelsea game embody the fans at a Jaguars game.

I use the Jaguars as an example because that is the team that has been most rumored to be the one to eventually relocate to England. Yes, what a gift that Roger Goodell wants to bestow upon the United Kingdom by giving them the worst team in the National Football League! How mighty generous of you, sir!

And while this NFL brand building in the UK is being pushed down the British people’s throats, as well as ours, the league can’t sell them on how awesome the product is if they keep sending them teams like the Jaguars, the Dolphins, the Raiders and the Falcons. At least the Lions and the Cowboys have had good seasons thus far. If you want to sell the game to the Brits though, send them really good match ups. Send them the Broncos and the Seahawks. Hell, just send them a real rivalry game – not just some random match up.

This year they played three games in London. Next season they are expanding it to five. This is ludicrous.

To start, it isn’t fair to the teams that participate. Now, I know that many teams and athletes are game for the adventure and the chance to play in London because it is a new and unique experience but what happens when it is no longer new and unique. Honestly, like the overabundance of outdoor stadium hockey, the novelty will wear off.

And why is it not fair to the participating teams? While like today’s game, the Atlanta Falcons, even though they are on the road in London, were considered the host team and thus, lost one of their eight home games. While the game counts as a home game, they are really playing seven at home and nine on the road, giving them a disadvantage to the other teams in the league. To Detroit, it is just another road game, as had they played in Atlanta, they still would have been on the road and they still get the even eight at home, eight on the road schedule. To a team like Atlanta, who are struggling so far this season, this is a big wrench in the machine that could prevent them from squeaking into the playoffs if they are able to pull a good run together to end their season.

Both teams are also effected by the travel. London is across the ocean. While you could look at an east coast-based team and compare it to a New York team flying to California for a game, it is much further than that to any team not located on America’s eastern shoreline. How long would it take the Seattle Seahawks to get there and once they got there, how tired and jet-lagged would they be?

Now imagine putting a team in London permanently. How tired would the London-based team be after having to travel back and forth to the United States every other week for eight road games over the course of the season? How fair would that be to teams on the west coast of the U.S.? There are several reasons why no professional sports leagues have expanded worldwide. This is probably the biggest of them.

With a schedule like the London team would have to have, who the hell would want to play there? Sure, if a player gets drafted, he doesn’t have much choice but why would he ever re-sign? How would they build a franchise and develop franchise players? Maybe the press should really ask the players about their thoughts on this but ultimately, I can’t see anyone wanting to voluntarily sign-up for this task.

Now imagine if there is a team to pop-up in Hawaii or further out than the west coast. As a team, you’d have to practically fly half way around the world and back to play a hard-hitting game just to rush back home for the next one.

I mean, the NFL could send the London team to America for three or four games in a block and then send them home for three or four, to lessen travel but the point is, they would still be on the road, far from home and not near their own practice facilities. Plus a schedule with big chunks of games at home and away, also isn’t really fair to a London team.

Remember NFL Europe? That shit crashed and burned and the league held on to it for way too long. No one in Europe really supported it and no one cared. And that is the thing. If the United Kingdom really wanted an NFL team, then let’s talk about it. I just don’t see anyone in the UK that really cares, at least not on the level of justifying a team to move there.

Now you could counter and say that the games in London attract more fans than any other American team that isn’t Dallas. While that fact is true, no American stadium other than Dallas is as big as London’s Wembley Stadium. It has the advantage of having more seats. Secondly, games are much rarer there but now that it is expanding to more games per season, it won’t be as unique of an experience as it has been to the British. Thirdly, despite the huge crowds for just one-to-three games per year, the London-based sports press never gives it more than a small blurb in their sports section. Reason being? Because it doesn’t care about the sport en masse. Don’t let the American press and the commentators selling you on the idea fool you. In fact, SB Nation’s Kristi Dosh had a great article about this last season (see here).

You know what they care about in London? They care about football. The kind of football where helmets and pads aren’t required and they aren’t subjected to a Taco Bell or a Bud Light Lime advert every twelve seconds.

Film Review: Gus (1976)

Release Date: July 7th, 1976
Directed by: Vincent McEveety
Written by: Arthur Alsberg, Don Nelson, Ted Key
Music by: Robert F. Brunner
Cast: Don Knotts, Edward Asner, Gary Grimes, Tim Conway, Harold Gould, Ronnie Schell, Tom Bosley, Louise Williams, Dick Butkus, Dick Van Patten, Bob Crane, Johnny Unitas, Richard Kiel, Stu Nahan

Walt Disney Productions, 96 Minutes

Review:

“Ready, Gus. Oich!” – Andy Petrovic

I was an avid viewer of just about every live-action Disney film put out from the ’50s up through the early ’90s. I had the Disney Channel, in its original subscription form, back in the late ’80s and a bit beyond. So stuff like this was on my television all the time. It’s also hard not to be an old school Disney nut when raised in Florida.

Still, this movie remained unknown to me until I got Disney+ and saw it available on there. Since I had never seen it and since I love Don Knotts, I had to check it out.

Unfortunately, Don Knotts isn’t in the movie anywhere near enough. He plays the wacky coach of a loser football team but most of the film focuses on Andy and his field goal kicking mule.

This is one of many Disney animal movies, as well as one of many Disney sports films. It’s cool seeing the two things come together though, as the concept, at least by this point, hadn’t been done to death courtesy of the Air Bud franchise and it’s 97 sequels and spinoffs.

At its core, this film is lighthearted and positive. It’s also got a lot of slapstick humor and some seriously good physical gags. My favorite sequence in the film features Tom Bosley and his buddy trying to capture Gus, the mule, in a supermarket. It plays like a live-action Road Runner cartoon, as the bumbling goofs continue to get upstaged and made into fools.

I can’t really say much on the sports elements of the film other than you have to turn your brain off because this is, after all, a movie about a mule playing in the National Football League.

While the team in the movie is fictitious, I liked that this was made with help from the NFL and featured some of the iconic teams, as well as former players and legends in various roles.

Gus isn’t a bad movie but it’s far from great. It’s one of the more enjoyable Disney animal comedies of the ’70s but for most people, this will probably come across as a very dated relic that will just be dismissed as stupid schlock.

And it could’ve used a lot more Don Knotts.

Rating: 5.5/10
Pairs well with: other wacky live-action Disney movies featuring animals.

 

Vids I Dig 436: Toy Galaxy: The History of ‘Starting Lineup’: Bridging Sports Nerds & Toy Nerds

Retro Relapse: Baseball Needs to Grow the Fuck Up

RETRO RELAPSE is a series of older articles from various places where I used to write before Talking Pulp.

*Written in 2016.

Warning: I’d call this a rant.

Baseball is the greatest thing in the world. It is more than a game. It is tradition, it is history, it is Americana at its most pure and it is what nearly every boy wanted to do before the NFL wrestled the ownership of Sundays away from Jesus.

The problem with this old sport is that it is a very large part of America’s unique history. While that isn’t bad in and of itself, it is ruined by those who must keep certain traditions alive despite the always changing and expanding world. Every other sport adapts with the times, sometimes a bit late, but they all adapt. Baseball has a really hard time with this and it is what is killing the game.

No one really gives a shit whether or not NFL quarterback Peyton Manning took HGH except for a few sports writers trying to make a mountain out of a mole hill and grind an ax. However, if a baseball player is even mentioned around steroids, the witch-hunt begins and the stake is already burning. Peyton Manning, after his recent Superbowl win is an American hero but Alex Rodriguez is still an unwelcome demon spawn. But I already talked about the PED issue. I’m just bringing it up because it is part of the bigger picture I am discussing in this piece. I also already talked about umpires being pussies and players as well. But all of this is relevant to my point.

Everyone in baseball is a fucking pussy. And not just those in baseball but those around it and the millions that watch it. Okay, not everyone but certainly most people.

This is why I am glad that a young player, Bryce Harper, is being pretty vocal about the sport having to adapt to the times. Last season, he put sensitive umpires on blast. Most recently, he’s been talking about players needing to man up and get over other players celebrating or showing excitement when they do something great on the field. He’s right. Despite other players telling him to shut the fuck up, he’s goddamn right.

Personally, I’m tired of professional athletes complaining about bat flips, victory dances and displays of emotion. The players claim that it is disrespectful to the player on the losing end. Jesus fucking Christ, man the fuck up and grow a set of fucking balls, pussies!

If a player is tired of a showboat, become a better player. If they can’t become a better player and beat their celebrating rival, they should learn how to grow thicker skin and deal with it. It’s childish bullshit. What’s next, participation trophies for all the professional athletes every year?

And really, did none of these players ever play ball as kids? Kids are brutal as hell and talk more shit and celebrate more than any professional athlete.

I sucked at baseball, even though I loved it. I got called all kinds of names. Yeah, it pissed me off and it made me want to knock the next pitch out of the park but I got over it and always came back the next day. And I was in middle school, certainly much younger than these crybabies. I also wasn’t making millions to play the game. I played it because despite the name calling, it was still fun.

Usually a player that celebrates too much is beaned with a baseball. There are other forms of retaliation but regardless, retaliation is a bitch move in that situation.

Sure, I get the old code. I understand that when one of your players gets beaned, you bean one of theirs: eye for an eye and all that jazz. It’s one thing if a bean is intentional, it’s an entirely different thing if it is an accidental wild pitch – that shit happens. But to bean a guy for celebrating a game-clinching multi-run homer, shows that the team on the losing end is a bunch of temper tantrum toddlers. Boo fucking hoo, you lost! Well, it’s a competition, someone has to lose.

The NFL penalizes football teams for a player showboating. I don’t agree with it but they’re pussies too. But no one is as big of a pussy about it as MLB players. And the fans are even bigger pussies than that. But luckily fans aren’t in the game to bean chronic offenders in the head.

The problem with baseball is that everyone, from top to bottom, is just a sensitive bitch. To see grown ass men act like pissed off toddlers in a sandbox rumble is deplorable. And if you call them out on it, they reference “the code” or talk about the “culture” of the game that us outsiders will never understand.

Well, if I go to a rival company and throw a ball at the head of an employee, I can’t turn to the media and talk about “the code” and the “culture” of the industry I work in. I’d be laughed at and probably be called “a baby” or a “psycho”. I’d also be in jail.

For guys that have a job that makes them a public figure, they can’t handle the scrutiny that comes along with their stupid childish behavior. But again, they’re fucking pussies.

The game needs to adapt in a lot of ways. It needs to change and grow up. The biggest change needs to come with the behavior and the ego of these prima donnas.

Baseball also needs to get over its shit with Pete Rose and deal with PEDs in a better fashion. But if you don’t see things through the MLB’s antique pair of glasses, you don’t know about the game and the tradition and the blah, blah, blegh!

There are a lot of old men in the baseball world that just need to die off. The sport may be be doing well enough but it can never be America’s pastime again if it doesn’t grow and change with America. Compared to baseball, I think football mostly sucks but that certainly isn’t majority opinion. It also won’t be majority opinion until baseball can kill off the zombies roaming around the grounds. They’re slow, they smell and they won’t stop until everything else is a wobbly mass of decaying shit and all the brains are devoured.

I just hope more young players are influenced by Bryce Harper. I hope more players become vocal if they share the same sentiment. I want to see the sport survive. Fuck that, I want to see it thrive. I want it to thrive like it did in the old days when it was the coolest thing in America.

In 1943, a team of women were told, “There’s no crying in baseball!” In 2016, a league of men don’t do much but cry.

Film Review: Lucas (1986)

Release Date: March 28th, 1986
Directed by: David Seltzer
Written by: David Seltzer
Music by: Dave Grusin
Cast: Corey Haim, Charlie Sheen, Kerri Green, Courtney Thorne-Smith, Winona Ryder, Tom Hodges, Guy Boyd, Jeremy Piven, Garrett M. Brown

Twentieth Century Fox, 100 Minutes

Review:

“You can’t ever make me quit, ever!” – Lucas

In the ’80s, coming of age teen movies, whether they be drama, comedy or both, were a dime a dozen. And while I can’t consider Lucas to be one of the better ones, it still has real heart and it’s damn near impossible to not feel for the kid, as he experiences his first heartbreak when the girl he loves, also his best friend, falls for the cool guy that is like a big brother to him.

I think that the story is something everyone can relate to regardless of gender or situation. At some point, we’ve all had to deal with heartbreak for the first time. And since this movie actually tells that story pretty well, it’s a pretty worthwhile picture.

Corey Haim was really young in this and it was only his second starring role. He showed great promise as a young actor, as did the rest of the cast, who also made this sort of hokey picture into a real human, emotional drama.

This is a strange film in that it does sort of get buried by its outdated ’80s cheese but the important stuff still gets through to the audience in an effective way.

There are certainly a dozen or more ’80s teen movies I’d recommend over this one but if you’ve seen the cream of the crop and never watched this one, it’s definitely worth your 100 minutes.

Rating: 6.75/10
Pairs well with: other coming of age high school movies of the ’80s.

Retro Relapse: In A Perfect World: The NFL With the EPL’s Structure

RETRO RELAPSE is a series of older articles from various places where I used to write before Talking Pulp.

*Written in 2014.

The English Premier League and most of European soccer has been around longer than the National Football League in its modern form (post AFL). Being a long time soccer fan, I have always been a big fan of the way the Premier League and most European leagues handle their shit. The structure of the EPL is awesome.

The NFL could benefit greatly by adopting a similar system. I know this is a pipe dream and probably too big of a feat to accomplish at this point but imagine a league of twenty teams, the bottom three each year get relegated to a lower league while the top three in the lower league get promoted to the big time NFL.

There would then be multiple lower leagues, like in English soccer, where teams would move up and down depending upon where they finish. This would open the floodgates for expansion and allow a lot more markets the accessibility of having a professional football team. Even if your local team didn’t fare well and get into the top level NFL league, they could still fight for championships in lower levels. It’d be like the pandemonium we have with all the bowl games in college. Multiple playoffs in multiple levels of the sport would be pretty fucking awesome. And yes, I said playoffs but I’ll get more into that further down.

In the Premier League, schedule strength isn’t even an issue and the playing field is level and fair. The reason being, every team in the twenty team structure plays each other once at home and once on the road. Again, everyone plays everyone on home ground and enemy ground once.

Now could the NFL have a 38 game season? No, even though from a fan’s perspective, that’d be awesome. They could however, have a 19 game season and just play each team once. Who gets home game advantage can be determined in some diplomatic fair way by some dudes in suits making a lot more money than me. Additionally, you could make the season 21 weeks and give these guys two bye weeks to rest because honestly, I don’t think one bye week is enough now. I’d even be in favor of expanding it to three bye weeks in a 22 week season. Think of all the football!

Now in the Premier League, there are no playoffs. The team with the most points at the end of the season is the champion. I’d change that however and make a 6 team playoff. The top two ranked teams get a first round bye while teams ranked third through sixth meet in the first week of a three week playoff; the winners going on to play the two top teams in a final four situation and those winners of those games playing for the championship. It’s fair, it’s easy and it’s badass! I would actually implore the Premier League to adopt this same playoff system even if it gets the traditionalists in an uproar. Playoffs mean more games, more money and more excitement!

I’d say that the NFL should go to three leagues of twenty teams, making a total of sixty teams. That nearly doubles the professional squads that we have now and increases the amount of local tribalism. All these states and large cities that don’t have teams can now have them. And hell, maybe the teams that continually flounder in the NFL, like the Cleveland Browns, can go on to win championships and have success once being relegated to a lower league. I’m not saying that to be disrespectful to Cleveland because in college basketball for example, no one ever complained after winning the NIT. In fact, those teams rejoiced and felt accomplished. This also doesn’t mean that teams like the Browns can’t fight for their spot to stay in the top tier NFL. In fact, this might improve competition between all the teams.

I know that from an economics standpoint, that it might not seem feasible for smaller markets to have a professional football team but if British soccer can have stadiums for dozens upon dozens of teams in their much smaller nation, America can get this done. Besides, not every stadium has to be Cowboys Stadium. Smaller markets can have smaller venues but it’d still be awesome. Hell, rent out some college fields.

This may all seem like a crazy idea and it probably is but I think that it’d improve the sport, breed more competition, create a lot more revenue, give more opportunity to players and give the fans so much more than what they have now. I wish I had a time machine and a shit ton of money so I could go back to the 1920s, buy a team and pressure the league into taking shape like this at its early stage.

Book Review: ‘Think Like a Warrior: The Five Inner Beliefs That Make You Unstoppable’ by Darrin Donnelly

I really liked Darrin Donnelly’s Relentless Optimism and thought that it was a book that I really needed to read, as it helped me get through some shit and it was more focused on having an optimistic mindset, which was something I was struggling with as of late.

That being said, I wanted to read some of his other stuff, so I went back and gave this a shot, as it is actually the first of the five books in Donnelly’s Sports for the Soul series.

It’s pretty darn good for what it is and I enjoyed it and found it helpful. It didn’t quite connect with me like the other book did but that one was more geared towards what I was looking for.

This one still has some solid, sagely advice and a good example of how to apply certain techniques and mindsets.

Frankly, Donnelly just has a good way with words and an even better way at weaving his thoughts and ideas into a story that is easy to digest and understand. 

Rating: 8/10
Pairs well with: The other four books in Darrin Donnelly’s Sports for the Soul series.