Month: November 2020

The Pac-12 has a bit of a reputation. Every week, a game will kick off at like 11 p.m. EST, and for some reason, it ends up being completely bonkers. It is not written in the Constitution or the Bible or anything, and yet it seems like there is a bargain that both teams feel obliged to uphold, and goodness gracious, is it beautiful.

Saturday night’s #Pac12AfterDark tilt featured the Oregon State Beavers heading to Seattle to take on Washington. The first drive of the game decided to set the bar awfully high for the rest of the game — Washington got the ball first and had a pretty unremarkable eight-play sequence that ended up with a fourth-and-6 at the Oregon State 40, so they decided to send out the punt team.

What happened next is nothing short of magnificent. Behold!

I agree with CFBONFOX’s assessment of “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no no no no no.” Why did he punt that? Why did no one fall on it? Why did any of this happen? The answer can only be summed up thusly: Pac-12 After Dark calls on the most insane things in college football to happen every single time. As a result, the Beavers went up, 7-0, before their offense could ever step on the field.

Not everyone likes Lane Kiffin all that much, a fact that no one is more aware of than Kiffin himself. Love him or hate him, though, he at least deserves credit for trying to be entertaining — he really likes to get jokes off, particularly at the expense of old boss Nick Saban, and his teams tend to play an exciting brand of football that makes his games a joy to watch.

The latest example of this came on Saturday evening during Ole Miss’ high-scoring affair against South Carolina. With the Rebels trailing in the fourth quarter and the ball deep in their own territory, signal caller Matt Corral dropped back and let one fly, connecting with Elijah Moore for a a 91-yard score and wait was that a clipboard?

As it turns out, a different shot shows that Kiffin did, indeed, let his clipboard fly in the air in celebration of his quarterback going deep.

The fact that Kiffin knew that was going for six right away is nothing new — he did that when he was at Alabama as their offensive coordinator — and the sprint while ripping off his headset was fun, too. But goodness, dude let that clipboard fly. We missed it on the replay, but I hope it did not land on anyone.

As delicate a subject as it may be, Jeopardy! needs a new host in the wake of Alex Trebek’s death. And at least one person oddsmakers believe has a chance to follow the late Trebek’s lead at least seems interested in the job.

Levar Burton, a TV legend in his own right after hosting Reading Rainbow and appearing on Star Trek, has become the subject of a fan petition to make him the new host of the show following Trebek’s death as a result of pancreatic cancer on Sunday. The 80-year-old host was likely nearing the end of his career before his Stage IV cancer diagnosis in 2019, so Jeopardy! would likely have had some replacements in mind. But a significant amount of fans want Burton hosting, and as we’ve seen with the Reading Rainbow revival, there’s a groundswell of folks online that really likes him.

A Change.org petition about his candidacy for replacing Trebek popped up online this week, and thousands of people quickly signed on.

Between hosting 21 seasons of the educational Reading Rainbow, playing the brainiac engineer Geordi La Forge on Star Trek: the Next Generation, and filling the roll of Kunta Kinte in the ever important mini-series Roots, LeVar Burton has inspired and shaped the minds of several generations of trivia-loving nerds. This petition is to show Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc. and producers Mike Richards and Harry Friedman just how much love the public has for Burton, and how much we’d all love to see him as the next host of Jeopardy!

Burton himself also shared the petition, saying he’s “flattered” people think he should fill Trebek’s place on the legendary Jeopardy! stage.

“Even if nothing comes from it, I can’t tell how much how I appreciate all y’alls love and support,” Burton wrote on Twitter. We know Jeopardy! has new episodes with Trebek hosting scheduled to air until Christmas Day, and the show’s future past that remains uncertain with Trebek now gone and an ever-intensifying pandemic threatening to shut production down even if it has a host. But we know a lot of people are hoping Burton gets the call, and he certainly doesn’t sound like he’d say no if if that call came.

The past week has been a grueling week for the hip-hop community in Dallas, Texas after they suffered the loss of up and coming rapper Mo3, who called the southern city his home. And just days after his death, another shooting occurred in the city which this time around involved Boosie Badazz.

TMZ reported Saturday that the famed rapper was shot in the leg while he sat in a sprinter van at a strip mall called Big T’s Plaza in Dallas. As the rapper stopped by the strip mall, someone opened fire on his sprinter van, with one bullet apparently hitting Boosie in the leg just below his knee. The suspects ran from the scene and the Baton Rouge act was taken to the hospital and treated for his gunshot wound.

Dallas PD tells us … officers responded to reports of an armed encounter Saturday, where the callers stated someone had been shot but then fled in a private vehicle. We’re told when the cops showed up at the scene, there was nobody around and no signs of a crime being committed.

Sources close to TMZ say the rapper is doing well and recovering from his injuries. Initial reports of the incident said the rapper was not injured in the shooting but TMZ reportedly confirmed that he was indeed injured. The shooting comes just a day after Boosie stopped by a venue to honor Mo3, whom he was close with and even collaborated with for their Badazz MO3 mixtape.

Mo3 was also shot in Dallas earlier this week on November 11 after an armed individual pulled up beside him northbound on a Robert L. Thornton Freeway in Dallas and stepped out of his vehicle to approach the rapper. Mo3 exited his vehicle and began running southbound on the freeway when he was shot in the back of the head. He, unfortunately, died as a result of the shooting.

(via TMZ)

The world could always use a little bit more kindness, and when it comes to the Canadian music scene, the band Arkells always seems to deliver. Fellow Canadian Jamal Murray is the latest beneficiary of that kindness after the band’s lead singer, Max Kerman, gifted the Denver Nuggets superstar the new console that’s been in high demand on launch week.

As the band shared on its TikTok and later Twitter account, Murray had his wisdom teeth taken out and was searching for a console to play games on, most notably an enhanced edition of NBA 2K21. Somehow, the members of the band each ended up with one, and Kerman apparently decided to pay it forward and give it to someone who would actually put it to good use.

The length the band went to make it happen in a pandemic is actually pretty impressive, and the level of trust Kerman put in a random rideshare driver to make the delivery is notable. He sent the PS5 in an Uber from Toronto to Kitchener-Waterloo, Ontario, a good 110 kilometers (just over an hour’s drive on a good day) away. Both Murray’s and the band’s stories have more videos about the exchange, and it’s a fairly wholesome endeavor all around: the driver said he’d call Kerman when he made it to Kitchener and everything.

It’s worth noting that Kerman is a huge Toronto Raptors fan, not a Nuggets fan. But Canadian basketball sticks up for its own kind here. You must now, per my editor’s request, watch Raptors head coach Nick Nurse play “Signed, Sealed, Delivered” — a standard often covered in Arkells live sets — with the band last summer after Toronto won its first NBA title.

In other news, Arkells put out an album of live songs along with a new track, “Quitting You,” earlier this year. They’re also releasing another, called “Pub Crawl” that they actually gave to a certain set of Canadian (and Western New York) bars and restaurants early in an effort to get fans to order takeout from businesses that may be struggling during a pandemic. If they order food for pickup and ask nicely, they get to hear it early.

Those good Canadian boys, always looking out for everyone else.

Agents of chaos, rejoice, because two of gaming’s most whimsically frantic games are teaming up for a new collaboration. Untitled Goose Game, the 2019 indie release in which you are a silly goose that raises hell, and Fall Guys: Ultimate Knockout, which came out earlier this year and puts gamers through several levels of chaos en route to crowning a champion, are coming together for a new partnership that will bring the former to the latter.

Fall Guys announced the news on its Twitter account. Those who play the game will be able to acquire a collection of skins inspired by Untitled Goose Game, and eventually a honk emote that will come with a corresponding sound effect will make its way into the game. It’s going to be a little tricky for gamers to acquire UGG gear, though, as the available head and butt will both cost five crowns. It’s a hefty price for some: in order to get a crown in Fall Guys, you must win a game.

The news of the two games teaming up comes a little more than a month after Fall Guys unveiled its second season for gamers. While it hasn’t started to get to the Fortnite level of having gigantic partnerships with every major thing under the sun, there have been other games to receive this honor. And according to Game Informer, this won’t be the only time Untitled Goose Game gear will be available, as groundskeeper and boy with glasses attire will become available once the goose top and bottom is out of the game.

It has been a while since I have been punched in the face, but I do remember that it hurts really hard. Despite this, people who are professional fighters in a number of different sports — boxing, mixed martial arts, etc. — are quite good at getting punched in the face and not collapsing into a puddle immediately.

Still, sometimes, punches connect a little too cleanly, and we end up getting some pretty spectacular knockouts as a result. An example of this came on Friday evening when Uly Diaz fought Donelei Benedetto at Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship 14. Diaz knocked out Bendetto so fast with a right hook that I should probably just stop talking and drop in the video, so here you go.

It was such an impressive knockout that UFC star Yoel Romero jumped out of his seat and did a whole bunch of NSFW screaming over Diaz giving Benedetto a two piece and a biscuit.

At three seconds, it was the fastest knockout in the promotion’s history, and Diaz was pretty stoked about what he accomplished, which is not a surprise, because this is insane.

This is not quite as explosive as Jorge Masvidal’s famous flying knee knockout of Ben Askren, but this is one heck of a way to end a fight right after the opening bell.

Westside Gunn has had an absolute monster year in 2020. The Buffalo rapper has released not one, not two, but three albums in 2020 thanks to his Pray For Paris, Flygod Is An Awesome God II, and Who Made The Sunshine drops. Despite the success he’s had this year, Gunn may enter 2021 as a “free agent” as the rapper revealed he is no longer signed to Shady Records on Saturday.

The news came during an appearance on the Joe Budden Podcast where he simply said, “I’m off Shady,” when he was asked about his label situation. He added, “I’m actually a free agent.”

The announcement came after Gunn laughed off Eminem’s poor promotion of his Who Made The Sunshine album. After a fan noticed that Eminem posted The Alchemist’s The Food Villain project — which is not a Shady release — to Instagram without doing the same for Westside’s album, the fan said, “No post of @westsidegunn album that’s in your own label? Lol wtf.” The Buffalo rapper caught wind of the comment and replied with a series of laughing and shushing emojis.

After revealing the news, the hosts on the Joe Budden Podcast asked the rapper if he felt like the label fell short of their goal for him, but he opted to stay tight-lipped on the details. “I’m not no pillow talking type of n****,” Westside said. “That’s how I move. … It’s like saying me and [Benny The Butcher] or Conway or Conway or Benny or whoever, we may have a disagreement the world will never know about it. It’s just going to be brothers and cousins. It’s the same way with business.”

You can watch the full Joe Budden Podcast episode with Westside Gunn above.

The college basketball season is slated to begin later this month. Doing this in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, presents a number of challenges, and in the eyes of one of the sport’s most prominent coaches, there’s no point to rush getting back onto the floor.

Rick Pitino, who is slated to make his return to coaching in the States this year with Iona, called on the NCAA to postpone the start of the 2020-21 campaign. While advocating for “May Madness,” Pitino stressed that he believes a delay would help “Save The Season,” and that trying to start right now is “impossible.”

Pitino is coming at this from the perspective of someone whose program is in a holding pattern due to COVID-19. Someone within the Gaels’ program who is not a player had a positive test recently, and as a result, Iona got put on ice for 14 days. This, per the New York Post, means Iona’s opener on Nov. 25 is out, and games in Mohegan Sun at the end of November/beginning of December are in jeopardy.

Myron Medcalf of ESPN laid out some of the issues in the world of college hoops right now. One coach at a school in Michigan that isn’t D-I said his conference is apparently planning on players wearing masks during games, while other coaches have repeated Pitino’s sentiment.

One high-profile coach recently told ESPN that the current situation for college basketball is “scary.” Another coach in a non-Power 5 league said he thinks it’s “impossible” for his league to play.

The first college basketball games this season are scheduled to take place on Nov. 25.

January will mark five years since Rihanna graced us with an album, namely Anti. Since then, fans have grown impatient waiting for the singer’s return. Unfortunately, most of Rihanna’s attention has been focused on other endeavors, including her Savage X Fenty brand. Recently, though, Rihanna has given minuscule details about her upcoming ninth album. The latest update comes from Pharrell, who had some positive things to say about her latest work.

In an interview with Allure, Pharrell fulminated about the singer. “Rih is in a different place right now. Like, wow. She’s from a different world,” he said. His comments come after Rihanna revealed that the singer and producer would be involved. “It’s somebody I’ve been wanting to work with him for a long time,” she said in an interview with The Cut before naming Pharrell as the collaborator.

Back in September, Rihanna revealed her ninth album “will be worth the wait.” “I’m always working on new music. Just because I haven’t released an album in a few years doesn’t mean I haven’t been working on it,” she said in an interview with New! Magazine. “I’m not just going to put music out because people are craving it. I’m going to make it worth the wait – and it will be worth the wait.”

(via Allure)