If you can spare about four minutes of your life – and the way things are going these days, you can – you really need to listen to Dave Portnoy.
Portnoy operates Barstool Sports and uploaded perhaps the best rant to date on the state of Covid-19 to his Twitter account on May 13. It has brought both sides of the aisle together with more common sense than we've heard from anyone on the issue. I'll let you see it for yourself ... I won't ruin it for you.
Anyway ...
What took so long?
The Colorado Avalanche will celebrate 25 seasons in its new home in the 2020-2021 season. That is, if it can finish up what's left of the current campaign.
When it all comes to an end, we can look forward with plenty of hope and juvenile giddiness with what has been suggested by the team. A recent report in The Athletic saw a spokesperson with Kroenke Sports and Entertainment, the company which owns the Avalanche, float the idea of the Avalanche rolling out the Quebec Nordiques uniforms at some point.
Seriously, why have we had to suffer this long without even a sniff of them? The Nordiques are like the Winnipeg Jets in that the fans were robbed of their hockey team and they want it back. There have been several occurrences over the years where Nordiques fans have invaded other National Hockey League arenas to let the league know how they feel about their team.
There should not be much thought put into this because it would be one of the most popular returns in professional sport. And count the Carolina Hurricanes among those teams who would be up for a full vintage game. The 'Canes were once the Hartford Whalers and moved to Carolina in 1997 but brought back the classic Whalers jerseys for a couple of games earlier this season and they were a hit.
How frickin' awesome would it be to see a game between the Avalanche and 'Canes with the teams decked out in Nordiques and Whalers jerseys? I would scream like a child at the thought of a classic Adams Division battle
Aren't jerseys fun?
In keeping with jerseys for a minute here, there's a cool-looking deal that was issued by Ferry Designs which has to do with the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Ferry likes to do what's known as the concept jersey, where new jerseys are made to look a lot cooler than existing jerseys, and the ones that have been made are rather sexy, if truth be told. For example, there's the Canadian jersey, which is a carbon copy of the Canada Cup jersey. I continue to say that version of the Canadian logo is the best one ever made.
There's a cool-looking one of the German team along with a rather good-looking Finnish retro look. There's a third jersey for Sweden which brings in the sailing ship which, while part of the Swedish get-up, will never be the main focus of the logo. It's been Tre Kronor – the three crowns – for decades and there has always been massive resistance to make it look any different than that.
If there's a cock-up, it's the Swiss jersey. I'm alright with the home and alternate jersey but the home jersey resembles the logo of the Red Cross. You see, it's the white cross on the Swiss flag inverted. I don't think Swiss hockey fans would go for that, much like the Swedes won't get rid of Tre Kronor.
Still, I like them all and I'll take the Canadian jersey, please and thank you.
And finally ...
Good Idea: Putting mannequins in the stands to create the illusion of fans at a soccer game.
Bad Idea: Putting sex dolls in the stands to create the illusion of fans at a soccer game.
Look, I kind of get the excuse that this team gave but common sense needed to prevail on this one.
The 2020 season is off and running in South Korea's top soccer league, the K League, and like all other sports which are actually operating (the notable exception being the Belarusian Premier League), the fans have been replaced with either cardboard cutouts or robots. Gotta try anything, right?
Welp, FC Seoul thought it would be a good idea to replace the cardboard with mannequins ... or so they thought in their game against Gwangju FC on May 17. You see, someone with an eagle eye – or knowledge of the product perhaps – clued in that they were sex dolls. The signs the dolls were holding up during the game were also promoting sites with adult content.
How did the team not know this? The dolls were provided by the CEO of a company called Dalkom, whose owner is a FC Seoul fan, and a few minutes worth of research would have given the team a bit of a heads-up. You simply don't accept something sight unseen and the team was forced to apologize for the mistake.
The team could be in some serious hot water as the K League bans any and all inappropriate or sexual advertisements with a hefty fine for teams who break that rule. And if you think I'm going to make a joke tying those two things together, you don't know my bosses very well.
Until next time, folks ...