Programs like Title IX. The list of the best teams in women's soccer correlates well with the importance a country places on gender equality in sports.
By pairing Spain and Portugal in Group B, it's all but guaranteed that Russia will play one of those in the Ro16, if Russia even advances from the group stage.
... all seem to gravitate back towards MLS, and now seemingly in their primes. See Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, and (though he may have been just past his prime) Clint Dempsey.
With the league becoming richer, how long will it be before MLS attracts the likes of Zelalem, Green, et al before they have fully developed in Europe? Before we know it, the success of MLS may start becoming a hinderance to the development of the national team. See Premier League and pre-2000 Bundesliga
... all seem to gravitate back towards MLS, and now seemingly in their primes. See Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, and (though he may have been just past his prime) Clint Dempsey.
With the league becoming richer, how long will it be before MLS attracts the likes of Zelalem, Green, et al before they have fully developed in Europe? Before we know it, the success of MLS may start becoming a hinderance to the development of the national team. See Premier League and pre-2000 Bundesliga
Holland has had a mediocre league since the post-Bosman exodus of the mid-90s. Belgium's league has been mediocre since forever. France league has generally been underwhelming, certainly in relation to its national team. It hasn't really hurt any of those teams much. A strong domestic league isn't a requirement for national team success.
Barcelona dominated La Liga more than Chelsea dominated the Prem last year, sure. Well, maybe. Barcelona won the league by 2 points over Real. Chelsea won the league by 8 points over City (and I think they had even locked it up well before then too).
But some (most?) of the goal differential is also playing styles. Barcelona keeps attacking and pressing, even when up big. Chelsea under Mourinho would park the bus after going up by a goal or two. So, all things equal, Barcelona's goal difference will generally be higher.
Except when it actually works. Transferring to a European club has worked out for Howard, Guzan, Bradley, Dempsey, Altidore, Cherundolo, Cameron... and that's not even counting the folks that started their careers in Europe (DeMerit?, Dooley, Harkes, and the German contingent).
Compared to, say, Hejduk, Eddie Johnson, Buddle, Rico Clark, Marcus Tracy, Donovan, Kenny Cooper... I'd say it's about a wash.
Maybe a shade pro-Europe, since it did give us the unintentional comedy that is Freddy Adu. And that was a bullet that MLS thankfully dodged.
Dante was on the pitch for Wolfsburg and must have experienced some form of PTSD. Dante was on the pitch for Brazil when they lost 7:1 to Germany and was mercilessly taunted by Thomas Mueller et al in the months afterwards.
And this may have possibly been Dante's first game for Wolfsburg since transferring from Bayern. So... out of shape + new teammates + PTSD.
Lewandowski was a free agent. Bayern didn't pay a cent for him.
Goetze's buyout was ridiculously low. ~37M Euros for a then-21 year old star in the making? Every major club would have made the same offer. If you're going to find fault anywhere, it's Dortmund's approach of trying to finance an A+ team with a B- budget.
Not to mention that the transfers work both ways. Mats Hummels etc etc
The NFL is doing no such thing. The NFL only requires draft-eligible players to be three seasons removed from high school. What they do during those three years, the NFL rules don't care about.
The NFL is doing no such thing. The NFL only requires draft-eligible players to be three seasons removed from high school. What they do during those three years, the NFL rules don't care about.
Let's not talk up Jamaica too much here. Jamaica has qualified for the World Cup a grand total of... once. One time. Une fois. Ein mal. Una vez.
There have been six times as many Jamaican bobled teams at Winter Olympics than Jamaican teams at a World Cup.
This team has never before made it into the final of a Gold Cup. A tournament held every two years. And a tournament at which the USA and Mexico routinely send their B squads.
They have a grand total of two players on their team that play in a top tier league. The best Jamaican player ever is... Ricardo Gardner? Deon Burton? It would be Raheem Sterling, I suppose, since he was born in Jamaica.
Their best results are what? Winning the Caribbean Cup a few times?
Jamaica is a slouch, plain and simple. And we lost. At home. With our A team.
LaBBQ is great, no question. And it's hard to argue against a place that has free beer. Also hard to argue against the tried and true method of hiring away Franklin's protege. But hey, the more the merrier for us.
But Franklin also has a nostalgia factor going for it. Before Franklin, the best BBQ in town was... Rudy's? Lamberts? Mann's? Salt Lick (if we're counting that as Austin)? John Mueller before he flamed out? Franklin's little trailer under I-35 was an oasis is an inexplicable desert.
Also, the espresso BBQ sauce. Not that the food needs it. But it's damn good.
If you pre-order an entire brisket, you get to skip the line.
Also, I've heard that there is a group of Austin high schoolers that have started a business over the summer, where they will camp out for you early in the morning and reserve your spot in line at Franklin.
Hire your brother's set design company for $1M. Or hire your sister-in-law's catering company for $1M. Heck, pay Tim Roth $5M with the understanding that he hands you a suitcase with $500k the next time he's in Trinidad.
In the housing bubble, the bubble eventually popped because homeowners simply defaulted on their mortgages, because that became (for many) the economically rational thing to do. Similarly with the dot com bubble, stock prices outpaced actual earnings to the point where it became economically rational to stop pumping money into the sector.
But each of those had a triggering event that eventually popped the bubble. What is the triggering event in the student loan bubble? Student loans aren't dischargable in bankruptcy and are guaranteed by the government. So the loaners of student loans will always be paid. Instead, the only effect of the student loan bubble is secondary, as many have said. People stop buying houses and cars and stop building up savings, but they will still carry that debt with them. For the economy at-large, that is a slow and painful effect, because not one event (short of a mass suicide of debtors or a sudden change in the law, I suppose) would cause the bubble to burst.
Which makes this really not a bubble at all, but a growing economic tumor.
Ramsey Snow was first introduced torturing Theon, for whom nobody was feeling any sympathy (at the time, anyway). So I'm sure that bought him at least some likeability points.
A police report is very much hearsay, regardless of what it contains. The witness actually testifying in court is direct witness testimony. Now, maybe the police report comes in under a hearsay exception, but it's still hearsay.
(Of course, all of this being OT, what with this not being an actual court and all.)
The NFLPA will never agree to this. The player reps that would vote for this (and I assume all of them are 5+ year veterans) would literally be voting themselves out of a job.
But MLS has no passion, at least not anything compared to even the Belgian league. There are no rivalries. Teams exist only because some rich person paid MLS a franchise fee, and not because they were promoted to the top league by virtue of winning in lower leagues. With the exception of perhaps Portland (and maybe a few others?), there is no sense of "I was a fan before promotion." If your team is terrible, there is no fear of relegation, only a resignation of "welp, maybe next year!" You (not you personally) are not a fan of the team because your old man and his old man before him were fans, or because of the part of town you grew up in, or your religion, or your class status. You are a fan because... oh, well there happens to be a team in town now.
But then again, I also think the NFL lacks passion and is utterly boring as a result. Certainly compared to college football.
This is a total pipe dream and will never happen, but if MLS could generate passion, it really wouldn't matter what the quality is. Allow for promotion/relegation, for example. A newly-promoted DCFC playing against a newly-relegated Columbus Crew in the MLS 2nd Division / Midwest Regional / whatever you want to call it... for the chance at promotion to MLS... I would watch this in a heartbeat, regardless of quality of play.
But wouldn't they simply convert to a private non-profit institution? Meaning they would be tax exempt from a lot of stuff anyway (possibly even property tax?). The one major advantage to being a state institution, though, is the ability to expand by eminent domain.
"It's not as though there was no talk about Harbaugh being a possible candidate for the Michigan job in early December, and Weber could easily have waited until the new coach was installed before committing to OSU."
If you were a 17-year old with (presumably) NFL aspirations, would you take this risk? What if OSU had decided to move on and recruit another RB and Michigan had ended up with Greg Schiano or some such?
I'm not sure this is true. Leaving aside the absurdity (what with a construction company unable to do any of those things), government contracts are often conditioned on the (non-)exercise of a constitutional right. Government employment contracts restrict free speech and freedom of travel all the time. Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, for one.
To use an example, Townsville City could surely offer a contract to a singer to sing at its annual Pumpkin/Cherry/Hatch Chile/whatever Festival. And that contract could surely contain a stipulation that (a) the singer must be in Townsville City on that date and (b) must refrain from political/religious/general non-pumpkin speech, no?
It's an offer than cannot be accepted until NSD. And an offer can generally be revoked until it has been accepted. But it's been too long since law school, so what do I know...
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For anyone traveling to Texas for BBQ, BBQ guru Daniel Vaughn has a venerated Top 50 list, which serves as the Michelin Guide for Texas BBQ:
https://www.texasmonthly.com/interactive/top-50-bbq-2021/
Nah, Dickey's is the way to go!
That's probably true for most teams, no?
It'd be true for Tom Landry, Don Shula, Gary Kubiak
Programs like Title IX. The list of the best teams in women's soccer correlates well with the importance a country places on gender equality in sports.
I'm pretty sure Trader Joe's carries Chimay cheese regularly.
115478
By pairing Spain and Portugal in Group B, it's all but guaranteed that Russia will play one of those in the Ro16, if Russia even advances from the group stage.
The Netherlands not qualifying has something to do with that as well.
He played for Hamburg this past season. Not exactly a stacked team. And he was awful. Just awful.
So he's basically semi-German.
There are more American teenagers playing professionally in Germany than Dutch teenagers.
... all seem to gravitate back towards MLS, and now seemingly in their primes. See Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, and (though he may have been just past his prime) Clint Dempsey.
With the league becoming richer, how long will it be before MLS attracts the likes of Zelalem, Green, et al before they have fully developed in Europe? Before we know it, the success of MLS may start becoming a hinderance to the development of the national team. See Premier League and pre-2000 Bundesliga
... all seem to gravitate back towards MLS, and now seemingly in their primes. See Michael Bradley, Jozy Altidore, and (though he may have been just past his prime) Clint Dempsey.
With the league becoming richer, how long will it be before MLS attracts the likes of Zelalem, Green, et al before they have fully developed in Europe? Before we know it, the success of MLS may start becoming a hinderance to the development of the national team. See Premier League and pre-2000 Bundesliga
Holland has had a mediocre league since the post-Bosman exodus of the mid-90s. Belgium's league has been mediocre since forever. France league has generally been underwhelming, certainly in relation to its national team. It hasn't really hurt any of those teams much. A strong domestic league isn't a requirement for national team success.
Barcelona dominated La Liga more than Chelsea dominated the Prem last year, sure. Well, maybe. Barcelona won the league by 2 points over Real. Chelsea won the league by 8 points over City (and I think they had even locked it up well before then too).
But some (most?) of the goal differential is also playing styles. Barcelona keeps attacking and pressing, even when up big. Chelsea under Mourinho would park the bus after going up by a goal or two. So, all things equal, Barcelona's goal difference will generally be higher.
The last time a team outside of Chelsea/United/City/Arsenal won the Premier League... Blackburn in 1995.
Even mighty mighty Liverpool hasn't won since 1990. When it wasn't even yet called the Premier League.
There is no KC Royals extended run in European soccer leagues nowadays.
There is also no Leicester City run in any American sports league either. The Toledo Mud Hens won't be promoted to the big leagues anytime soon.
Not to mention that small market teams do just fine. To use Germany last year as an example:
- Wolfsburg (pop. 120,000) finished second
- Moenchengladbach (pop. 250,000) finished third
- Leverkusen (pop. 160,000) finished fourth
- Augsburg (pop. 280,000, and only promoted to Bundesliga in 2011) finished fifth
Compare that to the rubbish teams playing in Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Duesseldorf...
Except when it actually works. Transferring to a European club has worked out for Howard, Guzan, Bradley, Dempsey, Altidore, Cherundolo, Cameron... and that's not even counting the folks that started their careers in Europe (DeMerit?, Dooley, Harkes, and the German contingent).
Compared to, say, Hejduk, Eddie Johnson, Buddle, Rico Clark, Marcus Tracy, Donovan, Kenny Cooper... I'd say it's about a wash.
Maybe a shade pro-Europe, since it did give us the unintentional comedy that is Freddy Adu. And that was a bullet that MLS thankfully dodged.
Dante was on the pitch for Wolfsburg and must have experienced some form of PTSD. Dante was on the pitch for Brazil when they lost 7:1 to Germany and was mercilessly taunted by Thomas Mueller et al in the months afterwards.
And this may have possibly been Dante's first game for Wolfsburg since transferring from Bayern. So... out of shape + new teammates + PTSD.
Lewandowski was a free agent. Bayern didn't pay a cent for him.
Goetze's buyout was ridiculously low. ~37M Euros for a then-21 year old star in the making? Every major club would have made the same offer. If you're going to find fault anywhere, it's Dortmund's approach of trying to finance an A+ team with a B- budget.
Not to mention that the transfers work both ways. Mats Hummels etc etc
The Alumni Association is also hosting an event at Nickel and Rye.
International hockey is littered with ads. See any of the pictures here:
http://www.iihfworlds2015.com/
But I'm fairly certain you can still buy a Team Canada jersey without the beer and car logos on them.
Skoda is a car company owned by VW and well known for sponsoring European hockey teams and the ice hockey world championship in the summer.
Repower is an electric company.
And the last one is a Swiss cantonal bank.
Old Firm
Man Utd - Liverpool
Schalke - Dortmund
Rapid Vienna - Austria Vienna
Germany - Holland
Germany - England
Brazil - Argentina
Ali - Frazier
McClaren - Ferrari
Federer - Nadal
The NFL is doing no such thing. The NFL only requires draft-eligible players to be three seasons removed from high school. What they do during those three years, the NFL rules don't care about.
The NFL is doing no such thing. The NFL only requires draft-eligible players to be three seasons removed from high school. What they do during those three years, the NFL rules don't care about.
Let's not talk up Jamaica too much here. Jamaica has qualified for the World Cup a grand total of... once. One time. Une fois. Ein mal. Una vez.
There have been six times as many Jamaican bobled teams at Winter Olympics than Jamaican teams at a World Cup.
This team has never before made it into the final of a Gold Cup. A tournament held every two years. And a tournament at which the USA and Mexico routinely send their B squads.
They have a grand total of two players on their team that play in a top tier league. The best Jamaican player ever is... Ricardo Gardner? Deon Burton? It would be Raheem Sterling, I suppose, since he was born in Jamaica.
Their best results are what? Winning the Caribbean Cup a few times?
Jamaica is a slouch, plain and simple. And we lost. At home. With our A team.
LaBBQ is great, no question. And it's hard to argue against a place that has free beer. Also hard to argue against the tried and true method of hiring away Franklin's protege. But hey, the more the merrier for us.
But Franklin also has a nostalgia factor going for it. Before Franklin, the best BBQ in town was... Rudy's? Lamberts? Mann's? Salt Lick (if we're counting that as Austin)? John Mueller before he flamed out? Franklin's little trailer under I-35 was an oasis is an inexplicable desert.
Also, the espresso BBQ sauce. Not that the food needs it. But it's damn good.
If you pre-order an entire brisket, you get to skip the line.
Also, I've heard that there is a group of Austin high schoolers that have started a business over the summer, where they will camp out for you early in the morning and reserve your spot in line at Franklin.
There's also plenty of newer places in Austin worth checking out. La Barbeque, Micklethwait, Freedman's... all good stuff.
Also worthy of a shoutout: Luling City Market, if you have the self control to drive past Lockhart.
When I went to UT, my name was on my student ticket. So I really couldn't sell it to anybody, I don't think.
Then again, the tickets were in PDF, so my name wasn't exactly engraved on the ticket.
But I think this is the right answer.
Hire your brother's set design company for $1M. Or hire your sister-in-law's catering company for $1M. Heck, pay Tim Roth $5M with the understanding that he hands you a suitcase with $500k the next time he's in Trinidad.
In the housing bubble, the bubble eventually popped because homeowners simply defaulted on their mortgages, because that became (for many) the economically rational thing to do. Similarly with the dot com bubble, stock prices outpaced actual earnings to the point where it became economically rational to stop pumping money into the sector.
But each of those had a triggering event that eventually popped the bubble. What is the triggering event in the student loan bubble? Student loans aren't dischargable in bankruptcy and are guaranteed by the government. So the loaners of student loans will always be paid. Instead, the only effect of the student loan bubble is secondary, as many have said. People stop buying houses and cars and stop building up savings, but they will still carry that debt with them. For the economy at-large, that is a slow and painful effect, because not one event (short of a mass suicide of debtors or a sudden change in the law, I suppose) would cause the bubble to burst.
Which makes this really not a bubble at all, but a growing economic tumor.
It's on FS1.
Ramsey Snow was first introduced torturing Theon, for whom nobody was feeling any sympathy (at the time, anyway). So I'm sure that bought him at least some likeability points.
A police report is very much hearsay, regardless of what it contains. The witness actually testifying in court is direct witness testimony. Now, maybe the police report comes in under a hearsay exception, but it's still hearsay.
(Of course, all of this being OT, what with this not being an actual court and all.)
The NFLPA will never agree to this. The player reps that would vote for this (and I assume all of them are 5+ year veterans) would literally be voting themselves out of a job.
It doesn't save you the embarassment of matching at a mediocre residency program in podunk and breaking down crying on stage.
I never want to attend another match day announcement event ever again.
512 Pecan Porter on nitro is fantastic.
But MLS has no passion, at least not anything compared to even the Belgian league. There are no rivalries. Teams exist only because some rich person paid MLS a franchise fee, and not because they were promoted to the top league by virtue of winning in lower leagues. With the exception of perhaps Portland (and maybe a few others?), there is no sense of "I was a fan before promotion." If your team is terrible, there is no fear of relegation, only a resignation of "welp, maybe next year!" You (not you personally) are not a fan of the team because your old man and his old man before him were fans, or because of the part of town you grew up in, or your religion, or your class status. You are a fan because... oh, well there happens to be a team in town now.
But then again, I also think the NFL lacks passion and is utterly boring as a result. Certainly compared to college football.
This is a total pipe dream and will never happen, but if MLS could generate passion, it really wouldn't matter what the quality is. Allow for promotion/relegation, for example. A newly-promoted DCFC playing against a newly-relegated Columbus Crew in the MLS 2nd Division / Midwest Regional / whatever you want to call it... for the chance at promotion to MLS... I would watch this in a heartbeat, regardless of quality of play.
Because they notoriously moved to Milton Keynes a few years ago.
Because 12-year old kids are generally capable of identifying a falsified boundary map?
But wouldn't they simply convert to a private non-profit institution? Meaning they would be tax exempt from a lot of stuff anyway (possibly even property tax?). The one major advantage to being a state institution, though, is the ability to expand by eminent domain.
Anecdotally, at least in Texas, this happens quite a bit already.
Especially in hindsight.
"It's not as though there was no talk about Harbaugh being a possible candidate for the Michigan job in early December, and Weber could easily have waited until the new coach was installed before committing to OSU."
If you were a 17-year old with (presumably) NFL aspirations, would you take this risk? What if OSU had decided to move on and recruit another RB and Michigan had ended up with Greg Schiano or some such?
I'm not sure this is true. Leaving aside the absurdity (what with a construction company unable to do any of those things), government contracts are often conditioned on the (non-)exercise of a constitutional right. Government employment contracts restrict free speech and freedom of travel all the time. Garcetti v. Ceballos, 547 U.S. 410, for one.
To use an example, Townsville City could surely offer a contract to a singer to sing at its annual Pumpkin/Cherry/Hatch Chile/whatever Festival. And that contract could surely contain a stipulation that (a) the singer must be in Townsville City on that date and (b) must refrain from political/religious/general non-pumpkin speech, no?
It's an offer than cannot be accepted until NSD. And an offer can generally be revoked until it has been accepted. But it's been too long since law school, so what do I know...
Most definitely