Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

We’ve had enough carrots to last a lifetime. break out the sticks.

Republicans do not pay their debts.

Thanks to your bullshit, we are now under siege.

Schmidt just says fuck it, opens a tea shop.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

JFC, are there no editors left at that goddamn rag?

Second rate reporter says what?

“Jesus paying for the sins of everyone is an insult to those who paid for their own sins.”

rich, arrogant assholes who equate luck with genius

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

You cannot shame the shameless.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

It’s time for the GOP to dust off that post-2012 autopsy, completely ignore it, and light the party on fire again.

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

Wow, I can’t imagine what it was like to comment in morse code.

Their freedom requires your slavery.

Balloon Juice has never been a refuge for the linguistically delicate.

The words do not have to be perfect.

They’re not red states to be hated; they are voter suppression states to be fixed.

Everybody saw this coming.

Damn right I heard that as a threat.

I like you, you’re my kind of trouble.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

You are here: Home / Sports / That Long Dark Period is Over

That Long Dark Period is Over

by | 87 Comments

This post is in: 

And the NFL is back:

Steeling himself for the long journey ahead, local man and father of three John Cantrell reportedly bid a tearful farewell to his family Thursday, expressing good wishes to his loved ones prior to the commencement of the 2013 NFL season. “Deborah, kids, it looks like I’ll be going away for a while,” said Cantrell, adding that, following the kickoff of the season-opening matchup between the Baltimore Ravens and the Denver Broncos, his family wouldn’t see or be able to contact him for the next five months.

Eventually this game will start. I might add that I loved that the Ravens tribute had some really fresh, hip, and just off the charts music. Like… Nelly.

Reader Interactions

87Comments

  1. 1.

    MikeJ

    From the hed I assumed you were talking about the Pirates having their first winning season in over 20 years.

  5. 5.

    lamh36

    Enjoy your game folks. Time to catch up on last night’s Luther episode I missed, so I can be ready for the new episode tonight! Peace out guys!

  6. 6.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    I would recommend the East Carolina-Florida Atlantic on Fox Sports while we wait, but that is becoming a massacre. Can’t wait for the high school ball, cheap tickets cheap food,decent football, with much more motivated kids, and the marching bands aren’t bad.

  7. 7.

    mai naem

    A year ago today, Bill Clinton was giving his ‘splainin’ stuff speech at the DNC The GOP thought they had done a great thing pushing back the GOP convention so that the Dems would end up on opening football night. WJC still beat opening football ratings. And, oh, yeah, the GOP lost one night of convention coverage because of a hurricane which at least partly led to the Empty Chair debacle. The Karma. It bites hard.

  8. 8.

    SmallAxe

    I thought the TSA was bad, what the heck is up with patting down the Raven fat boy OL and D lineman on the way in the stadium? Carrying weapons??? And if so why only the fat boys… Also too the Ravens did not look too hyped coming out.

  11. 11.

    Botsplainer

    Could knock me over with a feather.

    http://touch.orlandosentinel.com/#section/-1/article/p2p-77288133/

    George Zimmerman’s wife filed for divorce Thursday evening, her lawyer confirmed, less than two months after the former Neighborhood Watch volunteer was acquitted of murder in the shooting of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin.

    Shellie Zimmerman, 26, was not available for comment, but her attorney confirmed their marriage was over.

  12. 12.

    Just Some Fuckhead, Thought Leader

    I’m still amped from Ryan Seacrest opening football season to the theme of Sirius. WHEW!

  14. 14.

    drew42

    @JPL: Yeah, right? I wonder if that’s a regular thing. Thanks to the delay, we got to see the ugly racist underbelly of NFL locker rooms.

    “You make $2.5 million a year? Still look like a thug to me, boy.”

  16. 16.

    SiubhanDuinne

    Shows how much I know about sports. I read that news story and totally assumed that John Cantrell was a coach or player or someone really famous I had never heard of who had been convicted of something outrageous and received a mild prison sentence which had probably been reported obsessively in an ESPN story I hadn’t followed. I thought, Well, in order to sound semi-intelligent in case it comes up in conversation, I suppose I’d better click on the link.

    Well-Onioned, Sir.

  17. 17.

    Botsplainer

    @drew42:

    What a disaster. And what’s with the Raven pat-downs?

    It could be worse. They could be Raiders and need to go through a metal detector.

  18. 18.

    SmallAxe

    @drew42:

    so bizarre and again why only the big guys? I saw them do a fat white boy too so it didn’t seem like the thug route. But seriously we’re that paranoid that we think that an NFL player could be holding?

  19. 19.

    raven

    Seth Payne ‏@PayneNFL 7m

    Re last tweet: We used to spray our jerseys with silicone spray. NFL cracked down on it in late 90’s. Pat linemen down to check for it.

    dumb fucks, watch the game.

  20. 20.

    Mr Stagger Lee

    @Botsplainer: Wouldn’t be cool if she gave some of that money to the Brady Fund or to Gabby Gifford’s group. The homes of the gun nuts would have walls decorated with exploding heads.

  21. 21.

    maximiliano furtive, formerly known as dr. bloor

    @Botsplainer:

    It could be worse. They could be Raiders and need to go through a metal detector.

    Metal detectors? If you’re talking Raiders, you’re talking cavity search.

  24. 24.

    RareSanity

    Moving this over from the previous thread:

    @lamh36:

    Good luck trying to stop Roddy White, Julio Jones, Tony Gonzalez…and introducing, for the first time…Steven Jackson!!

    Last year’s worst defense, should be up to the job, right?

  28. 28.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    My internet life has been interrupted by real-life since my son started back to school…also been getting my butt kicked at work.

    That game Saturday was painful to watch.

    One thing for sure, there were no excuses…Clemson is just a better team. That and Murray seems to pucker in big games.

  30. 30.

    raven

    @RareSanity: Seems to be the conventional wisdom. Still, best d-back, best receiver out, best RB in and out and still 3 on the road. They are better but we’re not bad but we still are going to have a brawl Saturday.

    Where’s your son going to school?

  37. 37.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    They had no answer for the pass rush in the 2nd half, Murray was seeing ghosts (and real lineman) by halfway through the 3rd quarter.

    The way I see, and I could be wrong, is one of two things explains the 2nd half. Either the offensive line is just too green to have been able to effectively carry out the adjustments for the rush. Or, the more troubling option, Richt got out coached…badly.

    I’m leaning more toward the line just being so young as the main problem, but I didn’t get the feeling that the coaching staff was reacting very well to Clemson’s halftime adjustments. It looked to me that UGA tried to stick with whatever it was that they planned at halftime, and took to long to realize that Clemson had “out adjusted” them…and changed course.

    There should have been nothing but quick slants, screens and draws until Clemson stopped sending so much heat.

  39. 39.

    RareSanity

    @Baud:

    Yeah, but the Falcons had no running game…at all. Turner was done 2 years ago.

    Such is not the case this year.

  40. 40.

    raven

    @RareSanity: But the O line was “supposed” to be the strength! Coming out and getting a delay at the start of the half was not great! Richt don’t coach, Bobo and Grantham do!

  45. 45.

    Steeplejack

    Steeling himself for the long journey ahead, local area man and father of three John Cantrell [. . .].

    Christ, even The Onion‘s editing is going to shit.

  46. 46.

    Yatsuno

    @efgoldman: Florida is not a community property state. So the judge gets to decide who gets what. It’s not unusual for the parties to walk away with as much of the debt from the marriage at zero but anything that was accumulated before that still sticks around. I hope she soaks him though, he basically led her into a big legal problem.

  49. 49.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    You don’t have to tell me…I haven’t been a huge supporter of Richt for awhile now. But, since there aren’t really any better alternatives, Georgia is kinda stuck.

  52. 52.

    raven

    @RareSanity: I’m one of those rare Georgia fans that does not insist that it is National Championship or nothing. Maybe it comes from being a Bear fan for so long and then sitting there when they killed the Pats in the Superbowl and thought, “oh, so this it IT”?

  55. 55.

    trollhattan

    @trollhattan:

    Goddamnit, nothing’s working right around this joint lately. Anyhoo….

    Turns out she left Zims and went to mama’s the night before the Trayvon don’t-call-it-murder.

    I smell book deal.

  57. 57.

    MikeJ

    @trollhattan:

    Turns out she left Zims and went to mama’s the night before the Trayvon don’t-call-it-murder.

    Might have been interest8ng to know during the trial. Fair or not, there’s a good chance a juror would have thought he was pissed off at his wife and just wanted to hurt someone.

  58. 58.

    RareSanity

    @raven:

    Can’t have a program as big as Georgia, in a conference as competitive as the SEC, and not be trying to win championships. This ain’t Vanderbilt :-), if the Georgia supporters start to think that they aren’t going after championships, they’ll stop writing those fat checks for seat licenses, season tickets, and other “booster” related activities.

  59. 59.

    trollhattan

    @MikeJ:

    Oh, you know, special Timmeh and all the Zims latherers would assert the all-woman jury could NEVER have considered such a thing, but I find myself thinking just the opposite.

  61. 61.

    SmallAxe

    @trollhattan: I thought I read that the fight was actually the same night as the incident and he left the house to go Target. Which would make it even fishier that it didn’t come up at trial.

  64. 64.

    SmallAxe

    @SmallAxe: You were right, it was the night before and from seeing her interview she seems a heck of lot more like a normal empathetic human than he is.

  67. 67.

    Suzanne

    Just read this on nbcnews.com:

    “I’m so damn sick of hearing Trayvon this and Zimmerman that! Makes me want to hurl. I’m sick of HATER’s and of Obozo and Nancy Polosi why don’t they all just disappear, sure would make me happy! ZIMM’s wife, well so much for till death do we part. let her run like the lying chicken she is.

    Let’s get back to America’s problems, and stop jumping into helping poor little rich Siria! STOP giving them money when they have their own. We are not the World’s police Force! Let’s get together and figure out how to stop young black men who are killing each other and killing innocent little children. How low is that for them to take away these little ones lives. So so sad!!!! Just saying..”

    I cannot even begin to parse this.
    Anyone who shares any policy positions with this winner should engage in some serious self-examination.

  69. 69.

    Tom Levenson

    I turned on the teevee for the first time since returning from the family road trip (ain’t Netflix grand?) to find that RCN couldn’t get a signal to my cable box. No football for me. I’m a better man for it.

  71. 71.

    Steeplejack

    @MikeJ:

    I saw the first episode recently on one of the lesser PBS stations here, then lost track of it. I wasn’t blown away, but it looked like it had potential.

  75. 75.

    Fluke bucket

    @RareSanity: Winning the SEC championship is the National championship as far as I am concerned. Clemson has a damn good team and the crowd and atmosphere was amazing. Georgia will be fine this year provided no other starters go down for the season celebrating a score.

  76. 76.

    billB

    clemson, georgia, bama, whoever you got, my Oregon Ducks are ready! [and of course, I won’t shed a tear if Zim gets all his ill-gotten murder-booty striped for his wife.] Karma is a BTCH Zim

  77. 77.

    Steeplejack

    Wow, one comment in half an hour? Looks like all the fanatics who have been screaming for weeks about the return of football have, er, finished early, so to speak, and gone to bed.

  78. 78.

    RareSanity

    @Fluke bucket:

    I said it up-thread…Clemson definitely had the better team.

    In my opinion, Georgia was lucky to have kept it as close as it was, especially after the injuries.

  79. 79.

    SmallAxe

    We’re still watching Steeplejack, I’m liking my switch to Denver covering very much now.. An opening day KaChing! would be lovely.

  81. 81.

    Redshirt

    American Football needs a new name. Football makes no sense, since feet and balls make up very little of the game, and most of the worst. Punting?! Is the sport named after punting?

  87. 87.

    drew42

    @raven: Well, someone needs to get a clue. I was clearly joking — pointing out how strange it all looked.

    But you were okay with the “thug” part, though?

Comments are closed.