50 Hot Takes for the Philadelphia Sports Fan: Halloween Edition
Halloween is this Sunday, and the scariest thing you’ll see is the Eagles playing the Lions. Talk about frightening! It’ll be a horror show on turf. More inept than the stereotypical young girl who tries to escape Michael Myers but seems to be running at half speed while the latter is walking. Then he catches up to her anyway and it’s all she wrote.
It’s a great holiday, Halloween. You dress up as whatever you want, walk around knocking on doors, and then get a bunch of free candy. Just watch out for the MARIJUANA-LACED treats, according to the local news, as if someone would waste valuable edibles on trick or treaters.
Anyway, I present you with another installment of the award-winning, critically acclaimed 50 Hot Takes for the Philadelphia Sports Fan column. It’s the Halloween edition:
- Anybody who says it’s “hard” to play in Philadelphia is full of shit. Mike Scott was a bench guy and got his own fan club. If anything, it’s probably easier to play here than ever before..
- Josh Richardson for Seth Curry is a top-10 trade in Philadelphia sports history. Maybe top five in terms of sheer lopsided-ness.
- Doc Rivers is a bigger problem than Ben Simmons.
- Naps are overrated. Naps only make you more tired.
- There is no Eagles Super Bowl without Carson Wentz.
- “I do my own research” is the dumbest phrase of the last 10 years.
- COVID has been a fascinating study in how selfish some people are.
- If you get a player’s name wrong, you should automatically be booted off sports talk radio.
- My wife thinks corn chips “don’t belong” in party mix because their flavor spills onto the other snacks, thereby ruining them.
- The Walking Dead jumped the shark years ago, but you feel obligated to watch it because you already watched 10 other seasons.
- CVS shouldn’t be allowed to print those long receipts. Should be illegal.
- A flatbread is a pizza. Just call it a pizza.
- Time for “drive-through only” to go away. Let’s reopen the doors at Dunkin Donuts and elsewhere.
- The best frozen pizza is the DiGiorno with the croissant crust. You gotta try it. Just trust me.
- The new Flyers goal song absolutely stinks.
- Philadelphia currently has three retread coaches.
- Bagging leaves is for “soy boys.” Just run them over with the lawn mower.
- You know why every limited edition beer is an IPA? It’s because you throw a bunch of hops in a vat and walk away. They spend maybe five seconds on these “special” beers, which mostly stink.
- Elmwood Park Zoo is the shit. Take your kids there. They even have a beer garden for adults. (I was not paid to write this)
- Up in Berks, the county seat is Reading, but it should be Cabela’s.
- Penn DOT has eclipsed the Philadelphia Parking Authority as the worst government agency of all time.
- Penn DOT should not be allowed to work on 700 projects at the same time. The next governor needs to make these bastards finish a job before starting a new one. It’s ridiculous.
- The NBA’s mask mandate for media is lame. Gotta be vaccinated to even get in the door, then we’re all stuffed in there like sardines while the players and coaches go maskless. It’s redundant. Serenity now!
- The mask mandate at any sporting event is a joke anyway, because fans will just sit there nursing a beer for the entire game. You can keep the mask down the entire time that way.
- This year’s Union team is really good, but they are a boring and sometimes difficult watch. The 2020, 2019, and 2018 teams were a lot more entertaining.
- Jim Curtin is the best pro coach in the city right now (all sports obviously it’s Jay Wright)
- Temple should ask to rejoin the Atlantic 10 in hoops and go independent in football. Play UConn, Umass, Army, etc. There’s an eastern football conference that could probably be scraped together.
- You can’t make Nick Sirianni or Jonathan Gannon one-and-done coaches. Everybody deserves at least 1.5 seasons. This isn’t European soccer.
- The guy who deserves the most blame in the Ben Simmons saga is Rich Paul.
- Nothing wrong with Jason Kelce’s comments about Simmons because Kelce has earned the right to say whatever the fuck he wants.
- Joel Embiid needs to pick a Ben Simmons lane and stay in it. You can’t ask the fans to “support” him three days after saying that you “don’t care about that man.”
- Mike Greenberg has the world’s best agent.
- Jonathan Gannon is a bigger problem than Nick Sirianni.
- Kyrie Irving isn’t a freedom fighter; he’s a doofus with a history of saying dumb things. Same guy who apologized for saying that the Earth was flat, after admitting that he was into conspiracy theories.
- If you think the Adam Schefter/Bruce Allen thing was bad, the way NBA reporters gather information is 10x worse.
- The NBA cutting down on shooters drawing fouls via unnatural contact is the best basketball rule change in 10 years.
- The story about the Eagles fan who had a heart issue because he was yelling at the TV is pitiful. Fake outrage culture perpetuated by Angelo Cataldi and his ilk.
- Penn State is maxed out under James Franklin. He’s done a lot of great things in Happy Valley, but they’re not going to the college football playoff with him, and that’s what the goal should be. Penn State absolutely should be pushing to be in that tier 1 of Bama, Georgia, Ohio State, etc.
- People get upset when teams fire the PR guy (Phillies), or the equipment guy (Sixers), but 99% of the time it’s just new coaches and GMs bringing in their own people. That’s what happened in both of those cases.
- Investor emeritus Jeff says “the best Halloween candy is the 100 Grand bar.”
- The best Halloween candy is actually the Kit Kat.
- 94 WIP should just use a different guest host every Wednesday during Angelo’s farewell tour. Make it like Jeopardy, and let the listeners pick the replacement they like best.
- People talk about the Chip Kelly era like it was a disaster, but it wasn’t. He had two 10-win seasons, and only the last year was a disaster.
- A lot of folks still don’t know the difference between RPO and zone read. Need to get Dennis Dixon in here to do a free clinic.
- Eagles vs. Cowboys is just another game in 2021. The younger generation really does not give a shit about the Cowboys.
- Fall is the best season.
- Coggin with a Halloween hot take: “Michael Myers and Jason Voorhees are the two greatest slasher characters of all time. (apologies to Freddy Kruger, Pinhead, and Leatherface)”
- You’re never too old to dress up for Halloween, but after high school graduation you can no longer ask for candy (Russ disagrees with me and hates this take; he thinks high school kids should buy their own candy)
- You have to let the kids pick out the candy they want. Can’t hand them the candy.
- Russ gets the final take: “If you have to explain your Halloween costume, you’ve done it wrong.“
That’s about it for now. Everybody enjoy Halloween.