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50 Hot Takes for the Philadelphia Sports Fan: Finally Came Up with 50 More Takes Edition

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Jun 25th, 2025 · 2:31 PM EDT

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It’s been more than a year since the last “50 Hot Takes” column, simply for the fact that there were no more takes to compile. Opinions were exhausted almost entirely, to the point where this was originally looking like the written word version of Chuck Fletcher’s aggressive retool. Alas, I deleted about 20 crap takes and came up with new ones, now we have a fresh batch for your reading pleasure:

1. Buy yourself a pair of Crocs. You will feel like an asshole for 48 hours but then start wearing them everywhere.
2. This is the most compelling the Flyers have been in at least 10 years. Not once have they ever torn it down like this, which makes them interesting and fresh. I have a renewed vigor for the local hockey team.
3. Food takes jumped the shark years ago, but one of the dumbest things out there is the “open-faced” sandwich. If it only has one piece of bread, it’s not a sandwich.
4. Moana 2 was a big disappointment. Bring back Lin-Manuel Miranda!
5. Tom McCarthy should get more opportunities to call football. His football play-by-play is really good.
6. Designing the new sports complex should be led by the Flyers, Sixers, and Phillies. The Eagles only play 9-12 home games a year while the other three play somewhere between 160 and 180. The decision making process has to weigh how often the complex is actually used by each franchise, regardless of how large or popular they are.
7. The Sixers and Flyers were better off going their separate ways and being the top dogs in their own buildings. Say what you will about business competition, but not having to compromise on scheduling, or arena design, or anything at all, would have provided an obvious advantage for both organizations.
8. Father’s Day and Mother’s Day should be spaced out more. You’ve got moms going shopping on Mother’s Day weekend and the Father’s Day stuff is already out on display. That’s a violation!
9. Transitive property: Villanova is a Philly school. The Pope is a Villanova alumnus. THEREFORE – the Pope is a Philly guy.
10. RE: Pride, the argument that sports teams are shoving it in our faces or down our throats is pretty weak. Take the Flyers, for instance. They hold Pride Night once a year and then make a post on June 1st to kick off Pride Month, right? That’s two days out of 365 every year, or less than 1% of the calendar for acknowledging the LGBT community. It’s not a big deal.
11. The sports complex is the worst it’s ever been. Not a hot take I guess, but for the first time ever I’m asking myself if it’s worth the transportation shit show to go see a game, and that sucks.
12. Every college graduation ceremony should begin with someone going up to microphone and explaining the difference between alumnus, alumna, alumnae, and alumni. Even if you have a rocket science degree, you’re gonna sound stupid if you refer to yourself as an “alumni.”
13. On pretentiousness: no restaurant or bar in Philadelphia is good enough to require a membership, or waiting in line for an hour, or calling to “reserve your dough.”
14. The Super Bowl parade speeches were really boring.
15. The White House visit was also boring. 23 minutes of nothing.
16. The micro brewery scene is dead. Too many breweries making mediocre beer, then you throw in a pandemic on top of existing oversaturation and the bubble finally popped.
17. Miles Teller? Dangerously close to overexposure, especially after showing up at the Knicks/Pacers game. Need him to take a few months off.
18. It’s annoying when you share a picture of an attractive woman and people bring up filters. “Oh she put filters on that, she’s a 6 out of 10 at best.” This shit is so stupid. When you go out with your wife, does she wear makeup? Do you dock her points for it? Stop talking about filters.
19. Is Taylor Swift hot? Of course she’s hot. MAGA makes up this thing where she’s a “4” because she endorsed Kamala and her boyfriend is a vaxxer.
20. The worst part about getting older is that fewer people understand your one liners from movies like Half Baked and Billy Madison. “You’d better watch your back fish, because squirrel master ain’t always gonna be there for you! And when I come back, I’m gonna want some cocktail… fruit!“
21. The older you get, the more you realize that everything in life connects to the “leading a horse to water” proverb. Every single thing. Whether it’s potty training your kids or getting your employees to do their jobs or telling your parents that the email from the Nigerian prince is fake, you can do everything humanly possible to bring other people to the water, but they have to drink it. You can’t drink it for them.
22. The word “skank” should make a comeback. Just a great piece of late-90s slang and not overly vulgar.
23. “Wigger” is not an offensive term. Never has been, never will be.
24. This is a good era for pop music. Sabrina Carpenter, Dua Lipa, Olivia Rodrigo, etc. At some point, someone said, “you know what? we should bring bass back into pop music.” And here we are.
25. The strangest thing that women do is put out the seasonal decorative towel. Towels are for drying your hands. If you don’t want someone using a towel, then don’t put it out.
26. When are women going to stop wearing high-waisted shorts and baggy jeans? Hopefully soon! (this is a direct shot at my wife, who doesn’t read Crossing Broad)
27. It’s corny when people get engaged and say something like “I can’t wait to marry my best friend!” Your best friend is your best friend. Your spouse is your spouse. Those two things should be different and combining them cheapens the meaning of both.
28. You can’t be religious and a journalist at the same time, because the concept of faith doesn’t mesh with the gathering and sharing of facts and evidence. At best, you’re applying one set of principles to one thing and another set of principles to the other.
29. The worst movement is the anti-lawncare movement. It’s basically a hippy cult that thinks you shouldn’t mow or water and instead let everything grow naturally to attract pollinators and allow biodiversity. On the scale of environmental concerns, your dad mowing his half-acre property (probably with a Kobalt or EGO now) is not one of them. We have plenty of untouched green space and forest land in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware.
30. When people say the Dagestanis are boring, or bad for MMA, what they’re really saying is that Russian Muslims are difficult to market in the United States and Europe. Because the data doesn’t back up the narrative. For instance – Khabib Nurmagomedov had a 54% finish rate in the UFC. Islam Makhachev has finished eight of his last nine fights. Magomed Ankalaev is a striker with six UFC knockouts.
31. UFC really has been bad in 2025, BUT – not because of Russians. You had Jon Jones totally inactive and holding up the heavyweight division before his retirement, uninteresting rematches that no one wanted (DDP vs. Strickland, Merab vs. O’Malley), and more bad Apex cards. They need to focus on matchmaking and putting together more compelling Fight Night cards around the country. No more Apex, no more crap PPV cards.
32. Knucklemania further proved what we already knew, that Philadelphia is a huge combat sports market and should be getting large headlining events from all promotions. The fact that Philly is continually passed up is offensive.
33. If DOGE does save us some money, it should be given to pre-K teachers. Imagine having to watch your children all day.
34. Twitter has been terrible since Elon Musk took over. Bots everywhere, huge NFL aggregator accounts running amok, partisan grifters who can’t find Iran on a map posting whatever they want with no oversight or accountability. It’s the worst it’s ever been, and Blue Sky isn’t any better. Just a liberal echo chamber over there.
35. NBA fans spend way too much time re-litigating the past and hyper-focusing on every stupid move the GM and owner could have/should have made. The Sixers were good enough to get to the Eastern Conference final in both 2021 and 2023 and the players and coach couldn’t get the job done. The end. Stop wasting your time overanalyzing this stuff. Nobody needs 3,000 words on why they should have traded for player X instead of player Y. The roster had enough talent and it was the talent that came up short.
36. There’s no reason to use the word “resiliency.” You can say “resilience” and it means the same thing with one fewer syllable.
37. Also, no reason to say “hot water heater.” It’s just a water heater. If the water was already hot, it wouldn’t require heating.
38. New construction houses don’t need to come with ovens. Just an air fryer and cook top. The only thing you need an oven for is when your mom comes over to cook the turkey at Thanksgiving.
39. There is way too much being asked of Millennial and Gen Z women. Have a career! Be a mom! Work 50 hours a week while trying to breast pump! Pay out the wazoo for childcare because no one can afford to stay home anyway! It’s insane.
40. Having two school photo days (fall and spring) is a scam. Just another way to get money out of already-strapped parents.
41. Don’t waste your time with The White Lotus. The acting is great and the storylines are interesting, but it’s painfully slow to the point where payoff at the end of each season isn’t worth the buildup.
42. They should allow flares at the Linc for Eagles games.
43. The Camden Aquarium is overpriced. Yeah, it’s costly to maintain the exhibits, feed the animals, and pay the divers, but you can’t justify $160 on a Saturday for two adults and two little kids. And there isn’t enough on display to warrant buying a membership and going multiple times a year. I feel like an asshole saying this, because the hippos were cool, but it’s the truth.
44. Everything about the garage door opener sucks. It breaks every other year. The wires snap or the springs start to go. You can buy cheap Chinese crap at Five Below that lasts longer.
45. If you want to save money, you have to stop eating out and stop ordering DoorDash. Two of the biggest ripoffs in America, especially prominent and popular in Philadelphia. You will quickly save enough money to move out of your shitty apartment if you buy in bulk and learn how to cook. Stop wasting your money on DoorDash.
46. Scrub Daddy is legit. I thought it was some gimmicky Shark Tank thing, but it’s definitely worth the four dollars.
47. The Eagles should open their first offensive possession against the Packers by lining up with the tush push, but then they motion out of it and throw a bomb to DeVonta Smith instead. Straight trolling.
48. Do people not ride SEPTA because it sucks? Or does SEPTA suck because not enough people ride it? Not really a take I guess, but a question for the philosophers.
49. On the list of things that should receive taxpayer money, Lucy the Elephant is way down near the bottom, like bottom three. There are enough rich people in Margate to keep that thing going with private money.
50. The biggest problem with Jason Aldean’s “Try That in a Small Town” is that the guitar solo after the second chorus is too short. That dude can rip! Never heard a pinch harmonic in a country song before that.

This has been another edition of the 50 Hot Takes column. Thank you for reading, and have a great day.

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