Author: Bryan Schools

After a way too fast 2016 NFL season, we are on the edge of  Wild Card Weekend in the NFL. It’s a weekend for a wild stretch from 2006-2012 that generally produced a Super Bowl participant, if not champion. But this year, aside from being stoked about the Steelers being in, I, as a resident of Virginia, am ticked. Why, you ask? Because the Redskins are back in the playoffs.

Now, having grown up in The Commonwealth, I’ve known my fair share of Redskin fans throughout the course of my life. They range from bandwagon, to passionate, to disbanded and emotionally numb. Why this team being back, and their fan base rising from the ashes to suddenly support them, is exactly that, they only support the team (I’m saying majority of the fan base, Rick, you’re an exception, the emotionally numb one who still watches anyways) once every seven or so years when the team puts a mediocre run in and turns it into a playoff berth. Continue reading Eat My Sports: No, I don’t like that

LeBron James was awarded a lifetime contract with Nike this week, worth somewhere in the vicinity of $60 million per year for as long as James has a breath in his body. To put that in perspective, that’s approximately a freak ton more than you will ever make in your lifetime. While it may be impossible to comprehend that, even I hate to admit that James’ ridiculous work ethic at making himself the most marketable athlete on the planet made him deserving of that type of reward from a sports giant.

James may never be as popular as Michael Jordan. Jordan sort of became more of a myth due to the generation he played in. There was no social media, if you didn’t see the game, or have the luxury of having cable, you only heard second hand about the greatest basketball player ever. While James has played in the social media explosion of our world where every single play and word has been dissected with intense scrutiny, basically since James was 16 years old. Continue reading Eat My Sports: Lifetime achievement award

The Peyton Manning era in Denver appears to be approaching the, and the main culprit is not one Thomas Brady. Instead, Brock “Lobster” Osweiler achieved the one thing that has eluded Manning over his entire career, defeating Brady, late in the season, in terrible weather.

The bandwagon has begun to pile on Osweiler, and it’s hard to argue against it, as what he as demonstrated, albeit, in limited viewing, has been everything that Manning has not been when it has mattered most in Denver. Continue reading Eat My Sports: Brock Lobster!

Since the beginning of the 2012 NFL season we’ve been witnessing something that should not be humanly possible: a man with multiple neck surgeries, who has no feeling in his fingertips, breaking every NFL passing record there is. It should be noted that if you had the same surgeries as one Peyton Manning, that you probably shouldn’t play rough with your kids, much less have your body take on the equivalent of a car wreck 17-19 Sundays out of the year.

Nonetheless, Manning came back after he should have retired because one more Super Bowl ring and how he is perceived historically, means more than how his body is breaking down currently. The Denver Broncos gambles on him having enough left in the tank to get them over the top at least once, and by all accounts they really should have won it all in 2012 and 2013. But because he kept coming up short, and because he kept losing in the same situations he had in the past, Manning had to keep coming back for one more round for the chance to win it all and ride off into the sunset.

Depending on your definition of the greatest of all-time, Manning is either at the top of your list because of the way he has outsmarted defenses and been the smartest person on the field for the past 17 years, or he’s outside your top five because of postseason failures and the fact that he has won only one Super Bowl. I think he lies somewhere in the middle, both cases are too hard to ignore. Continue reading Eat My Sports: This Is The End

This coming Thursday night is the much antici.. the huge match…. the first game Buffalo Bills foot enthusiast Rex Ryan will coach against his old team, the New York Jets. Ryan, who has always given the media more than they need to work with for headlines and fluff for articles has been extra active this week.

First, he made IK Enemkpali captain for this week’s game. If that name sounds familiar, it’s because he’s the guy who clocked Geno Smith 10 weeks into an injury to start the season. Then today, he took shots through a journalist at Jets quarterback Ryan Fitzpatrick (who supports no shave every month, not just November) attacking his attractiveness. Fitz has five kids, for the record.

Stunts like these really prove that while Ryan is a locker room favorite, his focus while appearing to be game oriented, are nothing more than just a game to keep his team in the headlines. And while winning occasionally, the focus of Ryan seems to be on attacking people off the field, and making honorary captains out of the people who do the same.

Well, Seriously Readers, if any of you have read my columns over the past eight (wait … what? This damn thing is eight years old already?) you know that I do not care one bit about college sports. However, I’ve found the past two years of college football interesting due to the college football playoff.

They start ranking the top four teams beginning the first week in November, then even if a team wins, they find ways to knock them out so they can get the most marketable teams in (see TCU and Baylor, 2014).

This year’s edition has a one loss Alabama team cracking the top four in the first rankings. Why? Well they are ranked above undefeated teams and have a head coach that makes Bill Belichick seem like he has the glowing personality of Ace Ventura and they are riding the coattails of fairweather fans that think this team is still as good as the ones that won three out of four national titles.

The point of all of this really is that we haven’t really evolved since the BCS system, its all still a ratings grab and now ESPN has found a way to capitalize on a multi-billion dollar sport again.

Roll Tide.

Yeah, I thought about doing a scary, sports themed column this week, but lets face it, if you’re watching the Mets and the Royals in the World Series this year, Fox has already scared you enough.

For those of you that know any of The Guys, you know we are fans of the ‘stache. Rick Snee was the first one to get on board with actually raising money for Movember, with Bryan McBournie being a multi-year donator and this being my second venture into growing a full blown mustache.

What does this have to do with sports? Growing a mustache has a lot of the same qualities it takes to be successful in sports: patience, asking your friends and family to be team players and the willingness to look like a complete jackass for an entire month. All in the name of cancer (take that, NFL!). Continue reading Eat My Sports: Movember Rain

Sure, you’ve all heard the story at this point. A graduate assistant coach on Rick Pitino’s Louisville Cardinals’ staff paid for strippers, prostitutes and “parties” for recruits and their fathers from 2010-2014.

Why is anyone shocked?

I’m not privy to what goes on officially in college recruiting, but I got a pretty good idea of what the game was from Nick Nolte, Shaq and Anfernee Hardaway in “Blue Chips” and from Jesus Shuttlesworth in “He Got Game.” To think that any of this has changed since the early 90s is absurd, it hasn’t changed, it’s evolved.

What 18-year-old, testosterone-driven male athlete wouldn’t be tempted by what Louisville was allegedly offering? If anything, it was a clever (albeit, very misdirected) marketing program from the coaching staff, if that in fact is what happened. But the ridiculous part is to think that Louisville is the only program doing this. Continue reading Eat My Sports: Louisville Sluggers

I want you to imagine that there is a destitute baseball franchise. This franchise has gone through generations of futility with their inability to win the World Series. Not only can they not win, but they lose in heartbreaking fashion in the playoffs, literally in the most excruciating ways. Now, this franchise reverses course and hires a man-child, baseball metrics genius to break a supposed curse, and the team does so by mowing through the playoffs against their decades-long archrival.

Sound familiar? Yeah, Cubs fans, we’re looking at you. Your 2015 playoff run is a rip off 11 years too late after Theo Epstein got America to buy into this story the first go round. But let me warn you, nation-wide overexposure comes with a price if you win the World Series.

I know, I’m a Red Sox fan.

After the 2004 Sox reversed the curse and became national darlings, they treated 2005 like a year-long victory lap, and the overexposure turned them from loveable idiots to being hated just as much as the Yankees. Continue reading Eat My Sports: Party Like It’s 2004

We heard a lot this past year about the resurgence of the NFL running back. A once vital part to any offense had become as replaceable as spare engine parts. Their were a few survivors that seemed to be bucking the trend of having a RB not being a necessity. LeSean McCoy, Marshawn Lynch, DeMarco Murray had all seemingly made themselves indispensable to their offense and teams. Now, a quarter of the way into the season, fantasy owners and actual NFL owners are wondering what in the world has happened to the resurgence of the vital back.

Lynch and McCoy can’t stay healthy and Murray can’t get going in what was supposed to be one of, if not the most potent offenses in the league.

So where does this leave us as fantasy owners trying to believe in this comeback? Run like the wind.

WR has been and will continue to be the most viable option and you can forget all about the days of having a two RB set carry you. It’s over and done.

Fading into the background as quickly as Murray’s yards per carry shrink.