SirFozzie

Horrible week for Paradox: First, it's revealed that Harebrained Schemed laid off 80% of their staff after the Lamplighter's League won't hit their goals (They wanted to make Btech 2 but Paradox wanted their own IP that they could own and didn't want to pay Microsoft a cut), and now, their Stellaris meets Star Trek game: Star Trek: Infinite, is getting savaged. IGN gave it a 5 of 10, with the headline being "Star Trek: Infinite does a great job of capturing the look and feel of Star Trek, but those enticing bones splinter under the weight of its bugs and glitches."

Sucks to leave a conference en masse and screw over your conference mates, huh? Between this and seeing Kentucky's coach going "Georgia has bought so many good players, our backers need to step up their spending and get better players in", I think it's time that we changed the college football paradigm. (Yes, I know it will never happen, but...) Just make it a U23 pro league. There are currently 128 FBS teams and 133 FCS teams. Divide FBS in to 4 32 team "leagues", each made up of 4 8 team divsions, divided roughly by geography. Teams play each other teams in their division once (7 games), and can play any other team in the league with their other 4-5 games (which are treated like non-conference games currently) The top team in each division, plus four wild-cards (determined by highest poll rankings) advance to an 8 team championship for the league. Promotion and Relgation: The 8th place team in each division is relegated to a lower division (except in the lowest divsion of course). The 7th Place team division plays the quarter final loser in the playoffs for the league below in a promotion/relegation game. So, this is how it'd look: League 1: The four division winners and four wildcards play for the National Football Championship. Last place team gets relegated to League 2, 7th place team plays League 2 QF losers to determine who's in League 1 and who's in League 2 League 2: Four Division winners and four wildcards play in an 8 team tournament. Quarter-Finals winners are promoted to League 1, losers will play the 7th place League 1 teams for promotion. 8th place relegated to League three, 7th place will play QF losers of League 3 for promotion/relegation League 3: Four Division winners and four wildcards play in an 8 team tournament. Quarter-Finals winners are promoted to League 2, losers will play the 7th place League 2 teams for promotion. Last place teams fall to league 4, 7th place plays Division 4's QF losers to stay in League 3 League 4: League 2: Four Division winners and four wildcards play in an 8 team tournament. Quarter-Finals winners are promoted to League 3, QF losers play the 7th place team to try to go up. As new teams get filtered into FBS, the League 4 divisions will expand to 9-10 team divisions.. after 8 new teams join, then a new fifth League 4 division is formed (and then start to look in expanding) This allows teams to be judged against teams of roughly the same caliber, but gives a number of slots to keep traditional rivals. If teams want to book games against lower level teams, sure.. but remember, the voters may judge you for it, if you don't play top competition and don't win your division, you're at the mercy of the voters to get into the playoffs (which are the only way to get promoted)

I could never get a tattoo. I am extremely needlephobic (to the point I have a disqualifying panic attack when someone tries to give me a shot of novocaine in the mouth)

I want to see if they do Gary Hart in there. He mentioned that he had helped train the Von Erich kids, and pushed Fritz to treat them better.

Best line I've heard. Dillion Brooks was ejected because of DEEZ NUTS Oh wait, he was ejected because of Theis's nuts. Never mind

I'm wondering what would be funnier, if all four northern hemisphere teams win their QF, or 4 Southern Hemisphere teams. I think if all four Northern Hemisphere teams lost there'd be weeping, gnashing of teeth, but acceptance.. but if all four of the semi-finalist are Northern Hemisphere teams, the outrage from the usual suspects may very well throw the earth off its axis..

Pakistan chase down 344 to win over Sri Lanka. 98.2 overs, nearly 700 runs. It's such a different era. (remember when ODI were 60 overs, and 225 was considered a "par" score? I don't really, because I wasn't following the game at the time, but still)

In other cricket news, it looks like there will be an Olympic T20 tournament in both the 2028 and 2032 olympic games (in Los Angeles and Brisbane Australia) https://www.abc.net.au/news/2023-10-10/cricket-proposed-for-2028-los-angeles-olympics/102954760

watched a bit of the ongoing England-Bangladesh game. England's rugby team could learn a lesson about what to do after coming off a poor performance. Agreed, it's Bangladesh, but BazBall seems to be back on the menu, boys!

yeah, look at say, Baldur's Gate 3. I bet we're going to see A) More big games spending time in early access so they can finish iterating the engine, and to get feedback on what works and what doesn't without killing your development team (now, this is more for the big 100+hour RPG side) B) More games being less feature-rich at release, but with robust post-release support (through free/paid DLC) if interest warrants, just because right now, one bad game is enough to kill a company, since it's supposed to set them up for years to come. Redfall comes to mind

Only at the Rugby World Cup would we see a team lose to Portugal and still make the QF's (Fiji, who play England there.) Then again, it would be maximum lolz if the team that lost to Portugal beat england. (and poor Brave Blossoms. Was rooting for them against Argentina, but.. not to be.

Somewhere, Sven Goran Eriksson is crying tears, and the Special One (Very nice) is telling him "Shut up, Sven" (or he's telling Sven not to be doing the pimping all over the place to take Wayne's job) (if you don't get the reference, don't worry. Although Joe-say (as he was sometimes called) will be very disappointed with you. (yes, I want them to bring back Special 1 TV, so what?)

Ok, I think that if they can get away with releasing a "script" to Toni Storm's match, the next step stealing a bit from old 80's-90's WWE: Toni Storm grabbing her opponent, and then channels her inner Curt Hennig and goes "NOW YOU'RE GOING TO SEE... A TITTY SLAP!"

Someone needs to be fired. Out of a cannon. With no net to catch them.

Wonder if they pulled off the Con-chair-to to the arm (Con-Chairarm-to?) because Darby legit hurt his arm and needs to be written off TV for a bit

Pulisic scores the winner, and Olivier Giroud has to make a key save in goal (original keeper sent off). Crazy

And Scotland. Poor Scotland. So close to the quarterfinals, yet so far away from Ireland.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled englanding.. although Wales looked good

Seems like there's just an overload of tournaments and the like, I thought the new Zealand England game was a warmup match

They decided the problem with golf was the walking part, so starting this december, ESPN will start airing SIMULATED Golf. https://awfulannouncing.com/golf/espn-tgl-rights-deal-tiger-woods-rory-mcilroy.html

File under "Harsh, but fair" https://twitter.com/worldsoccertalk/status/1710004149750808966

Possibly extending the Starks/BCC fight? Starks costs Danielson the match?

I think before the season, you could have gotten really good odds on the Orioles being the last AL east surviving tean

Rugby World Cup to expand to 24 teams. A rejected plan would have either kept the same size or reduce the teams, with a second-tier "Rugby World Cup 2" (or Plate_ tournament running at the same time. https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2023/oct/04/world-rugby-to-reject-plate-competition-for-emerging-nations-at-world-cups

Something like, I forget whom, (Shawn Stasiak?) where he'd come out each week as a parody of another wrestler? You could call it "All Gimmicks Needed" edit: Actually looked it up. Charlie Haas