Blog

Short blog posts, journal entries, and random thoughts. Topics include a mix of personal and the world at large.

Play on

We understand that American football is an intensely violent sport. It’s a game of bodies smashing against one another, again and again. Injuries are common, careers are short. But we love to watch it because it’s like a game of battlefield played in real time. All the strategies and tactics can go deep enough to interest the nerdiest of nerds.

The tradeoff is that your favorite players have a high chance of getting injured from week to week. Things can go wrong very quickly. Take for example Tua Tagovailoa, the quarterback for the Miami Dolphins team. He suffered a concussion in the Thursday night game last week, the unfortunate third (clinically confirmed) in the past few years. The dreams of Dolphin fans hoping for a good season disappeared in a flash in only week two.

Of course, the health of Tua is most important here. The consensus around the league and fans of the league is that he should retire. Continuing to play puts a huge risk for Tua’s quality of life after he is done playing. What happens when he is in his 40s and can’t remember his kids names? Or god forbid, next time he doesn’t make it off the field…

Everybody knows the stakes here, including Tua, I am sure. He knows retiring is the better move for his and his family’s long term future. But, if it were that easy to stop doing something in trade for long term benefits (and for the good of the family), alcoholism would not be a thing. Obesity would not be a thing. Chain smoking would not be a thing. Cheating on your spouse would not be a thing.

It’s a tough call to make, if Tua is even capable of making the logical choice. You’re likely asking him to give up the thing that gives him meaning in life, his identity. It’s like some veterans who prefer the war theatre than peacetime home. When something is so ingrained into who you are as a person, it’s super difficult to let go.

My money is on Tua playing on.

Always play offense

American football season is upon us, and all I can think about it to this past Super Bowl.

There I was in China on a Monday morning. Because that is how time zones work. While all my friends were gathered around the television on a Sunday afternoon back in the States, I was vacationing back home in Guangzhou. For a time I was concerned about how I was even going to watch the game. More so because our local team the San Francisco 49ers was in it. I can’t casually skip this one.

To the surprise of nobody, American football does not have a significant following in China. Besides, with an air time of 9:00 AM on a Monday morning, what working adult has time to even watch the game? Never mind finding a bar showing the broadcast. It’s way too early to be drinking, by anybody’s standards.

Lucky for me, the local sports station was showing the Super Bowl. I avoided performing many tricks to one, get by the Great Firewall of China, and two, get a not so legal stream of the broadcast.

The succinct memory I have of the game is during overtime. 49ers kicked a field goal instead of going for the touchdown. Soon as the ball sailed successfully through the uprights, I knew the game was over. You simply cannot take the safe points going up against Patrick Mahomes. Sure enough, he marched the Chiefs right down the field for a Super Bowl-winning touchdown.

The lesson is this: in life, you want to play offense. Even if it doesn’t materially increase the chances of success towards your goal, at least it minimizes regret. Because you took action, instead of reacting to what the world dishes out at you. Playing offense means leaving it all out there; there is nothing else you could have done differently.

Meanwhile, I bet the 49ers still sometimes think to themselves, “What if we went for it on 4th down during overtime, instead of kicking that field goal?”

Tay Tay and football

I never thought that Taylor Swift and American football would crossover, but here we are. Because Taylor’s new beau (in an illustrious line of many) is Kansas City Chiefs tight-end Travis Kelce, we now cannot watch a game of football, or any sports show about football, without hearing about America’s favorite pop star. I think it’s fantastic she went to the game in Kansas City to cheer on her boyfriend. We should all be so lucky to have such supportive partners.

That said, I really just want to watch football. I don’t care about Taylor being at the game, nor do I care that Kelce’s jersey sales have increased 400 fold since they started dating (hope he gets a cut of that). Why the heck Taylor Swift on the front page of ESPN dot com? Worse of all are the puns using the titles of Taylor’s multiple hit songs during commentary. Ha-ha, Kelce found a blank space in the end zone and scored. Hilarious.

Taylor Swift need to tread carefully. I remember back when Tony Romo - then quarterback of the Dallas Cowboys - was dating music star Jessica Simpson. When the Cowboys - some would say inevitably - lost in the playoffs, some fans blamed Jessica for cursing the team. If this Taylor-Kelce relationship have legs, then the Chiefs had better win the Super Bowl! Otherwise, it might be the start of the Taylor curse (see: Kardashian curse) - should she continues to date sports stars.

This could be the last time

It only took the second day of 2023 to remind us just how fragile life is.

I was watching the Monday Night Football game between the Cincinnati Bengals versus the Buffalo Bills. Midway through the first quarter, Bills safety Damar Hamlin collapse on the field after a play. Medical personnel performed CPR for seemingly 15 minutes. Hamlin left the field in an ambulance, which is something I’ve never seen before in all my years of watching the NFL. After much hemming and hawing from the league offices, the game was rightfully postponed. The players and football fans caring only about the well-being of Hamlin.

Found out this morning that he suffered a cardiac arrest, and is still in critical condition at a Cincinnati hospital. I join everyone else in praying heavily for the man.

During the hubbub of last evening, I received the tragic news of Ken Block’s passing. In an apparent snowmobile accident, it seems Ken went out the way he would’ve wanted - shredding on a machine and having loads of fun. Block was an enormous figure in the automotive game, leveraging the money he made from founding DC Shoes to do all the rad stuff he wanted: rallying, gymkhana, Youtube channels, building cool cars, to name just a few. Ken lived a life of a true petrol-head, inspiring and entertaining millions.

A hearty rest in peace to the Head Hoonigan in Charge.

Tell people important in your life you love them. Be sure to have a bit of fun every single day. Because the world will keep reminding us that there might not be a next time. Take care.

Are you not entertained?

What a wonderful weekend of football. All four games going down to the very last play. It’s great to see the San Francisco 49ers beat the Green Bay Packers in the frozen tundra to advance to the championship round. I didn’t think the team would be in this position when the season started, but here they are. And how crazy was that ending to the Bills versus Chiefs game? The final two minutes of regulation and overtime was absolutely insane. What a treat for us that we get to see quarterbacks Josh Allen and Patrick Mahomes duke it out for many many years to come.

I’m just glad that both of them are in the AFC instead of the NFC, where the 49ers are.

Having bought a 4K television recently, I really notice how poor the broadcast quality of free over-the-air local channels are. I don’t think any of them (FOX, CBS, NBC, ABC) are even doing 1080p quality, much less 4K. The result is that the football games of this past weekend don't look quite as good and sharp as they really should be. Worse, even when I use the broadcaster’s own streaming app to watch (in this case, NBC’s Peacock app), the maximum quality is still only 1080P. Why on earth is America’s favorite game not in 4K already?

The Super Bowl - the most watched event in this country by a huge margin - will not be in 4K! That’s unacceptable.

Of course this is indeed a first world problem. Remember how stunning 1080P looked compared to the 480i signals we’ve been seeing for decades? Such is the progression of technology that 1080P have become the sort of baseline. I would say the ideal signal for the televisions you can buy these days is 4K HDR. Movies in Dolby Vision quality on Disney Plus look incredible (I rather enjoyed Eternals). Honestly if something is only 1080P at the maximum, I rather watch it on the smaller display of my computer.

Brady the GOAT

Tom Brady is now the undisputed greatest NFL quarterback of all time. 21 seasons, 10 Super Bowl appearances, and seven wins. All of them “and counting”, because Brady at age 43 still isn’t done playing the game. He is a special, once-in-a-lifetime mix of talent, skill, luck, and longevity. On the same weekend that Peyton Manning - Brady’s biggest rival QB - is elected to the Pro Football Hall of Fame, Tom puts yet another ring to his finger.

Surely it’s the middle one.

With last night’s Tampa Bay victory, even 49ers fans have to give respect to Brady, and recognize that our great Joe Montana is not longer at the top of the mountain. Montana is still on Rushmore, but Brady is the unqualified number one.

He left New England and took a new team to Super Bowl on the very first season. It goes to show just how important an elite, franchise quarterback is in football. It’s not everything, but a great quarterback can take an otherwise solid team over the hump very quickly. Brady proved it last night.

More pain for 49ers fans: during the last offseason, when Brady was a free-agent, he actually wanted to come to play for San Francisco! And the team declined his services! Hindsight being what it is, but when the greatest of all time wants to come play for your team, you don’t say no. One year later, Brady has another Super Bowl win, and the 49ers are on the prowl for a new QB to take them over the hump. Life is cruel like that.

Some guys really do have it all: the best at their job, supermodel-handsome, marry a supermodel, live in a giant mansion, and unfathomably rich. The closest parallel to Brady I can think of is Cristiano Ronaldo.