Since football ended (I know you’re there XFL, it’s just not quite the same) my sportscentric brain has come to lull. Every year the same thing happens. Football ends and I resort to binge watching TV shows that I’ve already watched multiple times, or that I will quit halfway through. It’s a vicious cycle.

Yes, I know that college basketball and the NBA are on. I’m starting to watch college more (this happens every year when football ends) and the NBA is on but it’s tough to really care don’t about it until playoffs. So pretty much what I’m getting at is that nothing is quite like football.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t have a couple of thoughts on what’s going on out there in the sports world.

WTF MLB and Rob Manfred?

It’s kind of sad to say but I have lost interest in baseball since my youth. I still follow the sport pretty closely but that youthful interest in the game has waned. I think that’s due to a lot of reasons. From the lack of offense to the lack of social media, the game has gotten tougher to follow. And the bad thing is I know I’m not the only one.

But what’s funny is you probably have seen the MLB in the national news as of late due to sign stealing scandal by the 2017 World Series Champions Houston Astros. If you haven’t it’s tough to recap under 10,000 words because there’s so many sides and stories to it, but pretty much the Houston Astros have used technology to steal signs from other teams close to five seasons now. That’s a big no-no.

But I like I said there are so many sides and stories to this, it’s difficult to really get to the truth. It also doesn’t help that the Astros don’t really seem that remorseful and meanwhile MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has continued to pour gas on the entire fire with some mind-numbing comments.

It’s time to suspend these guys enough playing around Rob

But what we know is that the Astros cheated. What we also know is that only the former Astros manager AJ Hinch and former general manger Jeff Luhnow were the only ones suspended. Hinch and Luhnow were then fired.

Now here’s a question for everyone.

Do you guys remember what happened when players got caught taking steroids/HGH/PEDs?

Oh yeah, they got suspended. BECAUSE THEY CHEATED.

Manfred knows that players were involved in this and refuses to suspend any of them for reasons unknown or maybe reasons that I had heard and just thought were so stupid I tuned them out. It just blows my mind how badly this has been handled.

You have superstar players coming out and ripping the Astros players and the commissioner. That never happens in the MLB, and rarely any other professional sports leagues. Players are pissed and deservedly so.

Now here’s the other side of what comes to my mind when I think of this whole entire fiasco. This is in no way defending the Astros and what they did, because they got caught. It also didn’t help that they won a World Series while it was happening.

But do we really think the Astros are the only ones cheating? Baseball has had a long problem of cheating in multiple ways, but sign stealing has gone back to hay day of baseball. This has been going on for almost a hundred years, the main difference (and the illegal part of this entire thing) with the Astros is that they used technology to make it a more complex but successful way of stealing signs.

But the Astros weren’t the first to be caught using technology to relay/record signs. No that would be the Boston Red Sox in 2017 when they were caught using Apple watches to relay signals to teammates. That happened after the New York Yankees filed a complaint, which then led to the Yankees being found of using an electronic device to relay signals as well. LOL.

So ya this isn’t the first time.

But still, those two teams didn’t win a World Series when they supposedly used those devices to relay signals or they hadn’t been caught yet when they did win (Red Sox won championships in ’13 and ’18).

The players knew about this scheme. Suspend them and make this right. Taking away the World Series seems silly since half the games were on the road and who knows what other teams were up to that season. But they were caught, and that at least deserves some suspensions.

The XFL is actually kind of… fun?

Earlier I poked a bit fun of at the XFL and said it couldn’t compare to the NFL or college football. That’s still true currently, but I will say this the XFL is actually kind of fun.

Now I will preface this by saying that I did attend the Seattle Dragons home opener where the atmosphere was pretty incredible. But I still watched last weeks game on TV and have caught some other games on TV as well.

It’s got a The Replacements vibe (if you’ve never seen that movie please do) to the league with the teams social media accounts promoting these guys chugging beer after wins (ok hard seltzer), doing hilarious stuff on the field and off the field, and just the general lack of talent but guys really busting their asses.

Where is Keanu Reeves?

I also love the transparency of the reviews. Could you imagine that in the NFL? It would never happen, but sometimes you really wish it would so you can see what these people are looking at specifically up in the booth. Not only is it just cool to have an inside look at what’s going on, but the audience might just learn something more about the rules with an official talking to them about the play. Smart idea to get some viewers.

The XFL has also applied some key rule changes to their game, and the new kickoff rule might be the smartest rule change in sports I have seen in a while.

If you don’t know the rule I’ll let the XFL explain it here https://www.xfl.com/rules#8099ec9d3feb7be967007719

This rule should be adopted at every level of football. Think about it. You have people lining up 20-80 yards apart on a kickoff and they are just running at each other full speed to hit each other. It’s not really the smartest or safest play in football, and with new kickoff rule kickoffs are almost non-existent anyways. This rule would not only significantly improve player safety, it would allow kick returns, which adds much more excitement to that play.

This league has serious potential to become a successful kind of offshoot of the NFL. One of the main issues so far is the lack of offense, specifically bad quarterback play. But there are some very good quarterbacks in this league that should get a shot on an NFL squad somewhere so it’s not like there isn’t any talent at that position.