Throwing Stars

My (Not So) Definitive Ranking of the NFL’s 32 Starting QBs

By: Jeff McDonough

No position in sports comes with more prestige and responsibility than starting quarterback in the National Football League. That’s why fans and front offices alike fixate on their team having a good one. For the haves that might mean deifying your long-time starter to a point beyond reproach and for the have-nots that might mean searching desperately for your “Franchise Quarterback” of the future. Most teams in the league fall somewhere in the middle, however — a state of convincing yourself and others that your quarterback is in fact good, whether or not it's true. “Elite” for some reason became a weird benchmark that we would all argue over. Does that mean the Top-3? Top dozen? Do you need to be a fantasy stud? Do you need to win a Super Bowl? No one can decide. Thankfully, I think the conversation has evolved from this shallow level, so that’s the one and only time I’ll use that godforsaken term in these rankings.

Unfounded

The Latest Attack On the President and Its Disregard for Reality

By: Jeff McDonough

President Obama is not the founder of ISIS. Anyone with a brain knows this. And while it’s reckless for a presidential candidate to talk in this manner, that’s not my main point here today, because the explanation we’re getting is that he didn’t mean it literally. He meant that basically President Obama has been weak on ISIS and the vacuum created by the way we pulled out of Iraq after the war birthed an environment in which ISIS was able to thrive. Which is a fine explanation, much more nuanced in delivery. There’s just one problem, it’s not true.

A Wrestled Development

Five Burning Questions Heading into WrestleMania 32

By: Jeff McDonough

 

Will WWE Break the Attendance Record?

On Saturday and Monday, upwards of 70,000 college basketball fans will pack into NRG Stadium in Houston — formerly Reliant Stadium — for the Final Four and NCAA Championship game. Sandwiched in between those days, there will be another massive stadium event down the road in Arlington at AT&T Stadium as World Wrestling Entertainment presents the Show of Shows, the Super Bowl of Wrestling, WrestleMania. Now despite WWE’s often hyperbolic boasts, their billing of ‘Mania as “the Greatest Spectacle in Live Entertainment” rings somewhat true, as this will mark the 10th straight year they’ve hosted their marquee event in a football stadium for 70,000+ screaming fans each time. WrestleMania for the first 22 years had mostly been held in considerably smaller basketball arenas. So what caused enough hype for WrestleMania ten years ago that would require the jump to a much larger venue? Well, of course, the involvement of WWE Hall of Famer and future US President Donald J. Trump!

So while that was the start of the football stadium as an every year thing for ‘Mania, there had been some large events in the past. Let’s examine this in reverse order: Before this ten year run, WWE did a sort of a swan song run for basketball stadium ‘Manias in its diehard cities of New York, LA and Chicago. The three years before that they tested out the larger crowd model by using three baseball stadiums with crowds between 54,000 and 69,000. Every other ‘Mania before that, except for two, was held at an arena with less than 21,000 attendees — including Trump hosting back-to-back years in Atlantic City! The two outliers were the 62,127 at WrestleMania VIII in Indianapolis at the Hoosier Dome, and the Grand Daddy of Them All, WrestleMania III in Detroit.