TWIST: What You Need to Know to Talk Sports This Week

You don’t love professional sports, but your livelihood and/or personal happiness depends upon your being able to converse intelligently about it. It’s a common dilemma with a simple solution: you need to learn a new language. You need to learn how to talk sports. And we’re here to help! The TWIST is our weekly Dandelion Chandelier guide to what’s happened on the field, on the court and on the ice. Every Sunday you’ll find the three (and only three) things you need to know this coming week to speak cogently about professional sports with the boss, the gang at the office, your barber, your barista, your secret crush, or your in-laws. Do the TWIST every week and we promise you’ll know how to talk about sports like a champion.

This week’s edition of TWIST: This Week in Sports Talk is literary in nature, in honor of New England Patriots QB Tom Brady’s first book, published by Simon & Schuster. The TB12 Method: How to Achieve a Lifetime of Sustained Peak Performance is a guide to healthy eating and fitness. Most of us will be unwilling to follow its strict dictates – here at Dandelion Chandelier, we’re mostly interested in the author photos.

For Those Who Do Not Follow Professional Sports, here’s what you need to know (and not a single thing more).

3 for the week of September 17, 2017:

1. The Cleveland Indians achieved a historic winning streak. Must know: The MLB team won 22 games straight, achieving an American League record. Sadly, the streak ended with a loss on Friday against the Kansas City Royals. It’s still the second-longest winning streak in major league baseball history: the Indians were only 4 victories away from topping the league record, set by the New York Giants in 1916. Nice to know: The team outscored their opponents 142-37 during the 22-game streak and only trailed for 8 out of 198 innings (and four of those came in one game). This weekend the Indians clinched the AL Central division title for the second straight year. Extra Credit: The LA Dodgers have snapped their 11-game losing streak and seem to be getting back on track — they have won four games in a row as of this posting.

2. NFL may be looking at its next “Deflate-gate.” Must know: The Dallas Cowboys’ Ezekiel “Zeke” Elliott is following Tom Brady’s approach to his NFL six-game suspension: he’s appealing it through the federal courts. Nice to know: A Texas court stayed the suspension so that the running back could play last weekend. The next day, the NFL filed an appeal of that stay in a higher court. Extra credit: Elliott can play while the legal maneuvers play out, so he could end up on the field for the entire season.

3. MLB Division races are heating up. Must know: The post-season is getting close, and the divisional races are still interesting in the AL East and the NL Central. Nice to know: In the AL East, the Boston Red Sox are only 3 games ahead of the New York Yankees. The Yankees made an investment in the next generation of talent, and the “Baby Bombers” have powered the team into real contention. They’re 5 games ahead in the wild-card ranking. The NL Central Chicago Cubs are only 4 games ahead of the Milwaukee Brewers. Extra credit: All the other divisional races have teams ahead by double digits.

For the remainder of the college football and NFL seasons, we’ll highlight the key weekend games you need to know about, and if we go to press before they’re completed, it will be up to you to find out the final scores before hitting the office on Monday morning. Remember: you always need to know how “your” team did. Here are the other key match-ups that the sports-minded will want to discuss this week:

College Football Games:

• #3 Clemson beat #14 Louisville at home, 47-21, with reigning Heisman Trophy winner Lamar Jackson unable to overcome Clemson’s defense
• #24 Florida beat #23 Tennessee, 26-20, in a battle of 2 SEC East top 25 teams that was described as “crazy” by commentators

NFL Games:

• Green Bay Packers at Atlanta Falcons: this will be the game of the week, with the defending NFC champion Falcons christening their new state-of-the-art stadium
• New England Patriots at the New Orleans Saints: everyone will be watching to see if the Pats can get back on track after their upset against the Chiefs in Week 1

For those looking for extra street cred, you should casually mention that Craig Carton of the Boomer and Carton sports talk show on WFAN was arrested and charged with running a fraudulent Ponzi scheme to repay his personal gambling debts; he resigned from the program last week.

Wish us luck in our weekend football pool – we called the Texans versus Bengals game on Thursday correctly, but it’s never a good idea to get cocky in these situations. Go, Lions!

That’s it. You’re good to go. See you next week.

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