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 begins with a celebration of acts of kindness in a sports world roiled by vitriol (you know what we’re talking about, we’re guessing that you know where we stand on this, and we can’t add anything new to what’s already been said by others, in many cases quite eloquently). Houston Texans’ rookie quarterback Deshaun Watson, last year’s National Champion, donated his first game check – for $29,000 – to three employees in the Texans’ cafeteria in Houston. All three women lost their homes and possessions in the flooding from Hurricane Harvey. Players from every sport continue to step up to help fund recovery efforts in Puerto Rico, Texas, Florida and the Caribbean; J.J. Watt’s relief fund has now raised over $37 million.

It’s a busy time on the sports calendar: the coming week will see the start of the MLB post-season, the first week of the NBA pre-season, and the kickoff of the NHL regular season. Plus there are college football and NFL games all weekend. So you have plenty of things to choose from – and quite a few to keep current on if you’re determined to look smart this week.

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 October 1, 2017:

1. NBA super-teams continue to form. Must know: In a previous TWIST, we noted that throughout the off-season, the best NBA players aggressively looked for ways to create “super-teams” with a shot at defeating the champion Golden State Warriors. The Warriors acquired Kevin Durant last season and won the championship – the belief by many is that the only way to beat a super-team is to form another one. This week saw a flurry of last-minute trades, as the NBA preseason begins this weekend. Nice to know: Dwayne Wade signed a one-year deal with the Cleveland Cavaliers, reuniting with LeBron James (the two played together for the Miami Heat, where they won two NBA titles and were in the playoffs for four straight years). The New York Knicks’ Carmelo Anthony departed for the Oklahoma City Thunder, where he’ll team up with Paul George and Russell Westbrook (who just signed a new 5-year agreement for $205 million – the most expensive contract in league history). Extra Credit: Other super-team trades? All-Star Chris Paul joined the Houston Rocket’s James Harden; Kyrie Irving was traded from the Cavs to the Boston Celtics. The first test of the wisdom of this strategy will come this week: on Tuesday, the Rockets play the Thunder in a preseason match-up.

2. MLB post-season is about to begin. Must know: Time for a quick primer on how the playoffs and World Series work. Ten teams make the playoffs—five each in the American and National Leagues – two wild-card teams and the leading team in each of the three divisions. For each League, there’s a one-and-done playoff between the two wild-card teams. Then there are two best-of-five Division Series playoffs – one sees the wild-card winner against the top-seeded team in the league; the other is a match-up of the two other division leaders. That series of games is followed by a best-of-seven League Championship Series. The two league champions meet in the World Series, and whoever wins in that best-of-seven series is the MLB Champion. We know, it’s a lot to keep track of. Our advice is to pick a team that made the playoffs, and follow them all the way through – switching if they lose – so that you have something intelligent to say without having to know the status of every team in the playoffs. Nice to know: In the AL East, despite a last-minute surge, the New York Yankees failed to catch the Boston Red Sox for the division title. They’ll be in the playoffs in a wild-card spot. The LA Dodgers and the Chicago Cubs have clinched their respective division titles. Extra credit: Yankees rookie slugger Aaron Judge broke the season home run record of 49 set by Mark McGuire in 1989 when he hit his 50^th homer this week. As of this posting, he’s at 52. All rise for the Judge!

3. NCAA college basketball rocked by scandal. Must know: This week coach Rick Pitino of Louisville was placed on administrative leave due to charges that the school has been involved in a bribery and fraud scheme. Executives from shoe-maker Adidas allegedly bribed high school athletes to attend certain colleges where the company is the official sponsor of the team. They allegedly also steered the players to specific financial advisers when they turned pro. Nice to know: Speculation is that this is just the tip of the iceberg, and that the NCAA is going to be under intense scrutiny in the coming weeks, with other coaches and universities likely to be implicated. Extra credit: Sportswriters are already assessing the impact of the scandal on March Madness next spring.

If you’re seeking serious extra credit, you can casually mention that this weekend golfer Phil Mickelson broke the record for the number of wins at the President’s Cup (which was attended by former Presidents Clinton, Bush 43, and Obama) with his 25th victory. The previous record-holder was Tiger Woods.

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 over, 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 key match-ups that the sports-minded will want to discuss this week:

College Football Games:

• #7 Georgia blanked Tennessee, 41-0 – Alabama dominates the Southeastern Conference (SEC), and with this decisive win, Georgia has made a strong case for second place (if you want to see some some world-class taunting, check out the Tweets in the aftermath of this game)
• #10 Wisconsin beat Northwestern, 33-24 – this was the Big Ten conference opener for both teams; Wisconsin was favored to win, and despite a late surge, the team prevailed, and remains undefeated
• #2 Clemson defeated #12 Virginia Tech, 31-17 – the two teams are longtime conference foes; defending national champion Clemson remains at the top of the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC)
• UCLA beat Colorado, 27-23 – this notable Pac 10 conference rivalry was expected to be a close game

NFL Games:

• Pittsburg Steelers at Baltimore Ravens – The Ravens are favored to win this one, driven in part by their desire to recover from a thumping last week by the Jacksonville Jaguars (they lost in London 44-7, tying for the worst margin of defeat in franchise history).
• Oakland Raiders at Denver Broncos – The Raiders are coming off a humiliating loss last week to the Washington Redskins, so they have something to prove; the teams are pretty evenly matched, and the experts predict a close game.
• Detroit Lions at Minnesota Vikings – The Lions have been playing well this season, and expectations are all over the map – depends on whether the Vikings defense can effectively slow down Lions’ QB Matthew Stafford.
• New York Giants at Tampa Bay Buccaneers – the Giants will be 0 – 4 for the season if they can’t win this one. They’re on the road, which doesn’t help. The trash-talking has already begun and will go to DefCon 4 if they lose.

Don’t forget to check out our roundup of perfect holiday gifts for sports fans. Act now to score something special for the super-fans on your list. If you wait too long, you’ll be forced into a Hail Mary, and those situations don’t always work out well.

Team DandelionC was crushed in the friendly NFL pool last weekend. Our shoe money has been wiped out. Wish us luck this week. Go, Lions! That’s it. You’re good to go. See you next week.

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