Carmen Electra Wrapped Up In A Red Bow For Christmas, LeBron's A Fool & Mark Cuban Takes Another L In 2024
The future of the NFL clearly runs through Netflix and Amazon after what we watched on Christmas Day
Like I expected, it was a bunch of shit thrown at a wall and a let's see what works kind of day.
Did Manti Te'o say anything that would have viewers scrambling to get to their TVs in the future? No.
I can't comment on what Drew Brees contributed because I never saw him during the broadcast.
Did Mina Kimes rattle off all her big football words and play calls to impress the white dork guys who would take a bullet for her? Yes. She plays the role of a fake NFL analyst well.
Did RG3 act like an idiot to serve his role as the guy who tried to bring the NBA on TNT pregame show to Netflix? Yes.
Did Nate Burleson make sure to tell viewers that he talked to NFL players on the field before the game? I caught at least two mentions before I had to get on the road to my in-laws.
Did Netflix really show us commercials when we already pay them like $20 for the service? Yes. And NFL fans sat there and took it.
Was Noah Eagle fine with Greg Olsen? Yes, but when Netflix showed the two of them side-by-side I couldn't get over the hair. It was such a stark difference. Olsen's comment about Noah never wearing a hat because he has amazing hair was a nice moment. Olsen fed off the hair differences. Smart.
Did I expect to see the Texans' owner riding around in a convertible during the halftime show? No, but now Jerry Jones will have no choice but to top that, which is great for the content world.
Like Clay, I was left thinking more about what the future of NFL broadcasts looks like when you have Netflix and Amazon clearly on a collision course for a massive TV broadcast package that's going to include Sunday games.
The NFL can opt out of its current TV deal of 11-years, $111 billion, except what Disney signed, in 2028-29.
Streaming is going to get better. Gambling on streaming will get better. The Baby Boomers will still have their cable subscriptions. The other generations will have their app services and then cable will go by the wayside like newspapers.
According to reports, Netflix has 283 million subscribers worldwide. Amazon Prime is around 230M subscribers. Disney+ is nearing 158M.
Will my employer, Fox News Corp., be in the bidding game? Will CBS have enough capital to bid on the Sunday games? The bigger question might be who will Paramount Global partner with to bid on NFL games in 2028-29?
And what will viewership look like domestically in 10 years when you already have Gen Z and Gen Alpha programmed by YouTube and TikTok to only want 30-second clips?
- Lee D. writes:
Is Ian Eagle trying to get a job opening for Jerry Seinfeld? The constant forced one-liners to let people know he's in the booth is exhausting. J.J. Watt and Nate Burleson banter is actually really good. Seinfeld Jr. apparently realizes he's being upstaged. Inferiority complex? "Don't forget about me!" Enough of the open mic night audition.
By the way, when the NBA's meal ticket is saying this, the NBA is in big trouble vs. the NFL
Drip…drip…drip.
The NBA knows it's a mess and is on defense. This will not end well for that product. LeBron claiming the NBA still owns Christmas Day is absolutely laughable because we already have the data to prove he's wrong.
The NFL trounced the NBA on Google Trends.
This is what a beating looks like.
Screencaps readers show off their Christmas gifts
- Sorta Anonymous shows off his new torch:
Well wifey came through with a solid present that could be archived for next year. Flamethrower
sorry I blurred the faces but I don't have any online presence and I'm trying to keep the kids off as long as possible.
Kinsey:
Here's what Mrs. Screencaps got me. I'll brag a little bit this morning.
The Screencaps kids woke up today and got out their rubber band guns
Now I sit back and wait for one of them to yell, "That hurt!"
I have Screencaps the III at -1500.
The kids also got Boxbollen from my mother-in-law. It was literally a hit. Screencaps Jr. was bashing that little red ball all over their house last night. He was also throwing it off Screencaps the III's head.
I'm sure it will eventually cause a fight.
I bought packs of football cards with Screencaps the III a few weeks back and now I've fully determined that world isn't for me
On Christmas Eve, I was in the man cave working on my John Daly autographed Marlboros display case when it came to me: Sports cards were truly never for me. I need to collect oddities/rarities or whatever you call things like Daly autographed cig boxes.
After mentioning that I have a signed wedding gift thank you note from Kim Kardashian's 72-day marriage to former NBA guy Kris Humphries, a reader wondered what else is in the oddities collection.
Before I came to OutKick, I was big into sending wedding gifts to athletes with the hope of securing the coveted thank you notes. For Kardashian, I bought her a single napkin. Now, it was still like $25, but it resulted in a thank you note.
The collection also includes a gift note from Wes Welker's wife, Anna.
She was pissed at what I wrote on the wedding gift card about how I felt obligated to buy them a gift after Wes dropped a crucial pass in XLVI. On the gift card, I wrote something about how Wes' drop won me a bunch of money on the Super Bowl and buying a gift was the least I could do.
In reality, I didn't bet on the Super Bowl. It was all a front to get that coveted wedding gift thank you note. Welker's wife was pissed and wrote me a scathing thank-you note.
Again, my early days on the Internet were wild and could be crude.
There were wedding gifts to RG3 and Bret Bielema. I remember Bielema received an egg timer. I let my readers write the note and they didn't hold back. Bret's wife, Jennifer, never sent me a thank you for the egg timer.
I've purchased knives off athlete wedding registries.
If they put a sharp object on a registry when it's supposed to bring bad luck, I would snap up the gift.
I remember buying a single washcloth for some MLB guy and then clicking my address for the mailing address. Oops.
We still use that washcloth.
What's the oddest collectible in your collection? Do you have a sports memorabilia rarity?
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com
David in Illinois writes a book of an email on Christmas Day and actually seems to bury the hatchet with Chris Y.
- David in Illinois, who famously shared his breakfast burrito, pens:
Okay, Joe, the Christmas Day spigot is officially wide open.
Going all the way back to the beginning of Burritogate, it appears Chris Y. and I may share (several, as it turns out) sentiments. Yes, my open burrito was ripe for criticism. It was also delicious. It’s kinda hard to get much traction with a picture of a wrapped burrito, which is why I shared the "before" photo. Lesson learned. But Joe had something sinister up his sleeve. He could have easily pocketed the "looks like Big Bird shit" comment and peace would have been maintained. But no. He was chumming the waters. He heard drumbeats of the Thunderdome. He definitely didn’t know it then, but what started as a dust-up will, if I have anything to say about it, end with an admission that Chris Y. has been fun to spar with, and he seems like maybe not a bad dude to sit down and enjoy a pint or two. The picture of him and his cousin, along with the story of how/why John Wayne has influence over the entire village of Cong, Ireland, is the early Christmas gift I didn’t know I needed. So I hereby anoint Joe Kinsey as the Great Bringer of People Together, because had it not been for his clear foresight, I might have (probably would have) passed by that anecdote and not given it a second thought. Instead, now I’m invested in who Chris Y. is, so his story mattered. Well done, Joe, you sly ole dog!
Speaking of dogs, may we all find someone who looks at us the way Dan Campbell’s dog looks at him in yesterday’s Caps.
Back to burritos for a minute, if you lived in an OG Big Ten town circa mid-1980’s thru probably around 2000ish, you may have been familiar with La Bamba and their "burritos as big as your head." Being from Illinois, as someone previously (accurately) pointed out, "burritos and Illinois" should never be in the same sentence. Except thanks to "Bamba," at least for a while, they definitely did. Every Thursday thru Sunday, we’d line up to get into the bars, then around 1am, the line started to form at Bamba. We needed something to soak up all that beer. The line would be steady out the door and down the street until maybe 2:30am, then it was just busy for another hour. Last I checked, there’s still one Bamba in Champaign, but they haven’t been on campus for years. Kids today just don’t know. Makes me wonder what type of places other people in the Caps community went to after the bars in college? Are those places still open? Do you ever go back if you’re in town for a game, etc?
On the topic of best places I ever drank a beer, I’m going to defer to several articles I saw posted back in 2016 after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series. If you’re unaware this happened, I’d much rather share this than anything I’ve personally done. Because it had been more than 100 years since the Cubs previous championship, many generations missed out on an opportunity to suck down a cold one while that last out was being recorded. So legend has it, grown men were traveling in some cases hundreds of miles with a folding chair, a portable radio, and a cooler, to sit at the side of their father’s grave to listen to the games together. I still get choked up a little thinking about what that must have been like. It’s why baseball and the father/son relationship makes Field of Dreams Kevin Costner’s best baseball film (and one of the best sports films of all time).
I’m going to close with a question: if you knew you only had a year to live, what is one thing you’d definitely do? On Christmas Day 2021, I was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer. I was two weeks short of my 52nd birthday, and my symptoms were related to kidney stones (which I also had), but surprise, my PSA was over 2,000 (it should be zero) and the cancer had already spread to my bones. My treatment has gone as well as can be expected, and if there’s such a thing as a "thankfully" in this scenario, it’s that many recent treatments have been introduced in the last 10 years, so I’m still here three years post-diagnosis. But I know this isn’t going to last forever. There’s no cure at this stage. The end stage will prevent any sort of travel, so I’m interested to know what other people would do if they had a year to do it. I’m not necessarily asking for what you think I should do, although if you’ve been someplace or done something you’d recommend, I’d love to hear about it and why it’s so special to you. It’s important for me to say that I’m completely at peace with what I’m dealing with.
I hope you all have a wonderful Christmas with your family and friends. Make sure to remind the people you care about how important they are to you, and try to find joy everywhere you can.
This might be one of the biggest violations in retail history
- Scott from Ridgeland, SC (presently in Simpsonsville, SC) writes:
I thought I wouldn’t have to send a note about respecting Christmas but here I am. I walked into our local grocery store on Christmas Eve to pick up some forgotten ingredients for homemade lasagna and found the store all decked out for Valentine’s Day. Now maybe it’s because they wanted to get a jump on it for the day after Christmas but the wife said the display had been out two weeks. I’m so depressed. Hopefully the lasagna will cheer me up.
Keep up the great work bringing content like the Ts and debates on best place to have had a beer.
Merry Christmas!
Kinsey:
You're a certified maniac if you're buying Valentine's Day candy on Christmas Eve. Are any of you willing to admit to this crime?
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And that's it this morning. I have to go get my mom at the airport and then get back to the house for the 9:45 ET OutKick Zoom call.
I know the prevailing thought is that OutKick will be slow, to non-existent today. WRONG. We're fully staffed and ready to roll while you sit there in the recliner.
Off to work we go.
Have a great day.
Email: joekinsey@gmail.com