Mikayla Demaiter Gets The New Year Off To A Hot Start, Morgan Riddle Down Under & Peach Bowl MVP Cam Skattebo
The Cotton Bowl match-up is set
If you slept in and spent all day yesterday in recovery mode or missed the announcement for a reason completely unrelated to over-consumption on New Year's Eve, Joe has the day off today.
You've got me for an extra day to start the year. Joe will be back tomorrow and Saturday as he uses today to recover from powering through the late night/early morning that he started his 2025 off with.
His recovery will likely be eased by Ohio State steamrolling Oregon during the Rose Bowl yesterday. The Buckeyes advanced by a final score of 41-21 and will face Texas in the Cotton Bowl after the Longhorns defeated Arizona State in overtime.
I have a couple of takeaways from both games. The first is from the Peach Bowl, where it looked like Texas was going to cruise to an easy win before, to their credit, the Sun Devils made a game of it with an incredible 4th quarter.
There's a bunch of crying about a targeting call that wasn't made late in that game that may or may not have helped Arizona State win the game. I've got news for everyone. There was bad officiating throughout that game.
Some for Arizona State and some against. That's how it goes. There's no guarantee that even if they get that call that it changes the outcome of the game. On top of that, we shouldn’t be calling for more targeting penalties, we should be calling for the removal of the rule.
The player safety rules have gone too far. It's a contact sport; injuries and concussions happen, and all these rules slowly turning it into flag football are ruining the game. If you don’t want concussions, play a different sport. They're part of the game of football.
Enough about that. Texas gave Arizona State ample opportunity to win that game. They didn’t get the job done. Which is a shame because Cam Skattbo did everything he could do to win.
The Sun Devils running back ran the ball, he threw the ball, and he caught the ball. If only he could have helped out on defense. His incredible performance earned him the Offensive MVP of the Peach Bowl.
Speaking of awesome performances, you have to give Ohio State some credit for jumping all over Oregon at the Rose Bowl and not letting them back up. They dominated the game from the beginning and were up big before the Ducks even realized that the game had started.
The Buckeyes are going to be a real problem in the College Football Playoff. There is no Michigan in it to beat them. That said, Ryan Day and Ohio State are still soft.
They're also very, very talented and if you don't hit them in the mouth early you're going to look up and be down by a ton before you know what happened. Oregon didn’t hit them in the mouth.
Now Texas gets a chance to end the Buckeyes season at the Cotton Bowl next week.
Man arrested for driving drunk snuck unopened beer cans into cop car
A man in Indiana wasn’t about to let being arrested slow down his party. After crashing his white Dodge into several vehicles in the streets in St. Joseph County, he was taken into custody for drunk driving.
"Officers approached and found that Giovanni Flores Franco in the driver's seat," the report states. "Speaking with Mr. Flores, officers noticed he had trouble with his balance, smelled strongly of alcohol, and had reddened eyes. Officers interviewed Mr. Flores with the assistance of an interpreter. He told them that he had been out at a party and drinking about an hour before the crash."
The 22-year-old, according to ABC57, had a blood alcohol level of .245 after being given a chemical test and submitting a breath sample. Officers later found that he had snuck unopened beer cans into the patrol car. Not one, not two, not three, but four beers.
How does someone, according to the authorities, that hammered pull that off? It's one of those mysteries we'll likely never know the answer to. Much like all the drones flying around everywhere.
The report said that officers found out about the road beers that had been snuck into the patrol car while they were transporting Flores. It stated, "While transporting Flores to the hospital given his high blood-alcohol content, officers discovered he secreted four unopened cans of beer into the patrol car."
Incredible. I don’t know what this guy was doing for a living before this, but he's got a bright future performing magic tricks or whatever he did to pull this off.
Referee eats punches like a champ after boxers start throwing illegal spinning backfists
Japan rang in the New Year with the Rizin Fighting Federation's annual New Year's Eve event. One of the bouts scheduled was an exhibition boxing match between two kickboxers, Rukiya Anpo and Sina Karimian.
The two fighters threw the special rules for the bout out the window and started throwing illegal spinning backfists at one another. During what turned into a wild brawl in the ring, the referee ended up being hit a couple of punches.
One of the fighters had his hand raised at the end of the bout, but the referee probably should have been declared the winner for eating the punches like a champ.
A church in England is using wrestling to help with attendance
Robot article
- Paul from St. Paul writes:
Seanie,
Thank you for the hilarious 2024 send-off about Robot sex courtesy of that synthetic marijuana-smoking futurologist and the 4B movement generated by our favorite dealmaker.
BTW, just as a passing observation, practically every cat-loving green-haired 4B participant need not worry one lick about the prospects of getting married, having kids or sex with men. That problem will resolve itself at first glance 😉
Cheers to you in 2025!
SeanJo
Thanks, Paul. I agree with you about that particular movement. It seems like a group that, for the most part, is already on the outside looking in.
If you missed it, there was a 2016 article where experts were predicting that by the year 2025 women would be having more sex with robots than they would be with men.
Unfortunately for those experts, that's not even close to the case. The prediction was a huge swing and a miss, but what would you expect from people rooting for the end of humanity?
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That's all I've got for the first Thursday of 2025. Let's hope for a calmer day all around compared to the start to the year that took place yesterday.
The Sugar Bowl is scheduled for this afternoon, and I'll see everyone in the Screencaps community back here on Sunday. The inbox is always open sean.joseph@outkick.com.