Category Archives: Athletes

It doesn’t matter if you win or lose, it’s how American you are when you play the game.

The Most Absurd College Bowl Game Names of 2018

Posted on December 12, 2018 | 2 comments

“Congrats, after a full season of hard work, your team has been selected to play…The Dollar General Bowl. We’re so sorry.”

~NCAA Selection Committee

bowl games

There’s a lot of money to be made in College Football. No, not by the players, that’s ridiculous. Obviously, we’re talking about the money out there for schools and the NCAA in general.

Yeah, no, fuck those students, they get to go to school for free, and all it costs is spending countless hours practicing, weightlifting, and training, and then putting their bodies in peril every Saturday for three months. But again, everyone else, they’re able to get a lot of money from College Football. And nowhere is that more evident than during Bowl Game season.

This Saturday the Celebration Bowl will kick off a slate of games that, between ticket sales, sponsorships, and naming rights, exist solely as cash grabs for schools across the nation. Every team that mustered up six wins will go ahead and play each other for a bonus game of which only a handful carry any real stakes.

But we’re not here to talk about the perils of the Bowl system, or about the NCAA, or anything like that. We don’t really like delving into serious matters like that. We’d much rather talk about goofy names.

So let’s talk about all of the Bowl games that have hilarious, silly names, shall we?

The Most Absurd College Bowl Game Names of 2018

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Posted in America Fun Fact of the Day, Athletes, Miscellaneous America, Strange America

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Elizabeth Marian Swaney Is Our New Favorite Olympic Athlete

Posted on February 20, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Unfortunately, just a little small, and not grabbing the tricks.”

~Literally the Most Polite Olympics Announcer Ever

 swaney

For the last few weeks, our TV sets have been (largely idly, but still) tuned to the Winter Olympics, that one time every four years where dozens of nations can get together and pretend they understand advanced curling strategies.

We’ve been watching because it’s our duty to root for America in the Olympics (even if we’re getting our ass handed to us by Norway) and also because the biathalon looks goofy as hell. Eeven though we don’t understand how there are so many different biathalon competitions, nor can we figure out how America is never good at that sport. We have way more guns than France, so what the hell is this Fourcade guy doing that’s so much more elite than our own athletes?

Anyway. As we’ve been watching speed skaters fall and ice dancers try very hard not to bang each other on the ice, we came across our favorite athlete of all time. While she is in fact an American, she qualified for the Olympics under the Hungarian flag on the Ladies’ Ski Halfpipe. And…like, we linked her run at the top of this article, but we’re going to link it again here, because it is the most wonderful and hilarious ski run of all time. Seriously, watch it. We’ll wait.

Holy shit, right? Like, she just…just skis up and down the halfpipe, never attempting a jump, and just…basically staying upright. And this was in the Olympics. The winning score was more than double what she was awarded! How did this happen!? Well, we’ll dive into that, and also try to piece together a general history of Elizabeth Swaney, our new favorite athlete.

Elizabeth Marian Swaney Is Our New Favorite Olympic Athlete

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A Brief, Incomplete History of the American Basketball Association (No, The OTHER ABA): Part 4- Even More Defunct Teams

Posted on September 14, 2017 | Leave a comment

“I don’t see why no one took our team seriously.”

~Owner of the Memphis Houn’Dawgs

aba patch

Obviously by this point we’ve made enough jokes about the American Basketball Association that we don’t really need an intro to this article. So, sure, you might think we’ve covered it all, from the league’s history to its current and former teams.

Except, remember, this is a league that has 350 teams disappear in its short history. So of course there are a lot more former teams than current teams. A lot lot more. Here are the last teams we’ve decided to make fun of in this silly, unnecessary, wonderful league. 

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A Brief, Incomplete History of the American Basketball Association (No, The OTHER ABA): Part 3- The Defunct Teams

Posted on September 12, 2017 | 1 comment

“If someone forms an ABA team, but no one watches it, does the team exist?”

~Famous ABA Proverb

aba logo

We’ve posted a few articles so far telling you about the revived American Basketball Association, with its hundreds of teams and its general lawlessness. Many of you have responded, “So what, why do you care so much about this league that no one watches,” to which we say you clearly aren’t drunk enough to get it, man. But seriously, this league is hilarious, and we love it, so we’re going to continue talking about it until we run out of absurd teams to talk about.

In this particular instance, we skimmed through the 350+ teams that have formed and disbanded in the league’s 17-year history to find the ones that are particularly hilarious to us.  And so we present part three of our four-part series on the new and improved (?) ABA.

A Brief, Incomplete History of the American Basketball Association (No, The OTHER ABA): Part 3- The Defunct Teams

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A Brief, Incomplete History of the American Basketball Association (No, The OTHER ABA): Part 2- The Teams

Posted on September 6, 2017 | 3 comments

“I’m on the DMV Warriors. Yeah, I know.”

~ABA Basketball Players

aba patch

Last week we went over the history of the second iteration of the American Basketball Association, or ABA, which so far has not given us a player like Moses Malone, but has had thousands upon thousands of people play in it since its 2000 inauguration simply due to the fact that over 350 teams have shuttered in the league’s relatively brief history. Though comically enough, this iteration of the ABA has already lasted a good eight years longer than its predecessor. Lol.

So far, we’ve already talked about the league, with its “so hands off it practically does not exist” management style and it’s “wait you potentially can score a 5-point field goal?” rule set. Now we’re going to take a step back and look at the beating heart of the league. The teams themselves.

A Brief, Incomplete History of the American Basketball Association (No, The OTHER ABA): Part 2- The Teams

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A Brief, Incomplete History of the American Basketball Association (No, The OTHER ABA): Part 1- The League

Posted on August 30, 2017 | 3 comments

“Cool, I own a semi-pro basketball team!  Oh wait, nevermind…”

~ABA Team Owner

 aba logo

The American Basketball Association, or ABA, was a major professional league that competed against the NBA until the two leagues merged in 1976. The American Basketball Association, or ABA, is also a semi-pro basketball minor league founded in the year 2000 that is, just, lol.

These are very different leagues. Now, yes, the new ABA was co-founded by Richard Tinkham, one of the co-founders of the original American Basketball Association, and sure, they pay players to play basketball, but otherwise, the similarities stop there. Since its founding, the new and not-really-improved ABA has weathered an NBA lawsuit and the folding of over 350 teams, which is a success rate that you’d expect more from open heart surgery in the 19th century than  from viable semi-professional sport franchises.

But this weird, unique, American Basketball Association, for all its nuances, is truly America at its finest. It’s democratic, letting just about any asshole buy their own basketball team…which they often do.

It’s also unlike anything we’ve ever seen before in semi-pro leagues, and we say that as a website that has written multiple articles about the myriad of indoor football leagues in our fine nation.

But this one is going to take a bit longer to unpack. Four articles, in fact. One to tell you about the league.  One to tell you about the teams. And two to tell you about the comically ridiculous teams that tried, and failed, to become successful franchises in the ABA. Because, oh boy, there are a lot of those. A lot. Let’s dive in to the most insane basketball league ever invented.

A Brief, Incomplete History of the American Basketball Association (No, The OTHER ABA): Part 1- The League

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The History of the Senior Professional Baseball Association

Posted on February 25, 2016 | Leave a comment

“Even to make love, you need experience.”

~Pedro Ramos, 54-year-old pitcher for the Senior Professional Baseball Association.  Seriously.

legends baseball

As a nation, we have more options for live sporting events than we know what to do with. Between high school, college, and professional levels of football, baseball, basketball, and sure, hockey, Americans could conceivably see a live sporting event every single day of the year without even having to consider lowering themselves to watch a Major League Soccer match.

But with so many games at our disposal, we’ve reached a bit of a saturation point, and trying to add another league to the market is practically impossible. Remember the XFL? A multi-millionaire tried to make a new football league, and even with a player named “He Hate Me” basically got laughed out of existence in less than a year.

It’s hard to start a sporting league now and really get enough interest to keep it in existence. Never was that more obvious than in 1989 when real-estate millionaire Jim Morley decided to start the Senior Professional Baseball Association.

What’s the SPBA, you ask?

Well, unfortunately for those of us that have to type it out, they didn’t call it that. It went by “The Senior League.”

But the Senior League was a short lived (it lasted one-and-a-half seasons) winter professional baseball league that took place entirely in Florida with players who had to be older than 35 (except the catchers, who could be 32).

And it is probably one of the most delightfully batshit leagues to have ever been played in these United States. So let’s go on a history lesson, shall we?

The History of the Senior Professional Baseball Association

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Annie Londonderry, America’s First Star Cyclist

Posted on February 9, 2016 | 2 comments

“I like to ride my bicycle.”

~Queen

annie londonderry

The average American exercises only four times a year, terrified with the knowledge that a fifth instance of physical excursion would cause their chest to explode and shower the room with under-digested hot Cheetos.

Don’t hold us to that, but we’re pretty sure we’re right. And if we’re wrong, don’t tell our doctor because otherwise he’d probably start giving us shit for our lifestyle choices. However, some Americans are immune to this totally-not-made-up-by-us exercise allergy. In fact, some manage to get themselves out there past all the marathons and Tough Mudders to find truly badass ways to get their sweat on.

One of those intrepid athletes? Annie “Londonderry” Kopchovsky, the woman who biked around the world in 1894.

Annie Londonderry, America’s First Star Cyclist

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The National League Blacklisting of 1881

Posted on November 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

“Listen, we’re just sort of winging this as we go along.”

~1800s Major League Baseball Commissioners

hubert

We’ve been talking a lot about baseball in the past several months, which comes as a bit of a surprise considering that the sport is a topic we have very rarely discussed over the past four years. Yes, it’s America’s Pastime, but it’s also kind of boring from an outside perspective.

But we stumbled upon something when looking up the silliest Major League Baseball team names that we could find during their early years—before baseball was a bankable commodity, they pretty much let anyone pick up a bat and play for (not much) money.  That led to crazy ballplayers, goofy names, and that one time where a guy got paid a full professional baseball salary to show up to an empty stadium every day and play himself in a disbanded league.

Baseball during the 19th, and somewhat during the start of the 20th, century was at times hilariously inept, completely marginalized, and interesting as fuck. So we’re going to look into our high tech time machine (read as: Googling shit while drunk) to bring you another chapter from the early annals of America’s most interesting sport that involves players standing still for the majority of each game.

The National League Blacklisting of 1881

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More of the Goofiest Baseball Player Names Of The 19th Century

Posted on October 15, 2015 | 2 comments

“Heh, guys, remember Dickie Flowers?  AHHH HA HA HA.”

~AFFotD Editor-in-Chief, Johnny Roosevelt

old school baseball

A few weeks back, we posted an article where we dug around the annals of Major League Baseball lore for the all-important purpose of laughing at silly names.  And ho boy, were there a lot of silly names to be found.  So many in fact that we couldn’t stick with just a single article.  Yes, there are more names that, either by a lack of parental foresight or the wanton cruelty of their teammates, are hilarious to our perpetually adolescent minds.  Sure, a lot of them are nicknames, but this was during a time where a player’s nickname actually went on his box score.  These people are remembered by as having these names, which we find delightful, because these names are goofy as shit.

More of the Goofiest Baseball Player Names Of The 19th Century

he's SAFE

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