Sports World Oddities Today …

Halloween is a time when ghosts, goblins and various other “odd phenomena” take center stage for a day.  In that spirit, let me try to deal with some “odd” stories related to the sports world this morning.  I will start with a tragic pre-game incident at a high school football game in Tennessee between David Crockett HS and Jonesborough HS.  Before the game, three parachutists tried to land on the field but one of the three – – an experienced jumper – – crash landed and was fatally injured.  What is odd about that?

1. That is a much more elaborate pre-game event for a high school football game than is normal in my part of the world.  And …
2. After the parachutist was airlifted to a local hospital via helicopter- – to no avail – – they went ahead and played the scheduled football game.

One of the mantras for football coaches everywhere is the attempt to minimize “distractions”.  I have to believe that the players in this game had to be just a bit “distracted” by the pre-game happenings.

The next oddity for today involves a professional fishing tournament in Lake Erie where anglers were in pursuit of walleyes; a purse of $28K was available to the tournament winner(s) and the weight of the fish caught within the rules of the tournament was an important part of the determination of the winner.  Two anglers who caught the heaviest fish have been accused of cheating in that tournament and now face felony charges of:

• Cheating – – who knew that was a felony?
• Attempted grand theft – – Seems proper here
• Possession of criminal tools – – really?

There is also a misdemeanor charge tacked on here for “unlawfully owning wild animals” which I will not even try to explain.  Here is the basis for all this:

• When these two men presented the walleyes they caught during the tournament, the tournament director was suspicious because the fish presented to the judges were “significantly heavier than walleyes of that size normally are”.
• So, the tournament director took a knife and cut open the fish only to find “fishing weights” and “fish fillets” stuffed inside the fish presented to the tournament judges.

At least for me, the idea of presenting a fish to judges that was so unusually heavy as to draw incredulous attention to it is odd enough.  But looking at the charges here and imagining how all of this happened, the “criminal tools” involved here would be fishing weights and fish filets; and somehow, I have managed to avoid such charges while being in possession of both things for significant stretches of my life.  Oh, and as for “unlawfully owning wild animals”, I hope that does not refer to the walleyes caught as part of the tournament; and if it does not, I guess the wild animals referred to here are those fish filets that were jammed down the gullets of the walleyes.

And completing a trifecta of oddball stuff for today, we have a new pronouncement from Kyrie Irving to consider.  For the purposes of perspective here, please recall that Irving has previously been on record saying that:

• COVID vaccination mandates were a huge human rights violation
• The Earth is flat
• Scientists just make up what dinosaurs looked like
• JFK was assassinated because he was a threat to an international bank cartel
• The CIA tried to assassinate reggae singer, Bob Marley

His latest comments have been labeled as being supportive of antisemitic tropes and charges put forth by Alex Jones.  When challenged on his supportive statements, Irving doubled down and took umbrage at the fact that reporters challenged his support of a conspiracy theory offered up in a documentary film titled, Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America.  I have not seen the documentary myself but according to reports it contends that there are people in the government who seek to enslave the general population by releasing various viruses among other machinations.  Evidently, the documentary insinuates that Jews are involved in this conspiracy to enslave humanity.

Who knows?  Maybe those “conspiratorial enslavers” are breeding an army of yetis deep in the Himalaya Range and training them to swoop down out of those mountains as the initial assault on humankind.  I cannot prove such a thing is not happening…

Finally, let me close today with an entry from The Official Dictionary of Sarcasm:

“Logic:  The principles of reasoned thought.  Brazenly abandoned on a daily basis by either your employer, your spouse or the President of the United States.  And, let’s be honest, most days it’s all three.”

But don’t get me wrong, I love sports………