Dumb Or Not

A week into the NBA season and I’ve already listened to two podcasts and read one article that tries to decide if early developments are legit or not. Based on 2–4 games. Because that’s the world we live in. I thought I would take that concept a different direction and work through several subjects to determine if they are dumb or not.

Darryn Peterson Not Playing Because Of “Cramps and Soreness”

Oh boy. Just four days after destroying Louisville for 20 minutes then basically sitting out the second half, KU’s best player did not dress for the exhibition game against Fort Hays State.[1] Since it’s 2025, there were immediate conspiracy theories on even the most level headed of platforms.

I’m going to hope it was just a combination of the “cramps and soreness” and perhaps an illness that kept Peterson from playing and not some bigger injury that is being hidden or any of the other ideas that got thrown around. Not dumb but has potential to become dumb.

ESPN+’s Broadcast Quality

The KU game was on ESPN+, which always worries me. You never know what’s going to go wrong. Tuesday it was audio that was cutting out at various parts of the game, and often not perfectly synched up with the video. Par for the course, but indeed Dumb.

NCAA Allows Players and Coaches to Bet on Professional Sports

Oh good Lord, this organization needs to be burned to the ground. The Dumbest

Ohio State Whining About Having to Play at Noon So Often

Oh, boo hoo, the defending national champs and perennial contenders are claiming they have a recruiting disadvantage since they have so many noon Eastern games. They say it’s hard to get recruits into town who aren’t from the Midwest since these kids are usually playing on Friday nights. I feel real, real bad for the Buckeyes, how will they ever stack their roster three-deep with NFL players at every position? <Looks at current recruiting rankings, sees OSU at #4. Shakes fist.> Pretty damn dumb

Oh, and this was a month after Ohio State was one of the few schools to argue against limiting the transfer portal window, claiming that teams like them that make the college football playoff will not have the same opportunity to recruit transfers. Again, this is a school that signs a top five high school class almost every year. If they know they need a quarterback or running back or whatever, I think they’re going to find a way to talk to a kid even if they’re preparing to play Georgia. And, to be honest, schools who are NOT in the CFP deserve some kind of advantage in recruiting. Take your massive payout and opportunity to play for a national title while everyone else gets to fight over transfers. “They’re Just Trolling Us Now, Right?” Dumb

Pacers Injuries

The Pacers lost Andrew Nembhard on opening night. He remains out for an undetermined time. Two games later Bennedict Mathurin hurt his foot and is week-to-week. Obi Toppin then hurt his hamstring and is out at least a month. Bench players Peter Taelon and Kam Jones are on the injured list. Johnny Furphy has only played a few emergency minutes as he works through a foot injury. TJ McConnell won’t play his first game until sometime in November. Things got so bleak the Pacers actually gave Mac McClung a contract this week. Meanwhile they are now 0–4 after losing to Dallas by two last night. This one is Annoyingly Dumb but since it may put them deep into the lottery, could turn out to be Not Dumb At All. We’ll see in May when they learn their draft position.

MLB Replay

Actually all sports replay reviews.

We got home from L’s scrimmage last night and I turned on the World Series and immediately saw back-to-back replay reviews. Each of bang-bang plays involving the same baserunner. We don’t know what the replay officials were looking at, but Fox rolled each in super slow motion, freezing at key frames to determine if the runner was safe or out. The reviews stopped play for roughly five minutes.

I’ve ranted about this before, but if you have to do something the human eye can’t do to make a final call, we’ve gone too far. We are too worried about a runner coming an eighth of an inch off the bag, a football moving half an inch when a player hits the ground, etc. All things we can only see because of super HD cameras and zoom lenses and other technology. Replay review should be designed to overcome clear mistakes, not these tiny imperfections that, if we had the ability at the time, would likely overturn countless famous moments in sports history. Very Dumb

Weather

We went straight from 80° every day to 50°, which is a little annoying but not necessarily dumb. Fall is supposed to be chilly. I was reading a long-term forecast last night that suggested after a warm up next week, we could go straight to winter, with temps in the 30s and chances for snow. Why can’t we just have six weeks where the temps slowly transition from 80s to 70s to 60s to 50s to 40s instead of these abrupt swings? Fucking Dumb.