Look at our King. Drink him in, soak him in, all of his glory. We aren’t worthy. Guy Fieri is one of America’s greatest exports. He’s the gift that keeps on giving, and we will never have enough to repay him.
Guy (noted Raiders & Warriors fan), got his big break in 2006 when he won Food Network’s “Next Food Network Star,” and never looked back. Since then, he has become a NY Times Bestseller, Emmy Award winning TV Host, and has opened 75 restaurants around the world with his company “Knuckle Sandwich, LLC.” This information, and much much more, can be found in the “Guyography” section on Fieri’s personal website.
He’s one of the purest, entertaining personalities on television. He’s the king of “Dad jokes,” and is 100% Guy Fieri 100% of the time. I honestly don’t know if I’ve ever seen anyone who is so consistently on brand as Fieri. I could sit my ass on the couch and waste an entire day watching “Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives” and not feel a shade of guilt.
Besides being a great personality, he’s seemingly a better person. Per a recent story published by Game Rant, Fieri has raised over $20 million for charity to provide to out-of-work food industry workers who have lost their jobs or been furloughed due to the Coronavirus pandemic:
“Speaking to TMZ Live, Fieri revealed that he has teamed up with the National Restaurant Association Educational Foundation to create the Restaurant Employee Relief Fund. Fieri said that he sent out personal video messages to CEOs in the restaurant business to put money into the fund, allowing it to grow to $21.5 million. Some of the businesses that have helped, said Fieri, are PepsiCo, Uber Eats, and Coca Cola.“
Really great stuff. I truly appreciate a celebrity using their given platform to do some serious good. Giving smaller, well-deserving eateries the shine they deserve on Diners, Drive-Ins, and Dives was already more than enough, but Guy decided to do even more during a difficult period that has especially hit the industry he loves most.
So a heartfelt thank you, King Fieri, from your friends here at Untimed Down Sports. We hope that you continue bringing us to Flavortown for decades to come. You provide more joy than you know; and if you ever need a co-pilot on your Triple D magic carpet ride, we’ll be the first in line to volunteer.
Who doesn’t love a good name? We’ve had some great ones in the past, but who really rises to the top? Let’s investigate the top five funniest sports names of all time:
Boof Bonser was a below average pitcher who hung around the MLB for four seasons. He spent time with the Twins, Red Sox, and A’s while in the majors, and ended his career after a year with the Uni-President Lions of the Chinese Professional Baseball League. After all was said and done, Boof hung up his spikes with a 19-25 record, 5.18 ERA, and 1.46 WHIP. Some truly incredible subpar numbers.
This guy’s name sounds like a fight sequence in the 1960’s Batman TV series: *BANG!* *KAPOW!* *BOOF!*
Boof Bonser sounds like an “As Seen on TV” cleaning product that will “magically, with a secret scientific formula, clear away any and all rust or grime from your old household items! For five easy payments of $49.99, you can try Boof Bonser today!”
What a beast. I remember running about 60 straight FB Dive plays in Madden ’98 to Chris Fuamatu-Ma’afala back in the day. Not only did it work all day every day, I got to say Chris Fuamatu-Ma’afala each time. For the sake of my writing and your reading time, let’s call him CFM.
CFM rumbled, stumbled, and bumbled his way to seven seasons in the NFL, five with the Steelers and two with the Jaguars.
Chris Fuamatu-Ma’afala sounds like a drunk dude trying to call me a very specific NSFW combination of words…which I’ve been called plenty of times in my day.
Quite possibly the greatest name for an offensive lineman in NFL history. This dude came in at a menacing 6’6, 310 pounds, and had the name to go along with the prototypical left tackle build.
He somehow lived up to an impossibly perfect name for a NFL lineman. Ferguson never missed a start in his 10 seasons with the Jets, was selected to the 2006 All-Rookie team, and was a three time Pro Bowler.
D’Brickashaw is, not surprisingly, the inspiration of one of the funniest sketches of all time, the Key & Peele East-West College Bowl.
Now it’s getting weird, folks. Even though the Argentine goalkeeper pronounces his name “ahss-mon,” you know what we’re doing here. There’s honestly not too much to say, due to Assmann’s short career and my severe lack of soccer knowledge.
I was able to do some digging and find footage of Fabian parking at his building:
A name has never contradicted itself more. First name actual God, surname fake God; pretty impressive flexibility. God’s journey has taken him all around the world; after being drafted by the Wizards in 1997, he played in China, Saudi Arabia, Poland, Kuwait, and Croatia.
Perhaps the most remarkable thing about this legend, besides his name, was his dribbling ability. Shammgod had such incredible handles, he created his own move that’s still used in today’s NBA, “The Shammgod.”
Boof, Fuamatu-Ma’afala, D’Brickashaw, Assman, and Shammgod; a collection of athlete’s names not easily forgotten. Who did we miss?
Recurring blog alert! What I’m going to try and do here is throw together a stupid soliloquy on the previous week in sports at the end of each week. Ideally, I’m hoping to have these done by the end of the sports day each Sunday, hence the title.
So sit back, light some incense (or whatever you choose to light that relaxes you, UDS is a judgement free zone), and enjoy some sports serenity with this week’s Sunday State of Mind (SSM):
TaylorMade Driving Relief Live sports, thank God, good grief Rory and DJ took out Rickie and Matt Went to a closest to the pin playoff Rory stuck it on the pin, splat
UFC on ESPN: Overeem vs. Harris Dana White continues to put on events, even if it’s careless The undercard featured six bouts, and the main card five Live sports are live sports, I suppose, glad they’re somewhat alive
The return of the Bundesliga Some fútbol for the lads Borussia Mönchengladbach took out Eintracht Frankfurt 3-1 A result, I believe, we all had
NASCAR came back as well With Kevin Harvick taking first I need live sports back so bad right now Watching cars turn left even quenched my thirst
I don’t think I need to go into much of an introduction for The Last Dance. However, if you’ve been living under a rock for the last five glorious Sunday’s in this current sports-free world of ours; the impeccably done 10-part documentary from ESPN/Netflix brought all of us more access into the Bulls dynasty, and more importantly Michael Jordan, than most of us could have ever hoped for.
If I hadn’t been so lazy and got this website off the ground a little quicker, I could’ve blogged episode by episode recaps. Instead, I decided not to summarize everything from each episode, but instead to jot down a few thoughts on one or two things from each of the 10 chapters.
Overall, this thing was obviously great. There was a lot I didn’t know, as the first three-peat happened early on in my life, and the second three-peat was basically when I was just getting into remembering sports memories. Let us reminisce on something that ended less than 24 hours ago, shall we?
Episode I
We get off to a pretty blazing start in the debut episode with some immediate character establishment, mainly pitting Jerry Krause (aka Mr. Swackhammer) as the ultimate bad guy. Krause infamously told Phil Jackson “I don’t care if you win 82 games in a row, this is going to be your last year here.” Bold strategy, Jerry.
I did find myself feeling a liiiiitle bad for Jerry Krause throughout watching this and subsequent episodes. The guy was physically such an easy target, and as with everything in his life, MJ was just unrelenting on the guy along with a lot of the other members of the team, that Krause was responsible for putting together. Also, the fact that he’s no longer with us to defend himself allows for some potential unfair representation within the documentary that he could have defended himself against. Alright, end Krause rant.
Episode II
The Scottie Pippen episode. What a story Scottie has, and I didn’t know the extent of it until this series.
The attention grabbing information with Scottie that we got early on in this episode was that despite being the clear cut Robin to MJ’s Batman, Scottie was only the sixth highest paid player on the Bulls, and the ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY SECOND highest paid player in the NBA. For reference, there are 390 active players in a given season. Simply astounding that a player giving his team as much as Scottie did was seemingly so underpaid.
There’s always two sides to every story, of course. We learned that Scottie agreed to a long term contract with a lower amount of guaranteed money (7 years/$18M) early on in his career to secure himself and his family. This was before Scottie became “Scottie.” Our old pal Jerry Krause was infamously known for not renegotiating contracts during his time. Krause remained steadfast in this case, and it lead to some harsh grudge-holding on Scottie’s part leading up to the end of the episode documenting Scottie completely berating Jerry on the team bus. Not a good look, but definite foreshadowing to where things were heading.
Ah Dennis, “The Worm.” This was the one I was really looking forward to. The evolution above could be the subject of it’s own 10 hour documentary.
The relationship between Michael and Dennis was super interesting. Rodman obviously was a guy who plays by his own rules and was going to do whatever the hell he wanted. Phil mentioned in the episode that Dennis gave off a 100% “could give a shit” attitude when asked if he would like to join MJ & the Bulls, and that the guy didn’t even stand up to shake Phil’s hand during their first meeting.
That attitude contrasted with the respect and amount he leaned on MJ as his leader was super interesting to me. The episode talked about a game that Dennis got ejected, one of the many. The Bulls were shorthanded to start with, and MJ was pissed. Michael and Dennis had a sit down after that game, (which would have been incredible to hear); after that chat, Dennis seemed to stay out of trouble (a very relative term, especially when considering we’re talking about Dennis Rodman here).
The episode wraps up with the infamous Dennis to Vegas mid-season trip. Dennis, Vegas, Carmen Electra. All that needs to be said there.
Episode IV
The fourth installment picked up with a continuation of the Dennis/Vegas trip. The best story that came out of this was that when Dennis (eventually) came back to practice, Phil had the team run a very common running drill; one where the team would run laps in a straight line, the whistle blows, and the guy in the back of the line picked up his or her pace to get to the front. If you’ve played sports at any level in your life, you know exactly what I’m talking about.
As the story goes, Michael tells the team to take it slow since…you know, Dennis is coming off of a 50+ hour Vegas bender.
The drill starts, the team eventually gets to Dennis at the back of the line, whistle blows…and Dennis takes off on a dead sprint that the rest of the team couldn’t keep up with. Incredible stuff, all before taking off after practice one a motorcycle with a Miller Lite in his hand (don’t drink and drive, folks).
“In Loving Memory of Kobe Bryant” opened up episode five. I’ll be honest, I was hoping for a little more time spent on the subject. What we got was excellent, but I was hoping they would have gotten more meat off of that bone. One of the great quotes came from Kobe about MJ and his impact on his game and career.
“What you get from me is from him. I don’t get five championships here without him. Because he guided me so much and gave me so much great advice.”
The respect between the two is obvious and palpable. It’s sad to say, but for me personally, there had been enough time since the helicopter crash that Kobe slipped from my mind a little bit. This brought me right back to how I felt on January 26, 2020; it made me incredibly sad, but also appreciative of what we were able to see between the two at the same time during this portion of Episode V.
Episode VI
This episode explored a lot of off-court issues that began to arise for Michael as his seemingly unattainable talent and success continued to skyrocket. Mainly focused on the 1992-1993 season in which the Bulls completed the first three-peat, the season came with plenty of drama. Leaks to the the press and gambling – what could go wrong?!
A book written by longtime Chicago journalist Sam Smith, “The Jordan Rules,” painted a pretty brutal picture of MJ. Verbal altercations with Krause and Phil, physical altercations with teammates, this one had it all. Michael thought Horace Grant, the rec spec king, was doing all of the leaking. This lead eventually to Horace leaving the Bulls for the Magic shortly thereafter.
As for the gambling, I’m impressed they addressed this as much as they did. MJ was, and is, known as world renowned gambler. We can see it in the documentary, the guy will bet on anything from golf to who can throw a coin closest to a wall. The entire gambling segment came to a head with one of the greatest quotes of all time.
“Do you think you have a gambling problem?” – Connie Chung
“No, because I can stop gambling…I have a competition problem.” – Michael Jordan
A *chef’s kiss* response from the GOAT here.
Episode VII
This was by far the best episode for me, and quite possibly had the finest combination of visual, sound, and emotion to end an episode I’ve seen in a sports documentary.
Total insanity of a schedule during this episode, starting with a look back on Michael coming back to the Bulls after quitting baseball. He was out of basketball shape and unable to carry the Bulls through the playoffs like he normally would, and fell to an absolutely stacked Magic team with Shaq, Penny, and the aforementioned scape goat Horace Grant.
That following summer, Michael was filming “Space Jam,” but jumped right back into training. Because he’s Michael Jordan, he got a personal basketball court and full gym to practice and exercise when not shooting the movie. We got to see some of the pick up games of all NBA players that would come out and play, which was cool. Why was Shawn Bradley there, though?
Episode IX
A lot of great, emotional content in this episode. Some great stuff from the MJ/Reggie & Bulls/Pacers rivalry throughout the years, Steve Kerr, and Michael’s relationship with Gus Lett.
A few things that I thought were interesting during the Pacers session was that Jalen Rose legitimately thought the Pacers were going to end the Bulls dynasty. Hindsight is 20/20, but what an asinine thing to think at the time. Also, Larry Bird’s meeting with MJ after game seven, with the GOAT lovingly saying goodbye to Larry in the only way he could, with a hearty “You bitch, fuck you.” Another great moment on the long list of things we likely never would have seen without The Last Dance.
Episode X
A bittersweet symphony, the end of what has been a great run; and I’m talking about the documentary, not the Bulls dynasty. A lot of content to digest here on the final championship against the Jazz.
Another vacation for Dennis, this time IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NBA FINALS, who took a quick trip and a day or two off to wrestle with Hollywood Hulk Hogan and bust a few metal chairs over Diamond Dallas Page’s back. This lead to an incredible look at how the Bulls PR team snuck Dennis out of The United Center past 300 media members. Dennis was in a dead sprint and hopped in an black truck while the Chicago media unsuccessfully attempted to run after him and get any ounce of video or quote they could. Simply incredible.
The series wrapped up incredibly well around game six and the fairy tale ending of Michael having to take the entire team on his back (due to Scottie’s bad back) one last time, predictably ending with “The Shot.”
What was so frustrating at the end was Michael’s display of willingness to come back and try to go for the seventh ring. I agreed with MJ’s notion that if you offered that team a bunch of one year deals, including Michael, that they would have been able to bring everyone back and to make a run at the seventh championship. Michael would have had to do some serious convincing for Scottie, who did and deserved to get his big payday with the Rockets after the sixth finals victory, to come back for a run at seven.
In any event, ESPN/Netflix truly outdid themselves here. I hope we get continued super strong content like this. A truly impressive, yet incredibly difficult story to tell on an equally impressive and difficult time in the entire history of sports.
Pancakes, waffles, sausage, toast…to hell with all of it.
Breakfast, the so called “most important meal of the day,” has so much room for improvement. Don’t get me wrong, I like the idea of breakfast…and by breakfast I mean brunch…and by brunch, I mean bottomless mimosas on a patio while I take a few bites of a burrito filled with eggs, cheddar cheese, and bacon.
Let’s break down a few of what I would assume are the generally most popular breakfast foods, starting with the aforementioned, “incredible, edible egg.”
You’re going to tell me that if scrambled eggs weren’t widely accepted, that this amorphous blob of neon yellow fluff to our left here would look appetizing? I wouldn’t touch that with a 10 foot fork.
If I have to incorporate eggs into a meal of mine, I’m throwing in some green pepper, onion, chorizo, and the like to make it some form of edible. That’s as big of an indictment on eggs as there can be; can’t win it on their own, need to rely on a supporting cast to get it done.
Look at that fat stack, topped with a perfect portion of melted butter, drizzled with juuuuust the right amount of syrup trickling down that power tower of flapjacks to create pinstripes of brown sap down the sides and a moat of sugar cane and maple at the base that can’t be beat, right?
WRONG. Pancakes are the less successful distant cousin of the tortilla, both in shape and functionality. I’d rather eat a PB&J wrapped in a tortilla than peanut butter pancakes any day of the week.
I mean…where do I start here? The poor swines who live their entire swine lives, only to end up as breakfast sausage deserve better.
If their inevitable ending is going to be what it is for most pigs, they have to be hoping they’re moving on to their next life as a sirloin, baby back rib, or at least a pork chop, no?
There are better ways to tame the hunger pains in the morning, my friends! Want a slice of pizza at 10AM? Why the hell not? Feel like throwing back a reuben sandwich with a Bloody Mary after rolling out of bed? Who says no? Saddling up at IHOP for your inaugural chow doesn’t have to be your only option.
I know I’m fighting a major uphill battle here, and that this blog is probably going to have a solid 95% disagree rate. But I can’t be the only one out here who prefers a sandwich, wrap, or literally anything else when sitting down for my first meal of the day…right?
Russell Wilson is one of the best quarterbacks in the NFL, and has been since he came into the league as a third-round pick of the Seahawks in 2012. In his first eight seasons in the NFL, he’s completed 65% of his passes, thrown for nearly 30,000 yards, and has 227 touchdowns to only 68 interceptions. Pretty impressive by the numbers; the guy seems to have “it.”
But what the hell is “it?” Russy’s got me thrown on a definition here. He’s the best example of a guy having, and simultaneously not having “it.”
He’s married to Ciara, a total smoke show (“Goodies” still bangs by the way), but will show up to the Pro Bowl like a midwestern dad who just took his first flight of his life from Omaha to Orlando:
Does he get nerdier or less nerdier with the amount of hair on his head at a given time? I can’t decide, and it’s something that’s been weighing on my mind for years. I can’t tell if that picture on the right is a shot from a community college marketing brochure or the Steve Buscemi meme come to life:
Either way, the dude’s a baller and I am jealous of his entire life. The fact that he can rock dad jeans with a Hawaiian shirt one minute, then turn around and post a mega flex video (that was also cringe worthy since, it’s still Russell Wilson) on Instagram in bed with Ciara after signing a $140M contract the next minute should have been enough for me to never even consider writing this blog.
What are we trying to do here? We’re trying to create content that will hopefully make you laugh, maybe make you think, and for sure make you call us out when we’re way off the mark or straight up wrong; which will 100% happen at some point.
We’re hoping to have a few recurring blog concepts, but otherwise going to try and keep this thing a fairly open playing field. A little more on that below.
What’s in a name?Untimed Down Sports.
In the greatest sport America has to offer (and that will likely will be outlawed in 20 years with continued CTE research), an untimed down happens in a football game when the clock hits 0:00 and a defensive penalty simultaneously occurs.
This unlikely scenario leads to an untimed down; a down with no time limits, and a play that any-god-damned thing can happen. That’s exactly what we’re shooting for here. We of course have “sports” in our title, but we’re not going to pigeon hole ourselves into only to area. We’re dumb, but not that dumb.
Pop culture, music, art, or the fact that koalas have fingerprints. We’re here for all of it, and we hope that you will be too.
Throw us a pity follow on Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook as well as any feedback or ideas you might have. This thing could last a month or 50 years, who the hell knows.
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