By Natasha Julius

When we look back on Super Bowl LIII (pronounced LIIIEEE!!!), we’re sure to remember what didn’t happen rather than what did. Because this was the game of the no-shows. No Cardi. No Xtina. No Drake. No Rams offense. No Andre 3000. Not even a fucking Kardashian. Things briefly looked up when the flaming asteroid appeared, but alas – no premature end to the most content-free major sporting event in recent memory. It was like opening a bag of jelly beans to find they’re all licorice and root beer and at the bottom there’s a black hole.

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Posted on February 4, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

* The Super Bowl’s Military Fables.
Seeing Lt. Nadd at the big game was an audacious triple lindy of product placement. You had the military, the NFL and, of course, the smooth taste of Budweiser, all in one Fox camera shot of corporate Americana. (Budweiser is actually owned by a Belgian/Brazilian consortium, but details . . . )

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Posted on February 3, 2019

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Coach ascends to legendary status despite general dickishness. Plus: Roger Goodell Is An Evil, Bumbling Bore; Patriots Hate; For Some Reason Super Bowl Commercials Are Now Released The Week Before The Game; The 11th Annual (More Or Less) Beachwood Super Bowl Halftime Show Prop Bet: Maroon 5 Edition; and The Rams Will Also Reportedly Be At The Game. And: Silent Collusion Is Still Collusion; The Ex-Cub Factor; Bulls Tank Already Accomplished Thanks To New Lottery Rules; and Polar Vortex Game Is Event Of Loyola’s Season.

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Posted on January 31, 2019

By Natasha Julius

Given the current sociopolitical position of the NFL, Maroon 5 represents the only logical choice for this year’s Super Bowl Halftime Show. Fronted by the human equivalent of a glow-in-the-dark condom, the band diligently catalogs incidents of sex while missing actual sexiness by a country mile. They rose to prominence on the questionable strength of an entire album that chronicles Adam Levine’s insufficiently big dick energy, making their back catalog the perfect misogynistic complement to the NFL’s increasingly uncomfortable displays of violence, oppression and general incompetence. It’s like a surf-and-turf of toxic masculinity. And yet, the choice feels so fucking lazy.

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Posted on January 30, 2019

By Steve Rhodes

An occasional series tracking the movements of former Cubs.
1. Micah Bowie.
The Cubs acquired Bowie from Braves in a 1999 trade that sent Terry Mulholland and Jose Hernandez to the Braves. The Cubs also got Rubin Quevedo and a player to be named later who turned out to be Joey Nation in the deal. The Cubs had high hopes for Bowie, but in the 11 games he started for them that season, he ran up an ERA of 9.96. He spent the next season in the minors and then signed with A’s.
Now Bowie is fighting for his life in a country that immorally rations health care even to the dying.

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Posted on January 29, 2019

By Jim Coffman

Four NBA teams have a good shot at the bottom three spots. But those three spots aren’t really that valuable. Then again, the top pick in this year’s NBA draft will be spectacularly valuable. Because that pick will almost certainly be used to select Duke freshman wunderkind Zion Williamson.
Welcome to the 2019 chase for the No. 1 pick!

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Posted on January 28, 2019

By Thomas Chambers

Man o MAN!
Just after watching the wonderfully educational and equally disgusting American Experience documentary “The Swamp” about the Everglades, TrackNotes happens to satellite down to Hallandale Beach, Florida for the year’s first big race, the bombastically (and plagiarizingly) named Pegasus World Cup Invitational (Grade I, 1-1/8 miles[nine furlongs], dirt, $9,000,000) at Gulfstream Park.
Thanks to Viewers Like You, I couldn’t help but come to the conclusion that Florida really is, as Dag Juhlin so often sings, the dangling wang of the United States.
Florida wants what it wants and will lie and cheat, steal and kill, and displace with extraordinary cruelty to get it.
Florida doesn’t have to listen to anybody, including Mother Nature, because it can jerry-rig its way out of anything. Need a dupe for a nefarious sweep around the Constitution? Come on down! They’ve got it all, including the flesh and blood of America’s Biggest Problem.

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Posted on January 25, 2019

By Jim Coffman and Steve Rhodes

Bill Belichick’s Brady Bunch BOAT. Plus: The Bears’ Pro-Am Bowl; George McCaskey And His Family Are Still Incompetent Nincompoops Whose Ownership Of The Bears Has Been A Stinking Disaster; Fans Will Have To Wait ‘Til Next Year To See Manny Machado And Bryce Harper At SoxFest; Cubs Go Old; Dyin’ For Zion; Bleakhawks; Where’s Your Sister Jean Now?; Better Call DePaul; and Horses With Wings.

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Posted on January 25, 2019

By Thomas Chambers

Here in The Beachwood Neighborhood, four-leggeds seem to garner the Page Six attention.
Ask Benny from Bucktown if he’s comfortable with the pub, he can’t say. I ask my pals Storm Cat (I’ll tell you that story if you ask) and Ralphie, a mutt who came with that name from wonderful Anti-Cruelty, they demure and walk away. These three and the feline family menagerie in Wisconsin, I think they all text each other. So you act as if they’re wearing a wire, Big Pussy.
TrackNotes is based on larger animals, and it’s that time of year. The Pegasus Invitational is this weekend. While we’ll get to that in the right tempo Count, let’s blow the webs out of the Bat Cave. Here we go again. Sweet Cathy the Valley Cop, and I hope she knows how great she is, is, I’m sure, ready for a new Triple Crown campaign, first things first the Kentucky Derby, of course.

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Posted on January 22, 2019

By Jim Coffman

So about that call . . .
It wasn’t just that at a critical juncture of Sunday’s NFC championship game, the Ram nickelback named Nickell (Robey-Coleman) committed pass interference that wasn’t called.
He committed nuclear pass interference! It should’ve been a spot foul and 15 yards!

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Posted on January 21, 2019