The NBA is experiencing a tanking crisis on both an individual and organizational level. Does the league actually care that teams and players are unwilling or unable to produce the best product night-in, night-out?
The LA Rams are Super Bowl champions after defeating the Cincinnati Bengals. What are the takeaways from this game, the entire NFL season, and the ways that narratives about player/team legacies unfold?
A discussion of Matthew Stafford, Peyton Manning, Aaron Rodgers, Tom Brady, and how elite quarterbacks play in the NFL playoffs.
Today’s show is the reading of an essay about Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers. What are the ways a career can be measured and what are they ways that cannot? For the full text, visit https://www.chrisrawle.com/aaron-rodgers-measured-unmeasured/
The Bengals and Rams have taken two very different paths to the Super Bowl. What are the team building strategies and philosophies that both franchises have used to arrive at the same place?
Six consecutive NFL playoff games have come down to the margins. The Bengals and Rams are advancing to the Super Bowl while the Chiefs and the Niners are going home. It is remarkable how slim the separation is between winning and losing in the NFL. Topics discussed on this episode: The incredible swing plays that can decide football games, like the Bengals goal line stand at the end of the 1H to maintain an 11-point deficit. Joe Burrow, balling. Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs offense losing thei...
The way narratives emerge in the NFL playoffs can be maddening and illogical. What are the current talking points about two teams (the San Francisco 49ers and Buffalo Bills) and how would they be different if the outcomes were reversed last weekend?
An unforgettable weekend of football ends with the Titans, Packers, Buccaneers, and Bills eliminated from the playoffs. In the tightest divisional round in NFL history, what was the separation between winning and losing?
Eight teams remain in the NFL playoffs—four will exit after this weekend. The path to improvement is paved by honesty and belief. What is real about these teams and what is not? And who should have realistic championship aspirations?
The NFL playoffs have begun and two games (Raiders-Bengals, Niners-Cowboys) were decided on the margins. How is Mike McCarthy still coaching in this league?
The 2021 college football season is over. Georgia defeated Alabama to win the national championship, proof of concept for two things: consistency pays off, and there are different paths to the same goal. As we enter another murky offseason and try to understand the future of the sport, the powers that be are trying to solve the unsolvable riddle: what is best for college football moving forward?
The NFL, more than any other sport, is decided on the margins. Week 18 of the regular season—including Colts-Jags, Niners-Rams, and Chargers-Raiders—was insanity and further proof that the separation between teams can be virtually nothing.
A discussion of youth (Cale Makar, Joe Burrow, Ja’Marr Chase) and experience (Aaron Rodgers), framed by a quote from Padraig Harrington at the 2021 PGA Championship: “People often ask in a general term about experience. Well, as you gain experience, you lose innocence. I suppose if you drew a graph, there's a crossing point of equilibrium where you have some experience and a certain amount of innocence and enthusiasm. As you get a little bit older and you get all this experience, on paper people...
The college football playoff was instituted in 2014. Since then, 23 games have been played and only 6 have been competitive. Why is playoff expansion seen as a solution for competitive imbalance?
Team outcome and individual performance can be very, very different things.
Christmas day presented the opportunity to watch two generational athletes, Aaron Rodgers and Lebron James, both nearing the twilight of their careers. How can small stories—like individual games between the Browns-Packers or Nets-Lakers—carry such meaning?
It is stunning how quickly opinions change over the course of a 17-game NFL season. What can be gleaned from such a small sample size?
Finding success in one walk of life does not guarantee success in any others. Why do most people believe this to be a simple, linear transition?
There is a reasonable case to be made that societally speaking, we’ve never been more impatient. This trickles down into the chase for a championship, where teams are ridiculed for coming close but failing to break through, despite mountains of evidence pointing to the same idea: the only way to break through is to keep trying to break through.
The NFL regular season is drawing to a close and it’s time to reflect on the journeys of the teams who have separated themselves at the top.
Football is a complex equation that oftentimes is discussed in simple terms: the quarterback is solely responsible for the outcome. Does this match up with reality?
The college football playoff field is set: Alabama, Michigan, Georgia, Cincinnati, four teams looking to prove they have answers, the blend of identity and malleability needed to win a national championship.
The college football landscape is being altered by a series of seismic coaching changes. Two of these (Lincoln Riley to USC and Brian Kelly to LSU) illustrate the ongoing shift within the sport of where value lies.
A rivalry week for the ages is in the books. Oklahoma State and Michigan both exorcised demons and moved into the thick of the national title race. There is no better distillation of college football than what occurred on Saturday.
Every person, athlete, and team is momentarily capable of incredible peaks and valleys. Separation and understanding occurs in the stretch of time between the bright flashes, consistency that establishes how you are trying to be a better version of yourself every single day.
Change is inevitable. It is the process of growth, decay, and transformation that exists in every facet of life and every football season. From the beginning of the college and NFL seasons until now, who has undergone the most drastic transformation?
Sports exist as an outlet for passion in ways that are describable and ways that are not. In the continual search for understanding, how does one make sense of the huge complexities of the heart?
The weekend of college and professional football provided countless examples of flawed contenders. Who will rise above their flaws and who will be submarined by them?
The first College Football Playoff rankings were released yesterday. As always, determining the best teams boils down to two different trains of thought: what we think versus what we know.
A weekend of football games is decided on the margins. What were the chances Green Bay (missing key players up and down the roster) would prevail over Arizona? What were the odds of Clemson covering over Florida State on the final play? How many times can a referee make a roughing the passer call that nobody understands? How do the majority of NFL games boil down to what happens on the margins?
