The house always wins in Las Vegas unless that house belongs to the NFL’s Las Vegas Raiders. On track for a playoff appearance this year, the team hosted the LA Chargers at its brand-new Allegiant Stadium for Thursday Night Football last night and to say that things didn’t go as planned would be an understatement. On both sides, errors and miscues mounted until the game was forced into overtime, and it was the LA squad that managed to squeak by to take the win.
The Chargers set the pace of the game initially, moving out in front as they shocked the Raiders and football fans alike. However, with the Raiders turning to backup quarterback Marcus Mariota to replace an injured Derek Carr, Las Vegas bounced back late in the game to tie the score at 24. Carr had left earlier due to a groin injury and Mariota gave everything he had, completing 17 of 28 for 226 yards and even scoring a touchdown. His coup de grace was a 75-yard touchdown drive that forced the tie and took 11 minutes off the clock.
With only about six minutes left in regulation, the Chargers electrified their bolts and mounted an offensive rebound to try for the go-ahead score. However, rookie quarterback Justin Herbert couldn’t quite get it done as the lightning dissipated and an attempted field goal by Marcus Badgley went wide left. That drive would later be completely overshadowed by Herbert’s OT performance.
As the Raiders looked to lock up the game in regulation, Mariota was back in action. However, an interception in the red zone forced the Raiders to draw up short, giving the Chargers one more shot at taking the victory in regulation. That shot missed its mark, though, as a clumsy offense and poor clock management stopped the team from reaching the end zone. Having to try once again to rely on Badgley’s foot for a field goal, the Chargers were, once again, left hanging.
It will possibly be looked back upon as a pivotal week in the English Premier League, with first and second meeting each other at Anfield and Chelsea proving that perhaps more than one wheel on their bandwagon could do with tightening up.
Manchester United got another comeback win against Sheffield United, Arsenal stopped the rot but still had a man sent off in their 1-1 home draw with Southampton,
Let’s take a closer look at the drama that took place at Molineux and Anfield.
A renewal of rivalries at Old Trafford, a title race flashback at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, and a potentially toxic tussle at Goodison Park. Let’s look at three superb games in potential and pick some sportsbetting tips out from the full English Premier League schedule.
Everton vs. Arsenal (Saturday, 5.30pm GMT kick-off)
This could be Mikel Arteta’s last game in charge of Arsenal if The Gunners lose it. Everton, who come into the game on the back of two quality victories without conceding against Chelsea and Leicester City, could put the North London side to the sword at Goodison Park.
Arteta has a massive problem on his hands. Arsenal sit 15th in the Premier League on the back of a run of seven defeats in 11 games, with players such as Granit Xhaka and Gabriel sent off in recent games, are missing key personnel against a very threatening, physical side in The Toffees. Under Carlo Ancelotti, the blue half of Merseyside is enjoying some sort of 1980’s renaissance. While they sit 5th, they are going to be dreaming of the Champions League and Arsenal will have to be at their best t get anything out of the game.
It’s the final UFC event of a wacky 2020 on Saturday night from the organization’s Apex facility in Las Vegas – no doubt, the UFC is hoping it can start staging events at worldwide arenas in front of fans early in 2021 – with a Fight Night card headlined by a non-title welterweight matchup between Americans Stephen Thompson and Geoff Neal.
Originally, this card was to be headlined by a welterweight fight between Leon Edwards and Khamzat Chimaev, yet both of those guys tested positive for COVID-19. The UFC is now targeting them to fight on January 20 at Fight Island in Abu Dhabi.
The welterweight champion is Kamaru Usman, and the 37-year-old Thompson is ranked No. 5 in the division with a record of 15-4-1. Thompson is a former professional kickboxer with an unbeaten record in that sport and once ranked No. 1 in Chuck Norris’ World Combat League.
The National Basketball Retired Players Association (NBRPA) today announced the numbers for the first three months of the expansion and launch of Legends Media & Entertainment (LME), a multifaceted storytelling platform producing, distributing and quantifying the wide reaching stories of many of the NBA and WNBA’s biggest stars. In three months LME in both audio and video has drawn almost 600,000 views and listens, more than three times the combined numbers of audio and video around the players in the previous nine months. Viewers and listeners have come from over 20 countries, and have enjoyed content from some of the most unique storytellers in the history of professional basketball. Athletes First Partners represents the NBRPA in its marketing endeavors and is working on engaging with brands on the platform as well.
“Basketball is a team sport, and by unifying efforts under the LME brand, we have been able to start building an audience, and a destination that fans from around the world are enjoying,” said NBRPA President and CEO Scott Rochelle. “The first three months have shown that consistency is key, and now that the season is upon us, we are expecting the concept to continue to grow both in content and in audience with our players, some of the most identifiable and engaged athletes and personalities anywhere.”
The NBRPA represents over 1,000 former NBA and WNBA players, making it the largest agency of its kind in basketball. This has allowed for direct access to players for opportunities domestically and internationally. Some of the most popular segments to date have included sessions with hoist Trill Withers talking with Charles Barkley, Bill Walton, Grant Hill and many others. The content can be seen, and heard at https://www.legendsofbasketball.com/legendslive/
Some of the key unified elements of LME include:
Legends Magazinewhich debuted in 2018 and is the official publication for NBA and WNBA Legends. Produced quarterly, Legends Magazine has featured cover stories about NBRPA Director Caron Butler, Jerry Stackhouse, Elton Brand, Jamal Mashburn and “The Knuckleheads” – Quentin Richardson and Darius Miles. Each issue is delivered to all former players, active players, coaches, stakeholders, influencers and league officials worldwide.
Legends Studios also debuted in 2018 with the launch of original live-action and animated short videos and two podcasts, the All-Access Legends Podcast and On Deck with Scott Rochelle. In April 2020, Legends Live, a weekly web series broadcasted to multiple social media platforms featuring live conversations with NBA and WNBA Legends, was added to the Legends Studios portfolio. In addition to 32 standard episodes, Legends Live also covered the 2020 WNBA Draft and ESPN’s The Last Dance with live commentary from Legends. Last week, media personality Tyler Johnson, aka Trill Withers joined the LME team as host of Legends Live, where he will spend time with many of the game’s most successful and dynamic personalities and business people. Johnson will also be a key contributor to Legends Magazine, the All-Access Legends Podcastand the NBRPA’s social media strategy and content.
To follow along with LME content from the NBRPA, find them on social media at @NBAalumni on Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and Twitch or on Facebook at NBA Alumni.
Verizon Media, the global media and technology company and Entain plc (LSE: ENT), the international sports-betting and gaming operator (formerly known as GVC Holdings), today announced a global innovation alliance to develop new opportunities across interactive sports and entertainment. Entain brands include Ladbrokes, bwin, PartyPoker, and BetMGM in the United States, which is co-owned with MGM Resorts.
The new alliance coincides with initial findings from new research for Entain by YouGov, revealing that the use of technology is increasingly shaping consumer behaviours in gaming and entertainment around the world, notably in the United States and Australia. Social media has become central to consumer enjoyment, with new immersive experiences, driven by virtual reality and 5G, accelerating growth of both gaming and e-sports.
Verizon Media and Entain will collaborate to develop a first-of-its-kind highly immersive proof of concept virtual reality experience, that will combine live sports viewing with interactive layers of sports data and gaming. Consumers will be able to participate in sports events, check data, socialise with friends, and place bets on Entain platforms.
Additionally, Entain will work closely with Verizon Media to develop concepts for new formats with emerging technologies like 5G, virtual reality, and augmented reality to bring the best experiences in immersive content and gaming to sports betting and gambling. Along with betting on the Entain platforms on live streaming sports events, the goal is to create realistic, immersive experiences for sports fans, such as being in the stadium, participating in play, competing and betting on outcomes on the Entain platforms.
“To win in the future we need to understand where consumers will be in five, ten years’ time and work with other global businesses also investing in that,” said Shay Segev, CEO of Entain. “We envisage consumers meeting at a game with friends, who could in fact be elsewhere, using virtual reality headsets to watch, interact and share the experience together and, potentially, compete between themselves at half time or feel like they’re on the pitch with the players.”
“This new alliance takes the collaboration between our two companies to a new level and will allow us both to maximize new opportunities across sports-betting, content and entertainment,” said Guru Gowrappan, CEO, Verizon Media.
“Together, we are building the next-generation of content experiences for sports and gaming fans. Our world-first 5G-enabled production studios in LA and London, creative technology teams and Verizon Media’s Immersive platform, that enables extended reality (XR) content to be created and distributed across digital channels at scale, allow partners like Entain to bring next-level immersive and interactive experiences to their customers.”
The collaboration builds on an existing successful relationship between Yahoo Sports, part of Verizon Media, and BetMGM, a joint venture with MGM Resorts through which Entain operates in the United States. BetMGM is integrated throughout Yahoo Sports in the US, and in legal jurisdictions fans can place a bet with BetMGM without leaving the Yahoo Sports app.
The new alliance coincides with first findings of new research for Entain from YouGov, revealing that gaming and entertainment is converging across multiple devices and becoming increasingly interactive, with two-thirds of consumers combining it with social media to increase their enjoyment.
Across all markets, men aged 25 to 39 are the most likely to be innovators or early adopters and are the key audience for e-sports and gaming. Half of e-sports players are in this age group, with most also interacting in social media and more than half enjoying a bet. When it comes to conventional sport, interaction is also increasingly important to this audience, with 31% of 25 to 39-year-old and 34% of over 55’s also engaging digitally to increase their enjoyment of watching sport.
The Bosman ruling made shockwaves when it changed football 25 years ago this week. The relatively unknown player Jean-Marc Bosman went to court to forge a new path for players around Europe.
Running down contracts, going ‘on a Bosman’, signing pre-contract deals in the preceding January, Jean-Marc Bosman gave footballers the ‘player power’ they had always craved and irreversibly changed the path of the most popular sport on Earth.
Since that day, player power has only increased, and many players have gone on a ‘free’ by using the Bosman ruling ever since. We look at the careers of seven of the biggest game-changers.
The NFL usually schedules Saturday games in Weeks 15 and 16 because the college football regular season is over and there’s no football competition on those Saturdays other than some lower-tier bowl games.
However, because the coronavirus pandemic pushed back the start of the 2020 NCAA season, Saturday is when the Power 5 conference championship games will be played (except for the Pac-12). Thus, the two NFL games will have huge competition in terms of TV ratings and betting action at the various sportsbooks.
Neither Saturday NFL game is very attractive as it features a playoff-bound team looking to get the highest seed possible against a club playing out the string. At 4:30 p.m. ET, the Buffalo Bills visit the Denver Broncos. Those teams played an ugly game in Buffalo in Week 12 of the 2019 season, a 20-3 Bills win. Buffalo, which is on the verge of clinching the AFC East for the first time since 1995, is -7 and has covered six straight in the series.
In more than 7000 Major League plate appearances over 16 years, Ozzie Guillén faced some of the game’s great fireballers, with his share of success. How would he have fared against intimidators like Don Drysdale, Bob Gibson and Aroldis Chapman? When the three-time All-Star and host of La Vida Baseball’s Being Guillén wanted to know, he turned to the experts at Strat-O-Matic, the market leader in sports simulation, for the answer.
Revealed on last Friday’s episode, the series of 10 simulated at bats against the three marked the start of a content partnership between La Vida Baseball, the digital media platform that celebrates the passion of Latino baseball’s past, present and future through original video, written and social content, and Strat-O-Matic, through which viewers and readers can see how some of the sport’s great “what if” moments might have turned out, as well as the results of fantasy events that only the world of Strat-O-Matic can simulate with unmatched accuracy.
“It was fun to see how I would do against guys like Drysdale, Gibson and Chapman, and it’s great that Strat-O-Matic has the tools to show us,” said Guillén, who hosts Being Guillén alongside his sons Ozzie Jr. and Oney live on Fridays at noon CT. “I think there are so many things we can do to create scenarios that fans will love to see what would have happened.”
The idea of “What If” using Strat-O-Matic data was first realized with the Marquee Network and the Chicago Cubs this past summer, where Marquee talent Len Kasper, Jim Deshaies and Taylor McGregor looked at some of the iconic moments in team history and created alternative results that delighted fans and had some fun buzz, like Deshaies facing the 1927 Yankees. Strat-O-Matic is currently in discussions with a host of other media partners locally and nationally to reimagine other classic moments in time in baseball and other sports.
While MLB paused at the beginning of the 2020 season because of the COVID-19 pandemic, Strat-O-Matic simulated the season as it would have been played, with results published daily by dozens of media outlets. Strat-O-Matic also posted results of the shortened 60-game schedule and playoff seasons.
“The possibilities are endless with what we can simulate working with La Vida Baseball,” said Adam Richman, Strat-O-Matic president. “From ‘what if’ player and game situations to imagined international tournaments and customized leagues, we look forward to tapping the creativity of La Vida’s personalities and fans to create content that they will enjoy.”
Youtube sensation Jake Paul has thrown out a challenge to UFC champion Conor McGregor. Notintent with his brother stealing the limelight in his showdown with Mayweather, Paul has attempted to trash talk his way into a $50 million boxing showdown against the Irishman.
Paul is 2-0 as a professional boxer and scored the second win of his career over Nate Robinson earlier this year. Paul scored a TKO victory over the former NBA star on the undercard of the Mike Tyson comeback fight against Roy Jones Jr in Los Angeles.
McGregor is no stranger to lacing up the boxing gloves; the Irishman lost the only bout of his boxing career to Floyd Mayweather in Las Vegas. The Irishman had been in negotiations to take on boxing legend Manny Pacquiao, before opting for a return to the UFC with a bout against Dustin Poirier at UFC 257.
With his brother set to take on Mayweather in an exhibition bout in February, Jake Paul is intent on securing another slice of internet fame. Speaking in his post-fight interview against Robinson, Paul called out McGregor. “I’ve been training my ass off for the past year. I’m taking this seriously. There’s a long list of opponents that I want — Conor McGregor, Dillon Danis. I’m going to knock them both out,” said Paul.
The incredibly unusual 2020 college football regular season comes to a close this weekend with a handful of teams finishing up with meaningless games but highlighted by the Power 5 conference championship games. While the coronavirus has canceled/postponed many games this year, the leagues are going to do whatever possible to make sure conference title games are played.
The final College Football Playoff Top 25 rankings will be released Sunday, which means it’s Selection Sunday. Those rankings will determine the four teams in the College Football Playoff as well as the other schools filling out the New Year’s Six bowl slots.
There already has been one conference title game change due to the coronavirus: Washington pulled out of Friday’s Pac-12 matchup at No. 15 USC and will be replaced by Oregon. The Huskies and Ducks were supposed to play for the North Division title this past weekend, but UW didn’t have enough players and still doesn’t. The Trojans are -3.5 against Oregon and the favorite has covered the past four in the series.
This midweek sees the first batch of Premier League fixtures between weekends for some time. With the chaotic ending to the disjointed 2019/20 season, including ‘Project Restart’, this shorter 2020/21 EPL campaign has got off to a frantic start. The first set of midweek fixtures should be absolute carnage, with nobody’s defence having had time to prepare very well to prevent some of the best attacking players in world football from scoring at will.
Who’ll come out on top? Let’s take a look at a match for each kick-off day this midweek.
Wolverhampton Wanderers vs. Chelsea (Tuesday, 6pm GMT kick-off)
This should be one of the games of the round, not least because both sides are experiencing mixed form at present. In Wolves’ case, this is largely due to the absence on Mexican striker and talisman Raul Jimenez, perhaps the ‘Old Gold’s best player and someone who is likely out for the season with a fractured skull.
Last night’s Monday Night Football game between the Baltimore Ravens and the Cleveland Browns was everything it was expected to be. While many games this NFL season have come down to the wire before a winner was determined, this one actually went past the wire, with the Browns making a last-ditch – but well-fought – effort to stay alive after time had expired. The effort wasn’t enough to give them the win, but it was enough to make some sports gamblers happy.
The Browns took the lead as the game got underway, but it was Ravens quarterback Lamar Jackson who then took control for a while. However, if the outcome of this game were based solely on stats, the Browns would have been able to claim the victory. 471 total yards, 333 in the air, compared to 384 for the Ravens. 76 total plays (58 for Baltimore), 33 first downs and 2-for-2 on fourth downs showed why the Browns have become such a formidable team this year. Browns QB Baker Mayfield put up 343 yards and two touchdowns, but a solid Ravens performance on both sides of the ball proved to be just a little too much.
The game went back and forth for a while as the scoreboard continued to see more points added for both teams. The Ravens broke away as the game progressed, finally feeling a little comfortable with a 34-20 lead in the third quarter. Then, something strange and unexpected happened. The Browns came back to life.
As the fourth quarter advanced, so did the Browns and they suddenly found themselves winning, 35-34 with only minutes left in the game. This was beginning to look like the first time since 2002 that they would head to the postseason and also like the Ravens were about to find their playoff hopes completely wiped out. Baltimore had other plans, though, and put them into motion.
It would be an understatement to say that things didn’t go as planned in Week 14 Sunday in the NFL. The New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers were handed defeats that no one, even sports gamblers, would have expected, and even the Kansas City Chiefs came close to losing against the Miami Dolphins. Maybe the top-ranked teams this year simply used up all their energy and talent early in the season and, if that’s the case, the postseason games are going to be a lot different than previously thought.
The Green Bay Packers pulled out a win over the Detroit Lions as quarterback Aaron Rodgers had a pretty good day. He threw for three touchdowns on the way to a 31-24 victory, but it wasn’t until the third quarter that Green Bay moved ahead, a hint at how the top-seeded teams performed yesterday. With that win, and with a loss to be discussed down the page, the Packers are now the champions of the NFC North. It also, because of another unexpected upset yesterday, gives the Packers the top spot in the conference. This game was pretty much on target in terms of scoring, with the final score missing the Over/Under by just half a point.
The Washington Football Team (WFT) can now claim four straight victories after getting off to a slow start earlier in the season. They took down the San Francisco 49ers, who are not showing any resemblance to the Super Bowl-bound team of last year, 23-15 and are now on top of the NFC East. Two defensive touchdowns clinched the win and put the WFT in a good spot for the postseason. The Over/Under had been set at 43.5, and the outcome fell short by 5.5 points.
The Atlanta Falcons have once again proven that they can’t hold up for four quarters. However, they at least forced the game against the LA Chargers down to the wire, only losing after Chargers kicker Michael Badgley nailed a 43-yard field goal as time ran out. Neither team is too concerned about the loss, though, as they’re not looking at a postseason appearance unless a miracle happens. Still, oddsmakers had expected a better result and the 20-17 score fell short of the predicted Over/Under by 12 points.
As the second half of the NFL season progresses, many pundits will be releasing their predictions for the end-of-season awards. But one award race sticks out of particular interest this year: the Comeback Player of the Year Award.
Conventional wisdom may point to a candidate such as the Steelers’ Ben Roethlisberger or the Texans’ JJ Watt. Both are perennial stars returning to form after injuries last year. However, Alex Smith of the Washington Football Team has redefined what it is to be a “comeback player.”
A catastrophic injury in Week 10 of the 2018 season left Smith with spiral and compound fractures to both his fibula and tibia, ultimately resulting in infections and sepsis that became life threatening. Doctors sought amputation as an option to ensure the virus did not infect his whole body, before several surgeries and skin graft procedures could be used to save the leg. Smith is now not only starting at quarterback in the NFL, a ridiculous thought considering where he was a year ago, but has the Redskins in first place in the NFC East.
On Monday night, he faced Roethlisberger’s undefeated Steelers and dealt them their first loss of the season. The game was expected to be a Steelers route and appeared so with the Washington Football Team losing 14-3 at the half. Smith extended the game play by play, drive by drive, until eventually taking a three point lead as the two minute warning approached. Smith’s simple resilience is ultimate inspiration. Winning and losing do not matter any more in Smith’s story, not as much his pure fight to keep going. And yet, Smith unwilling to settle, is in fact winning. He has now won four in a row.
Smith’s journey over the last 24 months was captured in the E60 documentary Project 11 which aired on ESPN in May. The documentary opens its story February 11, 2019, less than three months after the injury. Smith had incredible persistence that we was going to pursue an immediate comeback attempt, allowing ESPN to document this effort as a show of his confidence in himself.
Project 11, like the CC Sabathia Documentary we highlighted last weekhttp://www.thedailypayoff.com/sabathia-documentary-to-debut-december-22/, is an example of the transcendent power of athlete media. Much of athlete media is filled with podcasts and short form content concerning players’ opinions on everyday news in the sports world and beyond. This content is incredibly insightful, and a component of athlete media involves getting an insight into the minds of our heroes.
But heroes also go beyond to show us how to overcome battles in our daily lives. Both Sabathia, with his fight against alcoholism, and Smith overcoming devastating injuries are inspirations to people every day. Athlete media is meant to do exactly that: inspire people to be the best versions of themselves, to do what they think they cannot.
It might rub some football fans the wrong way, but it has to be said. This could be the end of the Belichick era in the NFL. Bill Belichick has been a coach in the league since 1975, most recently as the head coach of the New England Patriots, a position he has held for 20 years. He has won six Super Bowls and has been named the AP NFL Coach of the Year three times, and will always be known as perhaps the greatest coach ever in the NFL. However, even greatness comes to an end. The Pats have not had a very good season this year, and last night’s loss to the LA Rams could signal the beginning of the end.
Belichick can’t take all the blame for the team’s poor performance this year, but it simply might be time to make some changes. Perhaps even he knows it, which is about the only explanation for allowing Tom Brady to head down south to Tampa Bay. Maybe he’s preparing the Pats organization for a little housecleaning. That’s just speculation, of course, but it’s something to think about. New England’s performance on Thursday Night Football was, in a word, embarrassing, and there has to be a reason.
The Pats were held to a single field goal, which they scored as the first half was coming to an end. Apart from that, the team was sloppy on both offense and defense, and Cam Newton, brought in on a one-year contract (fortunately) to replace Brady, only lasted three quarters before being pulled. Even he must realize that there isn’t much of a future with the Pats for him. Newton only completed one of four passes in the second half and added a 79-yard pick-six to his record of non-achievements.
The Rams dominated right out the gate and walked all over the Pats. Their defense penetrated time and again, sacking Newton and his replacement, Jarrett Stidham, numerous times – six, to be exact. On offense, running back Cam Akers was, once again, the driving force behind the team’s success, racking up 29 carries for 171 yards. Wide receivers Cooper Kupp and Robert Woods and tight end Tyler Higbee each had over 30 yards as the Rams cruised to a 24-3 win.
The UFC usually stages a mega-card on the final Saturday of the year, but 2020 has changed plenty within the organization so the final big event instead is this Saturday from its Apex facility in Las Vegas with a flyweight title fight between champion Deiveson Figueiredo and top contender Brandon Moreno headlining UFC 256. The main card starts at 10 p.m. ET on pay-per-view.
The UFC ranks Figueiredo as the No. 11 pound-for-pound fighter in the sport, ahead of such big names as Conor McGregor, Robert Whittaker and Tony Ferguson. “Daico” is a 27-year-old Brazilian who is 20-1 as a professional.
If Figueiredo defending his flyweight belt in a major UFC event sounds familiar, that’s because he just beat fill-in Alex Perez – former bantamweight champion Cody Garbrandt had to pull out – on November 21 by first-round submission (guillotine choke). Perez was looking to become the first “Contender Series” alum to win a title in the UFC but was overmatched.
Christmas is one of football fans favourite times of the year. With what feels like wall-to-wall fixtures in the English Premier League, Boxing Day football on the television is a staple in most households. But what is the festive period really like for the players, coaches and staff who make it happen?
To find out, we spoke to The Secret Coach. TSC is a professional football coach in English football… who will remain anonymous. The Secret Coach has worked with some of the biggest names in the game, been through the coaching badges and is currently part of the coaching team at an English league side… and that’s all we’re telling you. As ever, this week, The Secret Coach pulls no punches!
“If Christmas goes well, it’s great mentally and you forget the physical impact, but if not it’s a difficult start to the New Year.”
This week, we’re looking at the festive fixture pile-up, and we started by asking TSC about what a coach’s first concern is about their players at Christmas time.
It’s an interesting Week 14 schedule around the NFL because there are only three intradivsional matchups and two of them are essentially meaningless with one team in the game playing out the string on a lousy season.
The Tennessee Titans visit the Jacksonville Jaguars and should have little trouble sweeping the season series and continue a push to a possible AFC South title. The Jaguars might be as bad as the atrocious Jets at this point, although Jacksonville did play pretty well in Week 2 at Tennessee. The Titans rode four Ryan Tannehill touchdown passes and a Stephen Gostkowski 49-yard field goal with 1:36 left to win 33-30. Tennessee is -7.5 this time and 5-2 ATS in the past seven in the series.
The Green Bay Packers are going to win the NFC North perhaps as soon as this week and look to sweep the Detroit Lions, who will have a new head coach next season. In Week 2, the Packers handled the visiting Lions 42-21 behind 168 yards rushing and three total touchdowns from Aaron Rodgers. Detroit actually led 14-3 early but then was steamrolled. Green Bay is -7.5 on Sunday but 1-6 ATS in the past seven in the series.
For Soccer Ventures (FSV), an organization focused on the growth and long-term development of American soccer, today announced the official launch of “Orange Slices,” a new podcast hosted by former US Men’s National Team player and Major League Soccer All-Star Heath Pearce and twenty one year old emerging U.S. international Mark McKenzie of the Philadelphia Union. The podcast celebrates the past, present, and future of American soccer through generational storytelling and unprecedented access to rising U.S. stars around the world. “Orange Slices” is FSV’s second podcast, joining “Best Soccer Show” hosted by Jason Davis and Jared Dubois.
The first two episodes feature 2020 Bayern Munich defender and current UEFA Champions League player Chris Richards, and former U.S. National Team and Rangers midfielder Maurice Edu. Both will discuss their experiences playing abroad, representing American soccer to global audiences, their personal and professional challenges, and the effort to rebuild the fan base and trust of the National Team after the tumultuous 2018 World Cup Qualifying campaign. The two shows will debut on all podcast platforms, including Spotify and iTunes on December 9th.
“Our goal with ‘Orange Slices’ is to dive deeper into the challenges and opportunities facing the current generation of players as both elite athletes and outspoken personalities in a time of global cultural change,” Pearce, who is also FSV’s Chief Creative Officer, said. “My role is to provide Mark and our guests with a bit of perspective on where we’ve come from as a soccer nation, and to help guide a lively conversation that takes fans beyond the on-field discussion. Our athletes have a lot to say, and this podcast provides a megaphone to connect with the diverse soccer community in this country.”
“It’s exceedingly rare for an up-and-coming player like me to have the platform not only to share my experiences with the Union and the USMNT, but also those of my peers, who may actually have a very different experience themselves,” McKenzie added. “’These episodes aren’t just for fans, but also a younger audience seeking great storytelling. In many ways these are universal stories of the struggles and successes and lives of athletes, many of whom I admire and work with, and continue to learn from as well. We think it will be a unique narrative journey many will enjoy and share.”
Through rotating segments, the show will explore the unique culture of American soccer, from the muddy fields and halftime orange slices of youth soccer to the biggest games won and lost on the world’s stage. Each episode will incorporate classic stories and learning examples with a fresh perspective from the younger generation reshaping the game in America.
