Greetings from The Booth!

I have no major topic this week, but I did want to weigh in on a few things, so here goes…

Let’s start with Dallas-Washington week, which used to be a big deal. It really isn’t anymore. George Allen and Tom Landry are long gone, and it’s been almost 30 years since the end of the Joe Gibbs era (not counting his mini-comeback in the early 2000s). Championships haven’t been on the line in this rivalry for awhile. And Dallas seems to own Washington recently. There’s absolutely no buzz about the game this week, and that’s a shame. Random thought: given all the team name changes recently, shouldn’t Dallas have to change it’s name to “Cowpeople”?

I’ll admit it. I’m a golf geek. I must be, because I watched way too much of the President’s Cup this past weekend. I know this because my wife’s irritation meter was about an 8 on a scale of 10. In case you don’t know, the President’s Cup is the team event that is held every other year, alternating with the more popular Ryder Cup, and is formatted in similar fashion. Unlike the Ryder Cup, which pits the USA versus Europe, the President’s Cup has the USA playing the International Team (minus Europeans). On paper, this year’s PC looked like a rout, an it ended up that way, as the Internationals were overmatched by an American team made up of the top names in golf: Thomas, Scheffler, Schauffele, Speith, Finau, etc. I’m sure only us golf geeks were watching on Sunday, when the only drama was how many points the USA would win by.

I have an idea for spicing up the President’s Cup. Let’s do away with the nationalism and have a PGA Tour versus LIV Golf event. The bad blood between the rival organizations is well documented and this would make for some great drama. Who wouldn’t want to see Rory McIlroy (my new favorite golfer) against Patrick Reed (my new favorite heel)? Man, this would be Flair versus Hogan stuff and the ratings would be off the charts. The only hurdle to making this a reality would be getting the 2 organizations to sit down and hammer out the details. Come on guys, make it happen!

Finally, on the date of this writing in 490 BC, the Greeks defeated the Persians at Marathon. A Greek soldier named Phidippides ran over 26 miles to tell the good news to Athenians, dying after his announcement, but was the inspiration of the marathon race. So it’s only fitting that this week, Eliud Kipchoge won the Berlin Marathon, breaking his own world record with a time of 2 hours, 1 minute, and 9 seconds. There are a lot of us who would celebrate a time of 2:01 in the half-marathon.

Kipchoge has actually broken the 2-hour barrier in the 26.2, but it doesn’t count as a World Record, because the feat came in a Nike-orchestrated event specifically created to have him break 2 hours. The Nike Sub2 Project had Kipchoge running on a controlled course with pacers, and generated some controversy in the running community. World Record or not, a sub 2-hour marathon was once unimaginable.

Come to think of it, I once had a pacer. It was an AMC Pacer. I barely broke the 4-hour barrier from college to home…

Until the next visit from the Booth…GO Phidippides!

RW