The Forest Green Rovers Appoint Hannah Dingley as Caretaker Manager
After being relegated to EFL League Two following a pathetic effort in 2022-23 League One, the Forest Green Rovers have decided to hand the keys to a new leader. Out with the old and in with Hannah Dingley, who is set to become the very first woman to coach a men’s soccer team in English Football League history.
Something had to change. This sorry lot needs to learn how to grow a parody’s nuts, and who better to teach them than Dingley? She runs a tight ship, and her first order of business will be to whip these losers into shape. If anybody can tell the Rovers to grow a pair, it’s Dingley.
Who knows? Perhaps Dingley can even get the FGR F.C. to play with some fucking heart for once. It would help if the players actually showed some fucking enthusiasm and passion for the game. Just look at this sorry lot give the game away to the Oxford United last season:
Before the 2023 MLB season began, the New York Mets were generating a lot of buzz because Uncle Steve opened up the checkbook for pretty much anyone not named Jacob deGrom. Casual and bandwagon fans entered the season actually believing the Mets, of all franchises, successfully bought the 2023 World Series Championship before opening day.
However, real fans of both the Mets and baseball in general know better. First of all, it’s impossible to buy a championship in baseball. The Yankees try to do this every single year and they haven’t won since 2009. Perhaps Cohen hasn’t been introduced to the Steinbrenner family yet, who knows, but they’ve been in the baseball business for a minute.
Everyone in the Yankees organization probably found it pretty amusing to watch Cohen counting his chickens before they hatched. Steve announced his intentions to win a World Series during his introductory press conference after purchasing the New York Mets in 2020.
“If I don’t win the World Series in the next 3-5 years, I’d like to make it sooner, I would consider that slightly disappointing.”
– Steve Cohen
However, the very fact that Steve Cohen opened up the checkbook shouldn’t be a surprise to anybody. The guy could literally wipe his ass with Benjamin Franklin’s face and earn that $100 back before he folds the bill for a clean surface. Shit, he probably wouldn’t even fold, he just gets a crisp bill out for the next wipe. That’s how rich Uncle Steve is.
Yet, he spent a lot of money on big-name free agents knowing that you can’t buy a World Series. Or, at least he acted like he knew that in 2020:
“I can promise you we’re going to act like a major market team. Are we going to act like drunken sailors in the marketplace? No. We want to be thoughtful. You can spend a lot of money today and tie up your team for the next five years.
You build champions, you don’t buy them.”
– Uncle Steve Cohen
Which leads me to the very first way the New York Mets are exceeding expectations at almost the halfway point of the 2023 MLB season:
We asked the same question every single year with Damian Lillard on the roster. Will the Portland Trail Blazers be any good this season?
Without Lillard, there’s no question at all. The Blazers will suck balls. Accept it. Own it.
But at least we know that from the start instead of clinging for hope during the past 11 seasons of turmoil.
Now we can move on with our lives, updating our social media profiles to say “Former Blazers fan” and taking the pledge to never watch another NBA game again.
Some may be upset, but let’s be real. It’s about damn time Dame Time is up. Let him be another franchise’s problem now.
Maybe the Blazers could even transform into the Seattle SuperSonics so NBA fans could have a team someone wouldn’t be embarrassed to root for again.
Meanwhile, it’s time to find a new hobby for the fans who won’t be included in the trade. Such is life.
But this is YOUR opportunity to get back at your ex. Show Lillard you never relied on him for happiness to begin with.
Besides, it’s not like the Blazers were ever winners before. Who even needed Lillard in their lives anyway!? To hell with him. The Blazers and their fanbase are much better off now than ever before.
Do you want to know what rooting for a team with Dame is like? It’s like believing a climax exists but never reaching it. Every single night. Congratulations to fans of whichever team Dame goes to, you’re about to give up orgasms for a while.
The Race for Baseball’s Best Two-Way Player Since Babe Ruth Is On
Major League Baseball is about a month away from its annual trade deadline. For the 2023 MLB season, the trade deadline is August 1st. Every single year there are teams trying to buy a World Series Championship at the trade deadline, but history has proven that rarely works. This year, every team in baseball should be calling the Angels about their asking price for Shohei Ohtani.
Insightful advanced analytics provided by A Fly On The Ball’s team of Swamp Nuts suggest there may be a wiser alternative to this trade-deadline madness. This modern Moneyball approach could prove more beneficial to teams looking to build the foundation for long-term success, and it’s easy to understand why when you break it down.
You see, the way your grandfather built baseball teams is a little bit different than the way advanced metrics suggest you should do it. The idea is to work smarter, not harder. It’s actually a really simple concept to grasp.
Everyone thinks the shitty teams should be sellers, but that just doesn’t make sense if you look at the only stat that matters in sports, the W column. If your team sucks, you need to do whatever it takes to get better. Immediately.
In reality, the MLB trade deadline offers the perfect opportunity to bolster your roster for next season and beyond. Before you roll your eyes, you might want to make sure you’re not becoming your parents with your perspective.
If your goal as a baseball team is really to win the World Series, you need to start getting better now. Not getting worse. You might as well roll the dice on a star player with an expiring contract to see if you should throw the bag at him in the offseason.
You see, these current millennial GMs have forgotten that you used to be able to rent a movie at Blockbuster before buying it. It’s time to get back to the basics and make a Blockbuster trade for Shohei Ohtani.
Here Are Six Teams That Should Trade For Shohei Ohtani Immediately
There can only be one winner. This year, it was the Denver Nuggets, but now even the defending champions face massive challenges heading into NBA free agency.
For teams who didn’t make a splash in the NBA draft or via trade, the free agent market is the next best option. This year’s crop of talent includes a lot of key players, like James Harden and Kyrie Irving. But there’s a wide collection of athletes who have largely snuck under the radar and can help win an NBA championship next season.
Here is one realistic NBA free agency signing every team needs to make this summer. Is there a name we missed? Or perhaps a player who you feel is a better fit for your favorite team? Let us know in the comment section below.
The 2023 NFL Season Will Be a Failure for the ‘Boys
Summer just officially began which means training camp is already less than a month away for most NFL franchises. For the Dallas Cowboys, it’s just business as usual as they are set to report to camp on July 26th in Oxnard, California. Training camp will run through August 15th for the ‘Boys, it is open to the public and completely free to attend.
Now, who’s ready for some Cowboys football? If there’s one thing you can be certain of, Jerry Jones and the entire Dallas Cowboys fan base have Super Bowl expectations. They do every single year, even though they haven’t won shit in nearly three decades.
Yet, Cowboys fans do have bragging rights to five Super Bowl wins in their impressive and rich football history. So, why shouldn’t they be optimistic? As one of the most recognizable brands in all of sports, let alone football, they know how to do a line with the best of them.
Putting aside their almost cult-like delusions, being a Cowboys fan is more like a religion than a group of fanatics. Cowboys fans don’t go to church on Sunday morning, at least not in their hearts. They certainly don’t follow Jesus unless he wears a blue star on his helmet. However, when the ‘Boys lose, real tears are shed. Dem’s the facts.
Those are real emotions because Cowboys fans are one of the most passionate groups you will find in all of sports. They care, and they want to win, like most fans. Unfortunately for all Cowboys fans, every season has been like visiting an empty Jerry Jones glory hole since the last time they hoisted the Lombardi trophy in 1996.
They sure do things differently in Texas. They say things differently too. I’ve never been to a glory hole, but it’s pretty clear this is an activity that every single Dallas Cowboys fan on the planet participates in.
In Dallas, glory holes have not only been normalized, everybody seems to be insensitive to Jerry’s long-standing obsession with getting sucked off by a stranger. Whomever it may be.
Anyway, back to football for a minute here. In recent years, there have been glimpses of promise followed by failure after failure to get the job done in the playoffs. From Dak Prescott putting up MVP-like numbers one season to looking pedestrian in 2022, the Cowboys and their fans are no strangers to riding a roller-coaster.
There have been several mishaps along the way, such as fucking up with the Ezekiel Elliot contract extension in 2019. That ridiculous six-year, $90-million contract was so bad the Cowboys cut Elliot this off-season. He’s still standing in the unemployment line. That’s how bad Jerry’s eye for talent has become.
Jones literally handed a bum 90 million dollars to go stand in the unemployment line. That’s a far cry from the dynasty Jerry built in the early 1990s by ripping off the Minnesota Vikings in the Herschel Walker trade.
Sadly, that Ezekiel Elliot contract remains a lingering problem in the NFL. It really began with Zeke’s former contract that eventually ballooned into the Christian McCaffrey nightmare that David “Zero Fucks” Tepper screwed the entire running back market over with.
But that’s in the past now as even the Carolina Panthers have moved on from CMC. Meanwhile, Dalvin Cook, Saquon Barkley, Josh Jacobs, and many others are paying the price for these terrible moves that all started with the Dallas fucking Cowboys. DEM BOYS!!!! Way to go, morons.
However, with that being said, the current Cowboys roster has some talent on it. Is it enough talent to win a few games with? Probably. If they can stay healthy at some key positions (Micah Parsons) they might even win more than five or six games. But, do the ‘Boys have enough talent to make the playoffs?
On paper, they might. However, as everybody in the suddenly-competitive NFC East knows, football games aren’t won on paper. These battles play out from the inside out. They begin in the trenches and are finished in the end zones. That’s NFC East football in a nutshell.
In reality, where everybody in the NFC East outside of Dallas resides, the Cowboys ain’t shit! If you want to know why the Dallas Cowboys will not make the playoffs in 2023, the real question is, how much time do you have?
There are countless reasons why the ‘Boys will miss the playoffs. However, A Fly On The Ball will focus on these top 3 reasons why the Dallas Cowboys will not make the playoffs:
Things have been changing in Phoenix, Arizona lately. Just when you thought all things had grown quiet regarding the Chris Paul situation, the Phoenix Suns decided to drop a parody’s nuts in real life by trading CP3 for Bradley Beal.
There is no debate that awe-inspiring offensive basketball is one of the primary reasons why the game is so exciting. Shit, fans of the Showtime Lakers are in their goddamn nineties now, but they can probably still get it up when they watch the modern evolution of the game.
There’s only one problem, putting on an offensive show without playing a lick of defense only wins fans, not championships. If you could win championships based on ticket sales alone, every team would stop playing defense entirely. Every NBA game would look like a god-awful All-Star Game, night in and night out.
Fortunately, for the sake of all sports, it’s still beneficial to play great defense in the NBA. If you make enough of a collective team effort on defense, you can even become champions.
For example, the 2023 NBA Finals champion Denver Nuggets were one of the worst defensive teams in the Association to begin the 2022-23 campaign. By the time the playoffs came around, the Nuggets whipped themselves into a championship-caliber defensive team.
If winning a Larry O’Brien is at the top of the list as a franchise, you must put some kind of priority on playing defense. If you can get the entire team to buy in, you might even build a fucking winner.
The Phoenix Suns have proven they intend on selling tickets, not winning championships, by trading Chris Paul for Bradley Beal. Here are the details of the trade that sent Chris Paul to the Washington Wizards (Paul has since been traded to the Golden State Warriors) in exchange for Bradley Beal:
Surprising reports are buzzing in from around NBA front office insiders that the San Antonio Spurs are not loving their options at number one going into tonight’s NBA Draft. Swamp nuts, the wings, eyes, and ears of A Fly On The Ball, are soaring by every steaming fresh pile in Texas for more details.
After verified reports emerged last night regarding Victor Wembanyama’s disdain for the franchise, the Spurs don’t want to risk selecting the top prospect in this year’s draft in fear that he might pull a Dimitrius Underwood.
No matter what San Antonio decides to do in tonight’s draft, this will go down as one of the most embarrassing moments in franchise history. The front office did zero due diligence on any other prospect leading up to the draft. They were under the assumption they had a shoo-in Hall of Fame selection in the bag. Here’s an undercover sneak peek at the front office of the San Antonio Spurs just two days ago:
There have never been more douchebags on social media than there are today, which means no prospect has ever had their dick publicly sucked more than Victor Wembanyama before they’ve even stepped foot on an NBA court.
Yet, some skeptics suggest the 19-year-old with a silky smooth jumper and an alien-like 8-foot wingspan could still be a bust at the next level. Remember, Wembanyama hasn’t taken a traditional route to the NBA.
He’s coming over from France, known more for overhyping meaningless statues than developing NBA superstars. This isn’t LeBron James or Michael Jordan. Chances are Victor Wembanyama is a bust, folks.
But those with a keen eye who know Wemby doesn’t have a chance in the NBA won’t have to worry about being wrong. They’ve forced this freakishly large creature into retirement before the games have even begun.
The San Antonio Spurs hoped to add Wembanyama, making him the immediate face of a franchise in desperate need of a savior. However, reports out of France have the athlete retiring instead.
The stunning decision was seemingly triggered after encountering his first Spurs fan on June 17, just five days before the NBA Draft. Wembanyama witnessed this crazed fanatic sell his soul, getting a fugly haircut depicting the Frenchman shown below.
But clearly, some shit was steaming behind the scenes as the Spurs were seemingly aware of Wembanyama getting cold feet days ahead of time. On the 14th, it was reported that the Spurs would hold an undescribed press conference two days after the draft, no doubt an attempt to save face following yet another embarrassment with Wembanyama ditching town.
While the artwork depicted above played a heavy role in the decision, the initial issue stemmed from Wembanyama learning about the Spurs’ very questionable past.
Which head coach has the best win percentage in NBA history? Gregg Popovich. Which NBA team has the best win percentage of all time? The San Antonio Spurs.
So how the fuck are they in position to land the best NBA prospect since Jesus Christ built LeBron James in NBA 2K? Something’s off here, and it doesn’t take a shitload of flies flapping their wings together to figure it out.
Popovich doesn’t need Wemby’s Hall of Fame skills to build a winner. Pop has done this his entire 74-year coaching career with players far less talented than some hotshot kid with a wicked jump shot. The guy’s a dedicated lifer.
First, it was David Robinson. He did his best to stay away from the Spurs, even going to the lengths of joining the fucking Navy to do so.
Seriously, what shredded 7-footer elects to do 1,000 pushups a day on a fucking submarine instead of playing in the NBA? That’s how much D-Rob was trying to evade San Antonio. Robinson lasted two full years on that submarine, crammed in there like a fucking sardine, before being forced to join the Spurs’ circus.
Nikola Jokić just led the Denver Nuggets to the 2022-23 NBA championship. He is on top of the world but he doesn’t plan on staying in Denver very long. A Fly On The Ball was buzzing around the team’s championship celebration last night and overheard some stirring comments from someone described with a very distinct Serbian accent:
“Playing this season made me realize how much I miss my horses. Horses have such a short lifespan compared to us, I don’t want to waste the best years of my life playing a meaningless game.”
– Voice with Distinct Serbian Accent
First of all, congratulations to Nikola Jokić and the Denver Nuggets for winning the ‘chip. This was Denver’s first NBA Finals appearance in franchise history. The fact that these quotes are circulating after such a glorious accomplishment is sending shockwaves throughout the sports world.
A Fly On The Ball reports hearing even more telling quotes from the same Serbian voice during the team’s championship celebration:
“I have already proven I am the best, what’s left for me to prove at this point? I have always dreamed of becoming a jockey at the Kentucky Derby. It’s finally time for me to fulfill my dream so I’m moving home, to Serbia, to begin my jockey training.”
– Voice with Same Distinct Serbian Accent
If these sources prove to be reliable, Jokić steps away as a champion in the prime of his playing career. The Joker played his heart out, taking his Denver Nuggets all the way to the 2022-23 NBA Finals and ultimately winning the Larry O’Brien trophy, all by himself. These recent quotes suggest he is satisfied with calling it a career at this point.
Jimmy Butler and the Miami Heat Lose Steam Down Stretch
To be fair, the Miami Heat and Jimmy ‘Can’t Get’ Buckets looked like they did not even belong in the NBA Finals for three out of the five games. Jimmy has proven time after time that he is not capable of being a clutch player. He is a maximum-effort player, a talented hustler at best. However, he is just way too streaky to be the top scoring option on a team with championship aspirations.
Butler tried to hustle so many teams on his way out the door but here’s a big newsflash, it takes a team to win in the NBA. That is, of course, unless your name is Nikola Jokić. With his unselfish play and blue-collar attitude, Jokić proved he was the best player in the NBA on a night when the entire world was watching.
Jokić offers a refreshing image for an NBA player that’s a stark contrast from the me-first, diva demeanor of Jimmy Butler. Butler forever enshrined himself in the selfish hall of shame with his epic meltdown during a Minnesota Timberwolves practice that ended in a discreet, behind-closed-doors session with Rachel Nichols.
Even though the meeting with Nichols was ‘private,’ an intentionally leaked tape emerged to suggest Jimmy had a closer relationship with the reporter than people initially believed. There was plenty of shit-talking between players on the court that leads A Fly On The Ball to believe those rumors are indeed true.
The sad thing is, Butler was supposed to be the leader and level-headed veteran on that very young and impressionable Wolves team. Does Jimmy sound like the kind of guy you’d want in your locker room? For most teams, the answer to that question is no.
Jimmy Butler practically played himself out of the Association with his performance in this year’s NBA Finals. He looked like a washed-up never-was who couldn’t keep up with the young energy and physicality brought to the court by the Denver Nuggets.
Jokić, on the other hand, cemented himself as a true legend of the game. As the Joker makes the transition from being a household NBA name to being just another jockey at Churchill Downs, his unselfish character will surely earn him some brownie points with his horses. Who knows, maybe he will even offer to lose some weight for the sake of his horses.
No matter what this man does, this photo will always be the first thing that comes up!!
Even if Nikola doesn’t shed a few pounds, sources close to Jokić say he is really just looking to blend into society at this point in his life. A Fly On The Ball questions his choice to become the world’s first nearly seven-foot-tall jockey if he’s really just looking to fade away.
Jokić doesn’t seem to care what other people think, he just wants to get home to his horses. A fly on the scene heard his response when asked how he feels after winning the MVP and the Larry O’B in the same season:
“It’s good, it’s good. The job is done, we can go home now.”
