Do Not Argue With The Sporadic Offtopic: The Top 5 Movies About Sports

Soundtrack - Miles Fisher's This Must Be The Place. This is a pretty great cover of the already pretty great song by Talking Heads. But this isn't really about the song itself, it's about the video. It's awesome and you will probably recognize what it's spoofing. You might also recognize Fisher from an episode of Psych and some shitty Final Destination Movie.

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By now, everything's been said that really needs to be said regarding Andre Roberson turning pro, but more recently, with this relatively sober take by Brian Howell, and this generally assholish take by John Henderson, both featuring quotes from Dad Robertson. If you read the quotes, and then go read this thing I wrote, you'll realize that I was right about his motivations for turning pro so you should listen to me about everything forever the end.

And so we close the book on the Animal Style era for CU basketball. For more background, read this right here (then buy this t-shirt right here). It has been pure joy to follow Andre's CU career as he is my all time favorite Buff, and I look forward to continuing to follow his journey.

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I've been meaning to write this for a while, but luckily as in all things- good things come to those who procrastinate, as someone else has done the dirty work of writing a LOT of words about the subject. But here's the gist of it- don't donate to celebrities Kickstarters. Celebrities are very rich. Scrubs is still on in syndication several times a day. And celebrities have other rich celebrity friends. Normal investors expect their money back, and hopefully a return on that investment. People who fund celebrity Kickstarters expect .pdf files of the shooting script, which you will be able to find on the internet anyway. So stop it.

And this isn't really limited to celebrity Kickstarters- a lot of Kickstarters are basically a way to separate stupid rubes who want to feel like part of something bigger than themselves from their money (the same could be said of CU football fans lateley, I suppose). Check out this smart take that Alex Pareene described as "weird vague fake internet companies take dumb people's money and buy each other." So basically don't do any Kickstarters, except the Kickstarter to buy Phil a new laptop, of course. That you should all definitely fund.

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Top 5 sports movies:

A little background for my methodology: I decided to limit my list to one movie per sport, and one movie per franchise. Also extremely weighted is rewatchability, which for me usually means fun. Not really funny, because no movie is funny upon watching it for the 50th time. Basically, this means that, how likely are you to change the channel if this shows up on cable. For instance, I was recently watching Road House, when I noticed that 21 Jump Street was on a different channel... and I changed the channel. 21 Jump Street is more rewatchable than Road House? Even I was surprised! That's the main factor I chose to use in ranking my eventual top 5- if all 5 were on cable at the same time, which movie am I more likely to watch. That was a pretty goddamn hard task when it was all said and done. Starz should just start a StarzSports channel that just shows these movies back to back to back on a loop. I would probably die sitting in my own filth after being permanently fused to my couch. The fact that I might die that way any way is beside the point.

Most of these reflect my juvenile sense of humor. There's a lot of "group of hilariously crappy underdogs come together under a mean coach to win the championship while the coach develops a heart." First up, the honorable mentions:

Rocky III, Slap Shot, Goon, Bad News Bears, Hoosiers, The Great White Hype, Diggstown, Hoop Dreams, Ladybugs, Caddyshack, Thrashin', Necessary Roughness, Happy Gilmore, Little Giants, Major League

5) Mighty Ducks 2: Yes, Mighty Ducks 2 is better than Mighty Ducks. Even though the Hawks were dicks, Iceland was downright evil. Mighty Ducks 2 also introduced you to the knucklepuck, that redneck idiot who uses a lasso, and the Hispanic kid who was super fast but couldn't stop. Plus,I've always thought that Gordon Bombay did Adam Banks pretty dirty in Mighty Ducks. The kid just wanted to play hockey with his friends, and Bombay stole him. No need to be a dick, man. Advantage, Mighty Ducks 2.

4) Rocky IV: BY FAR the best of the Rocky's. Rocky III is a distant second. Rocky's I and II were too serious for me. My buddy Jonesy threw July 4th barbecues for several years, and inevitably the Rocky Marathon would be on his 110" TV (yes- seriously) while we chatted and joked and drank and grilled in the backyard. But, just as inevitably, we would all end up migrating inside by the time The Montage came on the screen. You know the one. The greatest montage in the history of montages which juxtaposed super athlete Russian guy Ivan Drago training on a bunch of super high tech looking equipment with Rocky lifting heavy rocks and logs and shit, running up mountains while losing the KGB, and growing a gnarly beard. Rocky IV is the best.

3) Teen Wolf: I really wish Twilight had included the fact that turning into a werewolf turned you into a Harlem Globetrotter. I might've seen the movies then. Or read the books. Or most likely neither. I'm still not quite sure why becoming a werewolf made Teen Wolf good at basketball, or why it made him a good dancer (maybe it just made him black?), and I will never understand why Teen Wolf would have ever chosen Pamela over Boof, but Teen Wolf introduced us to pretending to surf on top of a van for some reason. The greatest achievement of Teen Wolf, however, is that based on the basketball scenes, it was made by people who had never seen a basketball game and had only had it vaguely explained to them a couple of days before shooting. Bravo, Teen Wolf! Also, Teen Wolf 2 was a boxer, because that makes some sense.

2) Caddyshack: Caddyshack had everything. It has tits, unlike most other sports movies; it has other stuff. I guess I'm done. No, not really. Caddyshack is one of, if not the best comedies of all time. There's really no arguing this, and therefore there's no arguing that Caddyshack deserves on the list. Beyond all of the quotes your friend who thinks he's really funny but all he really does is regurgitate Caddyshack and Simpsons quotes wait where was I going with this...? Rewind: beyond all the great quotes, you had quite possibly the greatest movie character of all time- a gopher who danced to Kenny Loggins.

1) RAD: If you are unaware of RAD (and most likely you are), it's about a boy who wants to race BMX bikes, but the douchey blond guy from 80s movies who isn't William Zabka is a jerk and Lori from Full House is... actually, nevermind. I'm just gonna leave this right here:

I love you, Cru Jones!