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We’ve got a lot going on in “The Sports Gossip Show” cinematic universe this week, folks. We went to Buffalo for the Bills-New England Patriots game. We talked to ESPN’s Emily Kaplan about the hottest NHL gossip as the season kicks off. The WNBA is exploding with drama over the work relationship between players and commissioner Cathy Engelbert. And Bill Belichick’s UNC tenure keeps getting worse.
Let’s get into it.
Bills fans might be the most dedicated
We realize this is a bold claim, but after visiting Buffalo, it’s hard to argue that any other fan base in the NFL loves their team as much as Bills fans do. The Bills are a religion in Buffalo. It’s an all-consuming fact of life.
We went to a Wegmans, and it turns out that even the supermarkets there are Bills-themed. Almost every billboard either says “Go Bills” or features Bills players.
On Saturday, at least 80 percent of the people we saw in various neighborhoods were wearing Bills gear. On Sunday? It was almost 100 percent.
Tailgates are infamous in Buffalo for fans who jump over tables and set things on fire. However, we found that most of the fans were lovely: A listener of the show invited us to her tailgate, and we climbed a Bills-themed lifeguard chair mounted in the back of a pickup truck.
Was it safe? Probably not. Would we do it again? Absolutely.
However, the most significant indicator that Bills fans are dedicated on a level that’s hard to find elsewhere is that it took us more than two hours to get out of the stadium after the game, and we didn’t hear a single honk.
Maybe true fandom means you can put up with traffic without getting road rage.
Another weekend, another Bill Belichick disaster
Over the weekend, CBS Sports’ Ross Marin reported that, “According to sources inside the UNC football program, it is a directive from the staff (Bill Belichick) to not tweet/retweet anything Patriots-related. That’s why UNC football has not posted anything from Drake Maye’s electric prime-time win over the Buffalo Bills.”
Drake Maye, quarterback for the New England Patriots, lit up the Bills on Sunday night in prime time, orchestrating a beautiful game-winning drive in the fourth quarter. Maye went to UNC, where Belichick currently coaches. UNC is famously not a football school, yet it has a rising star alum in the NFL that the program could have bragged about.
Eventually, the school’s social media team did post about Maye — albeit a day after his impressive performance.
However, it would appear that Belichick is still bitter about being fired by the Patriots, and he is robbing his current team of the good publicity it could use, considering it lost 38-10 to Clemson on Saturday.
This season, we’ve seen Belichick repeatedly put his agenda ahead of the good of the UNC football program. Given that there are rumors of a potential buyout of Belichick’s contract, you have to wonder how this all will end.
WNBA players, league leadership are on a collision course
Last week, Minnesota Lynx star Napheesa Collier read a prepared statement about how disappointed she has been with WNBA commissioner Cathy Engelbert’s leadership (disappointed might not be a strong enough word here — it’s worth listening to Collier’s whole statement). This move came amid growing tensions between the league and its players as they try to reach a new collective bargaining agreement.
Collier and Englebert were supposed to meet this week, but in Engelbert’s news conference last Friday, she denied saying the things that Collier reported. Collier promptly canceled the meeting. With the Oct. 31 deadline for a new CBA looming, it doesn’t look like there will be a deal anytime soon.
Pay the players!
NHL gossip to kick off the season
We were lucky enough to have ESPN NHL reporter Emily Kaplan on the show. If you’re looking to get into hockey, Kaplan’s fun stories and facts about the guys on the ice are a great place to start. The season kicked off on Tuesday, so there’s no better time to brush up on the narratives.
Did you know that many siblings are playing in the league? That players fight to defend each other? Did Brad Marchand’s current team, the Florida Panthers, hate him before he joined? That Sidney Crosby took a player to get his haircut? Does the NHL operate like a family? That WAGs take designing their playoff outfits very seriously and always match each other?
Now you do!
