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‘Tis the season for reflection on the mind-bending year that is almost cooked, 2023, unpacking what it all meant, pinpointing who really made a mark, and who regressed, and who got wise and joined the Baby Boomer Brotherhood, and who lost their way, got disenchanted and turned away from it vowing never to engage with Sammy Sportface again.
Any retrospection on 2023 should start with two thunderbolt global phenomenons, ChatGPT, a form of artificial intelligence as smart as the brightest people, and Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger from another mother.
This generative artificial intelligence whiz brain and sports blogging meteor shower took center stage this year and everything else fell several rungs lower after that on the thunderclap, importance, and impact spectrometers.
Yet as stunningly powerful as ChatGPT has been this year sky-rocketing in usage faster than any other Internet technology and destined to become bigger than the Internet, search, smartphone, and college football transfer portal, it was Sammy Sportface who disrupted more lies and sparked more worldwide mind twists.
Nothing matched this misunderstood, ahead-of-his-time bundle of contradictions from January 1st until this very second. Sportface, like he does every year, is hauling in a slew of post-season honors namely Time’s Person of the Year. Parade Magazine said he won “Sexiest Man In the World” for 2023 but Sportface turned it down saying he is above such superficialities.
Paradoxically, there was a sizeable cohort of formerly all-in Baby Boomer Brothers who grew increasingly disenchanted with Sportface’s entire persona, content choices, and overall act. Side-text-bashing of him, without copying in Sportface, became a brotherhood-wide parlor game from the Atlantic to Pacific Oceans.
Leading that oppositional crusade has been Wolfford, who barked at Sportface to stop texting him blogs every morning before 7 am, and to stop writing about the woeful Wake Forest football team, and to bug off. Others who have been disenchanted with Sportface are Gil, who never read or cared about Sportface to begin with, and Head, who is sick of the Sportface stupid sideshows and attention-grabbing stunts.
Closely aligned with this band of Sportface malcontents are guys who went out of their ways in 2023 to avoid being around Sportface. The outright leader of this group was Janby, who resides six minutes from Sportface yet manages to do everything in his power to concoct ways to stay away from Sportface.
Zmuda and Bert have also noticeably kept their distance from Sportface throughout the year blowing off Tastee Diner waffle invites. This is particularly concerning and sad because both used Sportface’s beach house in high school, which makes you wonder if they were just using him for his beach house but never really cared about being Sportface’s friend beyond that.
The backlash against Sportface in 2023 is rooted in his non-stop production of annoying blogs – all involving Wake Forest football. Not socially aware enough to realize no one cares at all about this football program, he wrote annoyingly about the now defunct Wake Forest offense called delayed run pass option mesh, which became totally useless this season; the annoyances of the team’s coach Clawson that he’s not financially endowed enough to pay fie stars to play for Wake Forest so his program is in free fall; and driveling on and on about the team’s third-string quarterback, The Great Santino Marucchi, who played in only one game.
Which provides a natural segue to the much-anticipated 2023 list of best new members of the Baby Boomer Brotherhood. At that the top of this list, despite the fact that she’s not a brother but a sister, is The Great Santino’s mother, Maria Marucchi. No one was more appreciative of what Sportface wrote in 2023 about her son, who won a dramatic game in his only playing time, than Momma Marucchi. Just as importantly, no one who joined the BBB this year meant nearly as much to Sportface as her new membership.
There were a few other notables who joined the BBB this year but Sportface doesn’t remember who they are and by the time he figures that out they’ll de-committed from the BBB and entered the blog-reading transfer portal seeking more money, playing time, and a fresh outlook on sports and global events.
As is the case every year, there were plenty of busts in the sports world, which means they underachieved, or lost a lot, or got fired, or lost their starting position or in some other way didn’t do well, or all of this. There were no shortages of bodacious busts this year’s, but the best of the busts had to be Bill Belichick, Megan Rapinoe, Coach Neon Deion Prime Time, Jumbo Fishhead, Ja Morant, Frank Reich, Kyrie Iring, Aaron Rodgers, The New York Mets, and Zack Wilson.
Sportface also belongs on this bust list for his series of blogs about Brad’s party that started far too early, got way out of bounds and off topic, and did nothing to raise awareness or heighten excitement for what was, in the end, a top highlight for the BBB in 2023 no thanks to Sportface.
Sportface reached his lowest stretch of the year with a series of articles in September about Coach Prime taking over the sports world and building a new transfer portal wing at the Boulder, Colorado Airport. He hit bottom after Prime’s team and Wake Forest were both 3 and 0 and Sportface prognosticated the two powerhouses would meet in college football’s national championship game.
The prediction was way off. Both teams finished four and eight, flying off the college football mountain cliff faster and more ignominiously than any two college football programs in American history.
Sportface got it so wrong that even his most steadfast supporters started to question his sports acumen and editorial judgement, and many started to question his credibility, business intentions, and ideological leanings.
But there was one guy Sportface rode the coat-tails of throughout the NBA season blogging again and again that Nikola “The Joker” Jokic was the best basketball player in the world. Sportface got that right and showed he’s a sports wizard. Joker won the NBA title and cemented himself as the 2023 Sammy Sportface Athlete of the Year.
On the court after Joker conquered all of basketball – including Kendrick Perkins who said Joker didn’t deserve to win the regular season MP which was the most outrageous opinion of 2023 — Joker said something that won him the Sammy Sportface Quote of the Year Award:
“OK, we can all go home now.”
That includes all of you.
It’s been quite a year, 2023. We all have our regrets, even Sammy Sportface. He didn’t always get it right and fired out more than his share of typos, reckless prognostications, and unsubstantiated insights.
The good news is we can, with trepidation and dismay, expect an avalanche of the same in 2024, and I know that’s not what anyone wants to hear. But sometimes we need to hear and process the truth and brace ourselves for what’s to come next, regardless of how painful it sounds.
Author Profile
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Sammy Sportface, a sports blogger, galvanizes, inspires, and amuses The Baby Boomer Brotherhood. And you can learn about his vision and join this group's Facebook page here:
Sammy Sportface Has a Vision -- Check It Out
Sammy Sportface -- The Baby Boomer Brotherhood Blog -- Facebook Page
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