It Was a Thing on TV: An Anthology on Forgotten Television

We are a week into the 2025 baseball season.  We chose this very short-lived series from 1983 about minor league baseball as our tribute to America's Pastime.  This series featured an amazing 20 people who appeared on every episode, covering all the bases from the players, the coaches, their partners, and even the mascot.  As one might guess with an entry on this podcast, the series got benched after a brief period of time.

The United Football League kicked off the 2025 season in Houston on Friday as the Houston Roughnecks hosted the St. Louis Battlehawks. In this live show we look at what notable names are in the UFL this season along with some discussion about NCAA March Madness and Opening Day in MLB.

Our lead-up to "The Big Game" continues with this look at a mid-70s competitor to the NFL, a league which actually got big names to join its league.  Like start-up competitors from the past and the future, the league had a very short life for a number of reasons, one of which is not the dickerod.

"The Big Game" is coming up this Sunday.  By coincidence, this installment is about a Disney made-for-TV movie centered around one of this year's "Big Game" participants, the Philadelphia Eagles.  What happens when Tony Danza goes from being a garbageman to the team's place kicker?  It's an ending only Hollywood could write in more ways than one.

The 2nd Annual Pop-Tarts Bowl saw Iowa State defeat Miami in the last few moments but the real fun was just beginning. Game MVP Rocco Becht had to choose which three of the Pop-Tarts Bowl mascots would be cooked to be eaten. Mike and Greg came on following the game to give their live reaction to the cooking along with providing play-by-play to the end of the Bengals/Broncos game. Remember "FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS!"

In 1988, the U.S. Men's basketball team finished with a disappointing bronze medal, after having won the gold in almost every other previous Olympiad.  For that reason or because some teams had professional players, the Olympics opened the games to professionals.  The United States loaded up their squad with 11 of the NBA's best, plus Christian Laettner.  The first game was against Angola which, to put it kindly, was slaughtered by the Americans.

As the Olympic Games are ready to start in Paris, the podcast will devote the next two episodes to happenings in previous years.  We start where each Olympics start--the opening ceremonies.  Each Olympic host city has their idea of what would be the perfect opening ceremony.  In retrospect, those ideas, while good in theory, were not for one reason or another.  The ceremonies also gather attention for who participated, and is amplified due to social media, see one specific Tongan athlete who stole the hearts of millions of women.

The 2024 Paris Olympics are coming up. To celebrate, we give you this extended cut of a previous episode we did back in 2021 that started our Olympics series of shows celebrating the Tokyo Olympics. The Olympics Triplecast for the 1992 Summer Olympics on NBC was a Pay-Per-View series of networks where you could watch all the Olympics you could handle. It turns out nobody in 1992 was willing to pay $125 for what you can probably get for about $13.99 on Peacock in 2024.

EA Sports College Football '25 is now out digitally (the physical version comes out Friday 7/19) so Greg hitched a one-month subscription of EA Play on PS5 just to play the free trial. Here are some of his reactions to the game so far in this Instant Reaction.

One of the most anticipated sports video games in a long time just released its first gameplay trailer. Mike, Greg, and Chico in this Instant Reaction watch the trailer for EA Sports College Football 25 trailer, the first entry in the EA College Football franchise since 2013.