Saturday Night, No Cover

We understand, you missed the last week in sports because you hate every sport that isn’t football, and also you were smelting a pig all week in preparation of your annual 'This is How I’m Spending My Life' Labor Day barbeque. As usual, VICE has you covered in the ball department.

College Football
It’s underway and as weird as ever. Some assorted highlights from the week:

- Floyd Mayweather  covering against Alabama, . Mayweather , so the bet is closer to an anesthesiologist betting $5,000 on, say, the Mariners winning, and then losing when they don't win.

- Notre Dame , which reinforces all sorts of stereotypes. It beat the Navy, whose football team is a bigger waste of taxpayer money than Obama’s 'Everybody Gets a Prius' initiative.

- Nick Saban is the .

- Franco Harris, who made that awesome catch way back when, is planning on visiting every NCAA board member to restore Joe Paterno's wins. (Franco went to Penn State.) (Franco is crazy.)

Football
- Wow, football starts on Wednesday. The Giants, who won it all last year and have the tallest average height in the whole NFL (just kidding, they do not), are facing off against the Cowboys, a franchise which has both banned its star wide receiver from patronizing the odd titty bar and earned a Forbes valuation at $1.85 billion. The stadium is worth $1.1 billion! They play eight (8) (EIGHT) regular season games a year! What do you think it was doing in, say, March? No one knows! It’ll make more money Wednesday than my dad’s boss has her entire life.

- Also, in case you haven’t been paying attention, and if you have any semblance of responsibilites, a social life, or simple self respect, you weren’t, the NFL preseason is over. If you are one of the people who knew that there were five weeks (including Hall of Fame) of preseason games, you win a prize. That prize? Direct sunlight, of which you must have been deprived.

- The replacement referees, including this dude who refereed six-on-six games, will work into the season. Expect terrible, terrible refereeing, which you may have been expecting anyway.

Baseball
- Going into Sunday, the Red Sox are 69-93 in their last 162 games (that’s the length of the regular season, buddy), which is the exact opposite of the A's, who are awesome. No one thought the A's would be awesome, but people liked the Red Sox before the season. Crazy! Baseball!

- It looks like Stephen Strasburg will be shut down soon, which is unfortunate for the Nationals since 1.) he’s awesome and 2.) they’re the best team in baseball and will need him to go further into the playoffs. Nats manager Davey Johnson says he doesn’t understand why it’s happening. The Nationals, of course, have the best record in the majors and will be awesome for a long time, so it's really no biggie.

NHL
- It doesn’t look like there’ll be a season soon, since bargaining between players and the league is recessed indefinitely, and the deadline for the new agreement is September 15. Gary Bettman, the commissioner, is a bad person, curled up in a ball and sucking some soup through a straw. He's a bad person.

Soccer
- Clint Dempsey, who is this ill, like, rasta hick who played for Fulham and was awesome, is running game and was transferred to Tottenham, which means he'll play in Champions League. It's a big deal for him, but he's kind of being braggy about it. OK, frustrated.

- Manchester City and United spend more money than more banks, and it's a reckless way of doing things. The Clippers aren't leveraged. Why can't they be more like the Clippers?

Tennis
- Andy Murray is keeping on in the Open before he retires to his early 30s and presumably a lot of money and, like, I’m not sure, Just For Men ads? Some sort of robot business? The only thing weirder than making millions playing tennis is retiring in your early 30s (he officially turned old last week).

NBA:
- No NBA news, unfortunately. Sorry, everyone. Maybe you can read some poetry or something?

@samreiss_