Jared Dufour 🌵

Houston born & bred | lifetime Astros fan | Texans circus follower since 2002 | Texas Tech c/o 2009 | loan officer | 📸: jayredd8683

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

1. Good read.

2. At this point, the NHL/Houston rumors are the boy crying wolf to me.

If it ever actually happens (I’m skeptical), then I’m totally on board.

But until/unless it actually does, I don’t have time/energy for any more rumors, and neither should anyone else.

[Jeff Balke @jeffbalke]

Wrote this about the NHL expansion to Texas. Houston seems the obvious choice but…it’s complicated.

[David McKenzie @mckenzielaw]

This feels awfully quixotic and as if we have been here before. Wait, we have been here before: Clarett v. NFL, 369 F.3d 124 (2d Cir. 2004).

Sorsby's lawyer calls the refusal a violation of "the CBA and the law," but the law is the problem. Two decades ago a far more gifted player made the same argument and discovered why it fails. Maurice Clarett, Ohio State's freshman sensation, sued to enter the draft before the NFL's three-season rule allowed it, calling that rule an illegal restraint of trade. He won in the district court and lost on appeal. The opinion against him was written by the future Justice Sonia Sotomayor: because the draft's eligibility rules are a product of collective bargaining, she held, the antitrust laws do not reach them. The league and the players' union may agree that a man "will not be hired or considered for employment for nearly any reason whatsoever," so long as they break no labor or anti-discrimination law. 9K bets, many of them on his own team, would seem to clear that modest bar.

After re-reading Clarett, I don't think he will like where this is going to end. The CBA gives the league sole discretion over whether to hold a supplemental draft at all, and no one can be shut out of a draft that does not exist. Nor has the union any reason to spend its capital prying one open for a nonmember who bet on his own team, least of all when seating him would cost a current member a draft pick.

The exemption that walls Sorsby out is one the players built and have defended for decades. (Ironically, Jeffrey Kessler — the gifted lawyer now fighting on Sorsby's behalf — represented the NFLPA as amicus in Clarett, defending the very exemption that now blocks his client.) This is not the law failing Sorsby. It is the law doing exactly what the players built it to do: protect their own "to the detriment of new employees and the exclusion of outsiders," as the court put it.

[Spotrac @spotrac]

Suing your prospective employer for (allegedly) violating a CBA that you're not currently bound to is a choice.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

Jeff Luhnow concurs.

[Brett Kollmann @BrettKollmann]

At some point he's gotta stop suing everyone and just take some damn accountability.

[Brandon Carney @BenchwarmerBran]

The NFL’s been promoting alcohol brands for 50+ years. That doesn’t mean players are allowed to get hammered in the locker room before games

[Brandon Carney @BenchwarmerBran]

I’m not trying to shill for the NFL, truly I’m not.

But the amount of people that have responded to this with some variation of “Oh BuT ThEy’Ll PrOmOtE It!!!” blows my mind. Like do you not understand the difference between betting in general vs betting against your own team?

[Brandon Carney @BenchwarmerBran]

I was expecting this to read like a PR-toned rejection letter. Instead they hit him with "You're late, you're stupid, your mom's fat, get bent"

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

This just keeps getting better.

(This is the right decision, BTW)

[Mike Garafolo @MikeGarafolo]

Sources: The NFL has informed Texas Tech QB Brendan Sorsby there will be no supplemental draft this year, rendering him ineligible to play in the league this season.

The league told Sorsby it is the NFL’s “sole discretion” whether to hold a draft. There will be none in 2026.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

Oh GTFOH.

Fuck everything about this team’s process.

[Adam Wexler @AdamJWexler]

Jeremy Pena is leaving the game after a swing in the top of the 6th. #Astros

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

Bases loaded no out & Vlad due… one run.

About as good as AJ could’ve done to navigate out of that mess.

[mjd @themightymjd]

Recently, foreign players have been booed and jeered for the crime of competing against an American. See: Matt Fitzpatrick at Harbour Town. Heard nary a word.

But it happens to a precious American - one who earned it with his boorish behavior - all the sudden, it crosses a line.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

Spoiler alert: it was Carroll Dawson.

Which means that for the first time I can say “thank goodness for Carroll Dawson” with a straight face.

[Robert Land | Houston Sports Talk Podcast Host @HSTPodcast]

32 Years Ago TODAY the Rockets 🚀 Won their 1st Championship - but did you know that Rudy T nearly turned down the Head Coach Job? Listen to Rudy T Biographer Robert Falkoff who told us which Rockets Legend Saved the Day 🎙️

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

@Garethpm3 I truly wonder if the reason golf (and soccer) are more popular world-wide than they are here is because we simply suck at covering them.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

Watching the US open, one thing has become terribly clear:

Golf coverage is terrible.

Doesn’t matter the network or the platform.

Too much talking. Not enough golf.

Too many missed shots.

Too much shitting on LIV.

Too much felating of Tiger 20 years after he was relevant.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

@bradley26613 It’s American sports coverage in a nutshell.

Every sport in our country keeps sabotaging its own efforts to grow their game, and it’s infuriating.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

@helpus20231 Golf Channel is just the worst.

Brandel Chamblee makes me want to stuff him into the bucket he uses to carry water for the PGA and drop-kick it into the Red Sea.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

@Moon221975 Bingo.

And when they’re not piling on Clark, they’re doing 5-minute interviews w/ his therapist every 20 minutes, which was even more grating.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

@DawgsandGolf 5 years is generous.

[Moon @Moon221975]

@jayredd8683 They can’t do a single broadcast without mentioning Tiger. It’s actually embarrassing. They just make up stats to mention his name. Funny they never mention the multiple drug arrests but pile on the leader for kicking in a locker door.

[John Lookabaugh @jdlookabaugh]

“Too much felating on Tiger” … Jesus dude, you could do an entire episodic Netflix special on this. There is a large contingent of people who refuse to see this guy for who he is. I expect they’ll be making excuses for him when he wrecks his car on OxyContin in 2030, 2034 & 2037.

[Jared Dufour 🌵 @jayredd8683]

@Garethpm3 Jealous. Truly.