nowandlater

Seriously? Rupert Gee, for those who don't know, was a Letterman regular. So he was obviously in on the bit. It was great to see Rupert again.

I believe Al Davis' son is worth around $500 million, so the Raiders aren't going anywhere.

I guess SNL pays well if you've been there for a long time.... http://www.newsday.com/classifieds/real-estate/colin-jost-of-saturday-night-live-buys-home-in-montauk-1.11293796 Oh, and here's Rousey guest-hosting TMZ from 4 years ago....

Ah, Marvin Lewis....In 2001, Cal was looking for a head coach. Lewis was the frontrunner. Our AD flew out to Maryland to offer him the job, and Lewis admitted that he ultimately wanted an NFL head coaching job and didn't want to mislead Cal into thinking he'd be there for a long time. (Cal's previous head coach, Steve Mariucci, had bolted after one season to become head coach of the 49ers.) And so, 13 months later, Lewis got the Bengals job.

Because Seth Meyers went from standing to sitting for his opening, Trevor Noah has to go from sitting to standing. FCC rules require only 2 sitting late-night hosts.

Ronda is so famous and successful in part because she has a personality...I don't follow UFC, I discovered her on TMZ.

Andy Reid? Although McCArthy and Payton became head coaches in the same year, McCarthy is in his 10th season and Payton is in his 9th season (thanks to that year off). What do y'all think of the Jim Nance story. He refused to acknowledge the allegations against Manning. But it turns out, they share a connection... http://deadspin.com/peyton-manning-shares-a-rep-with-jim-nantz-who-wont-me-1751103050

Looking at his record: He's gone 11-5 for the first three seasons (including one where he was out most of the season because of cancer). And he didn't have a losing season this year, despite losing his starting QB and despite playing his finale with 2 QBs signed a few days before. I mean, why would you fire a guy like that?

George R.R. Martin is sad...http://grrm.livejournal.com/466305.html I looked at Coughlin's win-loss total...and it's like his teams are either really good or really bad.

I had no idea they were doing a parody of a Farmer's Only dating ad...I saw a cow in the distance, and suddenly the camera moved away, then it switched to the blimp, which moved into a faraway wide shot. I'm on DVR 3rd quarter of the Sugar Bowl, with the game on in the background...why are there so many blowouts this 2nd New Year's Six year?

The fall on New Year's Eve the next 2 years. (Next year, New Year's Eve falls on a Saturday, so the Rose Bowl won't be played until Monday.) The Big 10 outside of MSU looks pretty good. Beating USC, UCLA, Notre Dame and Florida.

The New Year's Eve playoff ratings were a disaster, down 36% from last year. And the New year's thing is going to happen 8 of the next 11 years. People are blaming the Rose Bowl's New Year's Day stranglehold. But for this year at least, they refused to move the games to Saturday night. And the only compelling game on Saturday (Oregon vs. TCU) is made less compelling by the Boykin incident. Edited to add: I guess those Jimmy Kimmel College Football Playoff ads didn't work. (Kimmel, of course, was not watching the games -- he was at a Billiy Joel concert kissing Howard Stern.)

Both those playoff games were dreadful. Thank god for DVRs. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- My Cal Bears last won the Rose Bowl on January 1, 1938, beating Alabama 13-0. Our rivals, Stanford, last won the Rose Bowl on January 1, 2014. I really would not like to see Stanford win the Rose Bowl again on Friday. (Incidentally, the last time Iowa won the Rose Bowl it beat Cal in what was Cal's last apperance in the Rose Bowl, on January 1, 1959.) When I was a student at Cal in the late '90s, we were in the midst of a 7-game losing streak to Stanford, so we had to take pleasure in 1) rioting at the game, 2) the Hillary Clinton/Chelsea Clinton incident*, and 3) kidnapping their stupid tree mascot. (*When Chelsea Clinton was a freshman at Stanford in 1997, a columnist for Cal's student newspaper wrote a column two days before the Big Game with Stanford urging Cal students to take their frustration on Chelsea's bloody carcass. He wasn't serious, but he also mentioned the name of her dormitory. Nobody noticed...until the paper apologized. Then it became national news. It just so happened that 2 days after the game Hillary was set to visit UC Berkeley for some kind of . As a result, the Secret Service stormed the columnist's home. The columnist would go on to become a regular on Chelsea Lately and Comedy Central.)

Yup, there was this period 2 years ago when Driver and Jennings -- whose sister attacked Rodgers on Twitter during the game for not getting him the ball -- left the team and started bashing Rodgers. Which promted a response from Charles Woodson. http://espn.go.com/nfl/trainingcamp13/story/_/id/9581411/charles-woodson-backs-aaron-rodgers-green-bay-packers-wr-barbs Look, I'm not saying Rodgers is beloved but he's done well without Jennings (who's disappeared after leaving GB and Driver, who was like the heart of the Packers. I think there's a famous quote about people who've played with Peyton Manning, and I'm paraphrasing here, that they can't stand the guy because he's so anal about everything but they'd rather have him than somebody else lead them on the field. Edited to add: When Donald Driver was on Dancing with the Stars, Rodgers actually traveled to the studio to support him (with Clay Matthews).

I don't recall bowl games starting after 10 pm ET before this year. The Holiday Bowl tonight started at 10:40 pm ET and ended at 2:10 am ET. I guess it's part of ESPN's effort to have all the bowl games spread out on one channel for the entire day. But last year, and in previous years, the Holiday Bowl got the plum 8 pm ET primetime start time. And they'd get the likes of Brent Musburger or Chris Fowler calling the games. Now the Holiday Bowl, which while not an A-list bowl has been around for many decades, has become irrelevant. (The Cactus Bowl on Saturday night, pitting WVU vs. ASU, starts at 10:15 pm ET.)

I've been following Rodgers' career for 13 seasons now, and I can assure you he's a great teammate guy, from driving a rookie linebacker to the University of Wisconsin for an event to raise awareness in the Congo to hanging out with his o-lineman and TE at the PGA Championships to performing on guitar at an open mic night with the longsnapper Perhaps you won't believe me..I could offer a lot of proof...but, really, the proof is that the Packers have made it to the playoffs for the 7th year in a row (of his 8 years starting), even though teammates change. Also, he won a Super Bowl with a team decimated by injuries. But a couple things: 1) Who cares about his sideline demeanor? It could mean a lot of things. Tom Brady and Peyton Manning have terrible sideline demeanor. 2) Rodgers is still close to his Cal teammates. He attends their weddings. He retweeets them. (yeah, that sounds corny, but in Rodgers' world that's a lot). 3) Rodgers also keeps in touch with his Butte Community College teammates, who included "adults" who were truckers and former prison inmates. The WAshington Post recently ran a really great article on Rodgers and the most important year of his life. It's really good. https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/redskins/for-aaron-rodgers-road-to-the-nfl-started-at-an-apparent-dead-end/2015/12/15/8fe12800-a359-11e5-ad3f-991ce3374e23_story.html 4. During the 4 seasons that Rodgers had his own radio show, he went overboard in his praise of his teammates. Of course, all QBs are expected to do that. But it was the way he did it. (He would also praise the defense -- and he'd refer to Ha-Ha Clinton Dix by his real name.) He would also talk about his motivational techniques. I think Cam is awesome, but Rodgers has been awesome, too. One "bad" season, which many QBs and teams would kill for, doesn't mean he's a bad leader or teammate. (I also woudn't blame Olivia Munn, since Rodgers had his 2nd best season and went undefeated at home last year while dating her.)

I've heard he hates college. The boosters. The recruiting. All that good stuff. OK, here's a tangential rant: The NFL Network recently began showing an intriguing new documentary series called The Timeline. The annoying thing is that they'd premiere these episodes -- the most recent one tying the Iran hostage crisis to the NFL, narrated by George Clooney -- after the Thursday Night Football and Thursday Night Football on Saturday postgame shows. Since those shows could come on at any time, I choose instead to wait for the repeats. Problem is they only repeat it a couple times. 168 hours to fill, and they could only repeat their newest signature program a few times. And one of those few times was scheduled for tonight, shortly after the Chip Kelly news broke. So of course ,NFL Network is going to postpone The Timeline for breaking NFL news....I just hope the 2nd time they air this show, there won't be more breaking news.

When I think of McCarron, I think of his stupid tattoo.

As retweeted by Profootballtalk, a lot of teams use bats for motivation, including the Raiders and the 2009 Saints. On another note: Remember Jay Feely, the kicker? He's now a sideline reporter for CBS, and yesterday he covered the 49ers/Bengals game. The 49ers recently demoted their president, who's responsibilities included being the organization's Leaker in Chief. So the 49ers now have a new leaker. On Sunday, Feely reported that the 49ers are likely to bring Jim Tomusula back, and he cited a specific guy by name, the leaker. Apparently both the new 49ers leaker and Feely aren't adept at this whole leaking thing: http://blogs.mercurynews.com/kawakami/2015/12/21/note-to-future-49ers-tv-sideline-reporters-if-you-are-talking-to-this-man-you-are-not-supposed-to-quote-him-by-name/

Jon Rudnitzky seemed to be playing Anderson Cooper-as-flamboyantly-gay-with-a-beard-as-Wolf-Blitzer. They finally did a Republican debate sketch. They finally got somebody to play Jeb Bush and candidate Marco Rubio. It was about time. (I know somebody played Rubio years ago.) Although Bush is losing badly, he's been a big storyline in this presidential race over the past year. And Rubio seems like the betting favorite to actually be the Republican nominee. I'm not saying there are parallels, but it reminds me, if I recall correctly, that SNL took forever to get somebody to play Obama eight years ago. For a few seconds, I thought that was actually Donald Trump. Then I came to realize that Hammond is so, so valuable. The Meet Your Second Wife sketch was so perfect because it's so true....Howard Stern is 18 years older than his 2nd wife.... Kevin Nealon is 18 years older than his second wife, too...Jerry Seinfeld is 17 years older than his first wife....I could go on and on.

Obama had an end of the year press conference today, and during it Michele Tafoya went on an anti-Obama rant. You can read the tweets here: https://twitter.com/Michele_Tafoya/status/677938552496398337 https://twitter.com/Michele_Tafoya/status/677941262780112896 https://twitter.com/Michele_Tafoya/status/677942596031881216 Now if you follow Tafoya on Twitter, you'll see that she supports conservative causes. She even campaigned for Al Franken's opponent in Minnesota, where she lives. She discussed being political on Twitter recently with Sports Illustrated. http://www.si.com/more-sports/2015/12/06/media-circus-michelle-tafoya-sunday-night-football-lorne-rubenstein Personally, though, I find it odd...I don't want to know Kirk Herbstreit's politics, or Chris Fowler or Al Michaels' (had no idea he was a Republican, as pointed out in that article). Etc... It just becomes a distraction from the game. Especially when your as passionately on one side as she is.

Is anybody annoyted by Trevor doing accents? It seems like he never or barely did them in his first two months of the show. But over the past month, he keeps doing accents, particularly an American accent. I don't know why I find it so bothersome.

Well, W. isn't in the news nowadays. So why devote time to breaking in a new impression when you have Will Ferrell, who's always eager to do comedy bits? (Same could be said for Bill Clinton. Why get a new one, when the guy who did it best currently works for the show. And since Bill won't be needed very much, Darrell Hammond seems like the best option.) You could argue that SNL should've gotten a cast member (Kyle Mooney?), to play Bernie Sanders, but bringing on Larry David is considered one of the best things SNL has ever done. Anyways, last night's cold open reminded me of a cold open from a year and a half before the 2008 election, when Chris Rock was brought in to weigh in on the presidential race. ---> https://screen.yahoo.com/chris-rock-open-000000182.html? As for the white guys hired, let's take a closer look at them -- the 8 white guys hired over the past 3 seasons. --Mike O'Brien: Sketch performer capable of impressions. (Mostly gone from the show.) --John Milhiser: Sketch performer capable of impressions (Gone from the show.) --Brooks Wheelan: Standup comic and not much of an impressionist. (Gone from the show.) --Beck Bennett: Sketch performer capable of impressions. --Kyle Mooney: Sketch performer capable of impressions. --Colin Jost: Standup comic and writer who is not capable of impressions. --Pete Davidson: Standup comic who isn't good at impressions. --John Rudnitsky: Primarily a standup comic who is capable of impressions, but whose impression of Anderson Cooper earlier this season was widely denounced. So there you have it: Out of 8 white guys hired in the past 3 seasons, only 3 are capable of impressions who are currently on staff. Which I guess is why you don't see any Republican debate sketches. Re: Diversity: It's greaet that there are now 5 black cast members. But black people are not the be all and end all of diversity. It would be cool if you had Latino or Asian or even half-Asian cast members. 2 of Lorne's favorite cast members, Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen, are mixed-race and they could play numerous characters acorss the ethnic spectrum

Poor Jeb Bush. Eight episodes into this season, and he still has no one to play him on SNL. That's how irrelevant he's become. Has anybody portrayed Marco Rubio yet?

It's usually 60 minutes, and they go over by a few minutes. This year, I looked at the schedule, and it was 90 minutes. And I really, really could not give a damn about the finalists. So I recorded it, and fast-forwarded through the whole telecast, then watched the Buffalo Bills documentary that followed.