90's Youth Life Podcast Special: NBA 1990's Championship

With sports as we know them completely on pause, the state of Illinois under a shelter in place order, and my sanity starting to go, I need something to get me through The Quarantine of 2020. Fortunately, Geoffy is a lifesaver.

You may remember Geoffy from his occasional appearances on Confessions of a Sportscaster. You may remember him more as the host of 90's Youth Life, a podcast about all things 1990's. In particular, you may remember when these two worlds collided in the summer of 2018, when I ruined an average Major League shortstop for him forever as we simulated out the 1994 MLB postseason that never was.

So it was hard to say no when Geoffrey pitched another episode idea to me as we go back to our formative decade, this one arguably more up my alley, and definitely up his. We grew up in the era of the Jordan Bulls Dynasty, and Geoffrey had the idea of doing an all-90's postseason. I had originally wondered specifically about all the champions of that decade, but Geoffy thought bigger, and I ultimately have to say, better.

He pitched to me a standard playoff field of 16 teams (eight from each conference), limiting each conference to one representative from each franchise, which makes sense because otherwise the Bulls will cannibalize themselves. He constructed the bracket and went back to the old best-of-five first round model, with best-of-sevens the rest of the way, including the old 2-3-2 format of The Finals. And with his part done, I went into the lab, did the work, and found the All 90's Champion.

After the jump I will post all the box scores from every game along with some details. As always, all simulations are provided by WhatIfSports.com. And now, for your listening pleasure... my second 90's Youth Life appearance.

2019 COAS Pigskin Pick 'Em: Week 8

After accelerating things for the past couple weeks, the coalition is back on its normal schedule as we resume our quest to pick games against the spread!

Groupthink prevailed to an extent last week, and it ended up creating a deadlock: Adam took two of our three disputed games to move back into a tie for first as my uncontested lead lasted all of four days. He was happy to pull back into a tie for first, but wasn't happy with how the spread gods said no to what he thought were solid picks.

What I found funny was, after confirming that fact with Adam on Sunday afternoon, Joe texted that he would be right up there with us... if you consider ten games out "right up there." Now I refuse to count him out; I wasn't looking great going into Thanksgiving last year, then had the best week in contest history to get right back into contention. But leapfrogging four people and picking up ten games is a tall order, even with more than half the season still to go. It doesn't help that Joe generally... doesn't go hero; over the past 24 weeks of the contest, he has made exactly two hero picks. And it's those hero picks that have really helped Adam be in the tie for first, with an 8-4 record in those games, best in the group (technically tied with a 2-1 Geoffrey, but larger sample size wins). I'm riding a 10-2 mark in games where the group has split evenly on who we've picked to my spot at the top with Adam. You can view a full breakdown of how we've picked in relation to each other here.

You will also notice that, if you look at the record on here as well as on that spreadsheet, there's a major discrepancy with our ESPN standings. You may remember last week that Aiden forgot to pick every game other than the Thursday night contest in Week 6. In the interest of fair play combined with him not having any clue how those games played out, Adam got his picks for that week and found that he retroactively went 5-9. I've taken out the note about Aiden forgetting from last week's post and credited him the five points ESPN doesn't have logged for him.

I also got a little confused in prepping stuff for this week. Talking with Adam when he was in town last week, he's going to be on vacation one week in December where I'll need a backup for him. I mistook that for being this week and lined up Geoffrey Clark as a backup. Since I asked him to go through the effort I'll include his picks for this week as well, and hopefully he'll be able to join me again in December. Either way, I promise jabs about Jeff Blauser will be kept to a minimum.

This week Adam and I disagree on just five games out of 15; Geoffy and I only dispute three. Let's get to it!

90's Youth Life Podcast Special: The 1994 MLB Playoffs Simulation

I was a radio guy in college. So it's kind of a surprise that, other than a random podcast with a Nintendo forum something like ten years ago that who knows if it even still exists anywhere or not, I am a novice at the podcast game. Fortunately, I know people.

I've talked up the immortal Geoffrey Clark on here before. He's a classmate and friend from my North Central days, a blogger for Chicago Bulls Confidential, and he is also the host of the 90s Youth Life podcast. He's talked up a number of topics from when we grew up, including topics like the McDonald's Beanie Baby craze and the career of Ken Griffey, Jr. with another WONC alum we overlapped with.

So a couple weeks ago, I got a text from Geoff regarding my favorite tool on this blog, WhatIfSports. He'd been introduced to the tool through Confessions of a Sportscaster and was talking about how addicting it was. It was through that discussion that he brought up the lost postseason of 1994 due to the strike. One thing led to another and, well... I was a guest on a podcast.

In it we run through how the 1994 Major League Baseball postseason could have played out had the playoffs been the leaders in the standings when play stopped. After the jump I will post links to the box scores of the games, but if you want to keep the element of surprise... take a listen.