{"id":22893,"date":"2024-01-15T21:41:46","date_gmt":"2024-01-16T05:41:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/?p=22893"},"modified":"2024-01-15T21:41:48","modified_gmt":"2024-01-16T05:41:48","slug":"first-post-monday-january-15-2024","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/2024\/01\/15\/first-post-monday-january-15-2024\/","title":{"rendered":"First Post: Monday, January 15, 2024"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-twitter wp-block-embed-twitter\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">Frustration on the Eagles sideline<br> <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/wxmhQpYi1V\">pic.twitter.com\/wxmhQpYi1V<\/a><\/p>&mdash; John Clark (@JClarkNBCS) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/JClarkNBCS\/status\/1747104732617805998?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">January 16, 2024<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p>And so it ends now, this evening, less than a year after a near-miss in the Big Stupor Game, and less than two months after winning 10 of their first 11 games of the 2023 regular season, your Philalala Iggles have completed a gridiron collapse to shame all other gridiron collapses, losing six of their final seven games, the last of which was tonight\u2019s shockingly meek capitulation to your Tampa Bay Buccaneers in the Wild Card Playoff round. For a team that  looked well on its way to a return trip to the Big Stupor Game, for a team that seemed unbeatable both on the field &amp; off, with dynamic, confident leadership and a sense of chemistry &amp; camaraderie that appeared to mark them as one of those fabled Teams of Destiny, these Iggles walked off the field tonight thoroughly beaten, bickering openly on the sidelines and likely sniping at each other to the very end inside the locker room, that earlier promise and destiny abjectly come to nothing. A bright year-and-two-month stretch of elite football went dark fast, all in the last eight weeks, and it is hard to imagine this team, with its infighting &amp; suddenly questionable talent-level, getting back to true Big Stupor Game-calibre anytime soon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<p>And so it is with sports; the ascent to the pinnacle, or close to the pinnacle, is giddy, a heady flight that gets more exciting with each passing week, from one win to the next. But the decline, as in the case of these Philalala Iggles, can come even faster, out of nowhere, with heart-stopping suddenness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>A similar patch of rough form has befallen another of our teams at right about this same moment. Your No. London Arse were Top of the Table at Xmas, and not even a week later they had dipped to fourth-place, unable to score goals and losing games that, on paper, should have been routine wins. But unlike the Iggles, the Arse remain in contention, with four months remaining in the season; that is, as long as they can recover their prior form just as quickly as they lost it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Like the Iggles, Tulane Univ. gridiron had an extended run of good form over the past 15 mos. or so. Their downturn was not as dramatic, but they did lose their conference championship game and subsequent bowl game, not to mention their head coach, to end their season. Their immediate future seems less rosy than their recent past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Then, the final of our teams, your Philalala Phillies, looked all set to make it back-to-back appearances in the World Serious (thank you, Bugs Bunny!); but they inexplicably stumbled in the Nat\u2019l. League Championship Series, and if you had to guess about their World Serious chances for the coming year, you could easily conclude that they might not be as good as they were at the start of this past season.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>So, sports fans, this stuff can turn on a dime. Your extended spells of favorable results, your close approaches to the top, those gut-wrenching near-misses, might be as good as it gets before the inevitable downturn commences. But if you can hang-on tight during the rebuild, keep the faith before the prolonged upswing comes again, well, then, you\u2019re a diehard, and, inshallah, you revel in your boys (or girls) lifting the trophy at the end of the season soon enough.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>BestLine Racing Society Recap<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Today it was all the tracks except for the one in Tejas and the one that got canceled in Penna.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In <strong>Race 6<\/strong> from <strong>Youngstown, Ohio<\/strong>, your winning <strong>$207.60 exacta<\/strong> was composed of <strong>#1 Overload<\/strong> (.144 Win Prob \/ 5.94-1 Fair Odds \/ 8.72-1 Premium Odds) and <strong>#10 Stars N Space<\/strong> (.125 \/ 7.00 \/ 10.20), with the premium price on that comboa (comboa!) being $195.32. <strong>Next race<\/strong> there, <strong>#7 Two Bit Kid<\/strong> (.147 \/ 5.80 \/ 7.16) provided no quarter for his enemies, winning at <strong>$16.20<\/strong>; yes, this was 12\u00a2 shy of the $16.32 premium price, but maybe you decided to sacrifice those dozen pennies upon the Altar of The God of Doing Business via The Parimutuels \u2014 you couldn\u2019t be blamed! We report, you decide! <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At <strong>Albany, Calif.<\/strong>, the <strong>opener<\/strong>, which was lousy with firsters, went to <strong>#7 Mumbles Brockman<\/strong> (.647 \/ 0.55 \/ 0.85) at <strong>$4.80<\/strong>; completing your winning <strong>$12.80 exacta<\/strong> was <strong>#4 Silver Maty<\/strong> (.311 \/ 2.22 \/ 3.50), with the premium price on that comboa (comboa!) being $7.65. In <strong>Race 5<\/strong>, <strong>#3 Honeymoonz Over<\/strong> (.314 \/ 2.18 \/ 2.82) was first under the wire at <strong>$9.60<\/strong>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>And so it ends now, this evening, less than a year after a near-miss in the Big Stupor Game, and less than two months after winning 10 of their first 11 games of the 2023 regular season, your Philalala Iggles &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/2024\/01\/15\/first-post-monday-january-15-2024\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22893","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pavW5M-5Xf","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22893","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22893"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22893\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":22911,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22893\/revisions\/22911"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22893"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22893"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cynthiapublishing.com\/hp_wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22893"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}