Day 296

• First post of 2021.
• Deadspin announced it's Idiots of the Year -- did 50 of them.  Here's the Top Ten...

10)  Zach Plesac, for violating coronavirus protocols as a member of the Cardinals to go out in Chicago.  Got him sent home, and a teammate traded to San Diego -- one who would've been very important to the Padres in the playoffs were he healthy...   Mike Clevinger.

9)  Rudy Giuliani, for being Trump's biggest legal shill man and probably an instrument to crimes against humanity everywhere.  Was put on the list specifically for the apparent underage sex situation in the latest Borat movie.

8) Rob Manfred, for apparently trying to destroy Major League Baseball in several respects -- and the jury is out as to whether he's actually succeeded.  About three months to the regular season, and there's no reason to believe, at this point, that 2021 Major League Baseball season may occur at all!

7) Roger Goodell, for apparently trying to do the same to the National Football League, and, if the 20-30% drop in ratings because of the White Right isn't an indication, he may finally have succeeded in pushing the NFL off it's perch as the indisputable social center of the National Religion it has been since the 9/11 attacks.

6) Dabo Swinney, for shilling for fans and families at all college football stadiums in a season where the games themselves never should've been held at all!!!

5) Justin Turner, for returning to the field to celebrate with the Dodgers after winning the World Series...  after he was pulled from Game 6 for a positive coronavirus test which was also inconclusive the day before.  Of course, my anonymous friend Dodgers fan makes two good points:  He'd already been around the players all day and half the game to begin with.  And if fans weren't allowed to break the bubble created for MLB for the playoffs, Turner probably never tests positive in the first place!!!  So, see #8.   

4) Curt Schilling, for continuing to be a right-wing fuck in 2020.  Specifically for tweets supporting the border wall to trying to blame Democrats for being Nazis, etc...  He's just a dumb fuck idiot.

3) Rudy Gobert, for the stunt which might define the pre-coronavirus idiocy running around this country.  For which Gobert should've been banned from the sport, even through this season, in my personal opinion.    

2) Donald Trump.  Let's move on.

1) Yes, someone actually beat Donald Trump on this list.

The #1 Deadspin Idiot of the Year is Kelly Loeffler.  She's the Republican incumbent candidate in one of the two Georgia runoff seats.  She is also a co-owner of the Atlanta Dream, an act which should've gotten the 2020 WNBA bubble season cancelled with the players going on strike.  And then the Commissioner of the WNBA showed no nerve in banning her like Donald Sterling.

Loeffler wins the award for being a complete right-wing fuck, a probable QAnon activist (not unlike one of the new Georgia representatives!), a white supremacist, and such a deep conspiracist that even many on the Right won't touch her -- a fact which has not only put her in this runoff in the first place, but has many Republicans prepared to boycott it, even though two Democratic victories (and the Congress eventually certifying Joe Biden and Kamala Harris next week) would hand the Senate to the Democrats!

• DON'T YOU FUCKING START, 2021!!!  Paul Westphal passed away today.
• And Floyd Little, Hall of Fame linebacker, passed yesterday.
• Alvin Kamara has tested positive for the coronavirus, so the Saints won't have any running backs for tomorrow's key game.
• And some of the last of "Fuck 2020!"  Larry King has been in the hospital since just before Christmas.  Coronavirus.
• And Mick Foley is quarantining in a hotel due to same -- one of his technical assistants at a virtual signing three weeks ago had it, and one mistake...
• The Penn State-Wisconsin basketball game has been postponed from tomorrow -- "concern of the health and safety of the participants".  Psst..  COVID.