Eric Betts

📣Introducing VIDEO GAME OF THE YEAR: THE BOOK: THE BLOG📣 My new ongoing personal project, even more essays on even more games, from across all styles and eras. It's your favorite video game history book but online. Check it out, now on Patreon www.patreon.com/cw/VGOTY

Me trying to shorten my way-too-long index:

Everything about this person screams "Killed in the Battle of Geonosis."

Hot take: Some soccer fan billionaire eating a few million dollars a year to support local soccer coverage across America would have a much bigger impact on the future of the sport than subsidizing the salary of a fancy USMNT manager

Thank you @defector.com for publishing my epic on the history of football's hideout play (aka the sleeper play, aka the lurking along the sidelines play), a story that spans from the 1860s to the 2020s and involves my grandfather, Johnny Manziel, and Amos Alonzo Stagg defector.com/how-one-tric...

Speaking of vacuous death cults blinded by the devotion they've oversold to the world: www.bbc.com/sport/footba...

The tragic irony of Annie Dillard dying is there is maybe no one I would rather hear distill the experience of whatever is waiting for us after death.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...

Looking for more Legend of Zelda? I wrote a book about how Zelda works as a franchise that's out next April. It's about what these games provide for players, how they do it, and how they answer the questions facing all franchises. Preorder it here or somewhere else! bookshop.org/p/books/lege... 

I wrote a book! It's out next April from Bloomsbury! It's called Legendary: The Many Lives of The Legend of Zelda! It's a cultural and personal history of Nintendo's greatest series! It talks about innovation, canon, joy and more! Preorder it here or somewhere else! bookshop.org/p/books/lege...

I hope Labaron Philon does a bit where he says, "Yeah?" every time someone calls LeBron's name.

Well, at least I don't have to write about it.

Is Gio still playing?

We even underhit the touchback kickoff.

Feels like the coaching special sauce was aligning a squad of incredibly inconsistent players into all having pretty good days at the same time twice in a row.

Nine-year-old: So why is Balogun back? Me:

Rafa Marquez would have scored by now.

Harry goes for the defender's face every single time there's a high ball.

It's cute how the rest of Norway remembered at the end to include Haaland in their "Defense!" huddle.

Everyone but Messi on this Argentina team deserves to go home and we should just give him to CV for the rest of the tournament.

"Is he real?" - The five-year-old, pointing at Messi

Truly criminal that FIFA has managed to schedule this thing so that neither the US nor England were likely to play on July 4.

Is he trying to recruit LeBron to the Warriors?

Shot of John Terry celebrating is some reality TV-level ragebaiting production.

I think commercials would actually be preferable to hearing Livin' on a Prayer during these breaks.

This is like if the entire first act of the play consisted of reading aloud the specs of the gun that's hanging over the mantel.

Rooting for the draw because Yan Diomande vs Erling Haaland would be like the ideal hypothetical scenario for running penalties.

Morocco needed to bring Amir Richardson to sub in as soon as Weghorst came on.

Tahp bins.

How much does dynamic pricing add on to the cost of tickets for extra time?

They should sit George Weah and Antonio Freeman between Gregg and Claudio for the Round of 32 game.

Whose job do you think it is to explain to Ed Norton that these are all the backups?

McKennie jumping out of the way of that is the play of the game.

Hope one of those NFL teams they've been meeting with have gifted us some red QB DO NOT TOUCH jerseys for Adams and Richards to wear in practice.

I am the World Cup champion of stepping out of the room just before a goal is scored.

Today my five year old said "She's four-and-a-half, so she's four and she's five." I never had any idea she had been spending time on the Arsenal message boards.

Gonna tell people this was the World Cup.

for people who are only just now catching up on Gio Reyna doing a "can't hear the haters" celebration, I think this Slate piece is the best one stop catch-up slate.com/culture/2023...

So. Hey. Yeah. About all that.

My kid is just constantly making the wildest of suppositions off of very small data samples. So it's just like watching in a bar somewhere.