The Grand Prize Game!

 If you are over thirty-five, you may remember the "BOZO Show" and their  Grand Prize Game, in which buckets were lined in a row, and one by one, each ball is tossed in a bucket until the player missed.

I'm going to use that premise and offer one recent nugget for each of the teams/sports that I follow closely.

I was surprised to hear that MSG Networks and the New Jersey Devils moved away from Erica Wachter as their studio host for Devils games.

I liked Wachter's work (she also appears on MLB and NHL Network) and she had good chemistry with her studio partner Bryce Salvador.

No word on her replacement on Devils broadcasts.

The Cleveland Browns reached out for a player from their past to help solve an injury issue when they traded a 2026 sixth-round draft choice to the Seattle Seahawks for center Nick Harris and a 2026 seventh-round draft pick.

Harris was the Browns' heir apparent at center but injured his knee in training camp in 2022, which allowed veteran Ethan Pocic to cement himself as the starter.

Cleveland drafted Luke Wypler at the position in 2023 and Harris signed with Seattle as a free agent in the past off-season but Wypler suffered an ankle injury in the preseason opener and Harris's Cleveland experience made him an attractive option to replace Wypler as the backup.

The Cleveland Cavaliers have re-signed the three core players of their franchise to contract extensions in the off-season with the agreements with Donovan Mitchell, Evan Mobley, and Jarrett Allen but one decision still remains- a decision involving Isaac Okoro.

Okoro is a restricted free agent and some rumors have spread about a possible sign and trade with the Brooklyn Nets.

Okoro could take the Cavaliers qualifying offer and remain with the team, which would be okay with me but Okoro's skills and below-average shot make him less desirable as more than a situational player off the bench.

Newcastle United start their season at home against Southampton, in what is the Saints return to the Premier League after a one-year absence.

The drama around the Magpies is about their attempted signing of Marc Guehi from Crystal Palace.

Crystal Palace was asking sixty-five million (English Pounds) and turned down three offers for Newcastle before Newcastle offered the asking price, only to have the Eagles turn down THAT offer.

I'm all for negotiations but if Newcastle felt they were willing to meet the asking price of the player, why didn't they just offer it on the second try rather than the fourth?

I'm not knowledgeable enough to say if Guehi is worth this cost or not but Newcastle might have to go all in for him or end with no considerable additions to a team that wishes to return to Champions League play next season. 

We wrap up with this thought from boxing.

With the IBF forcing their talented welterweight champion Jaron "Boots" Ennis to fight a rematch against Karen Chukhadzhian, it started me thinking about fights that didn't deserve a second fight that was forced by sanctioning bodies.

In their first fight in January 2023, Ennis won each of the twelve rounds in a fight that managed to do the unexpected- make Ennis look ordinary.

Chukhadzhian ran, Ennis chased, and after the decision, most thought that we wouldn't hear from Chukhadzhian again.

Chukhadzhian has won three times since against middling opposition but one of those came in an IBF eliminator against England's Harry Scarff and when Cody Crowley was forced to drop out of his scheduled title try against Ennis due to an eye injury (replaced by David Avanesyan), Ennis still needed to make a mandatory defense and now that man is Chukhadzhian, leaving boxing fans with a fight that no one asked for once, let alone twice.

This made me think of Marvin Hagler being forced to fight Fulgencio Obelmejias twice by the WBA.

Obelmejias was 30-0 in January 1981 against weak opposition when the WBA mandated his title chance and Obelmejias fought fairly well in his first attempt at Hagler before being stopped in round eight.

Obelmejias rebounded with eight straight wins with the best win as an eighth-round stoppage of future super middleweight champion Chong-Pal Park to return to the top of the WBA rankings and another mandated chance against Hagler.

Twenty-one months later, the rematch no one wanted other than the WBA and maybe Obelmejias occurred in Italy with Hagler dominating before knocking Obelmejias cold with a fifth-round left hook.

Fast forward, five years, and Obelmeijas finally became a world champion when he won a unanimous decision over old rival Chong-Pal Park to win the WBA super middleweight championship in 1988.

Obelmejias lost the title in his first defense to In-Chul Baek and won his final three fights before retiring.