Tag: Reddit

An NFL Redditor combined the names of every player in history and came up with 1 moniker

Say hello to … Jarne Bareen.

The name Jarne Bareen might not mean anything to you.

But that’s what you get when you merge together some 27,000 names of current and former NFL players.

And why would someone do that? I’d say welcome to the NFL offseason, friends. We’re all done with the NFL combine and now we’re waiting for free agency and draft madness.

Anyway, Redditor DiggingNoMore crunched all the names together with a really funky way to combine them all using the most popular letters for each position of first and last names, and the eventual Frankenstein monster of a moniker is: Jarne Bareen.

Here’s more:

I continued finding the most popular letter in each position of first names and last names. Now, clearly there are some names that are really long. But I went until the position was more than 50% blank. That is to say, the first name I have come up with – Jarne – is five letters long. That’s because ~55% of NFL players’ first names have a fifth letter. Still a majority. But only ~30% have a sixth letter. So that’s how I ended up cutting off the merged first name after five letters and the merged last name after six letters. Turns out last names are generally longer than first names. I was also surprised to see how many first names were exactly four letters (over a quarter of NFL players).

Fans of perpetually bad college teams explained to Reddit why they keep watching

Hope springs eternal, even when it maybe shouldn’t.

Every year, some 80-plus college football teams become bowl eligible and extend their season by a few weeks. An even luckier few will make it to the College Football Playoffs for a chance to play two more games and win a national title.

And then there’s the rest of the programs across the sport.

The ones who didn’t accomplish much. The ones who almost never accomplish much. For every Alabama, Georgia and Ohio State out there, there’s a Temple, Boston College and Cal.

Yet every year, fans of those schools keep tuning in and filling the stands. An earnest Reddit thread on r/CFB wanted to know why. It turned into a lovely (and hilarious) meditation on the pull of college athletics and collective suffering across sports.

Here are some of the best response to a simple question: Fans of teams that are perpetually bad, what keeps you engaged?

Did an anonymous Reddit account scoop the Saints-Jimmy Graham story?

Did an anonymous Reddit account scoop the Saints-Jimmy Graham story? Either they had an inside track, or they just made a lucky guess:

Credit where it’s due: at least one anonymous social media account called it a week ago, with Reddit user TA4offmychest2022 scooping the story of Jimmy Graham’s return to the New Orleans Saints. Either they had an inside track, or they just made a lucky guess. There were no preceding reports from local or national outlets suggesting the Saints were even talking with Graham’s agent, much less that he was flying himself into New Orleans for a tryout.

“I actually have an inside scoop on something for once in my life,” they wrote on the Saints subreddit community Monday, July 17. “He’s working on getting his medical check and should be joining the team for training camp in the next couple weeks.”

The Saints themselves announced Graham’s arrival on Tuesday, July 25, the day before their first training camp practice. The anonymous post was initially met with derision and skepticism, which isn’t unwarranted — this kind of thing happens all the time. Anyone can create an account on their social media platform of choice and spin the rumor-mill. But every once in a while someone gets it right, and that was the case here.

As for this user: this appears to be a one-off thing. Their account was created one year ago but their post history is scarce, suggesting it’s just a burner or throwaway rather than a personal registry. So don’t expect many more scoops in the future on anonymous message boards, at least not this one.

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Reddit creator Alexis Ohanian, tennis stars Serena, Venus Williams lead ownership group for first TGL team based in Los Angeles

The team will be named Los Angeles Golf Club.

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The first of six team ownership groups for TGL has officially been announced.

Los Angeles Golf Club (LAGC) will be the inaugural team of TGL, a “new tech-infused league” developed by Tiger Woods and Rory’s McIlroy’s TMRW Sports, which was announced last August. LAGC will be owned by Seven Seven Six (776) founder Alexis Ohanian, and joined by tennis stars Serena and Venus Williams.

Ohanian, the creator of Reddit and Serena’s husband, is also the principal owner Los Angeles’ National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team, Angel City FC.

“Los Angeles is the perfect home for our TGL team. This city embodies the intersection of sports, technology, and entertainment, making it an ideal backdrop for the innovation and excitement we aim to bring to the world of golf and its fans,” said Ohanian.

If you’re unfamiliar with the plans for TGL, here’s the format:

Six teams of three PGA Tour players will compete in 15 regular-season Monday night matches, followed by semifinals and finals matches, starting January 2024. The matches will be played at a tech-infused, short-game complex, and fans will be able to see every shot live over a two-hour broadcast on primetime television.

Woods and McIlroy helped break ground on the TGL venue at Palm Beach State College back in February, and currently 12 players have committed to TGL, including Woods, McIlroy, Jon Rahm, Justin Thomas and more.

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An asparagus saga on Reddit is teaching people strange gardening facts

A curious gardening rabbit hole.

People who don’t garden probably also don’t think about asparagus much outside of the kitchen. But for gardeners, this unique plant can generate a surprising amount of intrigue. Recently, Reddit posts detailing one home gardener’s experience with an asparagus plant have gained thousands of views and hundreds of comments. Here are the details of this botanical curiosity, plus some strange gardening facts for home gardeners.

On April 14, Reddit user Luvnmylife presented this post to the r/gardening community. The post shows a picture of what appears to be a large asparagus plant growing out of the ground next to a tree stump. The Reddit user claims they discovered the puzzling plant after cutting down a tree and brush in their yard. In just under a week, this post gained over 700 comments, many of which agreed that the plant seemed to be asparagus. An update post on April 20 shows the plant sprouting new stalks. Now dubbed “Gus,” the plant has grown to 42 inches tall, according to the original poster.

I just found this in my yard after cutting down a tree and brush. Is this Asparagus? I’ve lived here 10 years and never seen it before.
by u/Luvnmylife in gardening

Why has this post set Reddit’s gardening community ablaze? Well, as several commenters pointed out, the plant is significantly larger than run-of-the-mill grocery store asparagus. The giant green stalk’s curious way of growing likely also captured people’s attention. As Twitter user @radtoria once put it in a 2019 tweet, “Asparagus grows like it’s trying to prank some idiot into thinking this is how asparagus grows.”

Strange asparagus plant facts

If you’re inspired to add asparagus to your home vegetable garden, you should know that these plants can get big. The star of the Reddit post isn’t an anomaly. An asparagus fact sheet from the University of New Hampshire explains that the plant’s “crown and root system can grow to an enormous size: 5 to 6 feet in diameter and 10 to 15 feet deep.”

Gardeners will also need to wait three years before they can harvest asparagus. While it grows, gardeners should keep an eye out for asparagus beetles. These pests like to nibble on the plant, which can cause scars and browning.

AI generator renders a future Saints quarterback almost as frightening as reality

An online AI generator produced a rendering of what the future Saints quarterback may look like, and the results are almost as frightening as their current reality:

Yikes. The New Orleans Saints quarterback situation isn’t much to write home about, but things could be worse. Neither Andy Dalton nor Jameis Winston have inspired confidence in the fanbase this season, but whoever is under center this time next year might not even look human.

An enterprising Saints fan on Reddit known as u/FauxJello took advantage of the artificial intelligence trend to create a rendering of what the next Saints quarterback may look like. Described as a “deep learning, text-to-image model” made public earlier this year, Stable Diffusion spat out an image after being fed a written description and some reference photos, and the results are unsettling at best. See for yourself:

Stable Diffusion
Stable Diffusion

It appears that the Stable Diffusion AI made a composite of various Saints quarterbacks to predict what the next one may look like, which checks out as something a machine would do in this kind of situation. We can see Drew Brees’ old No. 9 jersey, of course (and the prospect of New Orleans letting another quarterback wear it someday is concerning on its own), but there’s also Winston’s long undershirt sleeves and Taysom Hill’s Olympic javelin-style windup to throw in there. If you turn your head and squint, you can see some Chase Daniel in the posture, bizarrely. Just try not to focus on the fingers welded together, the reversed elbow, whatever’s going on with the team logo, and the enigmatic cloud over its face from the helmet.

Anyway: all jokes aside, it’s totally unclear who will be quarterback the Saints in 2023. It almost certainly won’t be Dalton or Winston, though the latter is under contract next season, and it’s been made clear that Hill’s days as a full-time quarterback are behind him. Whether the Saints pursue a veteran free agent or trade acquisition, or roll the dice on a rookie in the 2023 NFL draft, the quarterback room should look much different this time next year. Hopefully it’ll be an upgrade.

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Teacher learning why students call them the ‘GOAT’ is the best thing you’ll see today

When you learn what it means to be a GOAT >

By and large, “GOAT” is an acronym most closely associated with sports and hip hop debates. But since the proliferation of its use in the last couple decades, it’s not uncommon to hear people in other fields of work referred to as the GOAT — or the Greatest of All Time — at what they do.

We here at For The Win even celebrated sports legends with GOAT Week.

Sometimes it’s said in jest, and sometimes it’s completely from the heart. But hardly ever is it said without good intentions, which is why it was so cool to see a teacher’s reaction on Reddit after learning what it means to be called the GOAT by their students.

Why do my students call me a goat? from NoStupidQuestions

All of the edits to the teacher’s original post were after the teacher learned that not only was GOAT a compliment, but the ultimate compliment a teacher could receive, which might be my favorite part of the whole thing.

Without knowing whether GOAT was an insult or not, the teacher played along and apparently never lashed out, even calling the kids GOAT (which had to make them feel good).

It clearly made the teacher feel good if it brought them to tears.

Comment from discussion Balrog229’s comment from discussion "Why do my students call me a goat?".

Comment from discussion PuzzleBrain20’s comment from discussion "Why do my students call me a goat?".

That’s what it’s all about.

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When will Outkast apologize a trillion times to Ms. Jackson? One Redditor attempts the math

How long will it take? Forever, forever, ever, forever, ever?

Math is a beautiful, infuriating thing—especially for a sports and pop culture blog—but there are just some times when we have to give in, break out the TI-89 calculator we’ve kept since high school and crunch some numbers.

One post on Reddit’s r/Music board late Thursday night immediately sent us scrambling to do just that. You see, while the rest of the world was busy watching Duke keep Coach K’s last dance alive a bit longer, Redditor u/randomvegasposts was pondering one of life’s great mysteries:

How long will it take OutKast to actually apologize to Ms. Jackson a trillion times?

Got the song stuck in your head yet? Good. Now let’s dig into the question.

Released in October 2000, André 3000’s partial ode to Erykah Badu (and her mother) apologizes to Ms. Jackson 20 times in the lyrics. As u/randomvegasposts noted, the song would have to be played 50 billion times in order to reach one trillion apologies.

According to the post, u/randomvegasposts counts 621 million plays on Spotify, which accounts for 31 percent of all streams on the current market. That leads to an estimated 1.863 billion plays. Adding in YouTube streams and record sales from “Stankonia”, u/randomvegasposts brings the estimated total up to 45.9 billion apologies.

But it gets more complicated because the internet in the early aughts was anything but simple.

With file sharing apps like Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, Morpheus and tons of others at their peak, it’s impossible to tell how many times Ms. Jackson was pirated and played. Having grown up during that era, I can confidently say we can only underestimate this number.

So let’s consider this a different way. If we know it takes 50 billion plays to reach a trillion apologies, and the song itself—at normal speed—is four minutes and 30 seconds long, we would need to play Ms. Jackson on a continuous loop for 427,798.323 YEARS in order to fulfill André 3000’s promise.

Of course, Redditors have a few other ways of complicating this question. Let’s say you’re singing along with the song, do those apologies count as well? Or is it only André 3000’s vocalized apologies that matter here?

If André 3000 is singing in past tense, does that mean he has already hit a trillion apologies?

Does recording an apology and playing it back over and over count as multiple apologies? Or is André 3000 still stuck at the original 20 apologies in the lyrics when he recorded his part? And if OutKast had to record multiple takes in the studio, do those apologies count or are they unofficial?

The mind boggles. More specifically, the minds of all the sportswriters in our Slack Teams channel boggles. We were not built to deal with numbers these large.

The only obvious answer here is that it’ll take forever. Forever, ever.

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One Redditor is surviving the MLB lockout by drawing a new picture of Mike Trout every day until it’s over

The hero we need in these trying, baseball-less times

Major League Baseball has locked out the MLB Players Association for 25 days now. I know for certain it’s been that long because, for 25 days, a redditor who goes by u/DidItForTheStory has been creating hand-drawn pictures of Los Angeles Angels star Mike Trout to commemorate every 24 hours that passes without a new collective bargaining agreement.

It’s unclear who’s behind the account or what artistic training they may have received in their past. The first drawing of Trout on Dec. 3 suggested there wasn’t much.

A collection of mostly straight lines making a diving catch was mostly identifiable thanks to the Angels logo and No. 27 inscribed on the jersey.

As the days have gone by, the drawings have become more refined, more descriptive, but not necessarily more inspiring. They’ve mainly given a reason to scroll the r/baseball subreddit during a winter where MLB owners have chosen to close up shop.

“I thought initially we’d see this as the artist rapidly improving over time,” Commenter u/BUSean so elegantly posted on Day 14. “But now I know the real journey is observing their descent into madness.”

Please enjoy these selected works of u/DidItForTheStory as we patiently await MLB’s return. I highly recommend you check out all of them.

Here’s the 5 second Reddit Super Bowl ad you probably missed

Here is what you missed.

Did you see some weird ad flash across your screen right after the Super Bowl 55 halftime show and it disappeared before you could read it?

You weren’t the only one. It was a five-second Super Bowl ad, and it came from Reddit.

It was a card in which Reddit explained the company couldn’t buy a full Super Bowl spot.

“But we were inspired and decided to spend our entire marketing budget on 5 seconds of airtime. One thing we learned from our communities last week is that underdogs can accomplish just about anything when they come together around a common idea.”

Of course, that’s a reference to how a Reddit group called r/wallstreetbets helped drive up the price of stocks including GameStop and AMC.

“Powerful things happen when people rally around something they really care about,” the copy concluded. “And there’s a place for that. It’s called Reddit.”

Pretty effective spot, isn’t it?

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