Quick Slant: TNF - The Football Gods are Nihilists
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Bills * Texans Sports lie in this fuzzy penumbra between the brutality, discipline, and operational calculus of a military campaign, and something as cold and unfeeling as a dice roll; it is clear which the public ignores, and which it identifies as cause. It is romantic
Quick Slant: MNF - But the Gift Shop Will Be Open
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Cowboys * Raiders Dallas was founded in 1850—a small town nestled in broad meadows under big skies with nary a water source in sight, which it remained for some 80 years. Then oil was discovered beneath it—lots of it. Wells and derricks plunged into
Quick Slant: 2025 NFL Madrid Game - De Madrid al Cielo
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Commanders * Dolphins Situated in Spain’s belly, high on a plateau where summer heat gathers like stored voltage, Madrid sometimes feels closer to the sun than the sea. The air is dry as a kiln, faintly metallic. Autumn weather is a silence occasionally broken by
Quick Slant: TNF - The Hate, As It Turns Out, Is More Fun
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Jets * Patriots Cambridge-born Vaudevillian Fred Allen fled New England’s stiff traditions, parsimony, and old workings for the vital organism of New York—vibrant, improper, unchaste—long ago. He lamented the difference on his radio show years later: “I have just returned from Boston. It
Quick Slant: MNF - Empires Forged From Cold and Hunger
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Eagles * Packers Twenty-one is an age where the pragmatist inside you is in full-on fisticuffs with the dreamer. People like Curly Lambeau—square jaw, plump lips, full hair, handsome—like a member of One Direction seduced some time ago by the call of the barbell
Quick Slant: SNF - The Comings and Goings of Winning Culture
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Steelers * Chargers Los Angeles still glows after the Dodgers renewed their championship banner subscription last Saturday; not only so, they own the rights to the greatest baseball player who has ever lived, and they participate in a sport without a salary cap, where the richest
Quick Slant - 2025 Berlin Game: Better than a Corporate Retreat
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Falcons * Colts On May 9, 1945, the sun rose on Berlin. People woke to the sound of calm, turned the doorknob, and were met with a brisk spring morning—partly cloudy, 40 degrees Fahrenheit. They entered onto cobblestone streets, under a layer of ash, into
Quick Slant: TNF - You Survive, or You Don't
Mat Irby’s Quick Slant * Raiders * Broncos I once worked on a movie in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. Frankly, I loved it; I’m not from anywhere like the high desert, so it was a chance to experience an entirely different social and environmental context. In the middle of it