Studs and Duds: Seriously, You Don't Like the Ending of Empire Strikes Back?

If you don't like the ending of this movie, we can't be friends.

By Jeremy Conlin (@jeremy_conlin) and Joe Parello (@HerewegoJoe)

Studs and Duds is a weekly feature on Suite Sports. Who had a good week? Who had a bad week?

Studs

EA Sports' Advertising

I still maintain that the release of  each year's Madden NFL Football video game should be a national holiday. So should the Super Bowl, and so should every playoff game, and really every big Monday Night game… Ok, so maybe I just don't like to work and I like football.

Either way, EA Sports' advertising team has me particularly excited about this year's installment of the game (The 25th Year Anniversary Edition). No, it isn't the fact that you get NFL Sunday Ticket Mobile if you buy the "Anniversary Pack" through Amazon.com (Though that is awesome!), it is because of this fantastic commercial featuring Texans running back Arian Foster and Seahawks running back Marshawn Lynch.

The basic premise of the commercial is that both Foster and Lynch's fathers were huge Madden fans. In fact, they were Madden rivals, and they decided to have sons and raise them to be the perfect running backs, so that they could each use their own sons against the other.

Foster and Lynch play their fathers, each with an awesome hair-do, and it's actually pretty funny. The only, and I repeat, ONLY, ridiculous thing about this is that Foster is 26 and Lynch is 27, so they would have already been born when the first Madden came out. Other than that, bang up job EA.

-JP

Children Playing Baseball

Do I like baseball? Insomuch as I love all sports, yes.

Do I have a great passion for baseball like I do for Basketball, Football, European and International Soccer, Middleweight Boxing, and Curling? Decidedly not.

As a general rule, do I enjoy watching children play sports? Absolutely not.

Then, for the love of all that is holy, please explain to me how I am enthralled watching the Little League World Series. I find it to be completely inexplicable. Perhaps it's because there's literally nothing else on television at 2 o'clock in the afternoon in mid-August.

-JC

Conference USA's Bowl Scheduling

People say there are too many bowls in college football, and I could not disagree more. There are, however, too many crappy bowls in cities that nobody wants to go to. Case in point, the Motor City/Little Caesar's Pizza/whatever the hell they're calling that miserable bowl game in Detroit these days.

Whoever had the idea to send a Big Ten and MAC team to Detroit (They're from the Midwest, they know how much Detroit sucks) clearly didn't understand the point of bowl games. They're events, they're road trips for students and alumni alike, and they're rewards for a successful season.

AKA, don't put them in f*****g Detroit!

Unlike the Big Ten, Conference USA has the right idea. Sure, they may be losing all their teams to the AAC (Who is losing all its teams to… Whomever else will take them), but C-USA may have found a way to keep some schools around.

The Bahamas baby!

That's right, starting in 2014, C-USA will have a tie-in with a bowl in Nassau! Whoever represents C-USA is expected to face an opponent from the MAC. Hopefully it will be the top ranked team in that conference, because wouldn't it just be the worst if the MAC champion went to Detroit while No. 2 got a tropical vacation?

C-USA also added a bowl game in Boca Raton, Florida, home of new conference member Florida Atlantic, and their bowl slate can rival any major conference's in terms of pure enjoyment.

The Bahamas, Hawaii, South Florida, New Orleans, Tampa, Dallas and… Albuquerque. Ok, well you can't win them all.

-JP

NBC Sports Network, Fox Sports 1

The NBC Sports Network has done what ESPN was never willing to do - cramming as much English Premier League Soccer into their programming schedule each week as is physically possible. It makes sense that ESPN would never do this, as programs like NFL Live and Around the Horn and others actually produced ratings competitive with EPL games, and it's far cheaper to produce a studio show than it is a live broadcast of a soccer game. However, for NBCSN, the EPL gives them a niche that they previously did not have. Between NHL and EPL coverage, they're appealing to two very rabid (and growing) fan-bases.

Fox Sports 1, meanwhile, is still finding it's footing. In it's first week of programming, however, they've shown a good amount of promise. Fox Sports Live (the nightly show meant to compete with SportsCenter) is actually a very fun show that has an old-school SportsCenter vibe. Being Fox, and this being NFL preseason, most of their coverage during the week has been NFL-related, so it will be interesting to see how they cover, say, the NBA and the Winter Olympics early next year once the NFL season ends.

-JC 

Duds

Purdue's Marketing

I'm a proud Boilermaker, but seriously, Purdue released the WORST school music video of all time. It was widely mocked and ridiculed across the blog-o-sphere (Do people still say that?) within minutes of its release, and Yahoo got a hold of it shortly thereafter. Purdue tried to stop the bleeding by making the video private, but of course someone reposted it later in the day.

More copies of the video keep popping up, and Purdue keeps getting them taken down for copyright infringement. This will probably go on until the end of time.

Silly Purdue, don't you know that once you put something on the internet it is there FOREVER?!?! At least that's what I learned at my Purdue freshman orientation.

-JP

Tom Brady's Pre-season

Actually, you know what? I don't want to talk about it.

-JC 

Bill Cowher

I have no words for this. Bill Cowher, long known as "The Chin" in Pittsburgh, is wearing makeup in his new girlfriend's rock video. Ugh.

-JP

Joss Whedon

This has absolutely nothing to do with sports, but I feel like I need to address it. Joss Whedon, the brilliant mind behind The Avengers, Cabin in the Woods and, of course, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, has come out with some rather harsh words for one of the greatest endings in cinematic history.

I'll let Entertainment Weekly take it away from here:

“Empire committed the cardinal sin of not actually ending,” Whedon noted during his 10-page deep-dive interview with Entertainment Weekly in this week’s issue. “Which at the time I was appalled by and I still think it was a terrible idea.”

To which your EW interviewer blurted: “You think Empire had a bad ending?”

“Well, it’s not an ending,” Whedon explained about the 1980 film, which had a cliffhanger leading into the next entry of the series, Return of the Jedi. “It’s a Come Back Next Week, or in three years. And that upsets me. I go to movies expecting to have a whole experience. If I want a movie that doesn’t end I’ll go to a French movie. That’s a betrayal of trust to me. A movie has to be complete within itself, it can’t just build off the first one or play variations.”

Come on Joss, you just didn't see the REAL ending that rolled after the credits.

No wait, that big surprising scene already happened when Vader revealed that he was Luke's father. Or does that not count as part of the ending?

Seriously, if you don't like the ending to Empire… I just, I just… I just don't know what to say. I guess the ending to Buffy was better.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Joe has no idea how Buffy the Vampire Slayer ended.

-JP