Gather around all you ghouls and goblins. Happy Halloween and welcome to a special edition of the Town Crier. Depending on your age and persuasion, tonight is a night to conjure spirits or drink them. It’s a time to celebrate living while honoring those who are dead. It’s a time to go trick or treating with friends, one of the rites of passage into youthful independence, or go to a party. It’s a time to pass out candy or shut the lights off and pretend no one is home. It’s a time to stay in and watch a scary movie in the dark, or to sit around a fire telling ghost stories, or stay out late in the neighborhood, dragging pillow cases of goodies, going to one more house. However the time is spent, be sure to be safe, because after all, it’s All Hallow’s Eve, the night when the line between the living and dead is the thinnest.
But before we experience any of that, let’s see who has already received tricks or treats in the sports world this Halloween…
Treats: Reigning Champions
The Kansas City Chiefs haven’t lost since Christmas and are the NFL’s only unbeaten team heading into November. Between their Super Bowl run and start to their 2024 season, it’s been nothing but treats for Chiefs’ fans.
The same can be said for the Boston Celtics. The reigning world champions were given their rings, saw a banner raised (even if the TV audience watching TNT at home saw the ceremony cut for an American Dad commercial) and have started 4-1 out of the gate (a 3-point overtime loss at Indiana after a 24-point comeback, their only loss). It can’t get better, nor can it be more fitting. After all, the main influence for modern Halloween stems from the Celtic pagan holiday of Samhain. The Gaelic festival (pronounced SAH-win or SOW-win in Irish) marks the beginning of the “darker half of the year.”
The defending back-to-back national champion UConn men’s basketball team will embark on their three-peat in their Nov. 6 opener at home against Sacred Heart. Currently sitting at No. 3 in the AP poll, the Huskies handled Rhode Island, 102-75, in an exhibition at Mohegan Sun Arena a couple weeks ago.
Trick or Treat?: Lakers fans
The Lakers are off to a 3-2 start thanks to stellar play by Anthony Davis. Let’s see if the decent start, and Davis’ durability, hold up as the season goes on.
Trick: NBA fans
The Lebron James-led father-son moment was a farce. The sham and mockery was something out of a Hallmark movie, not legitimate sport. Bronny James is thankfully healthy, but should be in college developing his game rather than being his father’s travel partner. He played three minutes alongside his dad in the season opener to make “history.” What a manufactured, contrived moment. Only in Hollywood.
Treats: Los Angeles Dodgers
Speaking of Hollywood, congratulations to the newly crowned World Series champion Dodgers.
Trick: Auburn Football
We don’t have to trick Auburn football fans, or maybe more appropriately, the school’s administration. Their head coach Hugh Freeze has already taken care of that. After a 6-7 2023 campaign, Hugh is on his way to an even worse year as Auburn currently sits at 3-5.
Freeze is best remembered for recruiting and academic violations that marred the end of his run at Ole Miss. The big discovery in that investigation was that Freeze, then the most preachy SEC coach at the time (which in the South is saying something), was discovered to have called an escort service 33 times. Freeze said he dialed the wrong number.
America is the land of second chances, but Freeze has been afforded too many. After the hiatus, he landed at Liberty, where if you know anything about the school, was a fitting place for him to be. He was praised as a changed man, who rediscovered God, and learned from his mistakes. This and that. Blah. Blah. Blah.
He left Liberty after sending direct messages of a confronting manner to a sexual assault survivor. He “earned” a second chance in the SEC (the SEC has had five Black head coaches total in the conference’s history. Can guarantee someone of color with Freeze’s track record isn’t afforded that extra opportunity). Anyway, Auburn just had to hire him and bring him back to the top of the college football world.
Now they are sort of stuck with him. His buyout is just north of $20 million, which to us is a lifetime of money, but to Auburn’s boosters is easily raised to fire an underperforming coach.
So either Freeze sticks around and remains the head coach of a school in the best football conference in the country, or he’s paid $20 million not to coach.
For Freeze, even the trick is a treat.
