Lance Zierlein: I've seen the future of sports

RoboWatt

Boston Dynamics has created a robot dog that can open doors. Boston Dynamics/Facebook

My Monday evening was going along just like any other Monday. I was sitting on my Texas Mattress Makers bed (shout out to my man Youval) going back and forth between catching up on “60 Days In” on television and a day’s worth of mentions that I had missed on Twitter.

Draft question. Answered. Comment about the Rockets. Liked. Comment about something that we said on the radio show. Answered and liked.

Then, I came upon a twitter mention that had no commentary. It was just a retweet of a video (above) and I was tagged in the retweet. I clicked on the video and there it was - a video of a “robot” that was built in the likeness of a dog’s body had taught itself to open a door and walk about (along with another robot dog friend). My first thought was to recall how eerily similar this robot looked to a killer robot dog in a Black Mirror episode entitled Metalhead. This episode was truly terrifying and should be watched immediately.

I retweeted the video and mentioned how terrifying it was. And it is. We are literally teaching these robots to become smarter. Wait… it’s not “we,” it’s Boston Dynamics. This group has also built a robot that looks like an astronaut in full space suit. This robot has been created to do box jumps and backflips. They’ve basically built robot J.J. Watt but with fewer selfies and a more durable back.

(Just a robot with sick hops who can also do a backflip. No big deal.)

Boston Dynamics Must Be Stopped

There is no question that we are watching passively as Robot Murder Dogs and Assassin Bots are being created in the Boston Dynamics labs in Waltham, Massachusetts. All I can think of is that we need to stop them. We need to come together and stop these f*cking robot makers or we will all be wiped out! It starts with the robots learning how to open a door and before you know it, they are cutting your brake lines and putting crushed glass in your oatmeal. Nah, fam. Not me.

Well I’ve got good news and bad news. The bad news is that they’ve already built 11 different type of robots that all do different things. Cheetah can gallop at 28 MPH, RiSE can climb up the side of building and trees with micro-claws, SandFlea can jump 30 feet vertically, and Handle who is 6 feet tall, runs 9 MPH and has a vertical of 48 inches. We are basically already dead.

Here is how this plays out (according to movie storylines I’ve seen from the '90s.) Bad guy hackers get into the Boston Dynamics database and find a way to alter their Artificial Intelligence so that they learn to kill us. Do you even watch Westworld? You might want to start because they are just laying this sh-- out there right now about how this is going to go down.

The Only Solution

Oh yeah, I gave you the bad news a little earlier, but I forgot to give you the good news! I think I have figured out how we can keep robot dogs and backflipping super Assassin Bots from wrecking our sh-- permanently. We make even more of them and start a sports league. Honestly, I don’t even care which sport it is, let’s just create a focused vision for what we are going to do with them.

I’m sure Boston Dynamics will be down with this because they are probably Patriots fans and are responsible for Tom Brady. Forty year old MVP? FOH, Robot! They might be down with creating more and more robots with different sizes and skills (like they already have) that can eventually populate football, or basketball, or baseball. No more concerns about CTE. No more concerns about escalating ticket prices due to athlete salaries. No more concerns over off-field issues with a robot (unless they are involved in an assassination, of course).

The Netflix show, Black Mirror, is usually spot-on regarding what we might be able to expect in the future from a technological standpoint. Well they were beaten to the punch on this one. In 1990 the game Cyberball 2072 came out where football was played by robots that would collide into each other and throw pass and catch it and do a lot of football things. What made this game so amazing (despite a Metacritic grade of 41%) was that robots were doing football and not doing murdering and hunting of humans. Robots in sports? I say yes.

 

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Houston beat Gonzaga, 81-76. Photo by Ron Jenkins/Getty Images.

LJ Cryer matched a career high with 30 points, including two free throws with 14.2 seconds left, and No. 1 seed Houston held on to beat eighth-seeded Gonzaga 81-76 on Saturday night to reach the Sweet 16 for the sixth straight NCAA Tournament.

J'Wan Roberts added 18 points and Milos Uzan made two last free throws with 2.1 seconds left, giving the Cougars (32-4) their 15th consecutive win and pushing them into a regional semifinal against No. 4 seed Purdue on Friday night in Indianapolis.

Houston also ended Gonzaga's run of nine straight Sweet 16s, which had been the longest active streak in the nation.

“It's not just winning the game," Cougars coach Kelvin Sampson said. "It's beating a great program like Gonzaga.”

The Bulldogs (26-9) trailed 76-67 with just over 2 minutes to go when Graham Ike made two free throws to start their comeback bid, and most of it wound up coming at the foul line. And when Uzan turned the ball over and Khalif Battle made two free throws of his own, the Bulldogs had pulled to 77-76 with 21 seconds remaining.

Houston got the ball to Cryer, who was fouled, and he made both of his free throws to extend the lead. At the other end, Ja'Vier Francis stuffed Battle's tying 3-point try from the corner, and Uzan knocked down his foul shots to seal the win.

“Gonzaga is as good as anyone we've played all year,” Sampson said. “Had they been seeded somewhere else, that's a team that could have had a chance to get to the Elite Eight, or maybe the Final Four. They're that good.”

Ike finished with 27 points for the Bulldogs. Battle scored 17 and Ryan Nembhard had 10 points and 11 assists.

“It ended up being just a great, great basketball game, especially the way our guys fought their way back into it. I'm so proud of the way they hung with it,” Gonzaga coach Mark Few said. “Houston was everything and more than we thought it would be.”

Given that no program has won more games than Gonzaga and Houston over the past eight seasons, it seemed as if their second-round matchup in the Midwest Region would have been better suited for the second weekend.

Or even the Final Four, where the Bulldogs and Cougars were on opposite sides of the bracket in 2021.

Yet for much of the game, Houston looked every bit deserving of its No. 1 seed and Gonzaga its spot at No. 8. The Cougars asserted their physical dominance on the perennial West Coast power, while Cryer — the Big 12 player of the year — poured in 16 first-half points to give Houston a 35-27 lead at the break.

Roberts, who sprained his ankle in last week's conference tournament, took over in the second half. The winningest player in Cougars history began bullying his way for baskets, and that allowed the Cougars to maintain their lead.

Gonzaga made one final run down the stretch but could never overtake them.

Takeaways

Gonzaga was second nationally in scoring at 86.7 points per game, and surpassed that in an 89-68 rout of Georgia in the first round. But the Bulldogs finished short of that mark against Houston's trademark defense.

Houston was able to rest its stars during a lopsided win over SIU Edwardsville on Thursday. Those fresh legs seemed to pay off in the closing minutes Saturday, when Gonzaga was trying to climb back into the game.

Up next

The Cougars will play the Boilermakers for a spot in the Elite Eight.

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