fiction and creative non-fiction from Brennan Quenneville
Willie O'Ree was not a dominant player. His entire NHL career spanned only 45 games during which he registered a serviceable if uninspiring 14 points. He is the most underrated player in NHL history. Shortly after Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier in 1947, he was followed into the big leagues by Larry Doby, Hank [...]
Malcolm Gladwell's Talking to Strangers introduced me to "Hell You Talmbout," a magnificent piece of social activism by Janelle Monae and Wondaland Records from 2015. The song is primarily a roll call of Black Americans that have been murdered by the police and that it feels even more prescient right now than it did in [...]
"Tell me what democracy looks like," said a young black man. His words, amplified through a megaphone, carried across the intersection to where we stood. "This is what democracy looks like," came the response from the crowd that had flooded each of the four corners of our city's small downtown. We wore masks and stood [...]
Kickers are like toilets: You hardly notice them when they're working but when they break down things get shitty in a hurry. And on Sunday kickers around the league broke down. How bad was it? Well, it was worse than the Browns' strange decision to part ways with Josh Gordon due to a lack of [...]
In his first career start, Buffalo Bills quarterback Nathan Peterman threw five interceptions on 14 pass attempts. He was benched at halftime. In his second start, Peterman completed 50% of his passes for a total of 57 yards before leaving the game in the third quarter due to injury. On Sunday Peterman started for the [...]
A little after 4pm on Sunday the Cleveland Browns lost to the Pittsburgh Steelers, plunging them to the NFL's second-ever 0-16 finish. The loss would have been soul crushing if only there had been any souls left to crush in Cleveland. Bad as the Browns season finale was, though, it wasn't the worst of the [...]
On October 30th the San Francisco 49ers sent a 2nd round draft pick to the New England Patriots for Tom Brady's understudy, Jimmy Garoppolo. As San Francisco head coach Kyle Shanahan opted to take things slow with his potential franchise quarterback, Garappolo didn't start a game until December 3rd but since then, well, let's just [...]
In a feature literally named after the NFL's penchant for constant, unyielding incompetence, you might've guessed that today we'd be honoring (well maybe not honoring, exactly) the League itself again. And yet, even as both the Raiders and Steelers lost their games due to controversial-but-true-to-the-rulebook verdicts from their referees, there's only one place truly deserving [...]
When a yellow flag landed it was immediately clear what the call was going to be. It was also immediately clear that it was going to be the wrong call. https://twitter.com/thelionswire/status/939927384605777920 Detroit Lions defensive back Quandre Diggs had just leveled Tampa Bay's O.J. Howard, causing a fumble that was recovered by Detroit's Glover Quin. As [...]
Every Monday I play beer league hockey with a bunch of physically underwhelming and tactically inept schlubs like myself. In our darker moments, when our utter lack of coaching and ability rears its ugly, toothless head our defensive schemes devolve into little more than puck-chasing. As defensive strategies go, this one tends to be disastrous. [...]
Songs & Stories 