BCVoice Midweek Radio April 8, 2020

Transcript

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BRANDON WELLS
Good evening to the 2-2-8-1-2, and welcome to the BCVoice Midweek Radio Show. My name is Brandon Wells, co-station manager here at BCVoice. Due to the spread of the Coronavirus, Bridgewater campus events, lectures and activities have been shut down until further notice. But we are dedicated to still bring you the most quality content without interference. The many broadcasters of BCVoice-dot-org have recorded segments for air and we have all your news, sports and entertainment updates along with so much more here for the next hour. So sit back, relax and enjoy the journey.

ISAAC MILLER 1:34
Good evening, Bridgewater, and welcome back to another installment of BCVoice Midweek Radio Show. This is the national news segment, and I am Isaac and I’m going to be taking you through all the headlines we’ve got this week. As has been the case the last few weeks, a lot of it is going to be centered around the Coronavirus, but that’s still important to talk about. So, first things first, we’re going to start with Wisconsin. They decided to hold their primary elections yesterday, despite warnings from public health officials regarding the Coronavirus. Now the governor Tony, Tony Evers, a Democrat in the state, had attempted to work with the state’s Republican-controlled legislature in order to delay the election or switch to exclusively by-mail ballots. Now the two sides had been unable to reach any sort of agreement for weeks, and on Monday, the Governor Evers issued an executive order to delay the election until June.

Now this measure was quickly taken to the State Supreme Court. And within hours, the justices on the court ruled 4 to 2 to overturn the decision made by the governor stating that the move was an overreach of his authority and that he could not delay the election without the consent of the legislature. The matter was later taken to the United States Supreme Court that day, where the judges reached a 5 to 4 decision to uphold the Wisconsin Supreme Court’s ruling. Now the conservative majority on the court argued in an unsigned opinion that the case concerned a–quote–narrow dispute on a technical question. And they also argued that the state courts did not have the authority to postpone an election this close to the day of the election. Now in a scathing dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg argued that due to the health risks posed by the Coronavirus, many voters were being forced to rely on absentee ballots, which the state was not prepared to distribute at the scale demanded. She went on to say that–quote–the courts suggestion that the current situation is not substantially different from an ordinary election boggles the mind–end quote. Now the results from the election are not expected to be released until at least April 13, in order to give workers at the election committee in Wisconsin, more time to process the ballots there.

Some more news regarding the presidential race, Bernie Sanders announced Wednesday that he is officially dropping out of the race. The one-time Democratic front runner for the nomination dropped out amid the chaos of the Coronavirus. And neither candidate has been able to hold normal campaign events for at least the last month due to concerns regarding the disease. Now with Senator Sanders departure from the race, Joe Biden has now cemented himself as the presumptive presumptive Democratic candidate this year, and he will likely be the one to take on Donald Trump in the general election this November.

Little bit of good news regarding the Coronavirus in New York City. The USNS Comfort, which is a Naval Hospital ship that’s been stationed in New York Harbor, will begin accepting Coronavirus patients. So they will begin accepting patients on board this week after initially only planning on taking patients with other ailments not related to COVID-19. The Navy has confirmed that the ship will dedicate 500 of its 1000 beds to treating patients stricken with severe cases of COVID-19. The Navy is also working as recently as Friday that the ship had not taken any Coronavirus patients because it was–quote–not configured to provide for treatment of infectious diseases–end quote. Now the ship, along with its sister ship, the USNS Mercy, which is currently stationed in Los Angeles, is a converted oil supertanker that the government purchased and refurbished in the 1980s to act as a hospital ship. Now the ship, as was stated previously, was not originally planned to take on Coronavirus patients and this was largely due to the cramped nature of ships in general, which has aided in infections on ships such as cruise liners like the Diamond Princess earlier this year, as well as the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Now despite this, retired Vice Admiral Matthew Nathan, who was the Navy Surgeon General prior to his retirement in 2016, said the comparison to other ships was unhelpful because the comfort can still–quote–sequester large numbers of patients who are known to be infected–end quote. Now the availability of the ship for COVID patients is going to be a great help to New York hospitals as for more than the last week, they’ve been pushed nearly to their limit, attempting to deal with the coronavirus outbreak in New York City.

Now as we have been doing the last few weeks, we’re going to end off with the current state of the Coronavirus in the United States. Now, as of Wednesday morning, there have been more than 397,000 confirmed cases in the United States and at least 1200 deaths. At this time last week, there were just over 188,000 cases and just over 3900 confirmed deaths due to the disease. New York State this week now currently has at least 140,000 confirmed cases, which has surpassed the total of Italy, which is one of the European nations hit hardest by the Coronavirus.

Now as always stay home if you can. Wash your hands frequently if you must go out. Social distancing, I know has been hard, especially if you’ve been staying cooped up in your house as much as physically possible. And while the rate of infections has started to dip in some places — like New York City, we’re starting to see good news out of there that things might be slowing down — this is not the time to stop practicing social distancing measures. It will be, it’s takes at least a couple of weeks for somebody with the virus to know they have the virus potentially, so there can still be a lot of hidden cases floating around that we don’t know about. And if we were to end these measures now, that could just cause a resurgence of the virus and ultimately make things worse for everybody. So stay home. If you have to go out wash your hands. Don’t touch your face. Wear a mask — the new CDC guidelines released this week urging people if you have to be in public, you should wear a cloth mask. They’re not recommending medical masks just so those can be saved for nurses and doctors working in hospitals. So if you need to go out, stay safe but try to do so as little as possible.

JUSTIN ROGERS 8:17
Hello, everybody. Welcome to national sports here on BC Midweek Radio. I’m Justin Rogers, going to take you again through all of the national sports news that we have since last Wednesday’s recording here on the Midweek show. And let’s just start right off some of the sports birthdays that are happening today on April 8. First, we have Felix Hernandez, according to mlb.com, pitcher for the Seattle Mariners, won the AL Cy Young Award in 2010, six-time All Star and had a no-hitter August 15, 2012. So, happy birthday, Felix Hernandez — loved watching his no-hitter in 2012 as a kid, as a baseball fan growing up — a Cardinals fan nonetheless — but just great to see him get that no-hitter. One of the greatest pitchers in Mariners history, if not a top 20 pitcher of all time. Going to basketball, according to basketballreference, Terry Porter, the point guard for the Trailblazers, two-time All Star Trailblazers, all time assist leader with 5319 assists. And he also went to the NBA finals twice with the Portland Trailblazers, not able to get a championship, but able to get them there twice. And we have a couple of Hall of Famers whose birthday it is today. Jim Catfish Hunter, according to baseballreference, the former Hall of Famer with the Oakland Athletics and the New York Yankees, the pitcher won the Cy Young Award in 1974, an eight-time All Star, a no-hitter May 8, 1968. Unfortunately died in 1999, so rest in peace, Jim Catfish Hunter, one of the greatest pitchers–top 20 pitcher, just like Felix Hernandez and MLB history. Good to see him in the Hall of Fame.

And another Hall of Famer, but for another sport, we have John Havlicek–probably said that wrong–but according to basketballreference and nba.com, the small forward and shooting guard for the Boston Celtics, one of the greatest guards and boards in NBA history: 1974 NBA Finals MVP, won the NBA Finals eight times with the Boston Celtics, 13-time NBA All Star, earned 11 selections to the NBA first and second teams, was the Celtics all time leading scorer. His number 17 was retired by the Celtics, and he is in the NBA Hall of Fame. And a fun fact: was drafted by the Cleveland Browns in the seventh round as a quarterback in the NFL, after tried to convert him to wide receiver, wasn’t able to, and then went on to have a Hall of Fame career with the Boston Celtics and the NBA. And unfortunately died last year on April 25, in 2019, so almost a year from now. We’re going to be celebrating his birthday in a couple of weeks. So happy birthday and that was thanks to on-this-day-dot-com. If you want to figure out some of the famous people whose birthday it is today or next week or whenever, on-this-day-dot-com is a great place to find out whose birthday it is when.

And now just coming for some positivity, coming back to a segment I had last week, a moment of positivity: COVID-19 relief — and all of this coming from CBS Sports — so we’re just going to talk about some of the things that some sports teams have been doing for the community in the midst of COVID-19. For the NFL, the Falcons owner, Arthur Blank, donated $5 million to help those who are in need in the state of Georgia. The Packers, Chargers, Colts and Patriots all donated food to those in need. And we talked about last week with the Patriots opening up Gillette Stadium. Great for them and great to see that. And then you have the Kansas City Chiefs also providing food for those in need — to feed those in Kansas City public school system. And it’s interesting because there’s a lot of public schools where kids and teenagers that was there, where they got their food. So it’s awesome to see the Kansas City Chiefs donate and help benefit some of the people that are in the Kansas City area. A lot of the teams in the NBA are helping out the workers at their stadiums. A couple of those teams — 27 of them — the Hawks, Celtics, Nets, Hornets, Bulls, Cavs, Mavericks, Nuggets, Warriors, Pacers, Clippers, Lakers, Grizzlies, Heat, Bucks, Pelicans, Knicks, Thunder, Magic, 76ers, Suns, Trailblazers, Kings, Spurs, Raptors, Jazz and Wizards — are all donating to the part-time arena workers that would have been working at this time. So thank you for all the players and the owners, for all the NBA teams that were donating money and paying for the salaries of the part-time workers. Because they don’t have to do that, but they decide to do that, and I’m sure that all the part-time workers at the different arenas are thankful for that. And the Astros also for the MLB helping out because the MLB season was set to kick off a couple of weeks ago, I think a week ago, was supposed to be opening day for most ballparks. So the Astros until the MLB opens, which we’re going to talk about a little bit sooner, helping out the people who would be helping out of the ballpark. And the Cubs in the Braves, doing what a couple of the NFL teams were doing, also having players donating to food banks around the areas at the time.

So I talked a little bit about the MLB, and when the MLB could start, and according to ESPN, it could start sometime in May in Arizona. Arizona has a lot of outdoor stadiums, so with all the restrictions right now with COVID, it might not quite work. They do have an indoor stadium and the one thing that they’re concerned about, according to ESPN, is how hot it gets in Arizona, and how they could possibly cool down, and there’s a number of different ways they can do that. But according to ESPN again, the League and the players union are discussing a plan that could land all 30 teams in Arizona amid Coronavirus pandemic. And this all just depends on the state restrictions in Arizona, what those are like, and whether MLB players are willing to participate. And by looking at different ESPN articles, MLB articles, it looks like there’s a lot of players that are not willing to risk their health and even risk the health of some of their friends and their family who had come and watch. They wouldn’t want to risk their health at all. So it looks like this might be something that again, might happen, but again, they would have about two or three weeks of spring training and then they would start in May. However, the owners are saying that it’s more realistic that the MLB is going to return in the mid-summer, so we’re going to maybe be looking at more of early July, maybe mid July, even late June. We could possibly see the MLB comeback, but stay tuned the next couple of weeks. I’m sure we’ll have some things to say here on national sports.

And the one place where we’ve been getting just a lot of news last couple weeks if you’ve been listening to this national news segment, you’ve been hearing the NFL has had a lot of news — really the only news and sports. And one sad news is former Saints, Eagles, Rams, Oilers and Bill’s kicker Tom Dempsey passes away on Saturday, and he had the record for the longest field goal for 25-plus years. And another player passing away on Sunday, former Redskins and Browns running back Bobby Mitchell. It was cool, I got to, when I was a kid, got to go to the Redskins draft party and get a picture and a football signed by Bobby Mitchell. So sad to see him pass away. Also Tom Dempsey, two great players in the NFL but also amazing people. So prayers going out to their families, especially in the midst of everything that’s going on with COVID — Dempsey passing away from COVID-related illnesses. So definitely we’ll be praying, and lifting up prayers, for them.

But in other news, we have the NFL Draft continuing on April 23, that is a Thursday, and it’s going to go virtual. And according to nfl-dot-com, team personnel were furthermore advised to be separate locations, using phone and the Internet to communicate. And also leading club facilities are set to remain closed indefinitely, to ensure the NFL is in compliance with the current regulations due to the COVID-19 pandemic, and therefore clubs were advised to prepare to conduct the draft outside of their facility. So it’s interesting seeing a couple of stories of how there’s some teams are going to pubs to facilitate their draft, some players and teams have their war rooms are going to be at homes instead. So it’s just interesting how this is going to turn out. And if you want to hear more about this on, tune in on Friday at 11 o’clock on Spotify or Apple Podcast, where Beyond the Blitz, myself and Brandon Wells will be sitting down with Jim Wyatt, who is the staff writer and editor for the Tennessee Titans. And he’s going to talk a little bit about what COVID-19 has done for the NFL Draft process, so tune in for that on Friday. It’d be great if you guys could tune in and listen.

Speaking of the draft, we’re gonna talk a little bit more about EA Sports creating virtual moments for players walking across the stage and meeting Roger Goodell. And to me this is, you know, great for fans. I think this is more for fans’ perspective on watching it on ESPN, or NFL Network. It’s great for fans, but for players, I don’t know what that would really look like. Again, like you’re seeing the moment but you’re really not having that moment. So it’s going to be interesting to see if like Roger Goodell will like FaceTime in or Zoom in to different players to congratulate them on being drafted. It’s gonna be interesting, this draft process. Again, tune in to the NFL Draft, April 23, that’s a Thursday. It will be on NFL Network and ESPN. And yeah, it’s going to be very interesting virtual draft.

In other news, and we talked about free agency the past couple of weeks, not really a lot of free agency news right now, but one big free agent that’s still out there’s Jadeveon Clowney and we talked about the last couple of weeks how Jadeveon Clowney. I thought he was going to be a Seahawk hands-down, it looked like everything was pointing towards that: however, according to NFL-dot-com, right now, there’s a slim chance that Jadeveon Clowney will return to the Seattle Seahawks. So that leaves the door open for teams like the Tennessee Titans, like the Cleveland Browns to go for a pass rusher, especially with a Titans getting Vic Beasley. He returns a form of 2015, I mean 2015, Vic Beasley on one side and Jadeveon Clowney on the other, Titans front four will be unstoppable. But then if he goes to the Cleveland Browns Myles Garrett, again about a month ago reinstated into the NFL. Myles Garrett, on one side, to Jadeveon Clowney, on the other side — again, the Browns always full of talent. But will the talent pay off? Will they mesh together? We thought they would get a number two seed at least, or even win the division, but they were even close to the bottom of the division last year. So it’ll be interesting to see if they can make this signing to get themselves up there. And the Seattle Seahawks, I mean, they did sign Michael Ola to a three-year deal on a defensive end, but another guy I could see is Everson Griffin, who still is at the top of his game — had eight sacks last year I believe — and, but it would be a great option for them.

Another thing that the NFL, did they released their all decade team for the 2010 — so from 2010 season to 2019 — the best players and so you can check that out on NFL-dot-com, ESPN — everyone is talking about it, that was released two days ago. And some surprises — no Drew Brees. Aaron Rodgers and Tom Brady were the two quarterbacks selected to this team. And it’s interesting Drew Brees, not one all pro selection on the first team all pro — that is very interesting because he led the passing, the league in passing yards, I believe five times, and four times he had 5000 yards. I don’t know why Drew Brees is not on this list. Drew Brees is a top five quarterback. Again, plugging Beyond the Blitz, we talked about our top 10 quarterbacks. Drew Brees for me was number three on my list — actually number two on my list. So very surprised this. LeSean McCoy also not being on the list and very surprised with that one — with Darren Sproles being the flex, I thought LeSean McCoy would have been a better flex because he changed the game when it comes to running the ball but also receiving the ball. And then Andy Reid especially getting his Super Bowl this year. I think Andy Reid should have at least gotten a little bit of love. Pete Carroll definitely deserves to be on this list — one to two Super Bowls and one one and turned that Seahawks franchise around. But also Andy Reid, with both the Eagles and the Chiefs, just very consistent, always making the playoffs. And when he didn’t, I mean, he was released and let go, fired, by the Eagles and then just transformed the Chiefs. Andy Reid, you would definitely be on my all decade for the 2010s list. And that is it. That’s all we have to talk about today for sports. Go on BCVoice-dot-org, for all the latest news that we have that we’ve been posting — not a lot of sports-related stuff, but some good information, especially for you Bridgewater students who are trying to figure out on what’s going on around campus and with everything going on with COVID-19. Please stay safe, everyone, get your schoolwork done, finish the year off well. This is Justin Rogers signing off for national sports on BC Midweek radio

ZACHARY ROGERS 23:04
Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, my name is Zack Rogers and welcome to the BCVoice Midweek radio show. I’ll be doing some this segment of entertainment for y’all. And we’ll be talking mainly about video game news tonight because there’s not a lot of movies-slash-tv news going around since the Coronavirus has canceled a lot of events, especially movies coming out to movie theaters, and TV shows have halted production. So I’ll mainly, mostly, talk about video games tonight. First set of news is the PS5 controller was released yesterday, as of recording, yesterday. And it, it looks interesting. It, to me, it looks like an Xbox controller. Like usually the PS4 controller is very square, boxy, very symmetrical, but this one’s more curved like the Xbox controller and has a lot more features. But it still has that horizontal dual stick instead of the offset sticks, which I personally like the Xbox offset sticks. But what they’re doing with this is so they can have more comfortable grip for the for the hands, for whoever’s playing the games. And also this enables them to have more haptic feedback for with the players who are playing the game so they can be more immersed in the game. I don’t know. We’ll see. It definitely has a lot more — it definitely is better than the Xbox controller in the way that it recharges the battery instead of uses using batteries. You just recharge it instead of taking up batteries and putting in like the Xbox. So that’s the one advantage that it has over but we’ll see when both these release, we’ll see which one has the edge. Right now, Xbox Series X has the edge in specs, but we’ll see real life testing in a couple a couple months when they release.

On to other news. So for the Nintendo Switch, the Mario 35th anniversary is coming right around the corner. So what this means is there are rumors that, like old Mario games are going to be re-released and remastered very very soon — this summer. So according to Escape This magazine from VGC that Nintendo will review plans to release most of Super Mario’s 35-year back catalogue this year, remastered for Nintendo Switch. The three games that report focuses on are Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine and Super Mario Galaxy. While Mario 64 has managed to travel off of Nintendo 64 onto Nintendo DS as well as Wii and Wii U Virtual Console, the other two games were never ported outside the GameCube and Wii respectively. And this is interesting, I never played, never played Super Mario 64 or Sunshine, but I have played Galaxy and Galaxy’s so much fun. And if they brought all of those back and remastered them, that’d be amazing. As someone who just acquired a Switch, that’s very enticing to me that these would be rereleased, and that I can get into these the remaster games and into Galaxy again, which would be so much fun. So alongside this, with news on the upcoming Nintendo’s — Super Nintendo World — at Universal Studios, and the animated film as well as big as bringing the Super Mario manga to the west. Well, yeah, that’d be really cool. I love Universal if they added a Super Mario World, like alongside Harry Potter World, which is my favorite attraction, my favorite part of the park — that would be amazing. That adds to what Universal is already doing which is stellar.

So a bit more Nintendo news: According to the latest Famitsu’s numbers, Animal Crossing New Horizons sold 3,031,784 physical copies in Japan since it was released on March 20. That up considerably from 1.8 million it was sold in its first three days on the market in the region, says VG247, which is insane. Be, like you pretty much double — more than double — your numbers after a week, or two, of the game being out. And especially physical copies because of the Coronavirus, which is insane. And it shows how much people love Animal Crossing, including myself growing up on animal cross, Animal Crossing on the Wii, and then it coming out on the DS, and then Animal Crossing New Horizons on the Switch. But that’s all I have for y’all. I hope you guys stay safe during these times. I know updates are coming out of it being, like, getting worse every day, but just stay safe, wash your hands and all that jazz, and hope to see y’all next week. Goodbye.

BRANDON WELLS 28:52
And with that, our show has concluded we want to thank each and every one of our broadcasters for their dedicated work to bring you the most quality updates you can get, along with our listeners for tuning in. My name has been Brandon wells and you have been listening to the BCVoice Midweek Radio show at BCvoice-dot-org. Tune in next Wednesday at seven o’clock for a brand new show and thank you for listening.

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