I absolutely promise we’ll get back to player previews later this afternoon. Right after I try out the demo of PES ’16. But this feels like a good time to try and maybe attempt to take some of the heat out of all this that’s been building. And some of it is certainly my fault and unnecessary. This is always going to be a passionate subject. There are a lot of raw nerves exposed for a lot of people on this. We can’t remove all of the emotion, nor should we. But as someone who likes to think of himself as somewhat reasonable, I really shouldn’t let trolls bait me into a pure rage or tweet or write things without trying to carefully parse out what it is I really want to say (so no more tweeting and drinking for ol’ Shmuel, at least not about this. Which basically means no tweeting). That doesn’t mean there aren’t times when anger and rage are called for, because there are. I can just pick my spots a little better.

I understand that basically at the moment, there are two warring camps. And on something like this, it’s damn near impossible to find middle ground (and probably not at all). What comes next isn’t addressed to the over-creatined, fanboy, fratboy jerkoffs with their backwards white hats spewing filth from just about every pore. I don’t care what they think and never will, and nor should anyone else. But there is a strong group not near the fringes but near the middle that I and we have sometimes lumped in with that lunatic fringe (no, not Dean Ambrose). Perhaps that’s not totally fair. While I’m not here to “convert” anyone, I think it’s possible to build more understanding between us. Because believe it or not, on some level I do understand where you’re coming from. Keep reading, I’ll explain.