Gheorghe: The Blog

Reporting-ucopia

noreply@blogger.com (OBX dave) — Thu, 12 Nov 2026 11:00:00 +0000

Newsgathering isn’t linear. It’s messy and disorderly and time-consuming. It’s waiting, sometimes for things to occur, sometimes for people to talk, sometimes for information to come available. Sometimes for all three.

There’s no way to streamline reporting or to make it more efficient. That’s why it’s so dispiriting when the new breed of executives at newsgathering organizations fires those who do the work, in the name of profit seeking. They view news outlets strictly as businesses and employ business models of operation, which do not apply and in so doing diminish the product. Fewer reporters and editors mean fewer stories and less information, plain and simple.

It’s not a coincidence that the Framers included the importance of a free press in the First Amendment, nor that Thomas Jefferson once wrote that given a choice he would prefer newspapers without a government to government without newspapers.

This is all a Craig Kimbrel windup for a messy, disorderly post that began after I recently wrote about Bigfoot reporter Bob Woodward’s new book. The site’s benevolent* dictator asked if I might describe how the sausage is made, if you will, based on my experience. Unfortunately, I have no compelling stories of breaking news or investigative blockbusters, a la Woodward and Seymour Hersh.

*[Ed: You hear that, people? He thinks I'm fucking benevolent!]

I was a daily sports grunt for 30-plus years and mostly wrote about games and athletes and coaches. As you’re intelligent, informed folks who are familiar with “All The President’s Men” and “Spotlight,” you likely have an idea how it works: reporters cover events and talk to people; they do accompanying research; sometimes they unearth information, sometimes people tell them stuff and they then work to confirm and figure out what it all means; they try like hell to make deadline; they turn around and do it again the next day.

What I can do is tell you a few things I know, a few things I think and offer thoughts on a couple things I read recently. As for journalism thoughts and best practices: Be accurate. Jobs one, two and three. A reporter’s or news organization’s sole currency is credibility. If they get it wrong, particularly on a regular basis, or mislead and misinform they forfeit trust by both sources and readers, a death sentence for news outlets.

Which leads to … Own it. Nobody gets it right all the time, so when you make a mistake, admit it and take responsibility. Promise to do better, then do so. Be fair. Give people a chance to tell their stories, especially in the event of criticism or allegations of wrongdoing.

This doesn’t mean both sides always get or deserve equal time. Nazis and climate change deniers and moon landing-was-a-hoax types don’t merit elevated platforms. Of course, include the alleged murderer’s claim that he’s innocent, but facts and judgment carry the discussion.

Show up. Also known as Walk the Job. When subjects and sources see your face in a courtroom, locker room or government building every day, they know you’re serious and sincere about coverage and not some disembodied byline or face on a screen. Make facts inform your opinion. Not the other way around.

[Ed: FOG:TB T.J. Quinn's story about how he broke a major piece of news related to Barry Bonds' Grand Jury testimony is one of my favorite examples of Show Up, from a journalist's perspective. I've heard Quinn tell it in person, as, I'm sure, have KQ and Mr. KQ. Talk about being in the right place at the right time and doing the right thing.]

Write (or report) what you have. This has gotten trickier in an era of 24-hour news cycles and websites that can be constantly updated. But in the old days of hard deadlines, reporters had to interrupt legwork and research, and present what they knew. They still do, to a degree.

And just like the old days, get back to reporting a story when they’re done typing or talking. Use original sources and material whenever possible. If not, attribute. Use named sources. Anonymous sources are a last resort, but necessary, depending on the story. Anonymous sources don’t diminish a story’s credibility; they’re sometimes the reason a story gets told in the first place. A source may face retribution or harm by identifying themselves. In any case, explain why you’re using an anonymous source.

Operate in good faith. Don’t start with an agenda. Unbiased reporting is a myth. All reporting is biased, to some extent. Deciding what to report and emphasize is a judgment call. Many topics lend themselves to easy decision making. Some decisions and stories are filtered through a reporter’s or outlet’s ideological lean – left, right or center.

Which brings me to … The mid-term elections showcased reporting at both ends of the quality spectrum. Outlets in Texas and Mississippi did stellar work on Senate races that resulted in at least one flipped Republican seat (votes were still being counted in Mississippi, where Dem Scott Colom led by 3,000 votes out of more than 937,000 ballots cast as of Wednesday). Then there was whatever they were doing at the Free Press, the alternative news site with the outsized, provocative founder.

The conservative, Israel-friendly site has had a bit of a wigout over the election of seven Muslims to Congress. Reporter Olivia Reingold, who has stepped in it on previous occasions, covered Senator-elect Abdul El-Sayed’s election night gathering and posted to social media that she saw attendees sporting designer shoes and bags and clothing and expensive watches. She attached a pic of a woman’s nicely shod feet and handbag that she later admitted she had used AI to enhance. For what reason and what she was attempting to convey remain a mystery. Not to be outdone, her colleague Maya Sulkin posted a video of herself in which she stated that El-Sayed had delivered his victory speech in Arabic. He did not. He stated his name and said a few Arabic words, but he delivered his speech in English.

Sulkin’s video was taken down and the Free Press issued a correction. Why bring up a couple of embarrassingly bad posts from a fringe site? Well, the site was founded by Bari Weiss as a supposed alternative to the lazy, biased mainstream media. It was bought by Paramount chief and billionaire David Ellison for a ridiculously inflated $150 million, after which he made her the (unqualified) head of CBS News with the unspoken mandate of softening coverage of the Trump administration, Israel and conservative causes in general. She has shaken up the news division and its flagship show, “60 Minutes,” firing staffers and influencing coverage.

Weiss lent the CBS News name to an attempt to link several of El-Sayed’s deleted tweets to 9/11. For the record, his tweets were from 2020 during the pandemic, and he wrote that as COVID deaths climbed toward and well beyond the total from 9/11, he hoped the nation would similarly mobilize in the name of health instead of a War on Terror. Pretty innocuous, but Weiss wanted to find ways to link El-Sayed to 9/11. Do so often enough, imply that his remarks were nefarious and worthy of further “scrutiny” and boy oh boy, suddenly you’ve got yourself a terrorist unworthy of election. Baldly racist and misleading. Another reminder to dig beyond headlines and a once-worthy outlet’s reputation.

Finally, a recent Washington Post column by Megan McArdle illustrates the cynical partisan landscape in which national-level journalism often finds itself. The Republican party, she wrote, might actually benefit from the Blue Wave in the mid-term elections. Democratic control of Congress won’t be pleasant for the GOP, “so I don’t blame you for failing to look on the bright side,” she wrote. “But there is a bright side. In fact, there are two.” Do tell.

Republicans have a chance to remake the party and move away from Donald Trump, she wrote, due to his age and waning influence because of his lame-duck status. “Outside groups, donors and GOP politicians will start looking for leaders who don’t lose elections,” she wrote. No mention of shedding themselves of a mendacious, grifting narcissist who they enabled for the past decade, of identifying candidates who are more than pigs at the trough. It’s age and actuarial tables.

Then comes the kicker, as she spoke directly to Republicans: “Democrats will have the House and the Senate. They will use them to do things you hate. I can’t erase that pain, but perhaps I can ease it by pointing out that if they win the trifecta by capturing the White House in 2028, they will almost certainly end up holding the bag for the looming entitlement crisis.” In late 2032, she pointed out, the Social Security trust fund will run out of money and six months later, the Medicare hospital insurance trust fund will be depleted, causing substantial benefit cuts in both and likely forcing large and unpopular tax increases.

“You’ve been hearing about it for decades,” she wrote, “but the day when the trust funds are exhausted is almost upon us. If Democrats are in charge when it happens, that will be on them, not you.” And there you have it. Never mind that both parties have kicked the can down the road for decades and are equally culpable. Never mind that this century Republicans occupied the White House and controlled both chambers of Congress for 20 of those 26 years, so presumably could have steered us away from the oncoming fiscal cliff. If the GOP simply waits out the next election cycle or two, they can blame the Dems for Meemaw’s and Pap-Pap’s benefit cuts. Voila! Back in power!

See, it’s all about timing and leveraging adversity so that your side wins. And here you thought politics was about public service and journalism was about informing the public. Silly you.

In Praise of Badass Women, A Recurring Feature

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 10 Nov 2026 15:05:53 +0000

This week's episode of Ready to Play* on The Waterfront Radio (which drops today, a day or so later than normal, because we had some production challenges, namely that our only producer was required by the man to do work) features tunes related to the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL). The DJ got into the spirit (pun only intended after the fact) by attending yesterday's match between the Portland Thorns and the hometown team (which is the Washington Spirit).

*I hadn't realized how all over the place it is until I listened to it all the way through this morning. If you like your radio eclectic, you'll enjoy.

The episode kicks off with Beyonce's "Run the World (Girls)", as it's a celebration of badass women. That sort of celebration is something we do here, too. Which is a nice segue into the topic of this post.

The Golden State Valkyries won their first WNBA championship on Halloween, defeating the Atlanta Dream in Game Seven, 68-63.

Natalie Nakase is the Valks' head coach. After stints as an assistant with teams as disparate as the Los Angeles Clippers, Las Vegas Aces, Tokyo Apache (Japan), and Agua Caliente (G-League), she was named the first coach in Golden State's history on October 10, 2024.

She was named WNBA Coach of the Year after leading her expansion squad to a 23-21 record and a berth in the playoffs. Nakase was the first coach of an expansion squad to win the award. And she was just getting started.

The Valkyries finished the 2026 regular season with a 32-12 record, good for second overall in the 15-team league, one game behind the Minnesota Lynx. Golden State topped an up-and-coming Dallas Wings team, two games to one, in the quarterfinals, then easily dispatched the defending champion Aces in a three-game semifinal sweep.

Nakase's bunch were crowned champions after a brutal seven-game series with a very tough Atlanta Dream team, who took a step up this year after adding Angel Reese to a talented roster. Neither team led by more than one game in the back and forth set. True to form, all four Valks victories came with the winning score under 70, and all three of the Dream's wins happened when they were able to push the pace and get the game closer to 80+.

That's Golden State in a nutshell. Nakase herself was a hard-nosed, undersized (5'2") point guard who walked on at UCLA and became a three-year starter. Her team mirrors her on the court - they play their asses off. The Valkyries were 14th in the WNBA in points per game and dead last in shooting percentage. They took and made fewer free throws than all but one team. They were middling in rebounding stats. No Valk was in the league's 30 in points per game, nor top 20 in rebounds per game, and not a single starter cracked the top 50 in field goal percentage.

At the same time, they led the league in Defense Rating and Net Rating, were tops in turnovers created, and 4th in steals. They were the slowest team in terms of pace. It's a goddamn grind to play Natalie Nakase's team, and every contributor knows and plays her role. Every coach dreams of getting her/his players to sacrifice for the collective.

In Norse mythology, valkyries are meant to be fierce woman warriors who escort the dead from the battlefield to Valhalla. According to legend, they have no named leader, but work as one. Damn. I guess Natalie Nakase's a valkyrie her ownself. And she might just fuck around and be one of the first women to be an NBA head coach. Maybe she'll take over for this guy, who'd probably vouch for her.

EMERGENCY TRIBE SPORTS POST (UPDATED)

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Sun, 08 Nov 2026 11:32:00 +0000

Marls texted me on Sunday in the wake of W&M's dispiriting 41-14 home loss to Holy Cross on Saturday with a take that requires further inquiry.

"This could be the worst team in Tribe history."

To which I replied "Onassis!"

In my defense, we were in the midst of a comedy rhombus with London-based Whit riffing on the fact that the Commanders' third-string quarterback is a fella with Greek heritage. Speaking of dispiriting losses.

Marls got me thinking, and one doesn't have to go too deep to determine that - at the very least - this Tribe team is in the conversation for worst team in the lifespan of Gheorghie's as Tribe fans. That dates back to the autumn of 1988, when Whit, Jersey Dave, and I first walked the sylvan grounds of The College of William and Mary.

That year, the ninth of Jimmye Laycock's 38 seasons in Williamsburg, the Tribe was an independent playing at the I-AA level. W&M left the Southern Conference in 1977 when the NCAA divided its top division into I-A and I-AA.

The 1988 edition of the Tribe had an up and down campaign. Two years removed from Laycock's first NCAA Tournament appearance, W&M lost a close opener at UVA before running off three wins in a row, including a 10-3 win on the road against 17th-ranked JMU. They lost a heartbreaker at no. 9 Delaware, beat New Hampshire and tied no. 17 Villanova before heading to Sanford Stadium in Athens to take on Georgia.

That game against the Bulldogs is one of the vivid memories of my freshman year. We listened to it on the radio in my dorm room. I assume Whit and Dave were there, but I can't be certain of that part. W&M was tied with mighty Georgia, 7-7, at the end of the first quarter and we could dream. Fate had other ideas, and UGA outscored us 35-10 in the second frame on the way to a 59-24 victory. Still, there were positive takeaways from the game. Only Mississippi State scored more points against Georgia that season. And the Tribe generate 462 yards in total offense to a team that allowed an average of 355 against an SEC schedule that year.

Lots of offense and not a ton of concern with defense, the hallmark of the Laycock era, made for an entertaining rooting experience during my time in Williamsburg. W&M finished the 1988 campaign with home wins against Wofford and Colgate before falling to Richmond in the oldest rivalry in the South. That year, the school decided to decline a bid to the I-AA playoffs and accept the opportunity to play against a team of Japanese All-Stars in the first-ever Epson Ivy Bowl in Yokohama, Japan, where W&M won, 73-3.

W&M had two more excellent seasons in 1989 and 1990, reaching the NCAA Tournament both years and advancing to the quarterfinals in my junior year before falling to Central Florida. The 1991 team lost all five of its games against ranked opponents (including a 59-35 Natrone Means-led doozy of a game against I-A no. 20 UNC) and missed out on the postseason. That season did have a silver lining, though. I spent the season working in the press box for home games, responsible for tracking each drive and compiling the drive chart for the working media. One of those ink-stained wretches was Dave Fairbank of the Daily-Press. After the final home game of the season, a 35-13 hammering at the hands of a much-faster Samford squad, my Sports Information Office colleagues and I adjourned to Paul's Deli with the aforementioned Fairbank and a few other scribes, where I got my first taste of drinking beers with professionals. No idea if OBX Dave remembers that afternoon, but I certainly enjoyed the parts of it I recall.

Jesus. Where was I? Right, the really terrible 2026 William and Mary football squad. Sorry, got wandering down memory lane for a minute.

Bottom line: this is the worst W&M team of my Tribe-rooting lifetime. The 2012 and 2017 teams went 2-9, but both of them were competitive. The 2012 team lost six games by a touchdown or less, led Maryland until the final minutes in College Park, and lost in double-overtime on the road against no. 4 JMU. The 2017 squad was bad, but they were in the game in the fourth quarter on all but two occasions (against top-ranked JMU and no. 21 New Hampshire).

The insane ending to W&M's season-opener notwithstanding, the campaign has been one miserable outing after another. To wit:

A week after benefitting from four Villanova turnovers and 15 Wildcat penalties in their wild win, W&M nearly blew a 22-0 fourth quarter lead at home against Delaware State, stopping the Hornets on downs in the final 90 seconds to preserve a 22-15 win. The Tribe was outgained by a 366-187 margin, recorded 10 first downs to DSU's 26, and almost lost despite a +5 turnover advantage.
Two wins in two and feeling good headed to Lehigh. Until the Mountain Hawks scored 30 points in the game's first 21 minutes and cruised to a 44-20 win. Only got outgained 486-342 in this one, so...progress?
Not so fast, my friend. Woeful Fordham came to town the following week, their 0-3 record in tow, and proceeded to put 52 points on W&M. They've scored 37 in their other five games combined. The Rams rushed for 428 yards that day. They've gained 417 total in their remaining contests to date. Their win against the Tribe remains their only victory on the season.
The less we say about the following week's 62-7 loss at Duke, the better. We will note that Marls was in Durham with his Duke-alum wife and chose not to wear green and gold. No dummy, Marls.
Holy Cross coming to town at 1-4 with a defense that had allowed at least 30 points in each of its first five games seemed ripe for a get-well opportunity for W&M. Ah, well, nevertheless. The Crusaders led, 31-7, early in the third quarter and won, 41-14. The Tribe gained 31 yards on 29 carries and 253 total yards against a team that had allowed an average of 412 coming into the matchup.
W&M is being outscored by an average of 20.17 points per game (and they've fucking won twice!). Opponents are outgaining the Tribe 479.2 to 294.3 yards per game (269.0 to 91.3 on the ground). Jesus (William) Mary and Joseph.

It's not so much that the Tribe are losing. That happens. It's more that they've been absolutely uncompetitive for four consecutive weeks, the last two against dreadful teams at home. It's frankly embarrassing, and we've never been able to say that about W&M football in my 38 years of rooting for the Green and Gold.

Maybe it gets better, as the Tribe face a poor N.C. Central team and winless Georgetown in the next two. There's no evidence that it will though, and in fact, it sure seems that this staff is ill-equipped to deal with the realities of modern college football, which means we could be in for a long stretch of dismal football.

Onassis!

----------------------------------------

November 7 Update

One month later, and we can conclusively say that it did NOT get better. Since we last checked in on the Tribe, here's what's happened:

Despite being outgained, 439 to 221, while allowing 6.6 yards per carry and 282 rushing yards and losing the turnover battle, 2-0, W&M somehow managed a 17-14 win on the road at N.C. Central. Some smoke and mirrors shit.

The magic did not repeat itself the following weekend, when Mike London's boys couldn't hold a fourth quarter lead on Homecoming Weekend against a middle Georgetown squad. The Hoyas took possession at midfield with 1:27 remaining and scored 49 seconds later without using a timeout. The point after gave the visitors a 28-27 victory. The winning touchdown came on a 4th and goal from the 10.

W&M got the ball back with two timeouts remaining (having taken one on defense before Georgetown's touchdown) and promptly threw an interception on the first play of their drive.

As has become customary, the Tribe allowed Georgetown more total yards than their season average (416 versus 328.9) and gained fewer yards than the Hoyas opponents average (352 versus 389). It's goddamn uncanny at this point

The Green and Gold traveled to Hamilton, NY seeking a rebound at Colgate, where the Raiders were coming off three consecutive losses. W&M gave up 519 yards and gained 142, allowed 30 first downs while picking up 7, and got boatraced, 37-0. You won't believe this, but Colgate came into the game averaging 341.8 yards of total offense and allowing 302.5

This weekend, Lafayette brought its 3-5 record to Williamsburg, and W&M pounced on the Leopards immediately. The Tribe led, 14-0, after Andrew King scampered 39 yards for a touchdown with 11:44 remaining in the second quarter. The home team had gained 186 yards on 16 plays at that point, ripping off 11.6 yards per snap.

W&M ran 39 plays over the game's final 41:44. The Tribe managed 94 yards over that span. Meanwhile, Lafayette kicked a field goal late in the second quarter, scored on a 50-yard run in the third, then drove 80 yards in seven plays before finding the end zone on a 12-yard pass with 4:41 remaining. W&M had two cracks at a comeback, but gained a single yard on seven plays while punting and turning the ball over on downs. The Leopards closed out their 19-14 victory with a trio of kneeldowns.

What of the yards gained and allowed, you ask? I'll give you one guess, friends! Lafayette outgained the Tribe, 401-275. On the season, the Leopards average 323.8 and allow 412.1. Same as it ever was for the 2026 William and Mary outfit.

When we wrote the initial portion of this post, we concluded that this year's team is the worst since 1988, when my fandom began. Now, we're prepared to amend that, regardless of what happens the next two weeks, this is the worst team in the school's history, dating all the way back to 1693.

Over those final two weeks, W&M plays at home against 1-9 Bucknell and on the road against old rivals Richmond. Lord have mercy if they can't win the first one, 'cause there will be no mercy whatsoever against Spidey, who'll likely be smarting from a three-game losing streak.

My prediction? Pain.

Am I...Maturing? Let's Ask Sir Patrick Stewart.

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 06 Nov 2026 11:15:00 +0000

I sat down at my desk to write a very Schadenfreudian post reflecting on the results of the midterm elections and the across-the-board shock from the right wing at the depth of their drubbing. I had a lot of material. And I was ready to use it.

A funny thing happened on the way to the online forum. I realized that I'm wearing my What Would Dolly Do? t-shirt. Dolly would most certainly not mock people in their time of despair. Hell, we ourselves wrote not six weeks ago about how she went about quietly and intentionally doing the right thing. She wasn't perfect. For example, I'm sure she once said, "bless your heart" to someone in a fit of pique. Which probably landed like a megaton bomb on its target.

In any case, I felt like a dick wearing this shirt and mocking people's pain. Even if they deserve it. So I cast about for another topic. Wouldn't you know it, another Dolly-like example showed me the way. Not a clone, per se, though he did nearly run afoul of The Borg.

Sir Patrick Stewart passed last week at the age of 86. Much as with Dolly Parton, I'd heard stories about Stewart's kindness and genuine caring for his fellow man. And just as in Dolly's case, I didn't know the half of it.

Upon news of his death, story after story flooding social media that revealed the great actor's character, most in moments seen by just a very few. Here are some of the remembrances and videos I found most fascinating, and in a couple of cases, just silly (which also says a lot about the classically trained actor's sense of his own self-importance):

Sir Ian McKellan remembered his friend.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Ian McKellen (@ianmckellen)

A fan recalls a story from 2009.

Patrick Stewart story: Night before my GCSE Chemistry, I waited for Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart backstage after Waiting For Godot. Patrick asked what’s in my bag, I told him about my exam. So Stewart and McKellen told the Green Room to “shush” as they both tested me on the Periodic Table. RIP

[image or embed]
— Alexander Fox (@alexanderfox1.bsky.social) October 29, 2026 at 4:04 PM

Here he is answering a fan's question about the things outside of acting that make him proudest. He talks about his work combatting domestic violence and PTSD.

I think he could've been a member of Monty Python's Flying Circus if he'd chosen that path.

Here he is at the National Press Club answering an important question about Jean-Luc Picard's accent.

A story about his penis, as told to Graham Norton while Hugh Jackman looks on, jaw dropped.

Thomas Lennon on Rich Eisen's show talking about working with Stewart on a commercial.

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A post shared by Rich Eisen (@richeisen)

As with Dolly, we'd do well to remember Sir Patrick's kindness and generosity of spirit.

Bluenami

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Wed, 04 Nov 2026 15:47:14 +0000

Deceased Nag and Cudgel Alert, Journalism Edition

noreply@blogger.com (OBX dave) — Mon, 02 Nov 2026 13:00:00 +0000

Just in time for the holidays, primo Washington D.C., snoop Bob Woodward drops another doorstop about the powerful folks in whose orbit he’s circled for the past five decades. His twenty-fourth book, however, is a bit of a departure.

Rather than scrupulous reporting about the current President and power brokers and recent events, he presents a memoir of his life’s work. Woodward discloses previously unidentified sources and back stories that went into the making of many of his bestsellers, from his early days at the Washington Post investigating Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal to Donald Trump’s two terms in office.

The book is titled “Secrets: A Reporter’s Memoir” and within its 592 pages is a litany of prominent and behind-the-scenes figures who leaked sensitive information and provided invaluable background, a kind of celebrity kiss-and-tell for the D.C. journalism set. There’s Henry Kissinger and former CIA director William Casey over here, and Sen. Lindsey Graham over there. There’s career government insiders such as Brent Scowcroft and Lawrence Eagleburger and Bush 41 counsel C. Boyden Gray and former Nixon lawyers who defended him publicly but were privately repulsed by the man. There’s a slew of operatives and high-level advisors that Woodward cultivated as sources and who provided info for years, if not decades, and are still doing so. He had confidentiality agreements with many of them, promising not to reveal their identities until after they died, though he said some who are still alive gave him permission to name them.

I’ve kvetched about Woodward previously, so this may come off as warmed over grump casserole with a fresh balsamic drizzle. The man’s reporting chops and access are impeccable, but I find his practice of holding onto information for books rather than daily newspaper reporting to be problematic, if not harmful to the public at large. Granted, that’s frequently how he gets the access and info he does, by agreeing not to publish in real time, but it feels like insider back-scratching.

Woodward has often said that if he learned something that had immediate impact, the paper takes precedence and he would report it. However, that doesn’t quite square with his practices. For example, he sat on conversations with Trump in the early days of the COVID pandemic when Trump told him that he’d been briefed on the virus’s potential severity, then watched as the President dismissed and downplayed the disease in the coming months as millions were affected. He learned that Trump had quietly sent Vladimir Putin personal COVID tests during the height of the pandemic and had regular conversations with Vladdy after he was out of office, material that wasn’t made public until another book’s release just before the 2024 election.

I have less issue with this upcoming book than many of his previous ones. Yeah, it’s a bit of a vanity project, but a guy of Woodward’s stature is entitled to a victory lap. The fact that he pulls back the curtain on who talked to him and how he obtained the stories he did actually encourages me, that people in power are still willing to talk to reporters. Whether driven by a sense of civic duty or ego and status is irrelevant. Woodward reminds us that reporting, quality reporting, remains essential, even if the person doing so causes molars to grind.

In Our Joe Marler Era

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 30 Oct 2026 10:08:00 +0000

I first became acquainted with Joe Marler via the Netflix docu-series Six Nations: Full Contact. At the time of the second season, which covered the 2024 tournament, Marler was nearing the end of his playing career. He'd later retire from both international and club rugby in November of 2024 after earning 95 caps and three Six Nations titles for England and winning two English Premiership Rugby trophies in 286 appearances for Harlequins. mostly as a prop.

On the show, he came across as the type of garrulous big fella (he was listed at 6'0", 264 lbs in the lineup for his final match for England - just look at that absolute unit at right) with which you'd be familiar: funny, reveling in taking the piss, aware of his mass and the size of his physical and psychological presence. In the context of a rugby squad, he fit like a glove.

Enjoy this 10-minute interlude of Marler winding up various opponents, referees, and teammates while in uniform.

The next time I caught him was in a far different environment. Marler competed in the first season of Celebrity Traitors in 2025 alongside UK sports and entertainment royalty like Stephen Fry, Celia Imrie, Tom Daley, and Nick Mohammed. He made it to the show's final four contestants before being banished.

On Traitors, he was phenomenal, a burly body with an inquisitive, kind, and slightly off-kilter mien. He held his own in a group of outsized personalities and sharp minds, even though he claimed in an interview with The Guardian that his secret to success was, "A hybrid of being dumb and being able to play dumber than I am got me as far as it did – plus my competitive nature."

And now, it seems the big lad is taking over.

Marler and comedian Jake Bhardwaj started their podcast, Joe Marler Will See You Now, a year ago. The conceit of the show is that Marler is a psychiatrist who questions/interviews guests from a broad range of pursuits. In the show's short run, guests as diverse as Prince Harry, Tom Hiddleston, Usain Bolt, the aforementioned Fry, Imrie, and Mohammed, and the criminally camera-shy Jason Kelce (we kid because we love - the recent Kelce episode kills, as you'll see below - he and Marler are kindred spirits separated by an ocean).

Here are a couple of bits from that Jason Kelce appearance with Marler and Bhardwaj:

The say a rolling stone gathers no moss, and it seems that's true for a rolling 19 stone. The BBC just announced that Marler and his Celebrity Traitors castmate and now fast friend Joe Wilkinson (an English comedian and actor) are filming a six-episode travel series that follows the pair as they navigate British waterways in a barge.

In addition to the podcast and the buddy travelogue, Marler also works as Performance Director for Team England Rugby (TER). TER was established by former England players as a mechanism to enable players to communicate collectively with the England Rugby Football Union, the nation's governing body for the sport. Marler's remit in the role is to advocate for the player welfare in negotiations with the RFU.

He's been outspoken in recent years about his own mental health struggles. A June 2025 article in The Independent noted, "The Harlequins prop admitted he would direct his emotions, which manifested into “rage and anger” out on Daisy, his wife of eight years, with whom he shares four children: Pixie, Maggie, Felix, and Jasper. “She was heavily pregnant at the time, and I would wreck the house,” Marler recalled. “It was like, f***, I’m actually destroying all that’s good around me.”"

Amidst the general geniality and humor in his podcast, Marler makes it a point to try to remove the stigma associated with men seeking help for mental health issues. For that reason and many more, I'm rooting for the former loose head prop to make it even bigger. Somehow, I think he's gonna be just fine.

Wrenball: A Preview

noreply@blogger.com (OBX dave) — Wed, 28 Oct 2026 11:56:41 +0000

It isn’t starting from scratch, but Year Three of the Brian Earl Experience* with William and Mary basketball comes awfully close. The Tribe returns no significant players from last season’s 20-win group, and Earl and his staff brought in 13 new players.

*Photo may not be the correct Brian Earl, but coaching in Williamsburg does tend to change a fella

It’s a stark departure from his first two teams in Williamsburg, where there were contributors and holdovers both from the previous regime and from his first season that helped integrate the newcomers. “In the last four years, from Cornell to here, is a completely different world,” Earl told reporters on conference media day and likened recruiting now to “speed dating.”

He continued, “We do a lot of work to make sure we’re bringing in the right caliber player but also character kid to the university and asking the right people the right questions about these things. So it is very different and we’re hoping we made some of the right choices.”

The choices will be on display starting Nov. 2, when the Tribe opens at home against Division III Bridgewater. The new group is heavy on guards and wings capable of playing Earl’s up-tempo style that features full-court pressure, spacing and perimeter shooting. He said that “virtually everyone on the roster will make an open 3,” but described the team’s makeup as a mix of shooters and creators.

Earl said that W&M is a little longer and more athletic than his first two teams, which he hopes will translate to effective defensive pressure and more transition baskets on offense. Expect scoring balance similar to last season, when the Tribe had six players average between eight and 12 points per game and was 31st nationally in scoring (83.1 ppg) and 44th in effective field goal percentage – a stat that reflects both two- and three-point shooting.

Among the notable additions are 6-4 graduate transfer Tre Blassingame (pictured at left), 6-5 graduate transfer Josh Baldwin, 6-6 sophomore Gavin Ward, 6-8 sophomore Jesse McIntosh, 6-7 junior John Roland and 6-10 junior Stas Sivka. Blassingame, an Idaho native, was a member of Fairleigh Dickinson’s 2023 NCAA Tournament team as a freshman and played his next two years at the University of Idaho, where he averaged 3.9 points and shot 38 percent from 3-point range last season. Baldwin played three years at Cornell, Earl’s former school, and averaged 7.9 points and 4.1 rebounds per game. Ward was a standout junior college player in South Carolina and averaged 17.8 ppg while shooting 42 percent from deep. McIntosh is an Australia native who averaged 7.5 points and 3.5 rebounds in his one season at South Dakota. Roland was an all-conference Division II player in Florida who averaged 13.9 points and nine rebounds per game. Sivka is a Slovenian who played his first two years at George Mason and provides size inside.

Others expected to see minutes are 6-4 junior Nilavan Daniels, who played two years at Providence, and 6-3 soph Jayden Daniels, who began his career at West Virginia. The Tribe’s non-conference schedule is highlighted by a game at defending national champ Michigan, a trip to Ole Miss and contests against traditional rivals Richmond, James Madison and Delaware before diving into the Coastal Athletic Association schedule at the end of December. W&M was picked to finish sixth in the preseason poll, which is where it finished a year ago.

Given the newness of the roster, expect Earl to tinker with lineups and playing time over the first two months to identify effective combinations and player rotations. Blassingame said it’s been a good group that’s eager to learn and improve. “I think ultimately when you have a bunch of guys who don’t really care about (their statistics),” he said, “who want to see the program excel, who want to see wins in the win column, it’s easy for guys to buy in.”

Big Doings on the Waterfront

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 26 Oct 2026 16:45:41 +0000

As you (should) know, our man in the Hague (the one in Norfolk, not the one the Trump Administration is gonna get familiar with soon enough, good Lord willing and the creek don't rise) started a radio station on Live365 recently.

It's called The Waterfront. Here's how the management describes it: "Whitney's record collection, intelligently programmed. Punk, new wave, indie, classic rock, soul, funk, reggae, deep cuts, old favorites, new discoveries and musical rabbit holes. No algorithm—just great records, unexpected connections and the occasional useless bit of music trivia from Les Coole."

I've been listening to it quite frequently since it hit the airwaves, much to the detriment of my Spotify statistics. Whitney's record collection is a hell of a thing, as you'd probably imagine. Thirty-six thousand individual tracks spanning more than 2,500 hours (~110 days!) across as many genres as you can name. It's an eclectic listen, to grossly understate things.

Starting today, The Waterfront is getting a little more crowded. Yours truly asked the station's proprietor if there was room for a new show, and he graciously created some space. Starting today, and every day forward at noon and 6:00 pm, tune into Ready to Play, hosted by GM Russ (my DJ name, which combines a sports reference with my grandfather's nickname - his given name was Seymour, so I think you can understand why he chose a different daily name). Each week we'll offer a different sports-related (sometimes maybe sports-adjacent) theme.

The first episode celebrates the 2026 World Series, with songs connected in some way to the Brewers and
Rays. Here's the playlist:

John Fogerty, "Centerfield"
Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, "The Waiting"
Violent Femmes, "American Music"
Seven Mary Three, "My My"
They Might Be Giants, "The Famous Polka"
Doechii, "Anxiety"
BoDeans, "You Don't Get Much"
Ray Charles, "St. Pete Florida Blues"
Bon Iver, "Holocene"
The Hold Steady, "Killer Parties"
Trapper Schoepp, "Wildfire"
John Prine, "Angel from Montgomery"
Brother Ali, "Uncle Sam Goddamn"
The Lemonheads, "It's a Shame About Ray"

Listen in, tell us what you think in the comments. Put me in coach. I'm ready to play.

Election F*ckery, Tar Heel Update

noreply@blogger.com (OBX dave) — Fri, 23 Oct 2026 14:17:00 +0000

We’ve related examples of how Republicans here in my home state of North Carolina attempt to tilt the playing field ahead of the upcoming mid-term elections. Those efforts continue apace because no disruptor worth their “Stop The Steal” merch waits until Election Day or the tabulating room afterward. Better to leverage for desired outcomes beforehand.

We’ll keep this (relatively) brief, as y’all come to this site for political yammering the way buffet chowhounds go for the steamed veggies. [Ed: I disagree, good sir. The Gheorghieverse contains multitudes!]

The current commotion involves mail-in voting. Thousands of mail-in ballots already have been disqualified because they were deemed improperly sealed, and thousands more are likely to be rejected. North Carolina was the first state to send out mail-in ballots, beginning Sept. 3. That same day, the State Board of Elections issued new rules to county election officials, among them that an unsealed inner envelope was grounds to disqualify the ballot.

The state has a two-envelope system for mail ballots, implemented in 2023 when it adopted a voter ID requirement. The ballot itself is supposed to be inserted in one envelope, with a copy of the voter’s ID tucked into a sleeve on the outside of that envelope. The first envelope is required to be sealed and then tucked into a second, larger envelope and sealed.

Prior to this election cycle, mail ballots in which the first envelope wasn’t sealed but the larger envelope was, were counted. No more. This is all supposedly in the name of “election integrity.” A woman named Hilary Harris Klein, senior counsel for the Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s voting rights program, attended a public ballot canvassing meeting in one NC county where officials rejected ballots with unsealed inner envelopes. “There doesn’t appear to be any evidence of tampering or fraud or anything,” she told the New York Times. “From my perspective, they’re just tossing ballots with no evidence of a security issue.”

President Griftalot has railed against mail-in ballots for years, especially after losing the 2020 election to Joe Biden, claiming with zero evidence that they are subject to tampering and fraud. Trump’s critics say that he’s targeted mail ballots because more Democrats vote by mail than Republicans. Indeed, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Election Data and Science Lab found that 37 percent of Democrats voted by mail in 2024, compared to 24 percent of Republicans. The gap was wider during the pandemic year of 2020, when 60 percent of Democrats voted by mail, compared to 32 percent of Republicans. The non-partisan States United Democracy Center, in a study of primary voting in ten states, found that 26 percent of Democrats voted by mail, compared to 18 percent of Republicans in 2024.

In a purple state such as North Carolina, where recent Presidential and U.S. Senate elections have been decided by the slimmest of margins, it becomes statistically advantageous for Republicans to reject mail-in ballots in the belief that it will eliminate a larger swath of Democrat votes. GOP disenfranchisement is simply collateral damage and the price of doing business.

It goes without saying that we’ll be better off when Trump and his coterie of supplicant jizzpuddles* exit the stage. The fear is that the movement he spawned and the mechanisms in place – courts packed with compliant judges on lifetime appointment, state and local election boards increasingly staffed by 2020 election deniers and proponents of the Big Lie, partisan legislative bodies hamstrung by design – will break our system and outlast us all.

* Supplicant Jizzpuddles is the name of Dooger's Swedish Death Metal collective

Ichiro!

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Thu, 22 Oct 2026 11:56:59 +0000

Wishing a very happy 53rd birthday to G:TB's all-time favorite ballplayer.

The video below was shot in July. Dude looks like he could still get 200 hits in a season.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by オリコンニュース【公式】 (@oricon.news)

David Frum Reads G:TB

noreply@blogger.com (zman) — Mon, 19 Oct 2026 15:45:01 +0000

... and we don't even get a tip of the hat.

This Is How It's Done

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Sat, 17 Oct 2026 10:02:00 +0000

It is so goddamn refreshing to see Democrats, at long last, finding some sort of spine as the 2026 midterm elections head to a close. Refreshing, and kinda disappointing, because they could've done this years ago and instead allowed Republicans to define toughness as macho posturing bullshit.

Certainly, this newfound lack of fucks to give is primarily the province of newcomers. Like Michigan senatorial candidate Abdul El-Sayed, who fucking nails it:

how does ohio boy vance keep walking right into the buzzsaw of one of the midwest's most Ancient Tribal Hatreds. dog no one in michigan cares what your OSU ass has to say

[image or embed]
— dr. rich traditions, JD (@helldude.bsky.social) October 15, 2026 at 8:11 PM

The author of that Bluesky skeet goes on to drop some absolutely spot-on analysis:

More El-Sayed. More Coach Walz calling 'em freaks. And no more pearl-clutching Jeffries, Schumer, and the centrist Dem establishment.

Sweep the leg. Humiliate them. And make them wear your contempt like a goddamn hairshirt.

24? Fuck That: 138!

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 16 Oct 2026 10:05:00 +0000

Because you're a well-informed and curious bunch, you likely saw today's reporting that the College Football Playoff is nearing an agreement to expand the current 12-team tournament to a 24-team version starting in 2027.

According to ESPN, the revised format will likely have, "...19 at-large bids, the Power 4 conference champions as determined by each league and the highest-ranked Group of 6 team." You should read this as "We're now going to allow 23 Power 4 league members (and their leagues) to have access to the money that's flowing like and oil-field gusher from our broadcast partner and other sponsors." They'll likely say it differently, and make some hand-wavey motions about including non-Power 4 schools in consideration for at-large bids.

At the moment, New Mexico of the Mountain West has the pole position as the highest-ranked Group of 6 squad in ESPN's College Football Power Index - the Lobos are 38th. For the sake of journalistic accuracy, we'll note without comment that the current second- highest-ranked non-Notre Dame team outside of the Power 4 is 51st-ranked James Madison. Good luck with that at-large bid, Dukes!

We learned long ago that our thoughtful and logical expression of the flaws in college football's postseason structure is more pointless than Hakeem Jeffries' press releases, but since when do quixotic quests scare us? Indeed, friends, as a gallant knight once said, "Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!"

So a'tilting we shall go.

We see your 24 team playoff and raise you even more madness. I give you The All-Encompassing College Football Extravaganza Sponsored by Gheorghe: The Blog. 138 teams, 14 weeks, wall to wall football with nobody left out. Hope springs eternal for every FBS team each year.

Here's how it works:

Each of the 138 FBS teams (or however many there are in any given year) play four games in four weeks from the first Saturday of September to start the season - three against conference opponents and one intersectional matchup. After the fourth week, everyone gets a bye (big week for soccer and baseball programming). Said differently for our fans in the Deep South, On the Fifth Week, We Rest.

Starting in Week Six (we start capitalizing now because NOW IT MATTERS) all of the teams are ranked 1 to 138 and sorted into 32 four or five-team groups for round-robin play. If we take the current rankings from CFB TXT, which aggregates all of the major rating models into a single, equally-weighted ranking, and add some AI magic for the sake of geographical compactness, here's what that would look like today:

The top 22 teams in the rankings would be placed in four-team groups - they only have to play three games as a reward for their performance. Teams 23-32 would be the top seeds in five-team groups. You'll note that we named the groups after legendary college football coaches. We left a few out, for reasons.

The round-robin begins in Week Six, sometime in mid-October, and ends after Week Nine, when the five-team groups complete their schedules. Another bye week to rest (Week 10, if you're scoring at home), calculate the 32 teams that advance to the knockout rounds and their seeds (the seeding process will be a three-day shaman-led smudging ceremony, and we'll only know when it's complete when white smoke comes out of Nick Saban's ears), and spin up the McAfee Mouth Machine of Bottomless Hype.

At some point in the middle of November, the 32-team single-elimination commences, with games played at the home of the higher-seeded team. We get our last four teams (I'd use a different phrase, but that one's taken) at the end of Week 13 in early December.

Teams that fail to advance from their groups realign and play their own tournaments so we can smash more young fellas' heads together for the entertainment of alumni and a few more dollars for our commercial partners. Someone else can figure out the format - it can't be that hard.

We're still arguing in the conference room about the timing of the last two gameweeks for the Really Big Dance. I'd like to keep the momentum going and finish the season by the end of the calendar year. Others (read: money-grubbing gluttons) want to milk the moment for a month as with the current process and give the semi-finalists a month off before resuming the action. I'm right, but I may not win the day. Either way, we get a champion at some point.

You know you'd watch the fuck out of this tournament.

Let the real Madness begin.

Returning to Your Regularly Scheduled Dipshittery

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Mon, 12 Oct 2026 10:43:00 +0000

I was goofing off on the interwebs and came across the classic Kids in the Hall sketch "The Daves I Know". You can watch it below.

The next step was fairly obvious. Please enjoy my personal version of the song. I left out a couple. Kinda thought there would be more, though.

Hi, I’m rob. I’d like to tell you about the Daves I know.

These are the Daves I know, I know.

These are the Daves I know.

These are the Daves I know, I know.

These are the Daves I know.

Dave Pellicane, he teaches kids Shakespeare

Writes a sentence every day, has for 20* years

*ish

These are the Daves I know, I know.

These are the Daves I know.

These are the Daves I know, I know.

These are the Daves I know.

Dave Fairbank was an ink-stained wretch

Spends his days combing the beach, teaching his pup to fetch

CHORUS

The great Dave Flynn, he was larger than life

Saw the Pogues, met his kid, just don't tell his wife

CHORUS

Dave Milhiser, you guys don't know him

He's my high school buddy, realtor and a gem

CHORUS

David Robinson, of that name I know two(!)

One is my uncle, the other teaches school (college, that is)

CHORUS

Daves Lazorchak and Bucciero, a pair

Soccer coaches (school and club), definitely care

CHORUS

David Lau, a Lammie from the past

Don't remember lots when I saw him in Hoboken last

These are the Daves I know, I know.

These are the Daves I know.

These are the Daves I know, I know.

These are the Daves I know.

Gheorghe Explains: Footy Fraud

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 10:03:00 +0000

Those of you that are casual soccer fans, especially those of the American variety, may be forgiven if you're not up to speed on the drama that's gripping the game in England. From a scriptwriter's perspective, it really has it all: greed, avarice, riches beyond imagination, geopolitical intrigue, an honest-to-God Viking, lies, deceit. It's missing sex, but given the parties to the drama it's hard to imagine that's in short supply.

Buckle up. We're headed down some rabbit holes.

Let's start with the boring stuff, shall we. In 2020, UEFA banned the Premier League's Manchester City from European competition for two years for violations of the confederation's Financial Fair Play rules (basically, you can't spend more money than you take in over a certain period of time). That ban was overturned by the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), which still chose to level a €10 million fine for the club's actions. Notably, many of the charges were dismissed due to the expiration of the the statute of limitations in UEFA's rules.

Leaked emails and other information from UEFA's investigation prompted the Premier League to initiate its own inquiry into the matter. And in February 2023, the league announced it was charging City with 115 breaches of its own financial regulations from 2009-2018. Importantly, the EPL rules regarding the statute of limitation are different than UEFA's, so that defense no longer served City.

After three-plus years of legal machinations, chest-beating, and denials, an independent three-person commission released its findings ten days ago. They are, in legal parlance, a doozy. The commission found City guilty of 114 of the 115 charges, finding (with copious evidence) on 80 of 80 counts that the club conspired to disguise more than £900m (~$1.2b) of direct ownership investment as sponsorships, allowing it to invest far beyond its permitted cap on player investment. 35 of the charges related to failure to cooperate with the EPL investigation, and the commission found City guilty on 34 of those. In its findings, the commission pulled no punches, saying that the club the fabricated "sham contracts" and "rel[ied] on sham agreements to artificially inflate the club's revenues and reduce its costs". In addition, the findings said that "a number of important club witnesses gave false evidence in key respects and that some knowingly gave untrue and dishonest evidence". Not great, Bob.

TL;DR City intentionally, repeatedly, and persistently violated a shitload of financial regulations and then sought to cover it up via lies, obfuscation, and delays.

Okay, y'all. Take a little break. Enjoy this photo of the aforementioned honest-to-God Viking, City (and Norway) striker Erling Haaland. He's the best finisher in the world right now. City paid around £51.2m in transfer fees to bring him in from Borussia Dortmund (which was a very good deal given his age and talent).

A number of very good football writers (and an increasingly large group of business and hard news scribes) have written extensively on this story, and I don't intend to break any news here, so please seek out Tariq Panja of The New York Times, Rory Smith of The Observer, David Ornstein and Sam Lee of The Athletic, and Miguel Delaney of The Independent. Tom Rennie of SiriusXMFC has been very good on the broadcast side. Trent Crimm is right out.

If you stayed here, we're going to do a shallow dive on Manchester City's history and why this story matters so much from a soccer perspective, then broaden the scope to include figures as far-flung as Liam Gallagher, the richest man in Abu Dhabi, and UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

First, the club. Manchester City was founded in 1894. Since that time, the club bounced around among the first three tiers of English football for the most part, landing in the Premier League for good in 2002. Prior to 2008, City won a total of nine trophies in 108 seasons: two first-division titles, four F.A. Cups, two League Cups, and one European Cup Winners Cup (the predecessor to the Champions League). The aforementioned Liam Gallagher and his brother Noel are counted amongst the club's most prominent supporters, are were such long before City's fortunes changed. [That pun was not intended as it was being written, but it is now.]

Since 2008, the club has arguably been the most successful in the world, having brought home eight Premier League trophies, four F.A. Cups, seven League Cups, one Champions League title, and one World Club championship.

Pray tell, what happened in 2008, you ask? You're very smart, reader. 2008 is when everything changed at City, in the midst of a global explosion of football-targeted capital flowing from oligarchs, petrostates, and generally filthy rich folks into what had historically been a sport owned and operated with and by local money.

After a couple of years of financial precarity, City found footballing salvation in August of that year in the form of new ownership. Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG), owned by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the Vice President of the United Arab Emirates (hold on to that little nugget), became one of the first Persian Gulf state-associated entities to buy into the global game. Sheikh Mansour's group followed the path first trod by Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich, who purchased middling Chelsea in 2003 and quickly put that club on a path to on- and off-field growth.

As soon as ADUG purchased City (and named the company City Football Group), it began a spending spree that has continued unabated to present day. The club immediately broke the British transfer record by purchasing the great Brazilian Robinho from Real Madrid for £32.5m (that figure seems quaint now), then a summer later splashed over £100m on Gareth Barry, Roque Santa Cruz, Emmanuel Adabayor, Carlos Tevez, and Joeleon Lescott. They brought in Eden Dzeko the following year (2011), and finally broke through to win a trophy, beating Stoke City to claim the F.A. Cup.

One year later, they won the Premier League in one of the most thrilling final days ever, scoring twice in stoppage time to pull out a win over Queens Park Rangers and cause Noel Gallagher to react like this from a bar in Chile (hold that thought, part two):

The rest is history. Even at this moment, City (who dropped a record £472m on transfers this summer WHILE THEY WERE UNDER INVESTIGATION FOR FINANCIAL FUCKERY) sit atop the Premier League standings, perfect through five matches.

TL;DR Piles of Emirati cash transformed an underachieving locally-supported club into a global behemoth

Okay, I think we're good on the prelude. We've talked about the charges against City and taken a bit of journey back in time to show some context. Shall we talk about where all of this gets a mite bonkers? Oh, we shall.

In the span of little more than 20 years, high-level professional soccer has changed radically from the sport of passionate fans and local communities to a worldwide commercial juggernaut. According to a Forbes analysis, the 20 EPL teams are currently valued at around $30b. Precise valuations from the time Abramovitch bought Chelsea in 2003 are hard to come by (largely because very few people gave a shit about such things), but a bit of conservative (read: we're rounding high so as not to be accused of fudging the numbers like Man City) estimation suggests that the entire league was valued at around $4.9b.

With that kind of explosive growth comes more interest, and not just in the game. In the case of City Football Group's ownership in Abu Dhabi, that investment included far more than just football. Since 2014, ADUG has invested more than $1b in real estate development projects in Manchester, to generally positive effect. Manchester has been lauded as an exemplar of the potential for smart public-private partnerships to transform cities and communities. Former Manchester mayor Andy Burnham has branded the partnership as "Manchesterism".

Andy...Burnham. That name sounds familiar. Ah, yes. He's the new Prime Minister of the UK, having taken office a few short months ago. Just last week he said this at a major Labour Party event: “I intend to take what I did in Manchester, our plan for good growth, and drive it from the very centre of government into every postcode in Britain.”

It is no stretch to say that Burnham, who was mayor of Manchester from 2017 until early this year when he stepped down to run for Parliament, owes his entire political rise to ADUB. And when someone owes something, favors tend to get called in when the time is right. Here's an excerpt from an extremely detailed story from The Athletic on Abu Dhabi's complicated links to England:

As he sought to balance a multitude of interests, Burnham ended up in a bind when asked for his view on the possibility of City’s owners being forced out of English football.
“I would be really concerned to lose them,” Burnham told the BBC. “They’ve been such a huge partner in the building of modern Manchester and obviously the building of Manchester City into the global force that it is.
“I do actually thank the City Football Group and the wider ownership for the money that they didn’t just put into the Etihad (City’s home stadium) and the campus around it but also into the city.”
The BBC reported that Burnham said “it would be wrong for him to intervene”, yet by giving a view at all, had he already made life more difficult for those adjudicating on City’s sanctions?

I wonder why Burnham would say something like that when, "The initial judgement is serious and there can’t be any suggestion that anyone is above the rule. If wrongdoing is affirmed upon appeal, those responsible should face the appropriate consequences*.” was right there.

*This is the statement his spokesman put out in her third attempt to sorta walk back Burnham's initial comments.

The value of trade between the UK and the UAE is estimated to exceed $25b a year. If the EPL hammers Manchester City, which is essentially owned by the UAE, how many wealthy Emiratis (and their less wealthy though still pretty comfortable English business partners) will scream bloody murder.

Here, right in our face, is a stark example of how nation-states are using sport as a way to insinuate themselves into polite society and create immense leverage over the most powerful institutions in that society. The fucking Prime Minister is in a bind, and there's a real possibility he'll lose his job over it. Holy Sportswashing, Batman!

For a fun and interesting conversation on this particular element of the scandal, I commend to you this conversation between Roger Bennett and Rory Smith on the Men in Blazers media network.

TL;DR This thing has fucking tentacles, man! It's like a real-life episode of The Diplomat, only with soccer and without Rufus Sewell's gleeful scene-chewing.

Go on to the kitchen, grab a beer or coffee, or whatever time-appropriate chemical enhancement makes sense for you. Here's a shot of Everton fans celebrating a close escape from relegation two seasons ago. Same Everton (the club that Andy Burnham has long supported - another tentacle) that was penalized by losing total of eight points in the standings in 2024 for breaches of financial regulations on this order:

Penalized 10 points by an independent commission for a £124.5 million loss over the three-year period ending in 2021–22, which exceeded the £105 million threshold stipulated in the rules. That deduction was reduced to six points upon appeal.
The Toffees were hit for an additional 2 points in April for overspending by £16.6 million during the assessment period ending in 2022–23.

For the sake of journalistic integrity, we must point out that City Football Club has appealed the independent commission's findings, saying in part that the ruling contained "clear material errors, of law, principle and fact and is unsafe".

Those formalities done and dusted, let's talk crime and punishment. First in the abstract and then applied with the acknowledgement that this is very complicated web City's weaved with literal global economic and political implications.

Everton, as we learned above, had to forfeit eight points (while in a relegation scrap) for infractions worth around £36m. If we apply simple math, where each £4.5m improperly applied is worth a point in the standings, City should be on the hook for 200 points.

But Everton was lauded by the Premier League for being forthcoming and cooperative during the investigation, and their issues stemmed more from an accounting fuckup than a coordinated and prolonged fraud.

In a separate similar incident, Chelsea was assessed a two-window transfer ban (meaning they were not allowed to purchase new players at all for over a year) for financial irregularities a few years ago. That after the club itself came forward after the sale to Todd Boehly's Clearlake team to tell the EPL that they'd found some problems while reviewing the books post-transaction. By that scale, City should go a generation or so without being able to purchase players.

The EPL has a few options in terms of remedies in cases like this one, the most extreme of which is expulsion from the top four tiers of the professional football pyramid. The league can choose to deduct points from City's tally (and can do so over multiple seasons). Or, they could relegate the club within the pyramid. (In 2006, Italy's most famous club, Juventus, was implicated in an egregious match-fixing scandal known as calciopoly, relegated to Serie B, docked nine points and stripped of two league titles. A pair of club executives were given lifetime bans from working in Italian soccer.) Finally, any number of financial penalties are on the table, from fines to transfer limitations.

Before we get to what we think will happen, let's discuss WWGD, shall we? Simply put, the punishment for City should be commensurate with their transgressions. That means City Football Group should face consequences far beyond any ever levied at the highest levels of the game.

The scale of the alleged rule-breaking is massive, orders of magnitude beyond any previously uncovered. It was clearly done with intent in full knowledge that it was against the rules of the competition. During the investigation, City and its hired legal guns obfuscated, delayed, and prevaricated while ADUG and Emirati leaders made thinly-veiled economic threats against the UK. City approached the entire process with arrogant disdain, as if they were confident that there would be little to no consequence to its actions.

In our perfect world, the punishment, then, has to hurt. On the field, on the balance sheet, certainly, and in a way that lays bare the UAE's naked attempt to burnish its global credentials through sporting achievement and tarnishes its image in the same way sport elevated it in the first place.

Recognizing that there's no practical way to remove City from the league in the middle of a season, here's what Gheorghe would do:

Immediately apply a 40-point penalty to City for the 2026-27 season. They'd stand at -25 points with 33 matches to play and need 60 points from those matches to have any chance to avoid relegation, which as we'll see will be fruitless.
Announce that regardless of where they finish in the final standings, City will be relegated to the English League Championship for the 2027-28 season, where they'll begin with a 20-point deduction.
Apply that same 20-point preseason deduction at the beginning of each of the following four seasons, regardless of what league City found itself in.
Allow all City players who wish to unilaterally void their contracts and become free agents at the next transfer window. Don't blame a players one iota. They shouldn't be punished.
Prohibit any new transfer activity for the next four windows, other than signing free agents.

Those are all in the Premier League's jurisdiction. I assume we can get the English Football Association (FA) and UEFA on board, so we'd add these punishments.

Effective immediately, City should be banned from all non-EPL competitions in England for the next four years. Effectively, the FA Cup and the League Cup.
Additionally, City should be dismissed from the 2026-27 Champions League and banned from the next three.

That seems a hefty price to pay, but I don't think it unwarranted.

TL;DR Gheorghe would throw almost all the books at City.

Now, back to the real world. What will actually happen?

The Premier League is in a bind. On the one hand, they're already facing pressure from political forces to account for ADUG's good works and the UAE's status as a key trade partner for the UK in their decision-making. And on the other, the integrity of the competition is at stake. If City receives something perceived as a slap on the wrist, every other club will know the rules don't matter for the rich clubs, and the lawsuits will fly thick and fast.

Consider Tottenham Hotspur, which finished fifth in the EPL (and behind City) in 2010-11, 2012-13, 2014-15, and 2023-24? In each of those seasons, that finish missed Champions League qualification by one place, costing Spurs millions of dollars that meant they couldn't compete in the transfer market for the kind of talent that could take them to the next level. Over and over again. Would they have cause to sue?

What about any one of the dozens of teams relegated between 2009-2018 in what would have been proven a rigged competition? Leicester City's in the third division now. Think they're not ripshit?

And on and on. Individual players who lost out on wages and bonuses because their team didn't qualify for European competition? Cause for action, maybe? Coaches who were sacked because they couldn't compete with City? See you in court, motherfucker!

No, I don't envy the EPL at all.

After all those words (3,150 of them, dashed off in a rush. Meth is a hell of a drug.), I think the final answer comes down to the same thing it always does. As the bards of Staten Island sing, cash rules everything around football. Once the appeals are exhausted and City found guilty, ADUG will come to the table with an offer. They'll agree to accept guilt, sacrifice a couple of executives, and pay a massive fine. Money is truly no object to them.

The EPL will have leverage, but not all of it. They can't face the rest of the teams and the public without extracting some kind of concession. So the sides will agree that City will take a 20-point penalty this season to spare the EPL from the embarrassment of City hoisting the trophy too soon, and spend the next season in the League Championship, roster intact, with no points penalties going forward. Two windows of transfer bans will round out the consequences. So it's not a slap on the wrist, but it's nothing close to what City deserve.

And Andy Burnham and Sheikh Mansour will enjoy a really excellent cigar at some point not too far in the future.

TL;DR C.R.E.A.M.

Elephants, Acid, and Exploring the Inmost Cave

noreply@blogger.com (Unknown) — Wed, 07 Oct 2026 12:28:09 +0000

I just finished Act Two of my new Pig on the Wall series (The Long, Long Road: The Secrets to Tom Petty's Sustained Success).

As usual, the length and content have gotten away from me-- this was supposed to be a one-episode exploration of creativity and the interesting story behind the track "Don't Come Around Here No More."

Honestly, it was a G:TB assignment and post from 2014 that inspired me!

But now I'm deep in the thick of something monstrous again.

If you don't have the time and energy to listen to the whole thing, there is a quiz in this episode early on . . . for rock aficionados only.

But the thing I am most proud of in the episode occurs just past the 23-minute mark.

I had to make several montages to get a certain point across. Oddly, these montages did not exist on the internet, so I had to make them myself.

This section also turns into an oddball one-question quiz-- give it a listen and tell me if you got the answer in the comments; I am genuinely curious

The Protect College 'Administrators' Act, Part Next

noreply@blogger.com (OBX dave) — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 10:00:00 +0000

Technically, the legislation aimed at providing stability to college sports is halfway to becoming law. In practical terms, however, it may be much further from the finish line. The Protect College Sports Act passed the Senate last week by a 77-22 margin, which nearly qualifies as a landslide in today’s polarized Congress. Now it must pass the House of Representatives, no small feat among the larger, more diverse legislative body.

Texas Senator Ted Cruz, one of the bill’s co-sponsors, said he thinks the House will reconvene in the coming days to take up and pass the legislation, though Speaker/weasel Mike Johnson, the Republican from Louisiana, sent representatives home early last month until after the November mid-term elections and said himself that reconvening is unlikely.

One Democrat House staff member told Yahoo Sports college snoop Ross Dellenger, “That bill is dead.” Another told him, “We have no intention to return to take up this bill before the mid-term elections.” The contentiousness appears to be both procedural and personal, with a heaping helping of disapproval of the bill itself. The House doesn’t routinely rubber-stamp legislation passed by the Senate, and one Congressional expert told Dellenger that there are plenty of House members cheesed off at Cruz for holding up House-passed legislation in the Senate. Some are also peeved that several proposals from a similar, House-authored bill called the SCORE Act that couldn’t garner enough support for a floor vote aren’t included in the PCSA.

If House members do indeed take up the Senate’s bill, they could and likely would insert changes and amendments that the Senate would have to sign off on before final approval. Meanwhile, Democrats hold out hope of taking control of the House in November, so why would they reconvene under the current slim Republican majority? Also, there’s the optics of reps assembling to take up college sports legislation while ignoring issues such as the war with Iran, tariffs, inflation, foreign policy and any number of more pressing matters. And then there’s the bill itself.

The PCSA purports to create Federal, uniform guardrails and guidance amid the shifting landscape of athlete payment and movement. Instead, it’s likely to give back, or curtail, many of the benefits and freedoms athletes won in numerous court cases over the past couple decades and return control to the suits and administrators. The biggest gift is granting the NCAA an antitrust exemption, a shield against action or lawsuits brought on behalf of athletes or schools. Because yes, by all means we should greenlight the restaurateur with a track record of health code violations and salmonella outbreaks to open another eatery.

The NCAA fought tooth-and-nail for years to uphold amateurism as its foundation, while schools and conferences and coaches made tens of millions of dollars, and conference realignment caused its own brand of upheaval. Courts regularly struck down NCAA limits and opened the door for athletes to earn money and to transfer more freely in search of both money and playing time. The PCSA, as currently worded, would create a strictly regulated revenue-share salary cap; would limit athlete transfer policy (one transfer without penalty); create a five-year eligibility limit for athletes; create an agent registry with a five-percent maximum fee; limit conference expansion; create a path for Football Bowl Subdivision conferences to pool media rights; prohibit coaches who leave before a season ends from performing duties at their new school (the so-called Lane Kiffin Rule).

Proponents of the bill say these measures will replace the patchwork of state legislation and bring stability to a sporting landscape that’s become chaotic, as well as expensive. Critics point to the questionable wisdom of Federal oversight of college sports – for example, see Missouri Senator Eric Schmitt’s gaffealicious inability to differentiate between the Iowa Hawkeyes and the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks, while attempting to grill former prosecutor Jack Smith. Critics also take issue with the potential limitation of athletes’ freedom and earning potential, and rewarding the NCAA with renewed powers after decades of feckless and shortsighted management.

Though there’s bipartisan support of the bill (50 Republicans and 27 Democrats approved) there’s also bipartisan opposition. The 58-member Congressional Black Caucus, a group of Democrats, opposed the SCORE Act, as did a sizeable number of the 30-member, conservative GOP Freedom Caucus – albeit for different reasons. The CBC has already come out publicly against the current legislation. As Dellenger pointed out, both the Congressional Black Caucus and Freedom Caucus have members on the powerful House Rules Committee, which must approve any legislation for it to reach the floor for a full vote. If the bill doesn’t pass before the end of the calendar year, it goes back to square one and must be re-submitted and re-approved by both chambers.

Even if the PCSA passes and President Trump signs it into law, which he’s said he’ll do, it won’t magically and immediately transform college sports. Expect any number of legal challenges related to salary caps, earning caps, transfer limits, agent fee limits, Title IX considerations and pre-emption of state laws on eligibility and NIL payments to athletes over Tenth Amendment concerns, which states that the Federal government only has the powers granted to it by the U.S. Constitution and that the states have power over everything else; the Framers were notably silent on college athletics.

The Gheorghie Caper

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 02 Oct 2026 14:09:34 +0000

Ostensibly, the news from ComicBook.com that arrived earlier this month seems bleak. The headline alone is enough to make a person of a certain age sadly nostalgic: "The Muppet Show’s Disney+ Future Gets Grim Update Despite Multiple Emmy Nominations".

I'm here to tell you, friends, that we didn't watch 120 episodes of The Muppet Show, eight Muppets feature films, four made-for-TV movies, and a shitload of Mylo the Cat Muppet rap videos to watch the Muppetverse fade into oblivion.

If we learned nothing else from The Great Muppet Caper, we know that when things seem at their darkest, when our luck seems to have run out, when the cement mixer we stole after we broke out of prison to steal back the diamond from the villainous models runs out of gas, as long as we believe and have really good writers who aren't afraid of a seeming coincidence, there's always hope.

Conservatively, we've written 1.7 million words in more than 5,600 posts over G:TB's 20+ years as a content factory. Exact figures are hard to come by, but it's safe to say we've mentioned and/or featured Muppets in 10% of that output - we know, love, and honor the source material. Whitney and Dave have written at least one screenplay. I was once cast as Christopher Robin in a touring production of Winnie the Pooh (true story, and a real what-might-have-been moment for your boy). The Teej stars in a recurring role as McFisty on the interwebs. We have writers, actors, and vaguely Muppet-looking dudes in abundance.

All of which is to say: we have the talent, the background, the mindset, and the opportunity to do something the world desperately needs. Our namesake is a movie star, and definitely friends with Muppets, for Chrissakes!

Put differently, in a way more theatrically fitting: Gheorghies, we've trained our entire lives for this moment.

The Muppets will not go out quietly. Not on our watch. Today, we announce a brand new feature film from the people that brought you Gheorgasbord, Whitneypedia, and zbouillabaisse: coming to theatres near you at some point in the near-to-distant future, Gheorghe: The Muppet Adventure (working title).

Three Reasons to Listen to Sweeping Promises

noreply@blogger.com (zman) — Thu, 01 Oct 2026 10:09:00 +0000

rob demanded content to entertain him while his battered bits mend so content he shall have--content that I intend to become a recurring bit. Let's see if I follow through. The premise: I give you three songs to motivate you to check out a band you might not know. Today that band is Sweeping Promises.

Wikipedia says "Sweeping Promises is an American post-punk duo from Boston, Massachusetts, now based in Lawrence, Kansas, consisting of Lira Mondal and Caufield Schnug." I first heard their song Pain Without a Touch a few years ago. It was released as a single and I heard it in passing and didn't drill down on the band, but I really enjoy it. Here's a live version.

I love it when people who do not look conventionally cool do incredibly cool stuff. Their first album, Hunger for a Way Out, has a very similar vibe to Pain Without a Touch. It's a bit one-dimensional but worth taking a spin through. Here's a live version of Cross Me Out.

They released a new album last month, You Say I Romanticize, and it's cool too. It features songs with very Greasetruckian titles like My Friend's an Entomologist and Does He Want To Be The Weatherman? My favorite at the moment is Accent.

They're doing two shows in Medford (ahem, Squeaky) then DC and Richmond, all in November. Check 'em out!

WWDD, an Anti-Political Prescription

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Tue, 29 Sep 2026 10:49:00 +0000

I found it heartening, if not surprising, that the news of Dolly Parton's passing was met with an outpouring of emotion and love, and a flood of fond memories from every corner of the globe - geographically, sure, but culturally, as well. Rock stars, actors, authors, everyday people, and politicians - everyone that had anything to say about Dolly did so in an overwhelmingly positive way.

Been thinking about that last category of folks ever since Dolly left us.

Nearly everything you could see on the surface about Dolly would suggest a conservative-coded person, politically speaking. From her upbringing in a poor family in a very rural environment to the way she presented herself visually as an old-school sex symbol - curvy and coiffed but never tawdry - to her accent to her "aww-shucks-I'm-just-a-little-ol'-girl-from-Tennessee" manner to the music she wrote and released, it would be easy to imagine a right-wing lean in her personal politics. I suspect more than a few MAGA folk thought she was one of them.

Just as the face Dolly showed the public belied a whip-smart businesswoman with interests far beyond music, so too did her less-obvious actions open a window into how she actually saw the world. Among many other things, Dolly Parton:

Gave families $1,000/month for 6 months in 2016, when wildfires hit her Smoky Mountain hometown
Supported flood survivors in Middle TN with a $700,000 donation in 2021,
Donated $1M to fund COVID vaccine research in 2020
Gave $1M in 2024, after Hurricane Helene, and her foundation matched it.
Supported the LGBTQ+ community way before it was fashionable, once saying, "I've had to go against all kinds of people through the years just to be myself. I think everybody should be allowed to be who they are and love who they love."

She included lyrics about supporting gay family members in her 1991 song, "Family"
She came out in support of marriage equality in 2009
Was openly supportive of queer people visiting Dollywood, her Pigeon Forge, TN resort and amusement park
True story: Dolly once entered a drag Dolly-lookalike contest...and lost!

Speaking of Dollywood, in 2021, as housing prices climbed in its Smoky Mountain region, Dolly's company (motto: "Lead with Love") built a 750-unit apartment complex for seasonal, international, and temporary employees who would otherwise have difficulty affording lodging.
Famously donated more than 300 million books (and counting) to children across the world through her Imagination Library program.

I'm quite sure there are scores of other examples, public and private, of how Dolly lived her truth. A truth that hewed a lot closer to Jesus' teaching than does much of what passes for today's American Christianity and "conservative" values. She famously and conspicuously avoided taking public political positions, but as an online commentator said after she died, "Dolly Parton’s life is a political statement for those with eyes to see and ears to hear."

If I may be so bold, here's a short list of how I'd answer the question What Would Dolly Do?, as a personal and political prescription:

Be yourself
Laugh with your whole body
Love your people fiercely, and love everyone else, too
Care for the least among us
Tell bigots and misogynists to go fuck themselves (in the "bless your heart" sorta way)
Lift up children
Support science
Sing, dance, make music, and make fun.

I tell you what. If someone ran for office on that platform, they'd get my vote.

zbouillabaise is back

noreply@blogger.com (zman) — Sat, 26 Sep 2026 10:09:00 +0000

Here are a few interesting things I saw on the interwebs that aren't meaty enough to turn into a post, but if you stew them together they're meaty enough for a serving of zbouillabaise.

1. New Zealand parking lots are intense

A woman collapsed in a New World supermarket parking lot in Orewa, New Zealand. Her heart stopped--she was dead--but a good Samaritan sprung into action and revived her with chest compressions, then disappeared into the crowd. An ambulance took her to the hospital so the woman's car remained in the parking lot for about five-and-a-half hours. You're only allowed 90 minutes in the New World lot so she got an $80 ticket. Upon learning of her death, resurrection, and hospitalization, the supermarket relented ... by reducing the fine to $30. Only upon facing public outrage did they withdraw the fine completely. So if you're ever in New Zealand, make sure you're parked in a no-fee lot if you're planning on going to the hospital after temporarily dying. Because New Zealand parking lots are intense.

via GIPHY

2. Dale Caldwell is insane

Mikie Sherrill, the governor of New Jersey, released an independent report confirming various improprieties committed by Dale Caldwell, her lieutenant governor, including trying to get a state job for his girlfriend and sexually harassing women on his staff. The report confirmed that Caldwell asked one of his aides if her friend (who is much younger than him) was single and upon learning that the friend wasn't interested said that young women like them were ambitious and successful and needed a man who was in a position to help them, "but you young women are looking for young sperm." As Johnny G once said, "I'm no Wilt Chamberlain," but in my experience women are looking for a man with nice eyes and a nice smile, or muscular arms and ripped abs, or a good sense of humor and a warm heart, or a well-paying job and his own place, or a strong sense of honesty and decency. I've never heard a woman say "I'm looking for sperm" of any variety, let alone young. Dale Caldwell is insane. And twixt the time I started writing this and the time it posted, he resigned at Sherrill's request.

via GIPHY

3. Deshaun Watson does not provide good ROI

Deshaun Watson lamented the disrespect fans showed by booing him in the preseason. "I think the whole world knows it has nothing to do about the performance," Watson said. "It's a little bit [more] personal than that. So I think it's a disrespectful thing. So yeah, I mean, I'm going to keep whatever I feel with me and my family internally on how I feel about that. And yeah, just move on."

I think it's perfectly fine to be disrespectful given his history of sexual assault, but there's also no reason to show him respect for what he's done on the field over the last four seasons. Here are some numbers (you know I love numbers):

Allen has an asterisk because he played in 68 games but the Damar Hamlin game never finished and thus isn't included in his official stats. In short, the Browns paid a shit-ton of money for not a lot of performance. $183M for 19 games! Here are more numbers:

Watson looks even worse on a dollars-per-stat basis. $8M per touchdown! I don't know how to put a dollar value on the picks Cleveland traded for him, including three first rounders, but it's safe to say they got a terrible return on their investment in Watson. And twixt the time I started doing this math and the time it posted, he has a 112.9 passer rating and a fourth quarter comeback featuring a game-winning drive.

4. Caption this

I invite you to caption this photo of Donald Trump with Xi Jinping and their wives at Joint Base Andrews where Trump had US servicemen literally roll out the red carpet for China's genocidal communist dictator.

Take a Break

noreply@blogger.com (rob) — Fri, 25 Sep 2026 10:39:00 +0000

For the first time ever, the footballing world, men's division, is taking a three-week long break from club competition to provide time for international matches. FIFA chose to consolidate traditional September and October breaks into a single, longer period, which seems to be pretty sensible (and thus, very un-FIFA) - teams have more time to train together and gain more continuity, and the travel burden on players is halved.

The nature of the matches in this window vary from the highly competitive UEFA Nations League and AFCON qualifiers to a bunch of friendlies between minnows (Dominica beat Anguilla, 1-0, on Monday, for example) and Lionel Messi's farewall match for Argentina on October 7.

Here at home, USMNT skipper Mauricio Pochettino is using the extended break to integrate a number of youngsters into the senior national team setup. Of note, 16 year-old Philadelphia Union winger Cavan Sullivan, who's been tearing up MLS over the past month, is set to make his debut for the now aptly-nicknamed Baby Eagles. He's joined in the squad by fellow teenagers Neil Pierre (18 year-old center back), Mathis Albert (17, MF), Adri Mehmeti (17, MF), Julian Hall, (18, F), Peyton Miller, (18, D), Justin Ellis (19, F), and Zavier Gozo (19, MF). Cole Campbell (20, F) and Frankie Westfield (20, D) are relative codgers, comparatively.

The U.S. play Peru, Chile, Mexico and Canada over the next several weeks. Grown-ass men on those first sides - the baptism could be a bit toasty.

The lengthy break gives club teams and their followers a chance to assess the season's first month and figure out what's gone well and what leaks need to be patched. It also gives me an opportunity to take a quick look at my preseason Premier League prognostications after five matches. It's too early to draw any conclusions (and thank the soccer gods, because if the season ended now I'd look like an idiot), but we can see some outlines of the story that'll play out over the remaining 33 matches.

So what have we learned?

The level is insanely high and the league is very deep. Among other evidence:

Brighton walloped defending champs and previously unbeaten Arsenal, 3-0 in the last match before the break and has scored more goals than anyone else in the league.
Bournemouth and Sunderland both had Manchester City dead to rights at the Etihad before the home side pulled off escapes.
Leeds and Everton are both unbeaten (two wins and three draws)
European results thus far are outstanding:

EPL teams are 5-0 in the Champions League, 3-0 in the Europa League, and 1-1-0 (W-D-L) in the Conference League

Big names on either the front or back of a kit don't guarantee results. Tottenham Hotspur spent over $400m on new contracts this summer. At the time of this writing, and for at least the next three weeks, that entire roster has as many league goals as do the G:TB staff. Manchester United is off to the worst start in the club's 35-year Premier League history.

The G:TB Coaching Primacy Theorem offers mixed returns thus far. Andoni Iraola's Liverpool are unbeaten, but two wins and three draws in five have raised eyebrows at Anfield. Xabi Alonso's Chelsea team look exceptional going forward at times. They've also allowed more goals than any other squad. Spurs' Roberto de Zerbi has overseen a clusterfuck. Meanwhile, we scoffed at Enzo Maresca's potential at Manchester City, and the oddball Italian has his side top of the table with five wins in a row.

Enjoy the break and the opportunity for the young Americans to stake their claim to the future of the program. And maybe don't pay much attention to our preseason predictions.

Hubris!

noreply@blogger.com (zman) — Thu, 24 Sep 2026 10:09:00 +0000

You may have heard about Meta's $17.1 billion settlement with various school districts and Native American tribes who claimed that Meta knowingly hooked children on social media. The "Perry Mason moment" precipitating this settlement was the trial judge's order to unseal a document that was partially redacted to obscure attorney-client privileged material. This revealed information that damaged Meta's case and, more importantly, it showed that Meta's attorneys improperly over-redacted under a privilege fig leaf. In other words Meta's craven lawyers lied that stuff was privileged in order to hide it from the other side. You can't do that.

The judge appointed a special master to review all of Meta's privilege designations and along the way they learned that Instagram's legal team signed off on company swag hats embroidered with "a/c priv." You can't make this up.

These fools are so crooked and so hubristic that they hubristically thought they could tout their crookedness! But like a tragic Greek figure, their hubris did them in. The judicial fallout isn't complete yet but I expect a hell of a bench slap on this.

None of this would've happened if these jackals watched The Wire. If you do something bad, don't leave a paper trail. Or an embroidery trail.

Hypocrisy in Lauren Boebert's Glass House

noreply@blogger.com (zman) — Wed, 23 Sep 2026 10:09:00 +0000

Rep. Lauren Boebert has been through some things. She became a grandmother when she was 36 and her son was 17, which means she became a mother at 19. Shortly thereafter she got divorced. I don't know the logistical complications that required her to bring her grandson to her divorce hearing, but I suspect a 17-year-old dad isn't the most reliable, responsible dad so maybe this was an emergency child care situation.

Somewhere in between all that she was thrown out of a musical performance of Beetlejuice for some vaping and heavy petting with her date.

I can't relate to a lot of this. I didn't have my first child until I was 37, and I cannot imagine zson convincing a woman to procreate with him now, in two years when he's 17, or even in 20 years. Ever, really. I don't know why there is a musical version of Beetlejuice or why anyone would want to see it. But I have been divorced and I can tell you that some weird stuff happens.

I can also tell you that weird stuff passes relatively quickly and you settle back into normalcy, at least if you're healthy. Boebert is still trying to find herself and it's getting surprising.

Someone recently filed a complaint against her with the Ethics Committee of the House of Representatives, accusing her of having sex with three of her staffers, including her Chief of Staff, and paying one of them $200,000 to secure their silence about these improper relationships. The most surprising part of this story is that two of the people involved are women. I say "surprising" because Boebert has a history of homophobia.

Predictably, she denies it. I obviously don't have all the facts so I don't know the truth, but it seems unlikely that someone would go on the record with a complaint like this unless they have the receipts (and in fact the complaint attaches some literal receipts showing how much the staff members were paid).

I hope Boebert figures things out, finds happiness, fills whatever void she has in her soul. But this whole situation irritates the daylights out of me for the rampant hypocrisy. Not because of the homophobia, which is awful but could potentially arise from her own ill-placed self-loathing. I'm talking about her reaction when two other representatives were recently accused of having sexual relations with staffers. What those guys did was atrocious, don't get me wrong, but Boebert called for their pensions and provided this gem of a soundbite:

#NEW: Rep. @laurenboebert talks sexual misconduct allegations on the Hill "Why is everybody so horny here?" She says people need to "go to church. Find Jesus." https://t.co/KASrfx7lkc
— Vinay Simlot (@VinaySimlot) April 16, 2026

Glass houses, my friends. Or should I say glass houses of representatives? I look forward to Boebert donating her pension to It Gets Better.