Today's entry comes from Northern Germany, where Hamburg-based FC St. Pauli clinched promotion to the Bundesliga after 13 years in the second division. The team is famously governed by explicitly leftwing principles - some if its fans remain angry that the club sells merchandise and participates in capitalist enterprises, an interesting if possibly self-defeating point of view. The club is also fiercely local and focused on its civic responsibilities, and boasts a 31 year-old American manager. Pauli is one we can get behind, as they'll be one of the most dogged of underdogs next season.
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
More Joy
It's a great time of year if you're into watching throngs of people celebrate their local sporting club advancing to a higher level of competition. Technically, also true if you like watching fans suffer as their club's are relegated, but nobody's that much of a dick. [To be fair, if the Yankees were relegated, I'd do the Ren & Stimpy dance.]
Saturday, May 11, 2024
Your Moment of Joy
Como are an Italian soccer club with a long history, but not much of a winning pedigree. I Lariani have spent 14 of their 117 professional seasons in Serie A, usually toiling in the second or third divisions of Italian soccer. As the club's website itself hints in claiming Il Gioco Più Bello Del Mondo Nella Location Più Bella Del Mondo ("The Beautiful Game in the Most Beautiful Location"), it's probably not that difficult to accept mediocrity when you're living in Lake Como.
As recently as 2019, Como were playing in Serie D, the lowest rung of Italian professional soccer. Over the past few years, the club made a steady climb towards the top. And yesterday, after a 1-1 draw with Cosenza and Venezia's 2-1 loss to Spezia, Como clinched its first promotion to Serie A since 2003.
Striker Alessandro Gabrielloni joined Como in 2018, after a bankruptcy and recapitalization landed the club in Serie D. He's scored 63 goals in 202 matches in his seven years in blue. And at a time when professional athletes get accused of not caring, he showed how wrong that can be in the agonizing seconds before the final whistle yesterday.
Thursday, May 09, 2024
zbouillabiase: Political Natterings
I haven't posted anything in a long time and I don't have anything particular cogent to say, although I've seen a few interesting pieces of political news recently.
First, the New York Times and other major media outlets reported that a parasitic worm ate a portion of RFK Jr.'s brain and then died there. Lest you assert "this is lamestream media bias against the antivaxx crowd!!" I direct you to the portion of the article that quotes deposition testimony given by RFK Jr. in which he said that doctors determined than an abnormality seen in his brain scan "was caused by a worm that got into my brain and ate a portion of it and then died." More succinctly, he testified under oath that he had a dead worm in his brain. He further testified "I have cognitive problems, clearly," and "I have short-term memory loss, and I have longer-term memory loss that affects me." In response to the article, RFK Jr. twat (xeeted?) "I offer to eat 5 more brain worms and still beat President Trump and President Biden in a debate." So he admits the whole worm thing. And he had mercury poisoning too, which also doesn't bode well for his overall health or his cognition.
Apparently you get worms in your brain by eating undercooked pork, which can carry tapeworms. Typically the tapeworm larvae wind up in your intestines but sometimes they get lost and wind up in your brain.
Once there, they eat your brain but I guess that isn't what they're supposed to nosh on so they die and your body naturally walls them off, forming cysts. Like this.
Second, Donald Trump is running his reelection campaign like a goddamned gangster. And I don't mean "gangster" euphemistically, I mean it literally. He has family all over "this thing of ours." First he installed his daughter-in-law, Lara Trump, as co-chair of the RNC. This makes it easier for him to divert super PAC money to his pay legal bills. Second, he plans on making Uday and Qusay Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump "loyalty czars" in his next administration. This means he will only appoint and hire people who pledge complete fealty to DJ Trump. Third, he got 18-year-old Barron Trump named as an at-large delegate for Florida in the Republican national convention.
What do all of these people have in common? They're family, which means they will always be loyal. You can never lose your family.
Finally, Trump's Veepstakes competition is well underway. All sorts of seemingly important people are willing to debase themselves on national television for a shot at being on the ticket. Kristi Noem shot her way out of contention, but there's still plenty of chatter around JD Vance, Marco Rubio, Doug Burgum, and Tim Scott. Like I said in 2016, "he's running his campaign on some next-level reality TV competition three-steps-ahead shit." So it won't be any of those jackals.
Trump needs to win this thing to stay out of jail, and he needs to stay in office for the full four years so he can run again in 2028. There's only one way out of office once he's in (assuming the Big Macs don't get him in his sleep). He's clearly unimpeachable--he literally staged a coup and suffered no consequences in the Senate. All he has to worry about is section 4 of the 25th Amendment, which says in part:
Whenever the Vice President and a majority of either the principal officers of the executive departments or of such other body as Congress may by law provide, transmit to the President pro tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.
The key here is that the 25th Amendment can only be triggered if the VP signs on. In order to boot the Prez, you need the Veep. There is absolutely positively no fucking way in hell that Donald Trump is going to give anyone the opportunity to shiv him in the back unless that person is a rock-solid reliable supplicant. And that has to be family. Maybe Tomax or Xamot Junior or Eric, but they're both morons and The Don knows it. I think that means Ivanka, Jared, or Kimberly Guilfoyle.
You're probably saying "No way! No one go for want this!" to which I reply "Oh really?" Think about all the shit DJ Trump pulled over the past 77 years. You think the people who are willing to tolerate that won't tolerate some nepotism on the bottom of the ticket?
You don't think DJT would love to roll out "TRUMP/TRUMP" campaign signs?
You heard it here first. Trump/Trump or Trump/Guilfoyle 2024.
Tuesday, May 07, 2024
Dance, Marucci!
Continuing this week's theme of highlighting passionate and modestly weird humans putting themselves out into the world, we give you two-time World Speedgolf Champion Rob Hogan. This is what he looked like back in 2013 when he won his first title:
He's changed his look a bit in the interim:
Hogan excels at Speedgolf, in which competitors are allowed a maximum of 7 clubs, and are scored on the basis of both strokes and time taken to complete 18 holes. In 2015, when Hogan won the world title, he shot a 77 in 40 minutes. Tidy round, that.
Here's a video highlight reel of his victory in the 2022 British Open:
Over the years, Hogan has changed more than his look. He's also evolved from an elite competitor in an esoteric event to a manic, exuberant teacher of the broader game, and that's what we're here to celebrate.
Hogan's @speedgolfrob Instagram account is a careening bender of physiological coaching tips and madman-inflected mental advice. Here are a few samples:
I haven't played golf in a few months, but I've stored up a bunch of new swing thoughts, courtesy of Hogan. And if I'm being honest, possibly a few life lessons, as well.
Dance, Marucci!
Sunday, May 05, 2024
Trainspotting
We love the weird, the whimsical, and the eccentric in these parts. That should come as no surprise. And we embrace the enthusiasts who share their particular interests and in so doing help us both expand our parameters and give us freedom to explore our own peculiarities.
In the spirit of Gheorghiness, I give you today Francis Bourgeois (real name: Luke Nicolson).
This cat loves trains. Like, really loves trains. He's built a social media following in the millions by sharing his genuine enthusiasm for engines and boxcars all over the United Kingdom. He gives British Bill Nye vibes - a goofy, nerdy and unquestionably enthusiastic joy. As an example, here's a bit of his patter from a profile in The Guardian, "“Oh my God… Holy shit!” he yells, arms akimbo. “Look down there, that’s really rare!” Beneath us, a train is trundling along the line. “Usually there are only two locomotives on that service. This time there are four. All in the same livery. It’s verging on impossible. Fuck!” He takes a moment to catch his breath."
The Guardian reporter started the profile a skeptic and was utterly convinced of Bourgeois' genuine emotional attachment to trains. For his unique and utterly total embrace of his own passion, we salute the young man.
Thursday, May 02, 2024
The Rich Get Richer, College Edition
As college athletics trundle blindfolded and barefoot through the furniture-filled, Lego-littered room of athlete empowerment and conference upheaval, questions often arise. Among them: Will major college sports look different? And, Is it really all about money?
The answers, respectively, are ‘yes’ and ‘hell yes.’
The next installment of oversized collectives and “Our team has to go where?” commences in the fall when the two alphas – the Big Ten and Southeastern conferences – and the mid-alphabet, reactionary Big 12 and Atlantic Coast conferences re-open for business. The majority of Division I programs will see little difference in how they conduct their affairs, except as witnesses to the yawning financial disparities in the system.
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said that his conference would have walked away from the playoff and figured out something on its own. “When we ended that set of meetings in January 2022 without a decision, I was clear: If you are going to walk away from this opportunity, we are going to reevaluate our position on format, revenue sharing and governance,” he said in Dellenger’s piece. Tony Petitti, commissioner of the Big Ten, said that “if we couldn’t craft a deal, we’d look at other options. We would have started over. Without seeing better alignment, we weren’t going to sign. We were 100 percent confident and made it clear that we were only going to do a deal that worked for us.”
The latest example comes in the form of the College Football Playoff, which expands to 12 teams next season and whose rewards and payouts are heavily tilted toward the SEC and Big Ten. College snoop Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports dropped a well sourced, deep dive into the origins of the new playoff structure. Read it for yourself, but a couple of key takeaways are that the arrangement might not have been so one-sided had all parties been able to agree on a playoff format as recently as a couple of years ago, and the SEC and Big Ten went full brinksmanship and aren’t shy about displaying who’s in charge.
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| Did I include this image of Greg Sankey and Ted Cruz to damn by association? Hard to say. |
The Big Ten and SEC already distance themselves financially from the rest of Division I due to their massive football TV contracts. Both are expected to distribute in the neighborhood of $70 million annually to each member school going forward. The ACC and Big 12 will pay out approximately $40-45 million annually to their schools, under terms of their own TV contracts. Now add the new playoff deal, which will pay out an average of about $1.3 billion per year for six years. The SEC and Big Ten each will receive 29 percent of the revenue, the ACC 17.1 percent, and the Big 12 14.7 percent. Notre Dame will receive one percent, and the 64 schools in the so-called Group of Five will split the remaining nine percent, with a few extra nuggets and sweeteners thrown in.
In terms of actual dollars, SEC and Big Ten schools will receive more than $20 million apiece, while ACC and Big 12 schools get $10-12 million each. Totaling it up, the discrepancy between the Big Two and the second two grows from $30-35 million per year to between $40 and $50 million annually. My public school arithmetic skills suggest that means a $200 million gap between first- and second-tier athletic departments inside five years.
The Big Ten and SEC Bigfooted the discussions a) because they reasoned that they were the most successful participants in the playoff historically and brought more value to the table, and b) because they could. Sankey even disclosed that the 29 percent figure in the new deal was a compromise, that the initial proposal was an even greater cut but came down as part of negotiations. That, boys and girls, is leverage.
In any case, upper tier college football will begin to look more like European pro soccer and the English Premier League, excepting things such as relegation and stoppage time and foreign financing – for now, anyway. Everybody’s playing the same game, but there are a handful of deep-pocketed franchises that can afford the best players, the best facilities and simply outspend the competition. It’s already that way to an extent, but the funding gap will make it even more pronounced.
The SEC and Big Ten also reason that they and their schools need more money because their expenses will be greater. Travel ain’t cheap when your league stretches from New Jersey to southern California and the Pacific Northwest, or from central Florida to Oklahoma. Though the newly constituted Big 12 and ACC say: Tell me about it.
The greatest expense, however, will be athlete compensation and whatever form that takes. Toward that end, the SEC and Big Ten have begun preliminary research into areas such as collective bargaining and athletes-as-employee status. Many figure that’s how it will play out in the effort to avoid out-and-out bidding wars, to get a handle on costs, and to produce something resembling consistent spread sheets in the event that private equity firms want to partner up with leagues or schools. What, you thought hedge funds and the mega-wealthy wouldn’t be interested in eight- and nine-figure revenue streams because the company letterhead is attached to college sports? You thought that college presidents and governing boards would decline access to that kind of cash, given those groups' possible mercenary practices? You’re new around here, aren’t you?
Bemoan the fact that money has forever changed the college athletics that we grew up with and get all misty about. Though it’s worth noting that the old system was a charade in many ways – an underground economy hidden behind the mantel of amateurism and the glow of youth. Nine- and ten-figure deals disrupted and distended the system but also brought the entire enterprise into the light and revealed actions and motives. Most important, it gave the primary participants, athletes, additional freedom and a long overdue cut, as the old structure was both unfair and, as courts have repeatedly ruled of late, illegal. Change is afoot, and if we don’t know about the how, at least we have a pretty good idea about the why.
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