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.
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):
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
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.
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.
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:
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 Independentnoted, "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.
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.”
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.
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
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
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.
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!
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.
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