Gheorghasbord

Truly a wide range of cultural flotsam that's tickled my fancy and/or given me cause for consideration over the past week or so. From sports to music to current political events, as always, we span the globe to keep you entertained.

I mentioned the kerfuffle the Sullivan brothers of the MLS Philadelphia Union got into against Inter Miami a few days ago. I told you to find the video. I know you, so I'm sure you didn't. So here it is. You'll see Quinn Sullivan (the older of the brothers at 22) get disrespected by Miami defender Ian Fray (Fray put his nuts on Sullivan's head) and respond with a textbook bodyslam. Cavan Sullivan (potentially the best 16 year-old male player the U.S. has ever developed) rushes to his brother's aid and squares up with Miami's much-taller Yannick Bright. Holds his own, too.

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There's actually a G:TB connection here, tenuous though it may be. Quinn Sullivan has dated a girl who grew up in my neighborhood for several years. My wife and I are good friends with her mom. She played at Radford and did a year as a graduate transfer at the University of New Hampshire. Where she met and became friends with...Yannick Bright. Small world, y'all.

Also, remember the name Cavan Sullivan. He's contributing significantly to Philly's attack this season, with six goals and nine assists in 25 matches across all competitions. Despite the fact that he's 5'7" and 150 pounds, he's tough and strong and unafraid to mix it up with older and stronger men. He's been under contract with Manchester City since he was 14, and will almost certainly head to Europe when he's old enough for the appropriate visa. Says here he'll be a USMNT mainstay for the next 15 years.

Speaking of balls, which we were, at least obliquely, check out this scene from a recent Kacey Musgraves concert:

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And veering wildly from the ridiculous to the profound, I commend to your attention New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie. The Virginia Beach-born, UVA-educated (nobody's perfect) is one of the clearest thinkers and writers about the current American moment. He writes a great deal about the politics of race and culture, but he's good on a wide range of topics. This video essay offers typically-thoughtful advice to the Democratic Party should it find itself in the majority in Congress after November's midterm elections. I sure hope the party leadership is listening.

NFL Grind, With International Flair

The Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy starter kit, otherwise known as the NFL regular season, fast approaches, so let’s visit The Shield’s efforts to simultaneously grow the game and to protect the disposable bipeds, excuse me, the valued human beings that fuel the American sports colossus. 

Commish Roger Goodell recently told a German media outlet that “at some point there will be NFL teams outside the USA. I have no doubt that this will happen one day.” The NFL has played international games for decades and will continue this season with nine games outside the border, beginning with L.A. Rams-San Francisco on Sept. 10 in Melbourne, Australia. Three games are scheduled for London, and there will be games in Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Madrid, Munich and Mexico City. 

Now, when Goodell says “outside the USA,” he doesn’t mean Mexico City and Montreal, he’s thinking Europe. He previously said that he believes London can be home to two franchises. Indeed, the city has hosted 42 games since 2007. The games have been well-received, with last year’s Rams-Jacksonville Jaguars game at Wembley Stadium drawing 86,000 fans and two games at Tottenham Hotspur’s comparatively smaller joint attracting more than 61,000. 

There are beaucoup issues with planting an NFL team flag across the pond. Start with the two biggest questions: Where would they play? And why would one assume that civic interest in occasional NFL games means that it’s sustainable over entire seasons and many years, particularly in places with no historical ties to American football? The NFL stages international games in big soccer stadiums, borrowing the facilities when they aren’t being used or when the home club is on the road. That arrangement is untenable for an entire season, so any transplanted or expansion NFL franchise will need, and probably demand, a dedicated stadium and training facility. 

NFL owners’ practice of extorting sweetheart deals that benefit them is unlikely to go over well on foreign soil (“We’re on the hook for how much? For a stadium that’ll be used nine or ten times a year? Sounds like bollocks to me, mate.”). Logistics concerns are real for a potential foreign franchise. Could a team based outside the U.S. retain players or attract free agents? What about the tax structure overseas? How would that impact player salaries and compensation? Flights across the Atlantic become onerous. There’s a five-hour time difference between London and the East Coast, eight hours – a full sleep cycle – between the U.K. and the West Coast. That kind of regular disruption would be an extra stressor to players and certainly affect performance. 

Speaking of added stress, all this talk of international franchises comes on the heels of adding a 17th game, with an 18th game all but assured within the next few years and little more than lip service about the effects on players’ health. Goodell and NFL brass routinely yammer about how player safety is a top priority, but their actions often say otherwise. Yes, the league now penalizes targeting and headhunting and has outlawed certain kinds of blocks deemed dangerous. Kickoffs have been tweaked and re-tweaked to reduce the battering-ram collisions on those plays. Concussions and head trauma are now taken more seriously, but remember that the league had to be dragged into that position after denying a connection between the game’s violence and brain issues for years. It took some high-profile deaths and diagnoses, along with dogged individual medical researchers, to finally get the league to acknowledge the problem. 

Rest and recovery are vital for player health, but you wouldn’t know it to look at the schedule. Twenty-four of the 32 teams have at least one stretch where they play two games within four or five days. Twenty-two teams have at least one stretch where they’ll play three games in 12 days. Eleven teams have multiple stretches in which they play 3-in-12. Denver and Green Bay have three stretches in which they play three games in 12 days, while Chicago has two 3-in-12 stretches and one in which it plays three games in 13 days. A slew of games at the end of the season are designated as TBA for dates and times, owing to attractive matchups and potential playoff bearings, but that will also affect recovery and quality of play. It all but guarantees that injuries will have an outsized impact and that many teams won’t play close to their best at the end of the season. 

One logical fix is to lengthen the season, not to add more games but more byes and off time and to get closer to the one-game-per-week routine that would give players a fighting chance to stay healthy or to recover and contribute. But instead, we get the inevitable march toward 18 games, Patriots owner Robert Kraft floating the idea of 16 international games per year with every team participating and the accompanying flights and disruption, and a schedule that puts greater emphasis on exposure and not player health and safety. Wager accordingly.

Yet More Definitive Footy Takes

You got the kit takes, and on the first day of the 2026-27 Premier League season (Holders Arsenal host newcomers Coventry City at 3:00, live on USA), you get another definitive analysis. I offer you the GTB vibes-based Premier League predicted order of finish.

First, a few opinions from the experts:

Opta is a analytical outfit that uses data to model predicted outcomes. Here's their take.

Three of NBC's pundits offer their opinion.

Finally, the BBC weighs in here.

I crunched the numbers to see how our vibes compared with the experts, and a few things stood out.

In this view, the higher the number, the better the expected finish. 20 for first, 19 for second, down to 1 for 20th and last. 

We are more bullish than the experts about Liverpool, Leeds, Sunderland, and Fulham (not saying much - the experts are not high on the Cottagers) and generally more bearish about Man City (we're right on this one, hear me now and believe me later), Forest, and Newcastle. And now we've got a way to track our gut. Game on!

GTB's Definitive Review of the 2026-27 EPL Kits

At the time of posting, we're fewer than 36 hours away from the start of a new Premier League season. One of the league's traditional preseason activities (in addition to exhibition games/money grabs in places far from the UK and Chelsea overpaying for middling talent) is the release of new kit designs. Which, come to think of it, is also a money grab.

ESPN has helpfully catalogued and ranked all of this season's new looks so you can judge their relative attractiveness (or lack thereof) for yourselves. But we're here to serve, so if you don't have that much time, allow us to tell you what's Good, Meh, and Ugly.

The Good

Sunderland were surprisingly frisky last season after being promoted from the Championship. The Black Cats took some major scalps early in the campaign, and wound up in 7th place, good for a Europa League spot. They celebrated by dropping a pair of sweet kits:

ESPN ranks their away kit as the very best of the new season's offerings. I like it, too.

But don't sleep on the update to their classic home togs, which are an homage to the club's 1937 FA Cup winners, and feature a ton of vintage details:

Coventry make their first return to the Premier League since the 2000-01 season. They were in the fourth division as recently as 2014. They're headed back up wearing a sweet home getup:

Crystal Palace has punched above its weight the past few seasons, winning the FA Cup and the UEFA Conference League. They've always had a sharp kit featuring diagonal red and blue stripes, and they've modernized it a bit this year:

Some observers don't like Brighton's away kits, claiming they're too bland. Those people are wrong. These are really clean:

The Meh

Adidas has done this thing recently where they leave a cap in the three stripes markings that run down the sleeves, probably to fit in more sponsorship logos. Let us go on record as disliking it - see Fulham's fairly unambitious home kit as an example of the form:

Chelsea is a mess in a lot of ways (though I expect them to be pretty competitive on the pitch under new manager Xabi Alonso). Their home kit design seems to be a complete afterthought.

A bunch of clubs, including the aforementioned Fulham, are basically running back the same home kits they've used for a while now. So don't expect anything interesting from Arsenal, Spurs, Manchester United, Bournemouth, and several others.

Everton is a blue club, just like Chelsea, and they didn't break any new ground, either, but I do like the little splash of yellow on the collar.

The Ugly

With due respect to our man Marls, Newcastle's home kit is a nice try, but a bizarre execution:

Hull City is newly promoted. Let's hope they play better than they design kits.

I generally like Leeds United's kits, but someone should've thought about how this season's home kit would look when the sponsor's logo was applied:

And finally, for good reason, Spurs seem to understand that their home kit is fairly standard, so they went for it with their away togs. They should not have done so.

Check out the rest at the ESPN link. There are some decent kits out there and some other fairly boring efforts. Tell us how we did.

Dog Days

Belated Glen Hansard Appreciation Post

Not exactly dipshittery, but a return to a normality. Glen Hansard, who passed away in a motorcycle accident on July 29, was your favorite musician's favorite musician. Hansard was beloved by the greats, the goods, the unknowns, and the up and comers because he just absolutely loved music with all his being. Here are just a few of the things he did, and a few of the ways the community celebrated him.

I didn't realize until his passing that he'd played guitarist Outspan Foster in The Commitments. Check out his story about getting the part and then enjoy his stylings.

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Hansard started as a busker, playing on the streets of Dublin. He never forgot those roots, and organized a annual Christmas Eve Busk starting in 2010 to raise money for the Dublin Simon Community, a group that works to support homeless Dubliners. Here he is at the 2015 edition of the Busk with a few folks you might know.

Look at how much he loves watching others - this is him at a recent Busk glowing as he looks on while young Dubliner (who started as a busker herself) Allie Sherlock plays. Shit breaks your heart.

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In addition to his solo work and numerous collaboration, Hansard recorded three gorgeous records with Czech singer-pianist Marketa Irglova as The Swell Season. Shlara turned us on to them years ago. The 2007 movie Once is a fictional depiction of their musical pairing, with the pair starring. You'll be familiar with "Falling Slowly". Just fucking beautiful. True story: I have a female friend with whom I share tunes I think are cool (and she with me). I sent her this song when I first heard it. And then had to quickly explain that I just thought it was a cool song - no deeper meaning. 

Here he is eulogizing Shane MacGowan just a few years ago.

Just hours before he passed, he spent an evening in a pub in West Dublin. Cliche to say he died doing what he loved, but he certainly did what he loved right to the too-early end. He was celebrated by just about everyone:

Indulgence

Person Is Killed in ICE-Involved Shooting in Maine

Person
Passive
Forever now

Agents
Active
Shot him dead

Our polite society
Chooses to forget
The words that
Describe the truth

So a person is killed
Impunity granted
A little girl grows up 
Fatherless. 

Our editors write
The next headline.