Wrenball: A Preview

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

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

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!

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.

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David Frum Reads G:TB

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

This Is How It's Done

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

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— 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!

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.