Narcissist and His Ego Save College Sports, Again

Again demonstrating a capacity for oafishly inserting himself across multiple theaters, President Grifty McGrievance issued an executive order last week aimed at college athletics. You might have missed it, what with the moon mission, the U.S. “excursion” into Iran, disrupted global markets, belligerent and profane calls to re-open the Strait of Hormuz, turfing his Attorney General, and attending a Supreme Court hearing that he hopes will result in the elimination of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution. In short, a busy week. 

This week’s drama pushed it even further into the background. Titled “Urgent National Action to Save College Sports,” the order mixes high-minded claims about the need for a fix along with some specific measures. The order came almost a month after Trump convened a White House roundtable to discuss the issues around the current system. The two-hour confab included several dozen sports and political figures under the auspices of “Somebody Needs to Do Something.” 

Trump issued an order last July, titled “Saving College Sports,” addressing some of the same issues and the need for reform, though none of the measures from that order were implemented or even made a dent in the conversation. Asked at the March get-together what would be different about a new executive order, he replied that it would be more comprehensive and detailed. 

That’s debatable, but the new EO speaks to the transfer process and eligibility, payments to athletes for name, image and likeness, and raises the specter of financial penalties for schools that don’t comply with the rules. Athletes would have five years to complete four years of eligibility, a rollback to the old system. They would be permitted a one-time transfer with immediate eligibility. A second transfer would require an athlete to sit out competition for a year, though an athlete who completed a four-year graduate degree would be permitted immediate eligibility after a transfer. 

The new order also would end NIL collectives, the donor-backed organizations that mushroomed after players were allowed to be paid. However, many of those collectives have wound down or phased out after the House vs. NCAA settlement that permitted schools to directly pay athletes up to $20.5 million, a move that has stressed and stretched athletic budgets. 

Schools have begun to find a way around that and supplement athlete pay by outside deals with media rights outfits and separate companies. The new order also comes with the possibility of withholding Federal funds for schools that don’t adhere to the rules, a favored Trump administration tactic that’s been used in the battle against diversity initiatives and supposed discrimination. Here, it’s again worth noting that an executive order is often a recommendation with government letterhead. It’s not a law, it doesn’t replace a law, it doesn’t provide an antitrust exemption – a big ask on the NCAA wish list – and it’s not immune to court challenges. 

President Cranky Pants admitted as much at the March meeting, where he toggled between discussion of issues and gripes about “radical” judges who upended the good old days and those awful Democrats who won’t pass any legislation he endorses. “I’d like to go exactly back to what we had and ram it through a court,” he said that day. 

That said, there is bipartisan desire for reform and guidelines that would provide stability, both in terms of player movement and finances, though there is broad disagreement on how to get there. Old guard advocates continue to look longingly at the questionably named SCORE Act (Student Compensation and Opportunity through Rights and Endorsements), which pre-empts state laws surrounding NIL payments in favor of a national system, provides the NCAA limited antitrust protection against lawsuits, and prevents college athletes from being classified as employees. The legislation has worked its way through Congressional committees and might pass a tight House of Representatives vote strictly along partisan lines. But the measure is likely DOA in the Senate, where it would need 60 votes and has zero Democrat buy-in. 

Democrats don’t want to roll back the freedoms and compensation that athletes have won, and many believe they are due, nor do they want to cede control back to the NCAA. The rub with Trump Saves College Sports, Part Deux is that courts have already ruled several measures illegal. For example, a Federal judge ruled that the NCAA’s old one-time transfer policy was restrictive, and the Dept. of Justice and the NCAA settled on a system that essentially gave athletes free agency. 

And good luck enforcing, or even defining, the order’s call for “a prohibition on improper financial activities regarding student-athletes, including collectives or other entities or methods used to facilitate third-party, pay-for-play payments.” One passage in the new EO is particularly galling, a kind of tutorial in gaslighting and hypocrisy disguised as well-meaning and crucial. It reads: Absent a comprehensive national solution, therefore, the escalating financial demands to succeed in football and basketball combined with the significantly loosened rules governing eligibility, transfers, and pay-for-play schemes may force curtailment of women’s and Olympics sports, and may even jeopardize the overall financial well-being of universities with which the Federal Government has important financial relationships. Universities are important defense research contractors for the Department of War, important medical research contractors for the Department of Health and Human Services, and important scientific research contractors for the National Science Foundation. The health of the university system is integral to the Federal Government’s basic functioning. 

Yessiree, science and research are so vital to society that the Trump administration has spent the past fifteen months slashing budgets and gutting departments in those areas, as well as bullying schools and agencies that don’t conform to their standards. A snapshot: approximately fourteen percent of STEM Ph.D.s in the Federal workforce, more than 10,000 people, left or were laid off since Trump took office, according to Science magazine. The Centers for Disease Control has lost 25 percent of its workforce and faces a 41-percent cut in the latest budget proposal. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) is in line for a $1.6-billion whack from its $6-billion budget, targeting climate research and what the administration refers to as “Green New Scam” programs. 

Trump last year asked that lawmakers cut spending on science programs at NASA in half (though legislators left much of the funding in place). He recently asked for a $5 billion budget cut to the National Institute of Health. The National Science Foundation and Environmental Protection Agency would see their budgets cut by 50 percent if Trump’s 2027 budget proposal is approved. Budget cuts to USAID meant that Johns Hopkins University lost $800 million in grants targeted for health programs, and approximately 7,800 science-related grants across multiple sectors were cut. 

It’s hard not to conclude that Trump’s latest foray into college athletics is anything more than another episode of performative grandstanding by a jabbering fossil who believes he’s entitled to govern by decree and force of personality, whose moves are dictated by whim and whatever and whoever crosses his path at any given moment. He’s the light and the heat in his own solar system, and thanks to 77 million of our fellow voters all of us get burned.

Zooming Out

There is so much fuckery loose in the land that it's hard to reckon with it all. Probably not great for one's mental health to even try to do so. But every so often something stops me cold, standing as a stark reminder that we are so very beyond the pale.

To wit, I can't believe this is a sentence that actually has meaning: Last week, Iran released a new lego diss track, this one aimed at U.S. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

We live in a time where the character and actions of the United States Secretary of Defense are cause for another sovereign nation to mock him. Accurately, at that.

Lord have mercy.

Hoochie Coochie Birthday

On this date one hundred eleven years ago a baby might have been born in west central Mississippi who would become one of the most influential figures in American music and helped lay the groundwork for rock ‘n roll. We say “might” because record-keeping was spotty in the early 20th century for black people in the rural south, and the man himself gave conflicting information about his origins. 

Date and place aside, Muddy Waters’s impact on American music is indisputable. He brought Mississippi Delta blues north and electrified and amplified it in the 1940s, becoming the King of Chicago Blues. He toured England in the late ‘50s and introduced the music to British kids, including lads who used the title of one of his best known songs, “Rollin’ Stone,” to name their band. He recorded blues classics such as “I’m Ready,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” “Mannish Boy” and “I Can’t Be Satisfied.” He influenced scores of musicians in the 1960s and ‘70s, who played his songs and performed with him and incorporated his style into their own. He assembled great bands with performers who became household names within the blues and rock communities. 

He was born McKinley Morganfield and grew up on the Stovall Plantation near Clarksdale, Miss., raised by his grandmother when his mother died shortly after his birth. His grandmother, Della Grant, gave him the nickname “Muddy” as a youngster because he often played in a nearby creek. “Waters” was added later when he began playing music at local houses and juke joints. 

He taught himself to play harmonica and guitar and was influenced by Delta musicians such as Robert Johnson and Son House and Charley Patton. He worked the fields and drove a tractor during the day and performed nights and weekends. Waters’s big break came in Aug. 1941 when archivist Alan Lomax came to Mississippi to record Delta blues musicians on behalf of the Library of Congress, recording him and several others on the porch of his shack. 

When Lomax played the recording for Muddy, the musician’s mind was blown. He told Rolling Stone magazine years later that his first recording sounded like anyone else’s he had heard, and he began to think that he could be a professional musician. Two years later, he moved to Chicago, part of the immense migration of black people north and west from 1915-1970 (If you’re interested in a broad social, cultural and economic examination of the Great Migration, I highly recommend “The Warmth of Other Suns” by Isabel Wilkerson). He began playing in Chicago clubs and shortly thereafter bought his first electric guitar and plugged into amps, because he said acoustic instruments couldn’t be heard over the din of crowded, noisy clubs. 

Waters began recording in the late 1940s with a new label called Aristocrat Records started by brothers Phil and Leonard Chess that later became the iconic Chess Records. His first notable band included harmonica whiz Little Walter Jacobs, pianist Otis Spann, guitarist Jimmy Rogers and bassist and songwriter Willie Dixon, who penned several of Muddy’s signature tunes. He toured England and came home to perform at the acclaimed Newport Jazz Festival and record one of the first live blues albums, “Live at Newport 1960,” which includes a killer version of “Got My Mojo Workin’.” 

Waters experienced a lean period during the 1960s, as record executives attempted to marry his sound with harder-edged rock. But in the late ‘60s and extending through the remainder of his life (he died in 1983), he returned to his roots with numerous collaborations, tours and records with those he influenced, among them people such as Eric Clapton, Mike Bloomfield, Paul Butterfield, Buddy Guy and Johnny Winter. The Stones’ Mick Jagger, Keith Richard and Ronnie Wood appeared with Muddy at the famous southside Chicago club the Checkerboard Lounge in 1981. 

The dilapidated sharecropper’s shack where Waters grew up became a tourist attraction in the 1980s before its remains were moved to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale. When ZZ Top guitarist Billy Gibbons visited the old shack, he was encouraged to take a couple of planks, which he had fashioned into guitars known as “Muddywood.” They were used to raise funds for the museum and where one is also on display. Clapton once said, in a quote that appears on a plaque at the site of the old shack: “Muddy Waters’ music changed my life, and whether you know it or not, or like it or not, it probably changed yours, too.”

I'm going to yuck this yum

I'm a fan of language, especially slang, so I enjoy following the youngs' neologisms.  Although one of my faves is "don't yuck my yum" I'm going to do so in this post.

Which is not a political post!  You probably think I'm going to gleefully detail Bryon Noem's love of bimbofication but you're wrong.  If that's how he gets down, so be it.  I do, however, find it gobsmacking that of all the things associated with Kristi Noem over the past 14-or-so months, this is what brings her shame.  

I take to my keyboard to instead yuck a different practice.  I have long maintained, and I'm sure Danimal agrees, that water is the homeowner's greatest enemy.  It can cause problems originating in the house or from any direction outside the house.  You know you're middle aged when you see a foot of snow outside your house and perseverate about how it will all end up in your sump pump someday.

The homeowner's second greatest enemy is bugs.  Roaches, silverfish, termites, cave crickets, centipedes.  And ants.  Every year I wage chemical warfare against odorous house ants, or Tapinoma sessile to the entomologically inclined, by applying ecologically disastrous amounts of Amdro Ant Block to the foundation of zhome to minimize their appearance in zkitchen.  I cannot stand those little bastards.

I therefore yuck the practice of collecting ants.  So widespread is this preposterous hobby that there exists a commercial endeavor called AntsRUs.com offering for sale ants and, mindbogglingly, termites, as well as equipment to house these pests.  Some of these ants start at £159.99!  A hundred and sixty quid to bring a bug into your house!?!  Bollucks!  Closer to home, some loon in Ohio also sells ants and blogs about them too.  Ahnts: The Blog.

So profitable is this formic fetish that an illegal black market of ants exists to service these oddball collectors.  Giant African harvester ant queens sell for $220, probably because they are "many people's dream species."  Not my dream, maybe yours.

The next time your spouse complains about all the space taken up by your baseball cards, golf clubs, snow tires, CDs, or any other detritus you've accumulated over the years, tell them that you'll get rid of it all if you can start an ant collection.

Music as Memory: Final Boss Level

Usually when we use the phrase "music as memory" here, it's a reference to the way certain songs transport us immediately back to a place and time. We originally coined it in a post that celebrated three amazing records all released on September 24, 2011. (For what it's worth, that's one of the best posts ever committed to electrons on this here blog, and I don't (just) say that because I'm one of the authors.)

Today, though, a new take on music's memorial properties. Last week, Sir Paul McCartney dropped a new single. Entitled, "Days We Left Behind", it's a gauzy look back at the beginning of his musical career. 

There's no question that McCartney is one of the giants of the game, and the fact that he's still putting out new music more than 60 years after The Beatles exploded onto the scene is damn well remarkable. The dude is 83! So I'm not one to criticize. Though I do wonder: is this a sweet and melancholy walk down musical memory lane? Or do you find it all a bit maudlin?

I'll hang up and listen.

New Old Stock Music

If you're into collecting things you're probably familiar with the concept of "new old stock" or "NOS," which Wikipedia defines as "aged stock of merchandise that was never sold to a customer and is still new in original packaging. Such merchandise may not be manufactured anymore, and the new old stock may represent the only current source of a particular item .... Another definition of NOS is new original stock, referring to aged original equipment parts that remained in unsold inventory. This inventory may sell at a premium in a vintage or collectables market, such as among antique vehicle collectors where enthusiasts seek to repair their vehicles with original parts."

NOS is a popular fetish among collectors of watches, baseball cards, toys, car parts, Grateful Dead beanie baby bears, you name it.  NOS records are also desirable in certain circles, but I've never thought of the music itself as being NOS.  Until recently.

Spotify served up "If You Don't Want Me To" by Joanna and I thought to myself, "Jeez, are these guys Stone Roses fans or what?  They sound like a late 80's Manchester band."

It turns out they are a late 80s Manchester band!  You never heard of them because the album they recorded in 1990, "Hello Flower," was never released.  But now it is.  NOS music!  I dig it and most of you will too.

The State of Play: WFCSAGS

When our readers ask, we deliver. Case in point, Z recently suggested I review the current state of affairs for the football clubs Gheorghies support, either of their own volition or because I bequeathed (saddled?) them a side. This is a thing I can do.

Because Z asked, we'll start with his Norwich lads. They scuffled last season in the Championship (English soccer's second division), finishing 13th of 24 teams, but only eight points from relegation in a very crowded mid-table.

The Canaries are a bit better this season, currently sitting in tenth on 54 points with seven matches to play. They won't see promotion this season, but they've stabilized a bit. American striker Josh Sargent came back to MLS after several seasons on the south coast.

And their fans are funny:

Shlara's (and Prince William's) Aston Villa are in the quarterfinals of the Europa League, and currently in the mix for a Champions League berth next season. The Villans have been a bit up and down of late, but their 54 points are good for fourth in the Premier League with seven matches to play.

Fulham are having another very solid season, only four points from a spot in next year's Europa League and all but guaranteed of survival. But they're playing as if they're in their Ibiza Era. The final seven weeks of the season look to be a lot of "ah, well, that's a shame" in footy form.

As for Whitney's Leicester, I suppose that wide eyes emoji might be a good visual reference. The Foxes are currently in 22nd of 24 teams in the Championship. If that holds, they'd be relegated to League One, which...yikes.

Dave's Brentford are quietly buzzing along. The Bees are two points ahead of Fulham, and very much in the mix for a place in European competition next season. Big London and Gheorghie Derby in two weeks, as Brentford host Fulham in a match neither fan base would've expected to matter as much as it might.

Meanwhile, near the penthouse, fancy man Danimal's Manchester City is stalking Arsenal for the top spot in the division. While the Gunners are the odds on favorites to take the title, up nine points at the moment, City did just defeat Arsenal to win the Carabao Cup, the first major trophy of the English year.

Marls was a Newcastle supporter before we had a chance to attach a different label to him, and his lads are stretched. After a decent Champions League campaign, they've stumbled to 12th in the Premier League after a bitter defeat to local rival Sunderland in the Tyne-Wear Derby. Skipper Eddie Howe is bemoaning his club's spending on talent, never a good sign.

The Teej has been a Nottingham Forest guy from way back, to when we used to call him Little John. Forest are having a weird one. Like Villa, they're in the Europa League quarterfinals after defeating Danish power Midtjylland last week. But back at home, they've been in our near the relegation zone for most of the season. Their mercurial (read: batshit insane) Greek owner Vangelis Marinakis has fired three managers already this season.

Forest's win over Tottenham Hotspur vaulted them to 16th place, three points from the drop, but there's real work still to do.

And speaking of Spurs, who I believe count Rootsy and Squeaky as backers, that club is a fucking shambles. One year removed from winning the Europa League, and only a week after being eliminated from the Champions League, Spurs are in 17th, only one point away from relegation. Worse still, they're unmoored and playing like absolute ass. The other teams in the relegation fight have been hardened by their experience at the bottom of the table. Spurs' expensive roster is in no way prepared for what's to come over the next two months - their relegation would be seismic.