Sports Go Sports

The Trump administration tries to set broad NCAA policy by fiat, as in Executive Order, demanding a five-year eligibility cap, one free transfer, national agent registry, medical care protections for athletes, women’s/Olympic sport protections and a ban on NIL collectives it calls ‘fraudulent schemes.’

This is not how our government works, but Trump would to just declare things, so he’s trying to threaten NIH or other funding to force the universities to do what he wants, even when what he wants has been ruled illegal by courts and doesn’t actually have a working legal definition or plan to deal with the existing court rulings. He just thinks he can say ‘implement these things or else I will cut your funding, even though the courts probably think that is illegal, I don’t care,’ and sit back.

Kyle Saunders: And here’s the thing Heitner caught that deserves more attention than it’s getting. Section 4(b) of the order conditions the NCAA’s rulemaking mandate on actions taken “to the extent permitted by law and applicable court orders.”

The order contains its own limiting principle. It knows it can’t override the courts. It says so, in its own text, and then directs the NCAA to do things that courts have already ruled are antitrust violations.

The good news is that there seems to be momentum behind passing something, and everyone smiled about the order. The bad news is that all of that is meaningless.

How did we end up with a legal system where there is no punishment for repeatedly issuing orders that you yourself know are illegal, other than ending enforcement of those illegal orders after someone sues, thus allowing this to be used as leverage?

Shrug.

by Zvi Moshowitz, DWAtV |  Read more:

[ed. Don't know much about the issue in question, but this short description of Trump administration strong-arm tactics is near perfect. It's a strategy. Here's another Republican doing exactly the same thing (using the legal system to run out the clock): DeSantis plots end run of Florida law to create more GOP House seats (Axios).]

We Haven’t Seen the Worst of What Gambling and Prediction Markets Will Do to America

Here are three stories about the state of gambling in America.

1. Baseball

In November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians, Emmanuel Clase and Luis Ortiz, were charged in a conspiracy for “rigging pitches.” Frankly, I had never heard of rigged pitches before, but the federal indictment describes a scheme so simple that it’s a miracle that this sort of thing doesn’t happen all the time. Three years ago, a few corrupt bettors approached the pitchers with a tantalizing deal: (1) We’ll bet that certain pitches will be balls; (2) you throw those pitches into the dirt; (3) we’ll win the bets and give you some money.

The plan worked. Why wouldn’t it? There are hundreds of pitches thrown in a baseball game, and nobody cares about one bad pitch. The bets were so deviously clever because they offered enormous rewards for bettors and only incidental inconvenience for players and viewers. Before their plan was snuffed out, the fraudsters won $450,000 from pitches that not even the most ardent Cleveland baseball fan would ever remember the next day. Nobody watching America’s pastime could have guessed that they were witnessing a six-figure fraud.

2. Bombs

On the morning of February 28th, someone logged onto the prediction market website Polymarket and made an unusually large bet. This bet wasn’t placed on a baseball game. It wasn’t placed on any sport. This was a bet that the United States would bomb Iran on a specific day, despite extremely low odds of such a thing happening.

A few hours later, bombs landed in Iran. This one bet was part of a $553,000 payday for a user named “Magamyman.” And it was just one of dozens of suspicious, perfectly-timed wagers, totaling millions of dollars, placed in the hours before a war began.

It is almost impossible to believe that, whoever Magamyman is, he didn’t have inside information from members of the administration. The term war profiteering typically refers to arms dealers who get rich from war. But we now live in a world not only where online bettors stand to profit from war, but also where key decision makers in government have the tantalizing options to make hundreds of thousands of dollars by synchronizing military engagements with their gambling position.

3. Bombs, again

On March 10, several days into the Iran War, the journalist Emanuel Fabian reported that a warhead launched from Iran struck a site outside Jerusalem.

Meanwhile on Polymarket, users had placed bets on the precise location of missile strikes on March 10. Fabian’s article was therefore poised to determine payouts of $14 million in betting. As The Atlantic’s Charlie Warzel reported, bettors encouraged him to rewrite his story to produce the outcome that they’d bet on. Others threatened to make his life “miserable.”

A clever dystopian novelist might conceive of a future where poorly paid journalists for news wires are offered six-figure deals to report fictions that cash out bets from online prediction markets. But just how fanciful is that scenario when we have good reason to believe that journalists are already being pressured, bullied, and threatened to publish specific stories that align with multi-thousand dollar bets about the future?

Put it all together: rigged pitches, rigged war bets, and attempts to rig wartime journalism. Without context, each story would sound like a wacky conspiracy theory. But these are not conspiracy theories. These are things that have happened. These are conspiracies—full stop.

“If you’re not paranoid, you’re not paying attention” has historically been one of those bumperstickers you find on the back of a car with so many other bumperstickers that you worry for the sanity of its occupants. But in this weird new reality where every event on the planet has a price, and behind every price is a shadowy counterparty, the jittery gambler’s paranoia—is what I’m watching happening because somebody more powerful than me bet on it?—is starting to seem, eerily, like a kind of perverse common sense.

From Laundromats to Airplanes

What’s remarkable is not just the fact that online sports books have taken over sports, or that betting markets have metastasized in politics and culture, but the speed with which both have taken place.

For most of the last century, the major sports leagues were vehemently against gambling, as the Atlantic staff writer McKay Coppins explained in his recent feature. [...]

Following the 2018 Supreme Court decision Murphy vs. NCAA, sports gambling was unleashed into the world, and the leagues haven’t looked back. Last year, the NFL saw $30 billion gambled on football games, and the league itself made half a billion dollars in advertising, licensing, and data deals.

Nine years ago, Americans bet less than $5 billion on sports. Last year, that number rose to at least $160 billion. Big numbers mean nothing to me, so let me put that statistic another way: $5 billion is roughly the amount Americans spend annually at coin-operated laundromats and $160 billion is nearly what Americans spent last year on domestic airline tickets. So, in a decade, the online sports gambling industry will have risen from the level of coin laundromats to rival the entire airline industry.

And now here come the prediction markets, such as Polymarket and Kalshi, whose combined 2025 revenue came in around $50 billion. “These predictive markets are the logical endpoint of the online gambling boom,” Coppins told me on my podcast Plain English. “We have taught the entire American population how to gamble with sports. We’ve made it frictionless and easy and put it on everybody’s phone. Why not extend the logic and culture of gambling to other segments of American life?” He continued:

Why not let people gamble on who’s going to win the Oscar, when Taylor Swift’s wedding will be, how many people will be deported from the United States next year, when the Iranian regime will fall, whether a nuclear weapon will be detonated in the year 2026, or whether there will be a famine in Gaza? These are not things that I’m making up. These are all bets that you can make on these predictive markets.

Indeed, why not let people gamble on whether there will be a famine in Gaza? The market logic is cold and simple: More bets means more information, and more informational volume is more efficiency in the marketplace of all future happenings. But from another perspective—let’s call it, baseline morality?—the transformation of a famine into a windfall event for prescient bettors seems so grotesque as to require no elaboration. One imagines a young man sending his 1099 documents to a tax accountant the following spring: “right, so here are my dividends, these are the cap gains, and, oh yeah, here’s my $9,000 payout for totally nailing when all those kids would die.”

It is a comforting myth that dystopias happen when obviously bad ideas go too far. Comforting, because it plays to our naive hope that the world can be divided into static categories of good versus evil and that once we stigmatize all the bad people and ghettoize all the bad ideas, some utopia will spring into view. But I think dystopias more likely happen because seemingly good ideas go too far. “Pleasure is better than pain” is a sensible notion, and a society devoted to its implications created Brave New World. “Order is better than disorder” sounds alright to me, but a society devoted to the most grotesque vision of that principle takes us to 1984. Sports gambling is fun, and prediction markets can forecast future events. But extended without guardrails or limitations, those principles lead to a world where ubiquitous gambling leads to cheating, cheating leads to distrust, and distrust leads ultimately to cynicism or outright disengagement.

“The crisis of authority that has kind of already visited every other American institution in the last couple of decades has arrived at professional sports,” Coppins said. Two-thirds of Americans now believe that professional athletes sometimes change their performance to influence gambling outcomes. “Not to overstate it, but that’s a disaster,” he said. And not just for sports.

Four Ways to Lose (Or, What's a 'Rigged Pitch' in a War?)

There are four reasons to worry about the effect of gambling in sports and culture.

by Derek Thompson, Substack |  Read more:

Image: Eyestetix Studio on Unsplash

[ed. See also: Exclusive: Trader made nearly $1 million on Polymarket with remarkably accurate Iran bets (CNN).]

Masters 2026: Unforgettable Moments Walking a Harrowing Back Nine with Rory McIlroy

AUGUSTA, Ga. — Rory McIlroy raised his arms in the air. And so did I. The defending champion Masters defended reclaimed his green jacket and did it in dramatic fashion on the back nine Sunday. Attending the tournament for the first time in 10 years, I knew I had to get out and watch it and I’m glad I did.

Having walked every hole of the back nine with McIlroy as he posted his one-under 71 for a one-shot victory over Scottie Scheffler, here are five observations about the back-to-back champ

How Rory’s walk has changed

When a 21-year-old McIlroy built a four-shot lead after 54 holes at the 2011 Masters, he bounced around Augusta National. Long, curly, dark hair coming out from under his Jumeriah-sponsored cap, his walk was quick, youthful and energetic. Fast forward 15 years and the man and that walk have evolved.

Weekend rounds at Augusta are slow. As I arrived at the ninth green Sunday, in front of the Augusta National clubhouse, it was 4:35 p.m. Just a few feet to my left, on the 18th green, McIlroy would go on to win the tournament at 6:55 p.m. It took the final group nearly 2 1/2 hours to play the back nine, on perhaps the hottest day in Augusta, Ga.,, this year.

I was struck by just how slow Rory’s walk was. Down to the green on 10, back to the tee on 13, across the bridge on 15, he wasn’t bouncing. He was pacing himself. Literally. He spoke throughout the 2025 Masters about how he and Bob Rotella, a famous golf psychologist, had worked on a mindset of “staying in a bubble”, focusing on himself and controlling what he could control.

A year later, it was more of the same.

On the 13th hole, McIlroy slowed to a stop. Standing in the fairway for about three or four minutes. Not as his ball in the fairway, back near the tee. Just him and Harry Diamond, his caddie, waiting. I was confused. I could see two balls near where I was standing but begin wondering if Cameron Young had hit a provisional ball. I asked a couple of fans if they had seen what happened. They were as confused as I was.

“I don't know what had happened,” McIlroy said after the round, “but Cam was pulled in behind the hedges by a couple of referees to talk about something that may or may not have happened on the course.”

It’s unclear what went on with Young in that moment, but it is clear how Rory handled it.

“I thought, instead of me getting up there and waiting at my ball forever, I'd just hang back until Cam came back out. I don't really like that second shot anyway, so I don't need to be up there looking at it for too long. So I just tried to hang back … you know, just so I could get to the ball and go through my normal routine and not be waiting up there for what I would feel like is forever.”

He paced himself. All day, but especially on the back nine. And was clear to all down at Amen Corner. [...]

The shot that may define 2026 Rory

As I arrived at Amen Corner, I positioned myself to the right of the 12th tee. With a good view of the 11th green, I watched as McIlroy made a crucial par putt from six feet to remain one shot ahead. He walked onto the 12th tee with with his caddie to a standing applause. Many patrons removed their hats, holding them in the air and cheering as the leader arrived on their stage. Young then followed, to a similar, albeit less exuberant, ovation.

The wind wasn’t strong but it was as strong as it had been all day. The flag on the 11th hole was barely moving but the 12th flag, 155 yards away, was dancing back and forth. Diamond, stood next to Rory, signalled an 11 o’clock wind direction. They had a brief conversation and pulled 9-iron. Then the wind gusted. Rory backed off and Harry stepped forward. Not towards his boss but further down the tee, attempting to get a better feel for what the wind was doing and throwing grass in the air at the end of the tee box. The information was relied to McIlroy and he settled into his routine. Not rushed, but brisk.

We watched as he hit a sawed-off fade with his 9-iron, the same shot he had practiced late on Saturday night on the range. Often you’ll hear a player talk to their ball when it’s in the air, especially on par 3s, but Rory said nothing. Dozens of patrons shouted, nearly everyone of them in admiration as the ball flew towards the bunker, fading ever so slightly towards the right pin position. It landed, both with a thud and a huge cheer from the crowd, and released out to seven feet.

It will be the shot that many will say won him the green jacket. What is undeniable is that it won the closest-to-the-pin contest there on Sunday. No one, none of the other 53 players who teed it up in the final round, hit it closer.

There is no prize for that. But he’ll settle for another green jacket.

The sneeze that could have changed it all

After McIlroy rolled in his putt for birdie on 12, I moved about 100 yards towards the 13th hole, taking a spot just past the trees that line the right side of the fairway. McIlroy’s ball, amazingly having missed that tee shot well right in the opening three rounds, landed just a few feet away, barely on the fairway. He was two shots clear of the field and now in the “go zone” on the par five.

Every hole is lined with fans that place their seats early in the morning with the plan to return to those seats when the leaders come through. I stood probably three rows back from those chairs, always looking for relatively short fans to stand behind. I’m 6-foot-3 and height is an advantage in these situations.

McIlroy arrived at his ball, surveyed the shot with his caddy, and pulled an 8-iron out of his bag. A good swing here and the Northern Irishman would have one arm in the green jacket. Waggle. Look. Waggle. Look. Achoo. The teenage kid in front of me sneezed. McIlroy heard and backed off his shot, resetting with his caddy and going back through his routine.

Luckily, for all involved, McIlroy avoided the same watery fate that bestowed him here 12 months ago. His ball landed on the green and released just over the back.

“I’m so f****** glad he didn’t go in the water” said the kid. His dad appeared to agree.

by Jamie Kennedy, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Image: J.D. Cuban

[ed. A real nail-biter. In the end he had every golfer's dream - a two-inch putt to win the Masters. Yay, Rory! The years have added a lot of grit to his game. See also: In the post-Tiger Woods era, Rory McIlroy is the lion golf needs (The Athletic). Then, on the other end of the spectrum, you have what golf doesn't need: Sergio Garcia damages Masters tee box with his driver.]

Masters: 4/12/2026

[ed. Masters Sunday!]

Masters 2026: Sometimes golf needs to be told to go to hell

Golf is supposed to be a gentleman's game, a polite handshake between competitor and course. In reality it’s a hostage negotiation. We try to maintain our composure, but this sport operates like a bad contract with fine print you didn't read — every clause designed to remind you that the house always wins. Other sports at least pretend to be fair. You can outwork a defender, wear down a pitcher, grind an opponent into submission. Golf offers no such recourse. What it delivers, you take.

The toll of that arrangement is real. Every bad break deposits something into an account you can't access, pressure building in increments so small you barely notice until you realize the damage on the statement. Expecting players to absorb that indefinitely without some kind of release is fantasy. These are obsessive competitors who have organized their entire lives around a game that sets an impossible bar and then moves it. Perfection is the expectation and failure the guarantee.

Which is why the release, when it comes, makes a strange kind of sense. A perfectly deployed expletive, the kind that arrives with equal parts exhaustion and clarity, can work like a pressure valve, the emotional equivalent of opening a window in a stuffy room. And there is something cathartic about watching a club meet its end after a particularly unforgivable betrayal, a brief and satisfying severance of a relationship that clearly wasn't working. These aren't ugly moments. They're honest ones. Reminders that no matter how much money is on the line or how many people are watching, nobody has actually figured out how to make peace with this game.

What's maybe more compelling than the outbursts themselves is how reliably we seek them out. There's a recognition factor at work. The sudden collapse of the professional facade revealing something deeply familiar underneath, like running into a coworker at the grocery store and realizing they also have no idea what they're doing. These are the best players in the world, and when the wheels come off, they look exactly like the rest of us: bewildered, aggrieved, and entirely convinced the game is cheating. 

by Joel Beall, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Images: J.D. Cuban/Adam Glanzman

[ed. Factoid of the day (because, of course... it's the Masters):]

***

Every April, Augusta, Ga., transforms and becomes one of the most sought-after destinations in the world.

Masters week is an economic bonanza for residents. And for the homeowners who open their doors? Well, often it's the best investment they've ever made. A home less than three miles from Augusta National rents for $30,000, and the premium end? They command six figures.

The best part … every dollar these homeowners earn is likely tax-free thanks to a provision in the federal tax code called the "Augusta Rule." Allowing homeowners to rent out their property for up to 14 days a year without paying a cent in income tax on the earnings.

Hot Ticket

Jeffrey Epstein’s web of influence stretched from European palaces to Ivy League universities and Wall Street banks, but there was apparently at least one little corner of the establishment that seems to have been beyond his reach: Augusta National. In July 2019, Epstein sent an iMessage to Steve Bannon asking for his help with a particularly difficult problem. “Need to work magic to get brad Karp admitted to augusta golf club,” Epstein wrote. “The head of Paul Weiss Brad Karp?” Bannon replied. “Yes.”

Karp, the former chair of the legal firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, stepped down from his position in February because of his ties with Epstein.

Bannon and Epstein talked it over for an hour. Bannon suggested that Karp’s “best shot” was to “take a strong interest in amateur golf”, Epstein complained that some of the existing Augusta members who might help, like Bill Gates, “have no sway”, and asked “Who s their senator” as if they might. Bannon explained that he thinks the club is run by “7 Atlanta and Augusta families”, who he calls “crackers” from the “Old south” who are prejudiced against “lawyers and investment bankers”. The heart bleeds.

It’s a pungently obnoxious conversation, racist and misogynistic, and at the end of it, Bannon and Epstein are absolutely no closer to figuring out how to go about getting in.

Which is one of the great lessons of Augusta National. Money only goes so far. It is, even now, just about the only sports event in the US where you don’t need to worry that Donald Trump is going to decide to put in an appearance.

If Brad Karp and his ilk are busy worrying about how to get a club membership, most of the rest of us would settle for just making it inside the gates during Masters week. But admittance, like everything else around here, is done according to its own peculiar set of rules. Most of the tickets go to lifetime patrons from the local community, who own badges passed down through the generations along with grandad’s pocket watch. That route in was shut back in the 1970s. The other is the annual lottery, and your odds of winning it make Tiger’s chances of a sixth Green Jacket look good this year.

Officially that’s it. Unofficially, anyone who’s willing to spend enough was usually able to pick one up from one of the touts who camp out on the easements down by the interstate, just beyond the reach of the 2,700ft boundary that makes scalping near the property a criminal offence under Georgia law. Reselling tickets is against the terms and conditions, but the loophole was that anyone who bought one could always insist they had received it as a gift. In recent years, though, resale has become an industrial business, and second-hand tickets have been appearing on the internet where they sell for as much as 50 times their face value.

Until, that was, Augusta’s members decided they had had enough of other companies making the profit the club have chosen to forgo by keeping the actual admission prices so low. The Sunday of last year’s Masters was described as a “bloodbath” by an executive working for one of the hospitality companies in the area, as hundreds of paying customers found they were detained, and even refused entry, at the club gates because they had come on someone else’s ticket. According to industry reports, as many as 200 ticket holders were turned away on the day.

Some said they were taken into a room and asked to hand over their identity documents before being grilled about how they got their tickets, and where they were staying during the tournament. One person said it was like being pulled over by the police. Some were let in anyway, others say they were turned away. As is the way at Augusta, it’s almost impossible to get a straight answer from anyone at the club about exactly what’s going on and, in the absence of any information, there are an awful lot of rumours about the club’s crackdown on the market.

They say the four-day tickets have radio-frequency identification chips in them, and that the club were able to trace all the ones that were being returned back to a single geographical location each evening before being used again by someone else the next day. They say the information contained in the barcodes includes the buyer’s address. They say the club are employing undercover agents to idly ask patrons where they picked up their tickets while they are walking around the grounds.

The other theory is the club are buying up a lot of the resale tickets themselves just so they can find out the names of the people who put them up for sale. The letter they send out is a masterpiece of Masters manners, thanking the recipient for their support and patronage over the years before informing them that they are now permanently banned from the grounds.

by Andy Bull, The Guardian |  Read more:

Image: Mike Blake/Reuters

[ed. Master's weekend. Glad there's still one institution left with some balls.]

WNBA Players Had an Ace Up Their Sleeve in Pay Negotiations: A Nobel Laureate

After Claudia Goldin became the first woman to win a solo Nobel in economics in 2023, she received hundreds of invitations and requests. She accepted just three.

One of them was advising the WNBA players union as the women prepared to negotiate a new labor deal with the league.

When Goldin replied via email to Terri Carmichael Jackson, executive director of the players union, “I remember just reading it and screaming,” Jackson said. Goldin had one requirement: She refused to be paid.

This month, the two sides reached a collective bargaining agreement that gave Women’s National Basketball Association players a nearly 400% raise. Starting this season, players’ average salary will top $580,000.

It isn’t just the biggest pay increase in U.S. league history. It is, as far as Goldin is aware, the biggest increase any union anywhere has ever negotiated.

“It’s astounding,” the 79-year-old Harvard economist said.

Mike Bass, a spokesman who represents both the National Basketball Association and the WNBA, called the deal “transformational.”

“The WNBA community is rightfully celebrating a historic moment of growth, investment and progress for the players, fans and the future of the game,” he said.

Goldin played no sports growing up in the Bronx in the 1950s. But she has deep knowledge of women’s pay: As an economist, she spent years rifling through boxes of surveys and personnel records and tracking down data to document women’s changing role in the workplace.

 
That research has included the role that discrimination plays in pay gaps between men and women. Goldin won her Nobel for advancing understanding of women’s labor-market outcomes.

Goldin earned a Ph.D. at the University of Chicago economics department in 1972, when few women were in the field. She became the first tenured woman in Harvard’s economics department.

In early 2024, when Jackson approached Goldin, the average NBA player made about $12 million, according to Basketball Reference, a statistics website. The average WNBA player made $118,000—less than one cent on the dollar, as Goldin is quick to point out.

Around that time, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark and other young stars would enter the WNBA draft and spur a surge in popularity in the league that continues today.

 
Goldin’s first task was examining players’ average compensation—salaries plus benefits like housing.

She also looked at career length. She and a research assistant scraped roster data going back to the league’s 1997 launch and built what demographers call a “life table.” It’s the same tool that insurance actuaries use to calculate life expectancy, adapted to estimate how long a typical player might expect to play in the WNBA.

The answer: two or three years. In negotiating player benefits, it was important to know that if they kicked in after three years or later, many players wouldn’t receive them.

The foundational piece of revenue for the WNBA is an 11-year media-rights package finalized in summer 2024. The contract with broadcasters will pay the WNBA $2.2 billion over the life of the deal. The NBA’s deal with the same partners is worth about $75 billion, according to a person familiar with the situation.

by Rachel Bachman and Justin Lahart, Wall Street Journal | Read more:
Images: Carlin Stiehl/Steph Chambers/Getty

Something's Wrong With Tiger Woods

Something's wrong with Tiger Woods. We don't know the struggle’s precise shape, but it's there. It has been there. The evidence is not subtle, and it is not new. That is the sad and disconcerting thing, and until it is reckoned with honestly, everything else is secondary.

What happened with Friday’s two-vehicle crash in Jupiter Island, Fla., and Woods’ subsequent arrest, involved drugs or medication; the Martin County Sheriff said so plainly, because the breathalyzer said 0.00 and the man crawling out of the overturned SUV appeared lethargic, impaired, somewhere other than fully present. That part we know. What we also know, and have known for a while, is the context that surrounds it: all the surgeries, a body that has been broken and rebuilt so many times that the pharmaceutical architecture required just to get through a day is complex, possibly dangerous, and for someone with Woods' injury history genuinely hard to escape. Chronic pain and how people manage it are not moral failures. They are medical realities that have unmade careful, disciplined, strong-willed people for as long as the drugs have existed. Tiger Woods is, whatever else you want to say about him, among the most disciplined human beings to ever stand over a golf ball. That discipline did not protect him. It may have obscured how much protection he needed.

We are looking at a pattern. The 2017 arrest was not an isolated incident. It was a signal. The diversion program, the rehab, the public statement about an unexpected reaction to prescribed medications, these were events that fit a sequence the press was not particularly interested in identifying as one. There was a comeback to cover. There was Augusta to wonder about. And then 2019 came, and the green jacket, and it became nearly impossible to hold both things at once, the miracle of that Sunday and the unanswered question from two years earlier. So we didn't.

Consider 2021. Woods drove off a California road at high speed and shattered his leg, nearly lost it. The Los Angeles County Sheriff called it an accident. No blood was drawn. No substance test was administered. The official account was no evidence of impairment, and that was mostly accepted, because Woods had nearly died and it felt indecent to push. But the absence of a test is not the same as a clean result. It is the absence of a test. What we were left with, in place of information, was a story about survival and the road back. That was covered extensively, and which made it functionally impossible to also say: we don't know what was in his system that morning. That matters. It still matters.

The golf world, this publication included, has organized its Tiger coverage around one persistent question for years: Can he play? It is a reasonable question if you are covering sports. It becomes an incomplete one when the honest answer to a prior question—Is this man OK?—is visibly, and has for some time been, no.

***

We hope we are wrong. Maybe there is an explanation for the refused urine test that has nothing to do with what it appears to suggest. Everyone is entitled to their privacy, and no one should be mocked for their trials. But privacy is a harder argument to make when the struggle keeps arriving in public. On roadsides, in mugshots, in sheriff's press conferences. At some point, looking away is not discretion. It's something closer to abandonment.

The other questions will come. The legal exposure, the Masters, the PGA Tour committee he chairs, what any of this means for a legacy that was secured long ago and cannot be taken back. Those are real, and they will get their due. The sport will process this the way it processes everything: with coverage and debate and hot takes and updates and eventually, probably, a return to the question of whether he might somehow play. That is what we do. That is what we have always done with Tiger Woods, turning him back into a story about golf.

But there is a 50-year-old man who has been in some form of pain, physical or otherwise, for longer than most of his fans have been watching him. Who has been trying, by every public account, to hold together a competitive life and an institutional role and a comeback narrative and a body that has been asked to do more than bodies are meant to do.

The golf can wait. It has waited before. The difference now is that what's at stake isn't a green jacket or a record or a comeback story. It's him.

Joel Beall and Joe Raedle, Yahoo Sports |  Read more:

Image: Getty

[ed. See also: Will Crash Shake Golf From Its Dependency on Woods? (BBC)]

The Sucker

On a Thursday evening in September, I excused myself from the family dinner table and slipped into my bedroom. I didn’t want my kids to see what I was about to do.

With the door locked behind me, I pulled out my phone and downloaded the DraftKings betting app. I felt a certain thrill as I typed in my debit-card information and deposited $500. The first game of the NFL season was a few minutes away. Anything seemed possible.

I am not, by temperament, a gambling man. As a suburban dad with four kids, a mortgage, and a minivan, I’m more likely to be found wrestling a toddler into a car seat than scouring moneylines or consulting betting touts. And as a practicing Mormon, I am prohibited from indulging in games of chance. Besides, I had always thought of gambling as a waste of time. This makes me an outlier among my generational peers: Since 2018, Americans have wagered more than half a trillion dollars on sports, and roughly half of men ages 18 to 49 have an active account with an online sportsbook.

When I set out to report on the sports-betting industry—its explosive growth, its sudden cultural ubiquity, and what it’s doing to America—my editors thought I should experience the phenomenon firsthand. Mindful of my religious constraints, they proposed a work-around: The Atlantic would stake me $10,000 to gamble with over the course of the upcoming NFL season. The magazine would cover any losses, and—to ensure my ongoing emotional investment—split any winnings with me, 50–50. Surely God would approve of such an arrangement, my editors reasoned, because I wouldn’t be risking my own hard-earned money.

This spiritual loophole intrigued me. But for the sake of my soul, I decided I’d better consult a higher ecclesiastical authority than The Atlantic’s masthead.

A few days later, I sat across from my bishop, explaining the experiment and watching a look of pastoral concern come over his face. After some consideration, he said (a bit tentatively, if I’m being honest), “I don’t think you’re doing anything wrong.” He grasped the difference between gambling with my own money and using my employer’s for research purposes. But he had also seen too many lives wrecked by vice to let me leave without a warning. He told me stories he’d heard about upstanding family men who had let an initially modest gambling habit ruin them, and a cautionary tale about a churchgoing lawyer who developed an unhealthy curiosity about sex work after handling a prostitution case and wound up devastating his family.

I promised the bishop that I would steer clear of slippery slopes. “This will really just be a journalistic exercise,” I assured him.

Fifteen minutes before kickoff, I scrolled through the available wagers on DraftKings in wide-eyed bewilderment. Struggling to make sense of the terminology—Profit boosts? Alternative spreads?—I punched in bets almost at random. I bet that the Eagles would beat the Cowboys by at least nine points, based on the sophisticated premise that the Eagles had won the previous Super Bowl and the Cowboys had not. I placed a bet that Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts would throw for more than 200 yards, and wagered on something called a “same-game parlay” that would pay out if both Hurts and running back Saquon Barkley scored touchdowns.

Then, after tucking in my kids for the night, I turned on the TV in our bedroom and settled in next to my wife, Annie.

Watching the game was unexpectedly stressful. Toggling among my five different bets—monitoring their progress, weighing live “cash out” options—left me feeling harried and sweaty. Four seconds into the game, I got a taste of the capriciousness of the enterprise when the Eagles’ best defender inexplicably spit on the Cowboys’ quarterback and got himself ejected. Had the Eagles’ chances of beating the spread, and my chances at winning $75, just been expectorated away?

Ever since the advent of sports, humans have found ways to lose money gambling on them.

But the experience was also strangely mesmerizing. For 200 bucks, I had purchased an artificial rooting interest in a game I had no reason to care about. I kept watching even after a weather delay pushed it late into the night, scrolling frenetically next to my sleeping wife in search of angles to exploit with late-game bets. Most of my bets ended up losing, but the long-shot Hurts-Barkley parlay hit, and when the game ended, I calculated that I was up $20.

The next morning, I proudly shared the news with Annie, who high-fived me and immediately began to fantasize about how we would spend my winnings for the season. Could we replace our dying KitchenAid mixer? Remodel the kitchen pantry? Like so many wives before her, she had looked upon my foray into sports gambling with a bemused air of exasperation; now she was seeing a potential upside.

I laughed at her sudden enthusiasm—but I was starting to get ideas myself. I had made $20 on my very first night of gambling. Scale up the wager sizes, multiply across all 272 games in the NFL season, throw in some NBA and college football, and I stood to make—what, $10,000? $20,000? More?

I knew, of course, that I wouldn’t win every bet. But I didn’t see the harm in dreaming. As Annie and I traded home-improvement fantasies, I tried my best not to dwell on the last thing the bishop had said to me: “Be careful.” 

Practically overnight, we took an ancient vice—long regarded as soul-rotting and civilizationally ruinous—put it on everyone’s phone, and made it as normal and frictionless as checking the weather. What could possibly go wrong? [...]

Week Two

Total gambled: $376.00
Down $58.15

If I was going to do this, I decided, I would need a gambling guru—someone to talk me through the basics of sound sports betting (if such a thing existed) and teach me best practices.

The obvious choice was Nate Silver, America’s most famous statistics nerd. Silver first made a name for himself as the founder of 538, an election-forecasting website that accurately predicted the winner of all 50 states in the 2012 presidential campaign. A few years ago, Silver, citing a midlife crisis and political fatigue, discarded the pundit suits, threw on a baseball cap, and started writing more about gambling. He launched a newsletter full of sophisticated sports-betting models and wrote a book about the psychology of successful gamblers. He estimates that he has netted in the “mid–six figures” over the course of his gambling life. If anyone could turn me into a respectable bettor, I figured, it was him.

Before our first call, I sheepishly sent Silver my week-one bet slips. After that first triumphant game, things had gone downhill. Scrolling through DraftKings’ offerings, I had turned into a little kid at a carnival, emptying my parents’ wallet into any ring toss or high striker that caught my eye. I’d taken fliers on games without doing any research, and placed live bets on whatever ESPN happened to be showing when I turned on the TV. On Saturday afternoon, while casually watching a random college-football game with my brother, I bet $10 that the point total wouldn’t go over 52.5, lost, tried to make my money back with a new bet that it wouldn’t go over 61.5, and lost that one too. Of the 14 wagers I’d placed in my first week, I’d won three.

Silver pulled up my slips when we got on the phone, and began to audibly react as he scrolled:

“Okay …”

“Oh.”

“Oh no.” He started laughing.

Is it possible to be emasculated by Nate Silver? Apparently, yes.

Perhaps sensing my humiliation, he tried to soften his assessment. “Look, the nice way to put it is that you’re betting like a recreational bettor.” I took this as a withering insult.

Silver laid out some basic realities of the sports-betting economy. The books effectively charge you about 4.5 percent for every bet you place, he explained, which means it isn’t enough to win 50.1 percent of the time; you have to win 52.5 percent of your bets just to break even, and that’s before taxes. My most obvious mistake, he said, was that I was using only DraftKings. To find edges, I would need to shop for lines across at least three or four books every week.

He gave me other tips, too: Avoid “prop bets” on individual players (Josh Allen to rush for more than 50 yards) and multi-leg parlays, which pay out only if every outcome hits (the Chiefs cover the spread, the Ravens win, and the Chargers score more than 24 points). Props and parlays are how sportsbooks generate most of their profits. “They’re suckers’ bets,” Silver said, which made sense, given that I had already placed several of them.

Live betting—placing wagers in the middle of games—was also a bad idea, he told me, because it leads to gambling based on emotion more than logic. Also, televised games are broadcast on a delay, which means the sportsbooks can adjust lines before you even see what has happened on the field. You are, in effect, betting against people who live 20 seconds in the future.

To guard against emotional betting, Silver suggested a Tuesday-morning ritual: I should sit in a quiet place, study the lines for that week’s games, gather information on injury reports and weather forecasts, and then place $100 bets on the six or seven games I liked best.

Before we hung up, I asked Silver what kind of profit would make it a successful season for me.

He seemed confused by the question. “If you make one penny, that would be better than 98 percent of people over an entire season,” Silver answered, as if this were obvious.

I was taken aback. Hadn’t Silver himself made hundreds of thousands of dollars gambling? Yes, he said, but that was mostly from poker tournaments. Sports betting was a game of razor-thin margins and microscopic edges. NFL football was among the hardest sports to win money on—the lines were too sharp, the teams too evenly matched. Silver told me that, even with his quantish models and prognosticatory brilliance, he would consider it cause to celebrate if he broke even on the season.

by McKay Coppins, The Atlantic |  Read more:
Image: Tyler Comrie/Getty

[ed. See also: The Online Sports Gambling Experiment Has Failed (DS).]

12 Revelations About the PGA Tour's (Still Uncertain) Future

Although nothing concrete was announced regarding the future on Wednesday from PGA Tour headquarters, new CEO Brian Rolapp spent the majority of his inaugural Players Championship press conference signaling that the way things are will no longer be how they will be. Perhaps just as importantly, he signaled how. Here are the 12 revelations from Rolapp's remarks and what it means for the tour's future.

The PGA Tour is splitting in two

As Golf Digest reported earlier this year, the tour’s Future Competitions Committee is deep in discussions on creating a two-track competition system. Rolapp said the first track is expected to double the current eight signature events to 16 tournaments, alongside the four majors, the Players and the postseason. Running from late January to early September, the schedule will span 21 to 26 competitions. The second track will function as a promotion-and-relegation tool, with events spread across the calendar year and into the fall. This system does not replace the Korn Ferry Tour and other PGA Tour feeder circuits, which remain intact.

"We are evaluating the role of promotion and relegation across our competitive model," Rolapp said. "We are further strengthening our merit-based system and leaning into what makes professional golf so compelling: players earning their way to the top, with every event having greater meaning."

One of the recurring talking points of Rolapp's tenure has been “scarcity,” widely interpreted in the industry as the elimination of events. As Golf Digest has learned, the endangered events will likely be repositioned to the second track rather than cut entirely. The system essentially formalizes what has effectively been a two-tier structure for years.

The non-answer answer on rollback

At last year’s Tour Championship, Rolapp acknowledged he was still getting up to speed on the USGA and R&A's proposed golf ball rollback. On Wednesday, he made clear neither he nor the tour is ready to take a position.

"I think this is clearly a complex issue," Rolapp said. "From what I can tell, it comes down to two questions: Is distance a problem, and should it be addressed—[that’s] question No. 1. Question No. 2, does the current rule being proposed accomplish that? I've spoken with players, I've spoken with the governing bodies, I've spoken with golf ball manufacturers, I've spoken to fans. What's clear to me is that everybody has an opinion, and those opinions are clearly not consistent on either question.

“As far as our players, I know they're hitting prototypes. I hear all different things. Some are impacted; some that expected to be impacted are not. So as far as the PGA Tour is concerned, we have not taken a position. When we get comfortable with the rule and the data, we'll make a decision."

It's a diplomatic answer—but it's hardly an endorsement of the USGA/R&A proposal. Most of Rolapp's membership, sponsored by OEMs, opposes rollback, and picking that fight while bigger battles loom would be an unusual opening move.

Bigger cities returning to the schedule

As previously reported, the tour is pushing to place events in larger metropolitan areas. "The PGA Tour competes in only four of the top 10 largest U.S. media markets," Rolapp said. "That is an opportunity. We are evaluating markets like New York, Chicago, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Washington D.C., Boston, and many others, places where there is strong fan demand for our sport and a chance to reach new fans." [...]

No more limited fields, no cut events

One of the signature event series’ most persistent criticisms—from fans, media and players alike—has been its small-field, no-cut format, which drew unflattering comparisons to LIV Golf. Rolapp said the new top tier will feature more players and a cut.

"Our best events will have larger fields. Ideally, we are targeting something closer to 120-player fields with a cut," Rolapp said. "That consistently matters. It helps fans know who they will see and showcases who they want to see—the most competitive players. It helps partners know what they're investing in, and it helps players better understand the competitive landscape in their schedules, all while embracing meritocracy."

In a related note …

Sponsor exemptions may be on the outs

Another source of fan frustration—one that cuts against the meritocracy ethos Rolapp keeps invoking—is the sponsor’s exemption system, along with the politics surrounding it. Rolapp appears to recognize the tension.

"It is my opinion we need a better competitive model because we should be delivering fields to the sponsors," he said. "We shouldn't make them work hard to put together a field. We're delivering them something, and they're supporting that. I think we need to be better partners in that. I also have an appreciation for the fact that professional golfers are independent contractors. So their level of job security is in some part tied to the exemptions they have earned. It's a balance. Those are all discussions we're having with the committee—to provide for those things but also deliver the purest competition that fans want."

A strong opener

As Golf Digest reported in January, the Hawaii swing is in danger of being cut. Rolapp said the tour wants to open its season out west with a finish shown on network television in prime time at an iconic venue. Perhaps Kapalua qualifies as "iconic," yet one possibility, sources told Golf Digest, is hosting the season opener at Torrey Pines.

Reunification with LIV is not a priority

Even before Rolapp arrived, the tour had quietly narrowed its reintegration focus to three players: Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and Brooks Koepka. Koepka has since returned, and DeChambeau's LIV contract expires this year. As for the others, or any broader rapprochement with LIV, Rolapp expressed no interest.

"My brief is to make the PGA Tour better," he said. "I'm open to whatever makes the PGA Tour better—better for fans, better for our members. That's what I'm focused on, and that's where I put all my efforts."

The tour may have a media-rights fight ahead

The tour's current media-rights deal runs until 2030. But it was negotiated in a pre-LIV world with a different competitive picture, and it predates the two-tier structure now being assembled. There is also the not-so-small matter of the NFL, which appears poised to re-enter the market aggressively and early, potentially swallowing up dollars networks might have been ready to spend on golf. Rolapp, who came from the NFL, spoke candidly about what that landscape could mean.

"I've read the same reports you have—that they would like to go to the media market earlier. The U.S. media rights market is $30 billion. The NFL currently accounts for $12 billion of that. They have made their public intentions clear; they would like to double that," Rolapp said. "So if you start doing that math and you're anyone other than the National Football League, you ask yourself: Next time I go to market, how do I make sure I have the most compelling product so that we can compete in what is a very complicated media ecosystem that's changing all the time? You see fans changing their habits—television versus streaming. You see the companies and the economics of the industry changing. So it's a very dynamic time in media.

"If you are in the sports business, it behooves you to put your house in order as much as possible. That is a significant part of the work that the Future Competition Committee is doing, and it's one of the reasons why it's so important."

Thinking outside the U.S.

While the PGA Tour schedule will remain mostly American based, Rolapp said that having an international presence is important as well. He acknowledged the benefits of the strategic alliance with the DP World Tour, and the notion that certain segments of the calendar would provide opportunities for international exposure.

“No, you should not think about this as purely in the confines of the United States. I think the bulk of our events will be, just because of the nature of the tour and the realities of our business. But we do want to do more internationally.

“I think in the fall, in other parts of the calendar, are great places to lean into that. I think you'll see parts of our schedule that will have an international component to it, even in the summer. So it is very much on our mind. We have not gotten to it in our committee work because we're sort of concentrating on the core of our schedule. But it is very much high on the agenda.

Don't expect a new schedule for 2027

There had been hope in the industry that changes would arrive as soon as next year. Last month at the Genesis Invitational, Tiger Woods moved to temper those expectations. Rolapp echoed the sentiment. Expect some adjustments in 2027—not a wholesale transformation.

"Once decisions have been made and finalized, changes will be implemented through a rolling approach," Rolapp said. "As Tiger has said recently, some elements could be addressed sooner for next season, with more significant change likely implemented for the 2028 season, pending the necessary work with our partners and other operational considerations.

"This is a complex process with many constituencies impacted. We will continue to move with urgency, but we are focused on getting it right."

by Joel Beall, Golf Digest |  Read more:

Image: Orlando Ramirez, Tracy Wilcox

[ed. As a former NFL exec responsible for handling media businesses including digital media, NFL Network, advertising sales, NFL sponsorships, NFL media assets, television contracts, and digital media rights you can probably figure out where this guy is coming from. Might be good for growing the game, but is it good for golf? See also: Players 2026: Behind the scenes of the PGA Tour's renewed pursuit of major status for the Players (this week). ]

The NFL Franchise Tag: What It Is and Isn't

Tuesday morning’s news that the Seahawks are “unlikely” to use the franchise tag on running back Kenneth Walker III might sound ominous for the team’s chances to keep the reigning Super Bowl MVP.

It’s not.

That same report could basically be written about the Seahawks in every year — and increasingly about every NFL team.

The Seahawks have applied the franchise tag on a player only twice since general manager John Schneider arrived in 2010, and they actually used it only once. Just two NFL teams applied the tag last year.

In other words, the news says more about how players don’t like the franchise tag and how it comes with complications and unhappy consequences, compelling teams to avoid using it.

How franchise tags work

That may you leave wondering: just how does a franchise tag work?

At the most basic, it’s a designation (introduced in 1993) that an NFL team can place on one player per year who is set to become an unrestricted free agent, essentially keeping him for the upcoming season at a predetermined salary. Walker can become an unrestricted free agent when the new league year begins March 11.

There is a set period each season when teams can enact the franchise tag before free agency hits.

This year’s period began Tuesday and runs through March 3. If the tag is applied, the sides can continue to negotiate a long-term deal until July 15.

If no deal is reached, the tag takes effect for that season (some negotiating of amounts or incentives is allowed, but the length cannot be changed).

There are two types of franchise tags — exclusive and nonexclusive.

A nonexclusive tag is the most commonly used.

As described on the league’s website, a nonexclusive tag “is a one-year tender of the average of the top five salaries at the player’s position over the last five years, or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater. The tagged player can negotiate with other teams, but the current club owns the right to match any offer or receive two first-round draft picks as compensation if he signs with another team.”

The exclusive tag differs in that the tender “averages the top five salaries at the player’s position for the current year or 120 percent of his previous salary, whichever is greater,” and prevents the player from negotiation with other teams.

Official figures won’t be set until the NFL releases the final salary-cap number for 2026 (that number arrived last year on March 1).

The website OvertheCap.com, which tracks NFL financial issues, estimates that the tag number for running backs will be $14.536 million.

That would be a hefty raise for Walker, who made $8.4 million total over the past four seasons on his original rookie contract.

But the tag presents a few issues:

The player

Though the above number would be a good one-year salary for Walker, it doesn’t give him long-term security and means he would again face the same situation next year along with uncertainty all season about his future.

If there was already a lot of conjecture about his future this season, there would be even more in 2026 given Walker’s higher visibility as a Super Bowl MVP.

The one-year nature of the tag also has led to players feeling as if they are walking a tightrope through that season to avoid injury, or to avoid simply having a down season, before they can hit free agency again.

The tag can be rescinded at any time before the player signs it, putting both sides back at square one, and it could mean the player missed his best window to negotiate with other teams.

The team

One drawback for the team is that the entire salary counts toward the cap for that season. A tag for Walker would take up almost a quarter of the roughly $60 million in effective cap space that Seattle has, via OvertheCap.com.

A more amenable conclusion for each side is something along the lines of what Pro Football Focus recently estimated as his value — a three-year deal worth up to $27 million with $20 million guaranteed.

Such a deal would surely be structured to have a far lower cap hit than the overall $9 million average — say $6 million or so — and then increase steadily the final two years when the cap itself will also increase.

That would create more room for the Seahawks as they navigate what will be a challenging offseason.

While Seattle has ample cap space, there are also plenty of objectives on the to-do list. Other potential unrestricted free agents include cornerbacks Josh Jobe and Riq Woolen, safety Coby Bryant, receiver Rashid Shaheed and edge rusher Boye Mafe.

The Seahawks also can now offer extensions to every member of the 2023 draft class, which includes receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, cornerback Devon Witherspoon and edge rusher Derick Hall.

The Seahawks are likely to try to lock up JSN and Witherspoon for the long haul and avoid them entering the final year of their rookie contracts with some uncertainty about their future.

But both will likely command deals at the top of their positional wage scale, potentially taking a large chunk of cap space (and immediate cash in the form of big bonuses, as well).

The drawbacks of the tag are why they are often viewed as a “lose-lose” scenario. [...]

There is also what’s called a transition tag, which is a one-year tender for the average of the top 10 salaries at the position as opposed to the top five, which for Walker this year is estimated at $11.72 million.

But that tag guarantees teams only the right to match any offer the player receives and no potential compensation if he signs elsewhere. It’s been used only six times in the past 10 years throughout the league.

To be sure, Seattle faces a challenge in re-signing Walker. He’s rightfully going to want to get the best deal possible at a time when his market is the most heated — PFF rates him as the No. 6 free agent available overall and the top running back...

But Tuesday’s news does nothing to change the basics of the situation — that Seattle hopes to re-sign Walker to a long-term deal, and that Walker hopes to get life-changing security.

by Bob Condotta, Seattle Times | Read more:
Image: Nick Wagner/Seattle Times
[ed. I've never understood the franchise tag, just figured it was a way to keep a valuable player from being lost to free agency. Obviously it's a lot more complicated than that, but still not sure I understand all the finer details (and don't even start with cap space decisions).]

$180 LX Hammer Burger

Super Bowl LX isn’t just about football, it’s about excess. And this year, nothing captures that better than the LX Hammer Burger.

Yes, it costs $180.
No, that’s not a typo.

Created by Levy Restaurants, the LX Hammer Burger is the most over-the-top menu item at Super Bowl LX, and only 200 of them are being made for the entire day.

If you manage to get one, you’re not just buying a burger — you’re buying a Super Bowl flex.

What’s on the LX Hammer Burger?

This isn’t your standard stadium cheeseburger.

The LX Hammer Burger features:

• A juicy cheeseburger patty
• Braised bone-in beef shank, slow-cooked for maximum richness
• Roasted mirepoix demi-glace, adding deep, savory flavor
• Point Reyes bleu cheese fondue, melted and dripping down the sides
• All served on a freshly baked brioche bun

Oh — and the bone stays in. Because subtlety is not the goal here...

Why Is It $180?

Three reasons:

• Scarcity – Only 200 burgers are being made
• Ingredients – Bone-in beef shank, premium bleu cheese, and demi-glace aren’t cheap
• Super Bowl Tax – This is the biggest sporting event on the planet, and exclusivity sells

At Super Bowl LX, the LX Hammer Burger isn’t about value. It’s about the experience — and the bragging rights.

The Ultimate Super Bowl Food Flex

Every Super Bowl has its viral food item. Some years it’s gold-leaf steaks. Other years it’s absurd cocktails or luxury desserts.

This year, it’s a $180 burger with a bone sticking out of it.

by Don Drysdale, Detroit Sports Nation | Read more:

Image: uncredited

[ed. Man, that is one ugly burger. Probably a good idea to notify hospital Emergency ahead of time - incoming! No reports on how many were sold. Just stick with any old regular one, which (I'm guessing) would still probably run you $50.]

Bad Bunny Goes to the Super Bowl

Bad Bunny, Super Bowl LX
Image: ABC via (more)

[ed. What a show. Awesome (and I'm not especially a Bad Bunny fan). What did it all mean? All explained here. Meanwhile, in an effort to infuse politics into absolutely everything, there was that other competing, half-assed, halftime show:]

***

“Wear the mission. Text merch to 71776 for official TPUSA merch.”

Those were the first words greeting thousands of viewers as they joined Turning Point’s YouTube channel for the 15-minute countdown before their alternate All-American Halftime Show, as a chyron ran nonstop at the bottom of the screen, hawking merchandise and begging for text signups...

Unfortunately, the All-American Halftime Show was unable to evoke much more than a shrug, with halfhearted pop-country performances that showed the limitations of booking a big show with minimal talent. (...)

It’s jarring to remember that, prior to MAGA, Kid Rock’s biggest political affiliation was stumping for Mitt Romney’s milquetoast 2012 presidential campaign. Yet in 2016 — the year after his singles last hit the Billboard Hot 100 — he rode hard for the loud-mouthed Trump. Since then, he’s been riding that wave of partisan relevancy, popping up at random functions to rap at puzzled congressmen and sing mawkish ballads to wealthy donors. Hey, the Trump family is making money off of this MAGA thing — why can’t other grifters with merch stores full of American flag gear jump on the train?

Meanwhile, while the Turning Point show screamed about patriotism, Bad Bunny’s official show was filled with highlight after highlight of things that are exciting about America: a nation full of people who came here with talent and differences worth embracing. Even if you don’t speak Spanish, the visual storytelling evoked so many people living the American dream, from the workers in the opening segment, to elderly folks, female friendships, dancing, drinks, and unabashed jubilation and unity.

Ignore the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it shot of a few guys grinding on each other, and there was even plenty that the MAGA crowd would enjoy if they bothered to watch it: A real-life wedding! Beautiful women dancing! A great, big declaration of “God Bless America”!

But there was never going to be a good-faith effort to meet Bad Bunny’s show halfway. Like clockwork, Trump sent out a long message on Truth Social minutes after it ended, slamming it as quickly as possible. (Note to Trump: “Nobody understands a word this guy is saying” … he sings in Spanish, dude! Better take that cognitive test again.)

In the end, the final words shown during Bad Bunny’s performance were seen on a massive video screen: “The only thing more powerful than hate is love.”

The final words on the Turning Point broadcast? “Get involved,” next to a QR code begging for more money.

by William Earl, Variety |  Read more:

Savor Super Bowl LX, Seattle. Seahawks Fans Know It Can Be Fleeting

These games aren’t guaranteed.

But once, Pete Carroll spoke and everything seemed possible — infinite confetti, a perpetual parade. It was Feb. 5, 2014, three days after the Seahawks dominated the Denver Broncos 43-8 in Super Bowl 48. The franchise’s first championship parade started near the Space Needle, before sashaying along Fourth Avenue, past an estimated 700,000 bystanders bundled in green and blue. Running back Marshawn Lynch manned the hood of a duck boat, beating a drum and firing Skittles to his hungry fans.

At the parade’s end point, CenturyLink Field, Carroll stood on a crowded stage and saw the future.

“This is an extraordinary group of young men that have come together,” he said to 50,000 euphoric fans, with his team behind him and the Lombardi Trophy to his left. “They have come together to do something very special, and it’s not just one year. We’re just getting warmed up, if you know what I’m talking about.”

That was 12 years ago. Twelve frustrating football Februaries ago. One dynasty-denying end-zone interception ago. One Legion of Boom and one Beast Mode ago. Seven playoff losses ago. One hard, lasting lesson ago.

These games aren’t guaranteed. That’s why they matter.

That 12-year winter makes Super Bowl LX, between the Seahawks and New England Patriots at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif., matter even more.

It matters for Seahawks quarterback Sam Darnold, who found a home here, doubted and discarded but somehow undeterred. And for second-year coach Mike Macdonald, who was a 26-year-old soon-to-be intern with the Baltimore Ravens when Carroll stood on that stage.

It matters for general manager John Schneider, the NFL’s Executive of the Year, who took the keys from Carroll two years ago and built a juggernaut. (...)

Maybe it doesn’t matter for you, specifically. I won’t argue otherwise. Football, a violent and unforgiving sport, is not for everyone.

But broadly? It matters, maybe more than ever. In an increasingly fractured society, where halftime performer Bad Bunny is boycotted by some and beloved by so many more, sports are a gallon of glue — a unifying force.

It matters for a sports city where the Sonics were stolen. Where parades are precious and these games aren’t guaranteed. Where it often rains, but only rains Skittles once...

For the 12s who waited through a 12-year winter. When it comes to traffic or titles, in this town, waits are nothing new.

So, eat the nachos. Wear the jerseys. Fly the 12 flags. Believe that better weather is coming by kickoff.

Long winters make for satisfying springs, if you know what I’m talking about.

It took a while, but the Seahawks may be warming up.

by Mike Vorel, Seattle Times |  Read more:
Image: Nick Wagner

[ed. Yay! Here we go... (rooting for my favorite corporation!). UPDATE: Well, they did it; but otherwise, a pretty boring game (except for Mr. Bunny!), and an anticlimactic ending to the season. Oh well, whatever... we'll take it. Love this quote: "The Seahawks and the Patriots did their part by offering up a game of punishing defense and attritional offense that had all the carefree charm of a medieval torture procedure. Can football be normal again? That remains unclear, but on this evidence it can certainly be boring, which is maybe a form of progress."]

The Play That Killed a Dynasty

For Marshawn Lynch, the Super Bowl’s most infamous choice felt like a broken pact.

When it happened, as tens of millions of viewers let out yelps of indignation, elation or anguish, Marshawn Lynch laughed.

You probably weren’t aware of the mystified running back’s exact reaction, but you surely know the play that provoked it. Eleven years ago, the Seattle Seahawks were on the verge of securing a second consecutive Super Bowl victory, a yard away from a triumphant touchdown that was set up to be Lynch’s. Like everyone else, the powerful running back was shocked that coach Pete Carroll went with a different call: a Russell Wilson slant that was intercepted by Malcolm Butler, then a rookie cornerback for the New England Patriots.

Suddenly, it was over. The Seahawks had squandered a chance to win Super Bowl XLIX and, it would turn out, a shot at creating a dynasty. As Lynch looked over to the Seattle sideline and saw the tortured look on teammate Richard Sherman’s face, his own mouth dropped, and he did what came naturally.

“I could hear the emptiness, and I saw Sherm with a traumatic-ass face, like, ‘What the f— just happened? Like, God, are you serious?’” Lynch would recall years later. “And then at that moment, all I could do was laugh. Literally, like a dramatic-ass laugh. Mouth wide open — one of them kind of laughs.”

With the Seahawks and Patriots set to face off in Super Bowl LX on Sunday in Santa Clara, Calif., there has been renewed focus on what probably ranks as the most infamous play in the Ultimate Game’s six-decade history. It’s a subject I’ve explored in depth, beginning in the immediate aftermath — when Carroll attempted to explain his decision in a late-night text exchange — and throughout the years that followed. (...)

To Lynch, Carroll choosing to green-light offensive coordinator Darrell Bevell’s play call on second-and-goal from the 1 while trailing by 4 points with 26 seconds remaining wasn’t merely a perplexing move. In its aftermath, it also came to represent — for him and other players — a broken pact between the coaches and the men in uniform.

“It took confidence (away from) what the coaching staff and what the organization was preaching,” Lynch explained. “(Carroll) preaches, ‘We’re gonna run the ball down your throat,’ and all that type of s— like that. I think it took a lot of respect from them, ’cause they weren’t standing on s—. They weren’t ‘10 toes’ on what the f— they were preaching.” (...)

By 2013 the Seahawks, with a relentless, punishing and explosive defense that mirrored Lynch’s playing style, were the class of the NFL. They made it official with a 43-8 blowout of the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl XLVIII.

The next season, the Seahawks’ stirring rally in the final minutes of regulation produced an epic NFC Championship Game victory over the Green Bay Packers. After that wild comeback, Lynch was convinced a second consecutive Lombardi Trophy would be theirs for the hoisting.

And after Jermaine Kearse’s amazing, four-bobble catch gave the Seahawks a first-and-goal at the 5 late in Super Bowl XLIX, Lynch had no doubt that he and his teammates would finish the job. He came close to doing it on the first-down carry, getting stopped just inside the 1, and was sure he’d score on the next play — until the call came in.

Carroll had his strategic reasons for passing, given that Seattle had one timeout, didn’t want to be boxed into throwing on third down and was facing a Patriots defense designed to stop a short-yardage run. Yet none of that resonated at the time.

“You could just see when the play call came in, motherf—–s are just looking around, like, ‘What the f—?’” Lynch said. “I don’t even think it really probably registered to a lot of individuals. I know for sure it didn’t register to me at first, ’cause I think I lined up on the opposite side.”

Butler’s interception was hard to process in a locker room full of proud, headstrong players who were mystified by the fact that the ball — and Seattle’s fate — hadn’t been in Lynch’s hands. Instead Wilson, considered a teacher’s pet by many of his edgier teammates, had been asked to throw the potential game-winning pass, with disastrous results.

After the game, the anger was palpable. Following his initial fit of laughter, Lynch’s next thought was, “S—, I got a bottle of Pure White Hennessy in the locker room, and it’s time to go get loaded.”...

“When does it go away? I’ll let you know.”

In Lynch’s eyes, it never really did. Once he and other players felt as though Carroll and his assistants had gone against what they’d claimed to stand for in that pivotal moment, trust was broken and suspicions were high.

“Hell yeah, it felt different,” Lynch recalled. “It felt like we had to go to work. Before, work didn’t feel like work; it was basically like a hangout. (But) just like with anything, if you deal with an unsolid individual — once they show you their hand — then you deal with them accordingly. And motherf—–s started dealing with the motherf—–s accordingly.

“Then, you know, it just became a s—show. It was a friction between what the players stood on and what they saw the coaches standing on. They weren’t standing on their word.” 

by Michael Silver, The Athletic | Read more:
Image: Christian Petersen and Mike Ehrmann/Getty Images
[ed. Still hurts. Probably a safe bet the Seahawks will never throw a pass on the one yard line in a Super Bowl again. But then, that would be the last thing anyone would expect. Right? See also: A hated pair of cleats and a near-benching that led to Malcolm Butler’s Super Bowl interception (Athletic).]

Wasted Management Open

[ed. So now they're calling it "The People's Tournament". Which, you know what that means. More stupid, drunken frat-boy idiocy at another Waste Management tournament (as if the Ryder Cup wasn't enough). Nothing against the players or the course, which are always spectacular. But the PGA is probably not interested in showcasing another weekend of famously boorish behavior (*scheduling it on Super Bowl Sunday is actually pretty funny). Interestingly, WM has a commercial out now promoting "green collar jobs" ie., jobs that require a green vest (over collared shirt, or not), of which WM has quite a few. Haven't seen that one before but expect it'll become a major theme for more companies as AI starts destroying more white collar jobs.]

The Questionable Science Behind the Odd-Looking Football Helmets

The N.F.L. claims Guardian Caps reduce the risk of concussions. The company that makes them says, “It has nothing to do with concussions.”

The first time Jared Wilson, a New England Patriots offensive lineman, is seen on the Super Bowl broadcast on Sunday, some viewers may wonder why he has such a big helmet.

It’s called a Guardian Cap, and Mr. Wilson is among about two dozen National Football League players who have worn the helmet covering in games this season. Not for comfort or style. Even the company that makes the cap acknowledges that it’s bulky and ugly. Rather, Wilson and others have worn it for its purported safety benefits.

The N.F.L. claims the cartoonish caps reduce the risk of getting a concussion, convincing some players that they are worth wearing. The company that designed and manufactures Guardian Caps, though, makes no such claim.

“No helmet, headgear or chin strap can prevent or eliminate the risk of concussions or other serious head injuries while playing sports or otherwise,” the product’s disclaimer warns. Instead, the company says its caps blunt the impact of smaller hits to the head that are linked to long-term brain damage.

“It has nothing to do with concussions,” said Erin Hanson, a co-founder of Guardian Sports, the Atlanta-area company that makes the cap. “We call concussions ‘the C word.’ This is about reducing the impact of all those hits every time. That’s all that was.”

The disconnect between the N.F.L.’s claims about the Guardian Caps and what the company promises is emblematic of the messy line between promotion and protection, and the power of the N.F.L. to sway football coaches and players trying to insulate themselves from the dangers of the sport.

An endorsement by the N.F.L., the country’s most visible and powerful sports league, can generate millions of dollars in sales for equipment makers, including Guardian Sports. The N.F.L.’s embrace of the caps, beginning in 2022, has led to a surge in orders from youth leagues to pro teams. About half a million players at all levels now wear them, Guardian Sports said.

“Anything I can do to save my brain, save my head,” said Kevin Dotson, an offensive lineman on the Los Angeles Rams who has worn the cap in games since last season.

The league claimed that the Guardian Cap had helped reduce concussions by more than 50 percent, which has put the company in the awkward position of embracing the spirit of the endorsement while distancing itself from the facts of it. Further complicating the situation: The model worn by pro and college players, the NXT, is not the same as the company’s mass-market product, the XT, which retails for $75. That model has less padding than the NXT, and may be less effective at limiting the impact of hits to the head, studies have shown.

Ms. Hanson said the company had struggled with whether to promote the N.F.L.’s claims about concussions. It decided to do so because the N.F.L.’s boasts might persuade young players to use the product, even if the benefits are not comparable. (...)

Guardian Caps are the latest in a wave of products that have emerged since researchers linked the sport to the progressive brain disease known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy, or C.T.E. Scores of companies have introduced equipment that purports to prevent head injuries, from a silicone collar worn around a player’s neck, known as the Q-Collar, which is promoted as a way to give the brain an extra layer of cushioning, to G8RSkin Shiesty, a head covering that is worn under helmets and promises to significantly reduce concussion risk.

Independent neurologists are generally skeptical, if not outright dismissive, of the benefits of any product claiming to reduce concussions because few rigorous studies have been done to demonstrate their effectiveness.

Few products have received as much publicity as the Guardian Cap, though. Sales of the caps, which were introduced in 2012, took off after the company won the N.F.L.’s HeadHealthTECH Challenge in 2017 — two years after the league settled a lawsuit brought by more than 5,000 former players who accused the N.F.L. of hiding from them the dangers of concussions.

Guardian Sports received $20,000 from the league for additional testing, but the N.F.L.’s endorsement was priceless.

Orders for the caps from colleges, high schools and youth teams poured in. Nearly every college team in the top ranks practices with the caps. In 2021, researchers, including some affiliated with the N.F.L. and its players’ union, published a paper that said Guardian Caps reduced “head impact severity” by 9 percent.

That year, Guardian Sports introduced its NXT model, with an extra layer of padding for bigger, stronger players. The N.F.L. required linemen, tight ends and linebackers to wear them in training camp. In 2023, the mandate expanded to all contact practices, and running backs and fullbacks were added. Starting in 2024, wide receivers and defensive backs had to wear them in practices, and players could wear them in games. (...)

Researchers at Virginia Tech, which runs a well-regarded helmet-testing laboratory, found that players who wore the NXT version of the Guardian Cap experienced a 14 percent decline in rotational accelerations — basically, the turning of the head — and that their concussion risk was 34 percent lower than for players who wore only helmets.

The benefits were significantly lower for players who wore the XT, the model worn in youth leagues and high schools. Rotational acceleration was only 5 percent lower, and the concussion risk was reduced by 15 percent.

Stefan Duma, who leads the lab, said the smaller reductions, combined with better helmets and fewer full contact practices, suggested that the benefits of wearing the XT were negligible.

“We tested it thoroughly, and the benefits are just not there,” Dr. Duma said. “It’s all noise, no statistical difference in youth.”

Most parents and coaches, though, do not read research reports from testing labs, and there is little information on the Guardian Sports website that explains the difference in performance between the XT and NXT models. But looking at the testimonials on the website from Mr. Goodell and other N.F.L. luminaries, parents and coaches might believe they were buying the cap worn by the pros.

by Ken Belson, NY Times |  Read more:
Images: Audra Melton, NYT; Cooper Neill/Getty