Internal Review

Sport's most intoxicating characteristic is binarism. Winners and losers. Good and evil. Our team and your team. We crave the extremes, and fortunately, the real narratives often fill them well. When they don't, we have sports coverage to help push things to their extremes. Questionable calls become terrible calls. Someone suffering from substance abuse is a traitor to the game. A person who seems to be decent is canonized.

When these narratives are broken, sports coverage swings the pendulum back the other way. A loser becomes a winner. Shame begets redemption. Heroes become villains. Swinging the pendulum back is not easy, though, as it must fight against both pre-existing notions and rising apathy about the subject. Is Lebron finally good again, or is he still evil? We don't know because we got sick of talking about him and Steph Curry is more interesting. How do we feel about Pete Rose, Lance Armstrong, Barry Bonds, OJ?... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ 

STICK TO SPORTS... until you win and "save a city." Whatever, it's complicated. Anyway, any comment on your hairline?

During the quest to flip the narrative while keeping our interest, we question whether we really care or not. It's exhausting. Eventually we just don't want to talk about it. This often happens with things that aren't fun to talk about: student-athletics, steroids, domestic abuse, bigotry. In those cases, the pendulum often doesn't swing enough because the momentum of the conversation is halted by subject fatigue. Should we strip Lance Armstrong of every trophy? Should Adrian Peterson be in jail? Should North Carolina stop playing football and basketball? Eh, whatever, it's not worth getting into.

Most of the time, the arguments don't matter much besides to those directly involved. Someone cheated. Someone isn't a good person. Someone should be in a jail. But there is one very clear example of when changing the narrative became so exhausting that we gave up far too early. The systemic coverup of the raping of children at Pennsylvania State University is the most unforgivable crime in the history of sports. Would this have happened without sports? In some form, perhaps, as it happens without athletics or institutional compliance far too often around the world. But these rapes were allowed to happen because of sports, and after a couple years of thinkpieces and flame wars we found ourselves arguing about a statue. 

I use the word rape because using molestation strangely softens the crime. It conjures images of touching children, of someone who couldn't help themself, of inappropriate behavior. What Jerry Sandusky did, and was allowed to do, would be a crime even if the children were adults. He raped children for decades, and according to recent claims reportedly based off of sealed victim testimony, Joe Paterno, a high-ranking employee at a state institution knew about it as early as 1976. Now, CNN is reporting victims saying they told Paterno about being raped as early as 1971 and Paterno told them to drop it.

When the scandal first broke, everyone wanted to know how high it went and what the timeline was. When did Paterno know? When did athletic director Tim Curly know? When did school president Graham Spanier know? How was Second Mile involved? Before we could even discuss consequences and preventative measures for the future, we had to know what happened. It seemed like whatever was going on must be bigger than just one pedophile, because why would an administration risk everything to protect a single pedophile ex-coach? Maybe mainstream America was going to learn that massive sex-trafficking rings aided by extremely powerful people don't just exist in Europe. Maybe... if not for Louis Freeh.

A man of his word is only helpful if he is giving his word to you.

Determining whether or not an attorney is a company man can be difficult. Because their careers often vacillate between representing individuals, corporations, governments, and can even include the seemingly independent role of a judge, it's hard to tell if they are driven by career ambition, political motivation, money, or a sense of justice. Louis Freeh, however, is clearly a company man. 

He was an FBI field agent, first lieutenant in the Army Reserve, and worked as an Assistant US Attorney in New York's Southern District. His name-making case as a prosecutor in the Southern District was the "Pizza Connection Trial," where Freeh successfully convicted over two dozen mafia members who were running heroin and laundering money through pizza restaurants. Massive drug busts are so loved at the federal level because they serve the dual role of showing justice being served and also eliminate competition for the government's own lucrative enterprise.

George H.W. Bush appointed Freeh district court justice of the Southern District in 1991, and then Bill Clinton made him head of the FBI in 1993. In two years he went from second-in-command in one of 93 US Attorney districts to head of the FBI. Why would it be so important to get Freeh in as head of the FBI in such a hurry?

When Freeh took over in 1993, the FBI was investigating both the federal government's role in murdering 70 men, women, and children in Waco, Texas in 1993, and the federal government's role in murdering a wife and son at Ruby Ridge, Idaho in 1992. In both of those cases, Freeh found the government was not accountable for any deaths, and even publicly denounced a county prosecutor's charges of manslaughter against an FBI sniper at Ruby Ridge. In the rest of Freeh's illustrious career of the FBI he oversaw the at-best-incompotent but probably far more sinister investigation of the Oklahoma City Bombing, the botched frame-up of Richard Jewell for the Atlanta Olympic Bombing, and the ignoring of evidence of a looming terrorist attack before 9/11. He resigned amid allegations of corruption and incompetence in May 2001. 

Does this seem like the man to hire if you want to get to the truth? Of course not, but we were fine with that, because we didn't want the truth. We only wanted to consider two "extremes": either nobody knew Sandusky committed these acts, or only Paterno and a couple others knew but were reluctant to do anything because of careerism or lack of evidence. Freeh gave us the latter option: Paterno knew of one incident in 1998, but he heard about it second-hand, told his superiors, and Sandusky was asked not to bring children around the football facilities anymore. It's not the prettiest bow to wrap something up in, but it would do just fine. 

But our nation, and its insatiable hunger for the truth, wasn't going to just take Freeh's word for it. No, sir! We were going to have a long, heated debate about whether it was really as bad as Freeh said. Maybe Freeh was wrong and JoePa is a saint, goddamnit! Then the other side yells back that he ignored one rape he heard about second-hand. A statue seems like the proper stakes for this sort of argument.

The most recent allegations and judge's ruling, though, makes something clear. We were only arguing about the best case scenario. We were told the truth had to fall somewhere between incompetence and a white lie. We didn't ask any questions about the mysterious death of a US Attorney who chose not to investigate claims of sexual abuse against Sandusky in 1998, or the roles children's foundations have played in systemic sexual abuse operations in the past, because even entertaining the possibility of something more sinister having occurred at Pennsylvania State University would mean one thing was true: everyone is full of shit. Louis Freeh didn't ask these questions. Pennsylvania State University didn't ask these questions. The National Collegiate Athletics Association didn't ask these questions. The Entertainment and Sports Programming Network didn't ask these questions. President Obama didn't ask these questions. If you aren't asking obvious questions about something this important, is it because you already know the answer?

"I do not believe that being comforted by government lies is addictive..."

Those same people that didn't ask these questions just want us to move on. Talk about bowl bans. Use acronyms to help us forget the reasons the institutions were founded in the first place and instead see them as letters on a score ticker. Just cover the public hanging of one sick man and then discuss whether or not Christian Hackenberg can become an elite quarterback. Argue about a statue.

Paterno's greatest legacy is that he was such a towering figure that he became the ultimate stopgap. Nothing could be bigger than Paterno. If this was an institutional coverup then it ends with Paterno, because he was the institution. His timely death meant that we can throw whatever other dirt we find on top of his grave and take a long, hard, look at the record books and think about what we've done.

The coverage of the allegations when they first came out changed nothing. The sins of a deviant, and maybe some people trying not to scare away recruits, were punished. We needed to have a conversation about how unchecked social and political power is a terrible danger to everyone, especially children, and we got the bizarro version of that. We talked about how the all-powerful NCAA was wrongfully punishing 75 kids who didn't do anything wrong, by saying they couldn't go play in the music city bowl. It's this same "think of the troops" logic that has allowed endless wars and countless deaths around the globe.

The public consumption of sports is mostly useless. We all acknowledge this. It's escapism, nostalgia, and vicariousness. But we also know that sometimes sports are something bigger. Sometimes they push us forward as a society, make us face our bigotry, help people empathize, help people heal, show us the heights of physical endeavor. Sometimes they help shine a light on a serious issue, and our escape ends up becoming our therapy. What happened at Pennsylvania State University was one such opportunity, and we've ignored it. We've learned nothing.

Of course it's exhaustive, I'm exhausted just reading the title!

When I was in middle school, a new coaching staff coached our 7th grade team. There was a head coach and his two assistants. Most of the community didn't know much about the new head coach; I'm not sure how he got the job. He wasn't from the area, didn't teach at the school, didn't have any children, and hadn't coached at any other levels within the district. We loved him, though. He was tough, and cool, and joked with us about all the things we cared about in 7th grade, mostly jerking off, our developing muscles, and girls. 

One of the assistant coaches had been my football coach in 3rd grade. The other assistant I didn't know anything about. Some of the kids on the team knew him, though. He had been their baseball coach. The kids said they heard he was gay. This was a very big deal to my 7th grade football team and our nearly universal homophobia. We made jokes about it behind his back, freaked out when he hit our butts, and said we would never be caught in a room with him alone. 

Part of me always felt uncomfortable with that. I knew calling someone "gay" or a "fag" was wrong, but it's what everyone else did. But I was sure he wasn't gay. I don't know why, maybe because I didn't have much exposure to openly gay adults, or he didn't match a stereotype, or I was merely basing it on the absurdly low accuracy of middle school rumors. But I felt sorry for that assistant coach. 

After a game near the end of the season, our head coach pulled us aside. He said we may hear something about that assistant tonight on the news, and not to talk about it or be concerned. Because we are born trolls, and our trollbrains peak during puberty, this was the most exciting thing we'd ever heard. What could it be? What did he do? Was he a drug dealer?

No, he was a pedophile. Some of his former baseball players accused him of molestation. His home was raided; it was full of child porn, some homemade. Open and shut case, and we all were shocked. Completely shocked. Did anything happen with anyone on our team? No, at least not that anyone ever came forward about.

I can't even remember discussing the assistant coach's arrest with my parents. It was the sort of thing that everyone talked about, but nobody discussed. It was gossip. It was the pastor cheating on his wife. An isolated incident that we were fortunate to not be hurt by-- the type of darkness that you don't mention for fear it would spread.

That spring our school had a two day, drug-awareness retreat. It was like summer camp. We were gonna stay in bunks for a night and do activities during the day, team-building, learning about the power of being drug-free, all that stuff. We heard our head football coach was thinking of being one of the counselors. "I don't know," he said. 

"What, why not?" we all asked, and by all I mean 30 of us that swarmed him as soon as we saw him at lunch. 

"You guys are gonna get me in trouble." 

"What, why?" 

"Because, you'll tell your parents that I was swearing, or that I was dipping and it's supposed to be like this drug-free school-sponsored thing, and there's gonna be other kids in the bunk because they won't put all football players in one bunk. I don't think I should." We all convinced him we wouldn't say anything, and the other kids wouldn't say anything either. He said he'd do it.

All the other kids had to be in bunks with teachers-- boring, stuffy, supremely uncool teachers. Ten of us were put in the coach's bunk, along with some other kids.

The night in the bunk, after lights out, we started joking about the stuff we always joked about. One of the kids said he had some porn (they had it in magazines back then, children) and was gonna jerk off. He talked about spitting on his hand and going to town, started making sound effects and moaning. We were all rolling in our beads with laughter. It was an extension of the same conversation we'd been having for 2 years-- we crowd-sourced how to jerk off, how to get more porn, what girls were sluts (none yet), and what teachers we heard posed for playboy or used to date members of modestly popular rock bands (an impossible number).

Our coach came out of his room to see what we were laughing about. We quickly shut up. He told us we weren't gonna get in trouble, what was it? After some embarrassment and assurances someone mentioned that one kid, Mike, said he had some porn. The coach responded with the way we knew such a cool coach would, "Yeah? Let's see it! C'mon!" We were all dying of laughter. Mike was one of our good friends, but he wasn't on the football team. He didn't know coach like we all did. Maybe he didn't have any porn, maybe he was just too embarrassed, or maybe he didn't trust the coach, but he never got it out, despite the coach's persistent pleas. It was a big disappointment for the rest of us. 

The next day coach pulled a few of us aside and said that we shouldn't tell anybody about that stuff. He was just joking around, but it might not sound good. "And remember, don't mention the dipping either," he said with a lipful of tobacco. We assured him we wouldn't tell anybody. Of course the next day at lunch we told everybody, because like a lot of things in middle school, it was the most amazing, hilarious thing ever. It never got back to any teachers or parents, at least not that we heard of.

A couple years later, when I was in high school, I was in a bookstore. My mom was outside in the car as I ran in looking for something. I saw my old head coach sitting in the magazine section. I was excited to see him and sat down next to him. We caught up for a second. He asked if I still played football, I said no, just playing basketball now. "That's too bad," he said. "You were always fearless out there, you know. You weren't afraid of anybody or anything. That's why we tried you at center. Coach Matt (the coach I had in 3rd grade) told me, 'Put him in there. He'll go hit that middle linebacker. This kid's not afraid of anything.'" It made me feel better than almost any compliment I'd ever gotten. 

I said "thanks, coach" and looked at the floor, a forced stoicism that I picked up from my brother and seeing the way he handled compliments. While looking for something to fill the silence, I noticed what the coach was looking at. It was a bodybuilding magazine. I had never seen someone look at a bodybuilding magazine-- greased up dudes in speedos flexing peak-steroid-era muscles. Coach saw me look at the magazine, and looked back down at it himself. He slowly flipped through a couple of pages. 

"See this guy? That guy is jacked." It's the same way my teammates and I would talk about some older football players. 

"Yeah, he is." I responded, not getting into specifics over what particular parts of his body were especially jacked. 

"Oh man, look at this guy. You think I could ever look like that?" I looked at the photo a little closer, just another shining, ripped dude.

"I guess, maybe."

"Eh, probably not. Look at how jacked that guy is. I bet the ladies would like it if I looked like that, huh?"

"Maybe. I mean, you could always tell them you used to look like that, but were in an accident or something, and you'll be like that again someday." He laughed and went back to his magazine. I said my mom was waiting, and got on my way.

I didn't think anything of it. It was great to see my old coach. Nice to be told I was fearless. It only occurred to me 15 years later that maybe he was gauging my interest. That maybe it wasn't a total coincidence that his good friend was a pedophile. In a scenario where you would think I would be skeptical of someone, I had all the trust in the world in him. Even thinking of the possibility that there was more to the story than one deranged pedophile was so horrifying that it never crossed any of our minds.

Oh, okay. The institution changed so now we don't have to.

Schaudenfruede is such a big part of hardcore sports fandom. Your team will rarely win a championship, so the delightful failures of others has to fill the rest of the time. Whatever happened in Happy Valley was so bad that joking about it was shunned. It was something we couldn't take pleasure in. So we moved on. We are inherently trained to fight against growth, because it necessitates the understanding that we are flawed. It's time to acknowledge how terribly flawed we are. Not only are we capable of letting something like this happen, we are too stubborn to learn from it and not let it happen again. So we argue about a statue, and talk about wins records, and laud the efforts a state-funded institution made to take a hard stance against this kind of thing by hiring a coach who also may have covered up rapes. We've stopped blaming them for making us think about all this. But there is no "them" and there is no "us." It's all our responsibility to stop not just the raping of children, not even just the cover-up of the rapes, but the cover-up of the cover-up. We are arguing over whether or not our own punishment is enough to stop the institution we are all complicitly a part of. We are Penn State. 

Pebbles on the Invisible Bridge

During the Vietnam War, Air Force Colonel George Hall was a POW for over seven years. Before his capture, he was a four-handicap golfer. After losing 100 pounds, and not playing golf in nearly 8 years, he shot a 4-over at Augusta in his first round after his release, as if a day hadn't gone by. He said he'd been playing in his mind during his imprisonment, and that's why he never lost his touch. You play the game in your mind.

The first step in doing something is believing you can do it. It applies to all goals-- long-term, short-term, and immediate. Belief is the universal prerequisite to accomplishment. 

The interesting thing about belief, though, is that it's contagious. John Landy broke the 4-minute-mile barrier just one month after Roger Bannister did it first. Without any major technological improvements, or significant changes in style of running or pacing oneself, two men had done something nobody had ever done before, within a month of each other. Is that just a coincidence?

I have a six-year-old dog. He is a healthy, happy, 55 pound dog, but he is terrified of stairs. Any new staircase, even if it's only a handful of steps, presents a serious mental hurdle. My wife and I have tried everything we can think of to get him to go up a new staircase. We encourage him. We act like it's not a big deal. We try coaxing him up with treats. We try pulling him up. I've even picked him up and put him in the middle of a flight of stairs, forcing him to go up because turning around and going back down is far more terrifying.

The most effective way to get him to go up stairs, though, is for him to see another dog do it first. It works without fail. He needs to see another dog do it to believe he can do it. And once he believes he can do it, he can always do it again, albeit with some nervous hesitation. 

So what would happen if someone routinely did things that seemed highly improbable? What if a major leaguer hit .478 next season? It's not inconceivable. If someone can do something 36 percent of the time, is it impossible to believe someone else could do it 48 percent of the time? If that happened, wouldn't everyone else's averages go up? You play the game in your mind. 

Well, basketball is having its what-if moment. Steph Curry takes, and makes, hundreds of nearly impossible shots. With each unbelievable bucket, his confidence grows, and our confidence in him grows. It's reached a point where we are genuinely surprised when he misses an extremely difficult shot. But what's different about Curry's accomplishments than say, Jordan's, or Lebron's, or Bo Jackson's, or Cam Newton's, is that they don't require otherworldly athleticism. Yes, he is blindingly quick, and has exceptional hand-eye coordination, and not many people are 6'2", but most of us could make all the shots he makes if we had enough chances and practice. Someone who is five-feet-tall is never going to dunk from the free throw line (nobody under six feet has ever done it on film), but most adults are strong enough to throw a basketball 35 feet, one way or another.

There is little doubt that Curry's incredible run will lead to some terrible shots. People jacking up contested back-foot garbage from 30 feet because they're feeling it. But it will also lead to more people practicing those shots, just like Curry does. With enough practice, people will believe they are going to make those terrible shots, and their chances of making them will improve. Suddenly, terrible shots are acceptable shots, and people can shoot them with clean consciences because others will believe they can go in. When you see people say things like, "I channelled my inner-Steph Curry, and it worked!," you know the belief by proxy is real.

Curry is changing the game, it will just take a bit of time for the rest of us to follow him up the stairs.

You Are Not Your Children

Why is it the deplorable characters are always the most realistic?

With the sad passing of Garry Shandling we can expect a deluge of LARRY SANDERS WAS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL COMEDY SERIES OF ALL TIME pieces. Was it? Maybe. But when John Lennon died, did people talk about his influence on Sting? To use shows like Entourage, 30 Rock, Arrested Development, The Office, The Daily Show, and even celebreality TV as the lens through which we see Shandling's career in the rearview, is doing him, and his work, a tremendous disservice.

I never saw The Larry Sanders Show when I was growing up. I didn't have HBO, and even when we would get the occasional free weekend, I would usually be disappointed it was on instead of some b-movie skin-flick. I didn't watch it, but I knew I didn't like it. I knew it won awards, and some people thought it was the best thing on TV at the time, but I just couldn't see why. How could they like this guy?

Everything about Shandling seemed perfectly designed to be loathsome. His face, his voice, his hair, his clothes, his mannerisms. His first impression was by far his worst one, and it would stick with you. Getting progressively worse in your head, until the next time you saw him, you would tell everyone in the room, "I can't stand that guy," and unless someone else in the room was a fan of Larry Sanders, everyone would agree, and that would feed the hatred more. How is it that a room of reasonable people, who like comedy, and are intelligent, and don't like Jeff Foxworthy, could all dislike this guy so much, while some people still think he's great?

Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cringe, and they change the channel for 10 years until they call Ricky Gervais a genius.

This is why the Larry Sanders show was both the first great victim but also first great product of premium television. The bad first impression was kind of, sort of, maybe not really, who really gives a shit, part-of-his-schtick. Yes, it is clear we weren't supposed to like Larry Sanders. But were we supposed to like Garry Shandling? If we were, he would have probably had a more public persona "off-screen" (in quotations because we consider people on talk shows, and doing interviews in magazines or at sporting events to be off-screen). Liking him would have gotten in the way of the humor. But how can you get people to watch a show on a network they probably don't have, named after a character they can tell pretty quickly that they don't like, played by an actor they don't like? The answer is, you don't. You don't get them to watch it, and that's partly why it remained so great for six seasons. It didn't cater to anyone. It already knew you were only going to like it if you watched it, so why not make a show just for the people who watch it?

So they made the show they wanted to make. A show-within-a-show filled with selfish, insecure, manipulative people, who are just like us. But the thing you don't get right away is that they are all good people. Their decency is proven by the times they aren't selfish, when they empathize. Their greatness comes from their awfulness. Larry more so than all others. He is everything we hate about ourselves, and shows us how if we are aware of our awful nature, it doesn't excuse our actions, but shows us how some small gesture can offer some redemption. That show doesn't sell Doritos, so we didn't watch it.

Years later, when streaming and pirating became so easy, a whole new audience was turned on to the greatness of The Larry Sanders Show. I was one of those people. I had already seen The Office, and 30 Rock, and Entourage, and I could see how they were all descendants from this great show. But I didn't care then, and I don't care now. I shouldn't have to tell you that something was influential to get you to appreciate it more. You either like it, or you don't. And I fucking love that show.

You thought he was looking at himself, but that's not how mirrors work. He was looking at you.

Nostalgia is a dangerous thing, because we completely forget the ennui that fills all the spaces between the memories, but no matter what was going on, or not going on, some of my happiest moments were sitting on my couch, nursing a hangover, eating Indian food and watching Larry call Hank a talentless fat fuck, and then seeing him feel terrible about it. If you can convince the world that even the most vein, and selfish of us, can just as easily make someone's day as ruin it, that's enough for me.

Saying someone was influential is apologizing for their lack of popularity. Shandling doesn't need your excuses. If he wanted to be popular, he would have taken the late night talk show gigs he was offered before doing The Garry Shandling Show (the spiritual predecessor to Larry Sanders). His greatest feat was making a show about himself in the least self-indulgent way possible. Save the Tina Fey and Jon Stewart quotes for someone who needs them. Shandling let his work speak for itself, and that's one way I wish he was a little more influential.

For-Profit Prisms

On the tail of the incredible success of The People v. OJ Simpson, FX is announcing a new spinoff series: THE KARDASHIANS SAW THAT. It will feature the Kardashian children from FX's OJ anthology magically being transported through time to watch things on television.

No, they're not watching you, but it feels like that, and that's all that matters.

Evelyn Croissant-Badnotes, Senior VP of Programming for the FX network, says the show will stay true to its source material. "We know that people love seeing the Kardashian brood watching things as children, and we don't want to stray too far from a formula that obviously works. Each week, we will introduce a memorable event in history, and we will watch the Kardashian's watch that. Will they at some point spell their name aloud and chant it into the seemingly non-existent ears of an old rear-projection television? Of course they will. It's a crucial part of each week's plotline."

While some bloggers and twittiots who operate strictly on the fringes of acceptable critique-- let's call them haters-- may think the show's central premise is gimmicky, and can't possibly sustain the 36 episodes that have already been greenlit, Croissant-Badnotes disagrees. "These people are thinking too small. It's not just Kris with Kim and Khloe and Kylie and Kayla and Krayola and Kristaps sitting around watching television. It is our moments becoming their moments. And it's not just limited to events in their lifetime. It's the moon landing, my god, can you imagine? What did Kim have to say when we first landed on the moon?! I get ratings bumps just thinking of it. And it's not even just things that were televised, what did Khloe think of the Salem witch trials? As the darker, edgier, Kardashian, did she side with the witches? That's what people want to know. It's appointment television. Actually, appointment isn't the right word. It's prescription television. It's what people need to get through the week. Life is hard, and lonely, and we need guidance. The Kardashians are the high priests at the altar of existence. We all see the stars, but don't know why they shine so brightly until we see them reflecting off of little Krayola's eyes."

If you think this is cool, imagine what happens when they look at each other.

FX has already found a place in its late 2016 lineup for THE KARDASHIANS SAW THAT. "We had time set aside for the third season of Fargo, but we couldn't figure out a believable, necessary, angle to get the Kardashians in that show, so we cancelled it. Maybe at some point on TKST we'll have some episode where the kids watch an episode of Fargo and talk about Ted Danson's toupet... TBD."

UPDATE: Croissant-Badnotes sent an email to our geocities account and wanted some changes made to the post:

hi blogteam

great job! starting to feel FXy. i think just a few changes here and there and it could be something we can all be proud of. =) 

are u married to the title? seems a bit punny to me. your call, but maybe "FX CONTINUES TO BREAK GROUND WITH NEW KARDASHIAN EPIC THINKPIECE ANTHOLOGY" lets see how that feels.  

also, we r going with THE KARDASHIAN'S KOUCH. our market researchers say the k thing really resonates in the flyover states. they referenced a video game death kombat or something. either way, please change the title, asap. the pr teams want this streamlined.   

don't think the them watching you caption is tracking. how about, "its kim! and khloe! and rob! on FX!" let me see what brian thinks, but that seems to be the direction we are looking to go. lets just change it now and see if he thinks its tracking. 

love the graphic! one small change -- can it be a television instead of a triangle, and say fx on the tv instead of kardashians and can the light on the left be millions of eyes and the rainbow on the right be money? thx

lemme know when these are done, need to have brian approve, then ill have notes on his notes, and once you do those will send back to brian before it goes to the lawyers
k thx will be in the hamptons this weekend, starting at 4 today, so lets see if we can fastrack this

The Exodus of Mass

We are less than two weeks away from National Signing Day for college football recruits. This time of year always brings a lot of stress and excitement for college football fans. But this morning, those fans are reeling after a tidal wave of "Crystal Balls," a recruit-prediction metric made popular by 247sports.com, changed where their teams' prized recruits are projected to go to college. While recruits "flipping" their commitments is not surprising, where these recruits are now projected to end up is a complete shock.

Gary says he's not concerned about how he'll fit in Peking's 3-4 defensive scheme.

Like most coaches, Michigan Head Coach Jim Harbaugh was caught off-guard. "We were just floored. I've been recruiting Rashan since I lost that Super Bowl to my idiot brother. We were positive he was a Michigan Man. We've been ignoring a 3-star kid who committed to us back in 2013 for the past few weeks because we were so sure Rashan was gonna take his scholarship spot away from him. Now, hell, I don't even have that 3-star kid's number in my phone anymore. No, wait, here it is, I had it under Tubby McHatesmilk."

While Chinese universities aren't known as traditional football powerhouses, the appeal for the recruits is pretty clear. Because schools in China aren't subject to NCAA bylaws, players can be paid, and they will be, handsomely. "We're talking about 2-3 million dollars a year for most 5-star guys," said one unnamed recruiting coordinator via a snapchat from the men's bathroom of a barbecue restaurant. "That's probably even more than Ole Miss is offering, so it's not looking good for the North American Power-128 teams."

These regional lawnmower dealers are going to be crushed when they learn that 200 bucks and some Bojangles coupons don't have the purchasing power they once did.

But players in China will also still be Student-Athletes, and are given full scholarships. "Let's just say football doesn't work out," said Kentavius "American Dreamsicle" Thornby-Goodman, a much coveted recruit from Tampa, Florida. "Would I be better off with a degree from Florida State or Communications University of China? Shit, Coach Jimbo told me I had to major in Communications at Florida State anyway, so I may as well learn how to say 'The team that wants it more is gonna win the game today' in Chinese while I'm at it."

Several recruits mentioned they were originally trepidatious of playing in China because of the campus lifestyle. But, as one unnamed Defensive Tackle from Maryland put it, "In my experience, you build a big enough hot tub and put on Drake, things work themselves out." In fact, American universities have been unknowingly sending some of their best recruiting resources to China for the past ten years through foreign-exchange programs. One university President, speaking under the condition of anonymity said, "We always thought we were getting the better part of the deal when we sent them TMZ addicts and they sent us aspiring engineers. Now, we're paying our coach 7 million dollars next year, our recruiting class is hot garbage, and what the fuck are we gonna do with a bunch of engineers?"

The exchange program has created an obvious imbalance in fan hotness.

Losing hundreds of the best high school football players to China is not only going to have an impact on college football in America, it has the casino owners and defense contractors who run the NFL concerned too. "We had 3 years of required service out of these kids," said Eugene Goldfarm, Senior VP of Communications for Raytheon. "It's not just the fact that their games gave us all kinds of collision data, saving us millions in guided missile tests, that's just the tip of the iceberg. They'd shoot, spray, and eat everything their "strength and conditioning" coaches told them to. They'd participate in hundreds of hours of studies on enhanced conditioning techniques. Even when we cancelled our airborne venereal disease program, we couldn't stop the voluntary research testing. Now, guess who gets our most impressive physical specimens for the next 3 years? That's right, China. God help us if China can find 30 scumbags who want to create a professional football league, NFL games are the only times we can still get people to watch ads, and we have a saying around here, 'If we can sell them beer, we can sell them bombs.'"

Americans are terrified at the thought of what the world would be like if Tom Brady had been tortured and brainwashed at Tsinghua University instead of Michigan.

Only time will tell whether this mass exodus is the first step in a global football system -- hundred foot statues of Urban Meyer and Nick Saban are already being erected in the Pearl River, if you believe 'Brock from China' on The Paul Finebaum Show -- or just an especially large batch of sacrificial lambs who dare challenge the American football machine. One group, however, is clearly concerned: the SEC Network just began production of a 3-hour special called, Hangyang Ain't Played Nobody!

Marvel's Big Splash

After a record-breaking bidding war, Marvel Studios has secured the film rights to the Golden State Warriors franchise. Over the next 10 years, 8 Warriors films will be released, starting with next summer's brooding anti-blockbuster: Currying Favor.

From Marvel's press release:

CURRYING FAVOR will introduce audiences around the world to the Warriors universe, but be centered around the rise of Steph Curry, from his humble roots as the eldest son of a sharpshooting millionaire, through his Reconstructionist tear in the Southern Conference, and finally, through the legendary early morning games of GO against David Stern, where Steph paid his dues and Stern finally stopped breaking Steph's ankles and allowed him to win the first of his 4 NBA Titles.

Legendary writer of four Roseanne episodes, Joss Whedon has been chosen to write and direct. "It's a story we all know, of course, but we wanted to tell it from a slightly different perspective. This is going to be a dark, intimate film, and we're gonna see that darkness through the eyes of Marvel's Warriors first supervillain, Seth Curry. In Seth we have a tailor-made vengeful younger brother. Seth is seduced by Coach Krzyzweski, harnesses the twin powers of vampirism and flopping at Duke, and then lays low in Sacramento, biding his time, winning sympathy from the masses. It is in Sacramento, that he finishes his training in the dark arts with the elvish mage, Rajon Rondo. This is an exciting development in the story, because it will be the first NBA crossover between DC and Marvel franchises, as Rondo's infamous rise and fall were deftly told in the Greenblood Chronicles." 

It is truly the dawn of a new era at Marvel, and we know audiences are eagerly anticipating any new information regarding the Warriors films. We'll be getting them many more juicy bits of information in the near future. Until then, rest assured, that Joss Whedon is being told to "Just do it like Roseanne, don't fuck it up like a bunch of your other stuff, even though we're cool with Cabin in the Woods." 

When the Money's Gone

Talk about your all-time backfires... In a shocking development, the twin institutions of American mass control, the lottery and the NFL, have crossed streams and threatened the very fabric of our capitalist existence. This morning, news outlets across the country breathlessly reported that five Pro-Bowlers won the 1.5 billion dollar Powerball together. But the nation's excitement that Tom Brady, Rob Gronkowski, Odell Beckham Jr, Cam Newton and JJ Watt were the lucky winners turned to horror a few minutes into their press conference.

"It was Gronk's idea, most great ideas are," said Brady while wearing a fishing hat and a cutoff t-shirt reading "A Vacation from My Problems!" "He said it would make us the five richest men alive, and then we could build Iron Man suits and protect the world. Now, you know, Gronk gets carried away, but the money did sound pretty good. Gronk, where you at?" Brady pulled down his Ray-Bans to seek Gronkowski out in the crowd. He wasn't hard to find, because he was busy demonstrating his new "Human Daiquiri Machine" by spinning around with three bikini-clad women in a giant plastic tube filled with slushy liquor. "Love that guy," Brady added before shotgunning a PBR.

"First step in wealth management, you gotta diversify your portfolllllllliooooooooo!"