Womanizer

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Two former NBA players, Enes Kanter Freedom and Royce White, have announced they intend to identify as female to be eligible for the 2027 WNBA draft. Kanter Freedom said he and his team had carefully examined the league’s eligibility criteria and governing framework surrounding self-identification and inclusion, and that he qualifies. White followed hours later and added that his wig is in the mail.

The reason they can do this is that the WNBA has no transgender eligibility policy. None. The collective bargaining agreement signed in March says only that players who are women are eligible, and never defines the word. Into that silence stepped a parade of coaches and players — Cheryl Reeve, Stephanie White, Gabby Williams — all volunteering that a trans athlete would be welcome.

“I would welcome a trans athlete on my team or against my team, anytime. I don’t think it’s a problem in the world. It’s just another way to kind of attack trans people.”

— Gabby Williams, Golden State Valkyries

Then the players’ union issued this:

“We embrace justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion. Those are the values that unite this Union and allow it to protect women’s sports while creating transformational change. Hate, abuse, and demonization of any person or group of people, including transgender people, only fuel fear, division, and harm. We will continue to have hard conversations. But we will not be used as political pawns.”

— Women’s National Basketball Players Association

The WNBA is a Marxist community garden. It has always been an ideological experiment funded by the NBA, Nike, ESPN, etc. to platform their left-leaning, feminist and social and racial justice philosophy. The league is quite literally, a political pawn.

It actually serves as a wonderful microcosm of the shortcomings of these theories, as when gifted two mainstream stars on a team together in Caitlin Clark and Sophie Cunningham, the league has sought to suppress their popularity and elevate those who fit the racial and political agenda the league exists to serve. They are not interested in making money, they feel entitled to do and say what they want, and the concept of being profitable has absolutely no bearing on their actions.

Similar to how Mamdani’s New York City is giving everyone a little free preview of the inability for Marxist ideologues to handle the primary responsibilities of the positions they hold, in Mamdani’s case that being maintaining order and carrying out basic government functions, the league shows how the abundant fallacies in the views of those running it prevent it from ever growing into a respected and commercially viable sports product. If anyone can be a woman in their worldview, then they must dispel their bigoted ways and embrace the stunning and brave Enes and Royce as champions of the very diversity and inclusion they so virtuously espouse.

Update: In response to all this, Commissioner Cathy Engelbert sent a memo to the teams that declines to define who’s eligible, noting instead that WNBA eligibility rules are collectively bargained. Translation: the league can’t settle the transgender question without the union, and the union just told you exactly where it stands.

Update 2: Hours after this post, Sophie Cunningham was clubbed in the head on a fast break layup by Chicago’s DiJonai Carrington, who was ejected on a Flagrant 2 and then posted “WHITE PRIVILEGE” from the locker room and tagged the Fever.

Yeah, this league isn’t a completely racist trainwreck or anything like that. While it’s mildly funny when it’s a women’s basketball league, this is  the same rotten ideology that’s infected large swaths of government. 

Update 3: In the third quarter of that same game, Caitlin Clark was assessed her eighth technical of the season for accidentally bumping into a black female referee after being knocked out of bounds on a pass along the baseline. She simply looked at the official, turned away, and got teed up.

If your only access to the outside world was following the WNBA, you’d have a pretty strong inclination that America was on the verge of a race war.

Coup BS

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In my article last week, The Player-Announcer Paradox, I examined the often divergent relationship between liking a player on the field, and liking him when he moves into the broadcast booth. It was heavily focused on Tony Romo in the aftermath of his DUI, a first offense that in Wisconsin isn’t even technically a crime — it’s a civil forfeiture. Now there’s no excuse for Tony Romo to be drinking and driving, but this was miles away from a scandal in NFL terms.

Romo has already been suspended by the network, and CBS intends to use this as a pretext for replacing Romo from the A-side of their broadcast lineup with J.J. Watt, at least temporarily. Watt boasts a much more “aw shucks” corporate friendly persona. A move that the network may have already been itching to make.

“It’s possible CBS Sports uses Romo’s slip-up as an excuse to move on” — Pro Football Network

The record-setting contract Romo signed in 2020 also appears to be part of the calculus for the move. The high-value deal made headlines at the time, but has since been dwarfed by contracts that followed it, including the $375m mega deal signed by Tom Brady to join Fox’s top-pairing Sunday broadcast.

“He squeezed them for every nickel” — Colin Cowherd on Romo’s 2020 negotiation, via Fox News

Romo has four years and $72 million left on that deal, and it’s left a sour taste in CBS’ mouth ever since. They could attempt to use a morality clause in the terms of the agreement to void the remaining salary.

“the worst contract in media history” — a top sports media executive on Romo’s deal, via Andrew Marchand of The Athletic Pro Football Network

The upside is that Tony Romo as a free agent with nothing to lose would once again be able to impart his actual football wisdom, something that has been greatly missing since CBS called for him to tone down his color commentary style.

It is nevertheless still shocking to see things play out this way. A non-incidental, first offense DUI is now a reason to end a man’s sports broadcasting career? I grew up in a time when it would to take perverted sexual fetishes to do such a thing.

Tony Romo photo by Keith Allison, via Wikimedia Commons. Licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

The Gen X George Carlin

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The long, and agonizing to witness, fall of Bill Burr has entered new depths.

The transformation reminds me of another once lethal comedian who became unfunny in his life’s third act.

George Carlin grew into a bitter, cynical, and nihilistic comic. It was a serious falloff from his humor in the 70’s and 80’s, which I admit still wasn’t for everyone.

I remember watching Carlin’s early specials replayed on HBO as a kid. His facial expressions, verbal cues, sound effects, oddities and writing were brilliant, and genuinely made me laugh.

I even recall where I was the day I learned he had died, June 22, 2008. Sitting in a local bar & grill with my aunt eating chicken wings. How many comedians can you say you recall such details about? For me, the only other one is Norm Macdonald’s passing.

Carlin allowed his growing cynicism to infect his act, that may be understating what has gone on with Bill Burr.

To be clear, this isn’t coming from someone who has never appreciated Burr’s work. I saw him live in a mid-sized theater about a decade ago. He did an hour and a half and it was fine, but still much softer than his specials from a decade prior to that, and he seemed to be sorting his way through the material as he went.

This was a man who once did a bit on stage about domestic violence. “They say every time after it happens, how there’s no reason to hit a woman. Now, I’m not saying you should ever do it. But no reason? There’s no reason??” It was darkly hilarious and acted out with passion and charm.

Contrast that with Bill Burr Presents: Friends Who Kill, the Netflix showcase where he MC’s and just shits on “Karens”, and by that he simply means white women. I got enough of a sense of what it was from Gavin McInnes and Anthony Cumia covering it rather than having to subject myself to the full experience. That was June of 2022. This collapse has been an ongoing thing, when was the turn? Covid seems to be the underlying inflection point. Yet, Burr is not simply a Covidiot.

A review of his 2025 Hulu special Drop Dead Years called him a therapeutic work in progress, figuring himself out in public. That was meant as a compliment. Burr agrees with the premise — he told Variety the special was the result of reevaluating his own past work, and described himself as a recovering meathead doing the best he can. So it wasn’t just the theater tour. He’s working material out in the specials too, on the eighth hour-long feature of his career, at 56 years old.

In September 2025 he went to the Riyadh Comedy Festival , which is the funniest thing I’ve seen him do in quite some time. Not that I have any issue with people taking Saudi money, I think it’s more admirable than taking Hollywood’s, but because it infuriated the very people he has been aligning himself with for roughly a decade. Top acts were reportedly paid as much as $1.6 million, according to Tim Dillon. Burr trying to reconcile his remaining fans’ anger with his willingness to forgo his new allegiances for a payday was fun to witness. 

He’s always played up the angry red-head comic, but now he’s far less coherent. He recently exhibited an inability to formulate even a basic question when interviewing The Strokes frontman Julian Casablancas on his podcast. Casablancas is no Captain Charisma himself these days, but the interview only got back on track when the singer began asking Burr questions about himself. Burr’s mind literally seems to have ceased its most basic functions in favor of distilling everything through his own self-loathing narcissistic impulses, at least from what can be gleaned on the surface. It’s a sure fire recipe for getting your wires crossed.

He also feels he can write off all criticism of his comedy as racist because he is in an interracial marriage. Which is, of course, preposterous. His comedy doesn’t fail to make me laugh because of who his wife is. It’s his constant mental gymnastics that seek to position himself as the counter-cultural voice of reason that fail to make him relatable to the people who once appreciated him. This negative feedback loop creates further cognitive dissonance that struggles to process how he became the one being labeled out-of-touch.

Bill Burr was never a comedic genius that rivaled the all-time greats. But he was funny. That’s no longer the case. Comedy comes from honesty, and when you can’t be honest about the world, you can’t satirize, mock, or lampoon its inconsistencies in a genuine way.

George Carlin stopped being funny and started being a very well paid doomer, more interested in showing the audience how smart he was for figuring the grand mysteries of the universe out on his own. Bill Burr has descended beyond that. The cringy content he is putting out today does however make for its own form of entertainment.

You won’t be seeing me at any of his shows in the future, but we’ll always have the Red Sox.

Trade Winds

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The 2026 Major League Baseball trade deadline has come to pass. There was a flurry of activity Monday afternoon that provided some surprising moves, none of which were exceedingly shocking.

The big news of the trade deadline actually broke late Saturday evening when it was announced that the Los Angeles Dodgers have come to terms on a trade with the Detroit Tigers to acquire ace lefty Tarik Skubal.

Skubal is the back-to-back reigning American League Cy Young winner, and the first reigning winner to be traded in-season since Justin Verlander in 2023 — only the sixth ever. He led all of baseball in WAR and strikeouts in 2024 and went a combined 31-10 with 469 punchouts across 2024 and 2025. There was talk he may not be traded at all this year after he had loose bodies removed from his elbow in May and was back on a mound 38 days later. The Dodgers are now the first team in league history to have a reigning two-time MVP and a reigning two-time Cy Young winner on the roster together in the same season.

Unlike most baseball fans, I was happy to hear the news. The most important reason for that is my hope was that he would not end up on the New York Yankees. The Yankees had a rather quiet deadline, but they did acquire Luis Garcia Jr. from the Nats, he leads the NL in slugging percentage. GM Brian Cashman seems to like his team’s chances should they get Judge, Stanton and Bellinger back healthy before the end of the season. 

Failing to acquire Skubal hasn’t cost the Yankees much in the way of championship odds with only a slight drop from +550 Sunday afternoon to +600 Tuesday afternoon.

I screencapped two sets of odds to track the movement on FanDuel, giving a wide enough birth from the deadline itself to still get a reasonable picture of the changes it brought: 

Sunday at 5 PM: 


Tuesday at Noon: 


The question that I have for the Yanks is— what would their odds currently be had they acquired Skubal?

What would the third most favored team, the Milwaukee Brewers (+950 odds) odds be if they’d acquired Skubal?

A key reason to ask, is that the Dodgers didn’t give up a whole helluva lot to get the superstar pitcher — outfielder Zyhir Hope, the No. 5 prospect in their system and No. 25 in all of baseball, right-hander River Ryan at No. 7 in the system and No. 68 overall, and right-hander Brady Smith at No. 17, per MLB Pipeline. Los Angeles managed to hold onto their top four prospects and still get a nuclear arm added to their arsenal. 

The Dodgers sit at an unprecedented +155 to win the World Series in early August. That speaks to the incredible team they have constructed, and also the weaknesses of the rest of the field.

A three-peat would give them the first one since 1998-2000, when the Yankees pulled it off, it would also elevate the cries of the Salary Cap hungry owners and the majority of MLB fans who support such a measure.

Seeing a cap and floor model in the vein of the NFL would give fans a sense that any team could win it all. Just don’t tell that to Cleveland Browns fans, hell, don’t even mention it to Bills fans. Teams that scout, draft, recruit, sign, develop and take care of their players will still have an enormous advantage, and those in low-tax, high-revenue, nice-to-live locations will have built in advantages that will become more stark in a hard capped league. 

Point being, don’t expect a salary cap to fix all your franchises woes overnight, but I do understand the appeal and would love to see what America’s pastime looked like with a more level playing field.

Other noteworthy items from the deadline:

The Boston Red Sox basically dumped one of the members of their golden age of prospects they’ve been championing for the last several years. The oft-injured Marcelo Mayer never found his groove in the big leagues, and made more headlines for his attitude and alleged off-the-diamond issues. Word is the organization felt he was detrimental to the prospect they just locked up for nine-figures last summer in Roman Anthony. Mayer was said to be a regular fixture of the New England late night scene (according to 98.5 The Sports Hub of Boston), which fed into questions about his motivations and maturity. He was shipped to the San Francisco Giants for lefty reliever Erik Miller and minor-league outfielder Carlos Gutierrez.

The Red Sox also paid a pretty heavy price to nab Adley Rutschman from the Baltimore Orioles. The switch hitting catcher is currently injured, but could provide a valuable dynamic to the Red Sox lineup heading into the final stretch of the season, and the postseason should they land a spot. I quipped that the Red Sox are now going after players who are “pre-injured”, as another key acquisition before the deadline was Curtis Mead, the former Nationals second-baseman who has some serious pop in his bat right now and could provide much needed defensive stability to the Red Sox middle infield, was injured in his first game with the Sox. A pitch struck and broke his wrist. He now heads to the infirmary with ace Garrett Crochet, who hasn’t pitched since April 25 and still hasn’t picked up a baseball after shoulder inflammation turned into a lat strain, Roman Anthony, out since May 5 with a torn ligament in his hand and no timetable, shortstop Trevor Story, on the 60-day list since sports hernia surgery in late May and only now aiming at a rehab assignment. Rutschman officially begins his Boston tenure on the 10-day list with left wrist inflammation. Which when you compare it to the medical report I just got done delivering, is actually pretty healthy! 

Boston moved from +3500 odds on July 13, to +1800 on Sunday afternoon, climbing as high as +1500 after the acquisition of Rutschman before settling to their current line at +1600. Still a dark horse by those odds, but third behind division rivals Tampa and New York in American League team odds to win it all.

The Atlanta Braves were quiet at the deadline, their odds have dropped slightly as a result. But Chris Sale did win July’s NL Pitcher of the month, and the Bravos still have big October aspirations.

My recent article, The Dead Tradeline, discussed how the expanded Wild Card slots (and the longstanding inability to trade future draft picks) makes for less excitement at the trade deadline. Far more teams being “buyers” now than sellers limits the amount of top end players who are available to be moved, and not trading future picks limits the amount of resources teams have to acquire them. I discussed how the Red Sox could greatly benefit by being deadline sellers, but their improbable win streak, and Breslow’s desire to save his General Manager job, had made that highly unlikely. The Red Hot Sox haven’t slowed down yet, having just completed a sweep of the Dodgers this past weekend, placing them at a mind-blowing 28-5 since June 24. 

The last few weeks have felt like a holding pattern as we waited for the deadline to come and lock in the rosters. Now that we’ve seen its fruits come to bear, the headline that remains: the rich get richer in LA, the Yankees don’t make major waves, and the odds of a serious labor stoppage that puts the 2027 season at risk have grown ever higher as the owners will seek to use the Dodger’s success as the smoking gun that demands a salary cap at all costs. 

So enjoy this postseason run, it may be the last one we get for a while.

Sex Ed

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I’m reminded of the age old question: who is going to teach our kids when there are no more young people willing to martyr themselves for the sake of the profession?

The answer is: The Sex Robots.

A WESTERN NEW YORK school district has halted its plans to place a humanoid robot in a classroom after a New York Focus report on the plan sparked fierce debate over the use of artificial intelligence in schools and backlash from local parents. Salamanca City Central School District announced in a Facebook post Friday afternoon that its pilot project with tech company Realbotix has been put on hold as school officials “work through enhanced student data privacy agreements” with the state education agency and engage with community members… In April 2024 (Realbotix), it acquired Simulcra, the Las Vegas parent company behind RealDoll, which creates hyperrealistic sex dolls.

— New York Focus

This story lept out at me before the uproar even had time to begin. One of those comically incompetent decisions that only gets made by the most highly-educated individuals.

Upon seeing the aesthetic of the device, I became more concerned for the robot’s safety than that of the high school students.

Football Nationalism

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European football’s governing body, UEFA, has made clear their response to FIFA’s stated plans to sell private stakes in the World Cup.

“UEFA and its 55 member associations stand as one. We unanimously and unequivocally reject FIFA’s proposal to transfer ownership interests in the World Cup and other FIFA competitions to private investors. The World Cup cannot be treated as an investment product. It is one of football’s greatest sporting legacies. It has been built over generations by players, national teams and supporters across every continent. No part of it should ever be surrendered to private investors. The World Cup is not for sale.” —UEFA

This evokes memories of the European uprising in response to twelve of the biggest clubs coordinating for their own breakaway league in 2021. The dirty dozen involved were Manchester United, Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, Tottenham, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Atlético Madrid, Juventus, AC Milan, and Inter Milan.

“Atletico Madrid, Inter Milan, AC Milan and Juventus all dropped out of the Super League on Wednesday, leaving the new competition essentially extinct before it even started.” —CBC

The interesting thing is that the new league wouldn’t have ended the domestic European leagues the clubs are all aligned with, it would have changed the “Champions League” format by giving these top clubs permanent placements and a larger share of the money from it. The Champions League is their season-long playoff system that is most easily comparable to the College Football Playoff. The plan they had discussed was far less of a fundamental change to their structure than what College Football has and is currently in the process of undergoing.

Which has me thinking, if only Europe was as conservative about its borders and Americans were as resolute about our College Football, what a vastly different world it would be.

Machine Yearning

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Stories like these are becoming more frequent, and beginning to poke holes in the infallibility of AI.

Forrester’s survey of leaders found 55 percent of employers regret making tech-driven staff cuts — leading its analysts to predict that half of AI-attributed layoffs will be “quietly reversed.”
 — Inc.

While AI may be inevitable in displacing large swaths of the labor market, whether it can reach that scale before this current AI market-bubble pops is another question entirely.

“Mistakenly, we thought that by just introducing artificial intelligence and ingesting the design requirements that we had, that would produce a high-quality product,” said Charles Poon, Ford’s VP of vehicle hardware engineering.
 — Quartz 

The good news is this means more human jobs, the bad news is they probably won’t go to Americans anyways.

Blood in the Water

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The San Jose Sharks have locked up their franchise superstar, but the cost signals dangerous waters ahead.

Five years, $94 million, $18.8 million a year — and Celebrini turned down the $20.8 million max. Grier thanked him publicly for “the flexibility they have provided to the team in how we allocate future dollars.” —NHL 

That $18.8 million average annual value, while it may not compare to other top earners in the rest of the major sports leagues in America, makes Celebrini the highest paid player in hockey.

He deserves to be. He has taken the league by storm. Last season he posted 45 goals and 115 points in 82 games, finished fourth in Hart Trophy voting, and was named IIHF Male Player of the Year. His 115 points were the third-most ever by a teenager, behind only Gretzky’s 137 and Crosby’s 120.

And he technically just took a discount, albeit a small one. The maximum any player can earn is 20% of the cap, which comes out to $20.8 million next season. Grier says ownership was willing to pay it. Celebrini said no. While he could have signed for as many as eight years, the young cornerstone strategically signed for five. This makes him eligible for a new contract, and what would likely be a significantly higher average-annual-value, before his age 25 season. 

To put Celebrini’s new deal into perspective: it doesn’t start until 2027-28, when the cap will be $113.5 million. That $18.8 million will eat 16.6% of it. When Sidney Crosby signed his 12-year, $104.4 million extension in July 2012 — a deal that kicked in for 2013-14 against a $64.3 million cap — his $8.7 million cap hit represented 13.5%.

The danger San Jose now faces is they have an emerging young core who are entering contract extension territory, and the Sharks can’t do for them what they have done for Celebrini.

The NHL has a hard cap. It sits at $104 million for 2026-27, up $8.5 million, and is locked in at $113.5 million for 2027-28 — the last year the league and the players have confirmed. Rookies begin their careers on entry-level contracts, cost-controlled deals that run three years for anyone signed between 18 and 21. After that is where things get extremely volatile.

Celebrini’s deal is a consequence of a standoff between the Ducks and the Flyers earlier this summer. Leo Carlsson is a talented young center for Anaheim who came off his entry-level deal on July 1 and became a restricted free agent — which is what made him eligible to sign an offer sheet. Philadelphia took advantage on July 3, tendering Carlsson a five-year, $90 million deal at $18 million a year. Carlsson signed it. Had Anaheim not matched, Carlsson goes to Philadelphia and four Flyers first-round picks go to Anaheim.

The Ducks matched, and throttled their salary cap flexibility in the process. They now sit under $10 million in space with Cutter Gauthier — a 41-goal scorer — still unsigned.

The biggest winner of the deal wasn’t Leo Carlsson. It was Macklin Celebrini. Being a vastly superior talent to Carlsson, and seeing what Carlsson had just been signed for, the leverage flipped in the Sharks forward’s favor. Celebrini wasn’t offer-sheet eligible this summer — he still has a year of entry-level left and wouldn’t have hit restricted free agency until July 2027 — but that was exactly the problem. Grier said it out loud: the goal was not letting Celebrini reach next offseason unsigned. Because next offseason, someone tenders him $20.8 million and forces San Jose to match.

The Sharks bit the bullet and secured him for the next half-decade at just under $19 million instead.

The Sharks have had incredible draft lottery success the last few years, and now their other recent first-round picks will be looking to cash in as well. Will Smith, fourth overall in 2023, enters this season on the final year of his entry-level deal — which makes him extension-eligible right now, and offer-sheet eligible in July 2027. Michael Misa, second overall in 2025, has two years left; he becomes extension-eligible in July 2027 and offer-sheet eligible in 2028.

This summer, the Sharks drafted Ivar Stenberg second overall. Stenberg is a Swedish winger out of Frölunda who put up 11 goals and 33 points in 43 games in the SHL — as an 18-year-old, against grown men. He’s three short years from the same cliff San Jose just pulled Celebrini off of.

San Jose has also already committed north of $24 million a year in long-term money to Mason Marchment, Darnell Nurse and Jacob Trouba. The cap goes up, but perhaps not fast enough.

The Sharks’ window to win their first Stanley Cup has shifted from the next decade to hurry up before this thing implodes.

California isn’t doing the boys in teal any favors either. The state boasts the top marginal income tax rate, 13.3% — the highest in the country. As a California resident he owes California on his entire income, home and road, with credits for what he pays elsewhere. A Florida/Texas/Nevada-based player pays zero state-tax on roughly half his season by simply playing at home.

The last team to win a Stanley Cup out of a genuinely high-tax American state was the 2014 Los Angeles Kings. The last Canadian winner was Montreal in 1993 — thirty-three years ago. Since 2020: Tampa, Tampa, Colorado, Vegas, Florida, Florida, Carolina. Five of those seven play in states with no income tax at all. The other two, Colorado and North Carolina, are flat-tax states under 4.5%.

I’d love to see the Sharks get over the hump and finally win a Cup after years of close calls and then nearly a decade of losing that has led them to this draft lottery abundance.

But I’m also reminded what a great position the Hurricanes are in, with nearly all of their core locked up for the next five years and beyond at a fraction of what San Jose is going to have to dish out.

The NHL is a microcosm of the economic transition taking place on the continent writ large. High-tax areas lose, low-tax areas win.

That’s one reason the Stanley Cup is sitting in Raleigh today.

Cue the hysterical attempts to moralize that reality.

Our Long National Nightmare is Over

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Another glassy-eyed deconstructionist has bitten the dust.

“Cracker Barrel CEO Julie Masino is stepping down nearly a year after the company’s failed rebrand, logo redesign, and restaurant modernization efforts sparked widespread customer backlash.” —AP

This concludes what I consider a successful boycott of the Americana eatery.

It was not enough for me that they walked back the logo redesign. I wanted the restaurants returned to their classic look instead of the modernist cleansings they’d undergone. Masino’s renovations had left them as generic, soulless diners, and I wanted her gone from the company. Time will tell if her replacement suffers from the same ideological incompetence she exhibited.

For today, I’m declaring victory, and the next time I’m in the vicinity of a Cracker Barrel, I will be stopping by to enjoy a Country Fried Breakfast with double hash brown casserole as the sides, eggs over medium, and cream gravy on the chicken fried steak. 

I encourage everyone to pay them a visit. Their next quarterly earnings report showing an increase in sales after her departure will be sweeter than a Double Chocolate Fudge Coca-Cola Cake. 

A nation is its people and their culture. And damn it, this is ours.