Tuesday June 9 Links and Banter
It Only Tuesday
I'll be honest with you all. I've been holding out on you recently. I usually try to do a small blurb of some sort, a few sports links, and some fun, random shit that I've come across. But recently, I've (metaphorically!) shat the bed and let down the two or three of you that read these things.
It's been challenging to find a ton of good links in the midst of the bad stuff. I'm no stranger to delving deeply into the existential shit being currently wrought in sports; to paraphrase a discussion on Monday's thread, that's kind of the point of this place and also the reason why I write most of the things that I write. But damn, man.
- The Texas Tech/QB Brendan Sorsby decision, effectively legalizing college football players gambling on their own games?
- The World Cup being the loud, cash-grabbing, racist shitshow that only America can truly pull off at such a volume?
- The Chicago Bears moving their home stadium to a slag heap covered with human feces (and also in Indiana) purely for the cash?!
I mean, it's 2026. We're not new to this thing. We are all pretty well inured to the headlines, the absurdities, the iniquities, and the bullshit. But damn! All of those headlines happened over six days. It's been a lot.
This is where I would hope to say something clever, or uplifting, or at least a few words to provide the proper sort of closure to the points above. I'm not sure what that hopeful thing is right now. Sports are, for better or worse, a mirror to culture and to society. They're the most important least important thing. But we're living amidst a constant enshittification of anything that can be commodified, packaged, and monetized on behalf of the corporate Big Swinging Dick Business Idiots, and sports are painfully emblematic of that world right now.
The answer could be to pull back, to stop giving a shit. Hell, I get that. The (allegedly) Chicago Bears will get not a penny of American or any other currency from me if they move to Hammond fucking Indiana. Sometimes, the answer is to let it go.
But the better angel of sports is community. And clinging to that tiny lifeline, as silly as it is, is pretty much all we have right now.
The game's on soon. I'll be over at the bar. We'll see you there, yeah?
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