after two seasons of sniffing its own farts, The Bear really nailed its ending. great season with an excellent finale that reminded me of why I loved so many of these characters the show was kinda like a basketball team that built a 20-point halftime lead, blew it and then won on a buzzer-beater

How do you have an interaction with Clay Travis where you come out looking like the asshole?

my rooting rankings for the World Cup quarters: 1. Norway 2. Morocco 3. England 4. Argentina 5. France 6. Spain 7. Belgium 8. Switzerland

I've never passed a kidney stone, but it sounds infinitely more appealing than "Fox After Hours with James Corden, featuring special guest Sophie Cunningham"

international soccer managers who have center backs take PKs is some absolute galaxy-brained shit. these guys' main experience striking the ball hard is to clear it or play a long ball. no wonder have of them sky it over the crossbar!

Colombia is my top rooting interest with the USMNT out and Xhaka is maybe my least favorite player ever from my most hated team I'm ready to be hurt again

truly heartened that I've lived long enough to see the boondoggle that is travel youth soccer become as big of a punching bag as AAU basketball (I played both and travel youth soccer is way more deserving of your ire)

if any USMNT fans want to adopt a Premier League team that is closely associated with Mauricio Pochettino and regularly provides this kind of crippling disappointment, boy do I have the club for you!

USMNT in the opening 20 minutes

the scene at damn near every game in Seattle during this World Cup has looked immaculate

I want to make fun of IShowSpeed for being such an unrepentant Ronaldo stan, but he's one of the few prominent male streamers under the age of 30 who doesn't think women should be indentured servants

everyone who let the Platner campaign get this far by ignoring every damning piece of evidence, whether due to professional ambition or personal pride, should be ashamed

I've seen a lot of Texas football and Indiana basketball comparisons made with Brazil given their lack of recent titles, but where the comparison comes up short is just how cool Brazil used to be (which IU and UT weren't, minus the Vince Young years). makes the drought even more startling

we need to get back to World Cup ads where the world's best players are doing cool shit this is the all-timer for me

easy to tell who follows the USMNT more than once every four years based on how they're reacting to this Mexico loss seen some people say they're absolutely gutted for Mexico. me?

we should have had at least one World Cup game at the Kibbie Dome

no idea if the FIFA Peace Prize winner had anything to do with this, but this is one of the few times in my life I would have cheered for naked corruption he's corrupt as hell. FIFA's even more corrupt. surely, something could get worked out

the World Cup final this year really should be at Azteca. just a completely different vibe there. if you don't want to have to deal with the elevation, have it in Seattle. and if you want it somewhere east for ease of access for Europeans, do Atlanta basically, anywhere but MetLife

The security guard at the door:

it's not like the original was some artistic masterpiece, but this Baywatch reboot is going to be fucking awful. the OG one at least had actual, honest-to-god actors in it

Mbappe absolutely oversold it, but what that Paraguay player did to him -- just striking down on him on a run away from the ball -- was worth a red card way more than what Balogun did against Bosnia

been spending most of this match wondering whether Morocco's coach looks more like Ezra Klein or Anthony Fantano

happy 250, America

this is hardly a novel thought, but you've got to be a special kind of asshole to want to get married in MSG

[Rapids mentioned on a World Cup broadcast] [Rapids player proceeds to immediately doink a PK off the crossbar to lead to his team's elimination from the World Cup] a painfully but perfectly fitting Rapids sequence

it might just be people being hyperbolic online, but I've been kind of astonished by how much antipathy there has been toward Diana DeGette. just seems like an odd target for so much ire

this video from the bbc about texas bbq is frying me

still stunned by that Balogun red card last night. a red card is like pornography: you know it when you see it. that wasn't it and if the process leads to a red card being a valid decision for that play, your process sucks and you need to get a new one

still don't understand why so many people assumed the USMNT would be playing Belgium in the Round of 16 if they beat Bosnia tonight

the race for athletic scholarships in non-revenue sports leads parents to do and believe awful things, but it's also pretty pointless. on the rare chance your kid is a DI caliber athlete, those sports have like nine scholarships for a 25-person roster. so, at best, you're getting a half scholarship

my inevitably wrong Colorado election predictions CO-01: Kiros Governor: Weiser Senate: Hickenlooper

I'm really hoping Serena Williams isn't making a comeback just to further promote her husband's Temu Ozempic

turns out Paraguay isn't too bad, huh? I'd be terrified to be in the path of the juggernaut that beat them 4-1

if Brazil goes on to win it all, and if he continues not to contribute, we can largely blame the gap between World Cup titles on Neymar, which is reason enough to root for them

I don't know if she's gonna end up losing (I think she will), but Diana DeGette might as well be the mascot for the type of Democratic incumbent who's in the most danger this election cycle

LOL South Korean TV blurred out the head coach because they were so pissed off at him.

whoever won the 2024 election was gonna get to preside over the first World Cup on American soil in 32 years, the country's 250th birthday and the 2028 Summer Olympics good job, voters. you really know how to pick em

I want to root for Canada -- it's an awesome country filled with incredibly friendly people -- but I just can't bring myself to do it. Jesse Marsch is just too much of a herb

Western Kentucky has started doing sport-specific logos and I can't even begin to describe the joy it has brought me

covered a lot of ground in this week’s newsletter - why Dusty May leaving Michigan doesn’t mean college basketball is doomed - how this year’s NBA Draft highlighted the health of the college game - a look at Len Bias’ extraordinary college career on the 40-year anniversary of his tragic death

I thought the discussion around Caitlin Clark and the WNBA poster was a bit much until I saw they put Sophie Cunningham on that thing

it's a close to ideal setup for him, but selfishly bummed Ryan Conwell ended up with the Heat. one of my favorite Louisville players of the past 10-15 years. now there's actually something I'm gonna have to like about that cult-ass organization

I'm sure Regime Change is good, but I don't understand the point of these kinds of political books in this day and age. they have a laughably short shelf life and relevance and a lot of those revelatory anecdotes and nuggets you get could just be stories you publish as you report it out

the English are encountering some difficulties in Massachusetts. a tale as old as time

Brendan Sorsby vs Diego Pavia in the CFL

I wanna hate that iShowSpeed kid, but he seems like one of the only prominent male streamers who doesn't think women should be entered into indentured servitude

the Celtics narrowly miss out on a high-profile trade target. it's like Danny Ainge never left