EVA

“What if Ghostbusters wasn’t funny?” is definitley a take.

Man, Battle Riot was a shitshow. I’m not sure who could’ve foreseen this, but having like 15 guys come out before there was even one elimination was a horrible idea. Total cluster. It was especially bad during that middle stretch when all the lucha guys were trying to get their shit in in the middle of all of it. Zenshi doing like half a dozen Kofi spots was a real headscrather. Even the production team seemed to get bored with him after a while. And that stretch run where it was just Contra guy after Contra guy, to the point that dudes I didn’t know were even IN Contra are coming out...just horrible. Hammerstone is super over with the MLW audience, so he’s clearly the guy to end this endless Fatu reign, but I still don’t think he’s all that good.

I really enjoyed the first episode of 100 FOOT WAVE on HBO. Kind of a spiritual successor to FREE SOLO, as a breathtakingly shot portrait of a dude with some issues who is chasing his doom via a weirdly specific athletic obsession for little apparent reason. I’m not sure there’s 6 episodes here, I’m in for now.

I like Nikki and I’m IRL happy for her to have the belt, but from a character/story perspective, it seems all wrong for her to win it so soon and in the way that she did.

I did love discovering that that one dude from The Doors showed up to play a song with Creed while wearing a motherfucking UNDERTAKER t-shirt.

I watched the Woodstock doc today, and I thought it was actually super creepy how they handled all the nudity. I understand that’s part of the story, but past a certain point—and it went WAY past that point—it became just as exploitive of those women as the Girls Gone Wild culture of the 90’s that the doc is decrying IMO. The doc positively ogles them, at times.

Feyd is not even in the movie, apparently. Saving him for the sequel.

I’ll put it this way: This is all about consolidating $$$. Are the P4 conferences really going to sit back and watch Kansas make deep runs in the NCAA tournament on a regular basis and and then carry those bags of cash off to the AAC or the smoldering husk of the Big 12 or, I dunno, the fucking Horizon League? Fuck no, they’re not. They want that money in their pockets. And somebody will reach down to pick it up, even if they have to hold their nose during football season to do it.

I suppose we’ll see. Lots of moving pieces here. I’ll just say that “4 of 16” is not just speculation. That’s a narrative that’s kept alive from the top, because consolidating power in that form makes sense to the powerbrokers in major college athletics—and, just in terms of football, fits very neatly into their vision of the future of the CFB playoff. But again, it’s not just about football, and there is no vision of a consolidated future where Kansas is not in one of the P4 conferences. They will be taken care of, whether that’s by the B1G or the ACC or Pac-Whatever making a weird play to clean up whatever useful remnants of the Big 12 are left (or to lock in regional partners for Texas/OU if the SEC deal doesn’t happen—and we’re hearing today that other conferences are already in Texas/OU’s collective ear).

Kansas went to the Orange Bowl and finished in the Top 10 in 2007! They had a run of respectability in the years around that season. They can be a competent football member, they’ve just been horribly mismanaged for the past decade.

They could very well elect not to expand, but if they move, they’ll go to 16. And I do think Notre Dame will be a big piece of that. If you get ND football, then Kansas basketball as a throw-in just makes too much sense, for the reasons I gave. It gets a little harder to find a second team that’s worth it without Notre Dame, if B1G is going to strictly adhere to their concept of what “a B1G school” is. I can guarantee you that Kansas isn’t getting left without a P4 dance partner when this dosey-doe is over, though.

Kansas brings the elite-tier basketball chip to the table, which does matter even if football gets most of the attention, and the university overall is a strong cultural/academic match for the B1G, which matters a lot to the B1G and their, um, highly idealized self-concept. If the B1G starts looking to add 2, based on what schools would actually be available to them, Kansas would be a strong candidate.

At last.

They will definitley look into that. Problem is, there likely isn’t enough $$$/prestige in the AAC/MWC schools available for them to pilfer to offset the horrendous financial/prestige loss they’re going to eat when Texas and OU leaves. You’re going to see other schools that may have options (like Kansas) try to jump off the boat before it goes down, rather than resign themselves to being part of a newly-minted Group of 6 conference. Like, Boise State and UNLV and Central Florida and Houston and whoever else are not getting you that Texas/OU TV money.

This has to be a scary time for those Big 12 schools on the plains. If this happens and the Big 12 blows up, places like Oklahoma/Iowa/Kansas State are not going to be desirable commodities to the B1G, ACC, or PAC-12. Their best case scenario might be the AAC...and a more realistic option might be the Mountain West, a conference that is, itself, nearing self-destruct.

I would be in favor of doing away with divisions, but then you’re bringing back the locked games (which most teams hate) because there just can’t be a year where you don’t play the Iron Bowl, Red River, Cocktail Party, etc. Thats not college football anymore.

That pod idea seems needlessly complicated. Just add Texas and Oklahoma to the West, move Bama and Auburn to the East, flip Mizzou to the West...boom, two well-balanced, geographically sensible divisions that eliminate the need for a locked inter-division game because Bama, Auburn, Tennessee, and Georgia are all in the same division now. Definitley expand to 9 games though.

So…as the day has progressed, I’ll say that a lot of credible people are saying the smoke is real here. It appears that the leak may have come from Texas A&M, who obviously wants to blow this up. Texas and OU need 75% of the vote to be approved as new conference members, and A&M and Mizzou will likely be firmly against them. Just need two more schools to veto all this. Texas will have to concede a lot and check their ego at the door to pull this off. Regardless of if this SEC move happens, it seems clear that Texas an OU do not intend to be in the Big 12 beyond 2025, one way or another.

Problem with most of these 10-count style matches is that they way overdo it with too many drawn-out counts (that Edge/Orton match being one of the WOAT offenders). Sucks the energy out of the match. In both the Mox/Archer TDMs, they kept the energy going by not doing too many counts and mixing up the length.

LOL @ Jericho thinking the Painmaker persona is something people actually care about. EDIT: Damn, Natural beat me to this sentiment.

It’s never going to happen, so it’s not even really worth speculating about. Better question to consider right now would be, whose interests are being served by leaking this right now and what are they REALLY trying to do?

One of Janela’s better performances in AEW, honestly. Just hurling himself at Archer and eating shit constantly.

Current college football reporter and former TNA employee with a strong take/thread:

It does not go to crap.

Aren’t there RUMBLINGZ that NXT is viewed internally as a failed brand? That would certainly explain why no one seemed to care about protecting their title last night and why they felt like all of Kross’s NXT clout was meaningless and could be tossed aside.