EVA

Bruce Pritchard has had his head so far up Vince’s ass for so long, you can bet he knows who Vince has defecated on. He’d be one of the next motherfuckers out the door for sure if I was in charge.

I’m glad to hear TKO did the right thing, even if I’m sure it wasn’t for the right reasons. Just have to hope that they don’t stop there and continue to investigate who else was involved, aided and abetted, etc.

Plenty of reason think Michigan with Moore can have the same long tail of the Harbaugh era that Stanford did with David Shaw. But I’ll be interested to see if they extend him as much grace as they did Harbaugh. Its wild to think about now, but if not for Covid cancelling the 2020 Game, Harbaugh was, barring a minor miracle given how bad Michigan was that year, going to be fired after six (!!!!) fairly underwhelming seasons by the metrics that matter most to Michigan. With NIL and the portal, it’s never been harder to keep a good thing going, and Michigan’s schedule year in and year out is about to get a lot tougher with the West Coast schools coming in (2024 looks absolutely brutal by recent Michigan standards). They gonna stand by him if they drop back down to 10 wins, but not the wins that matter, for a few years?

I guarantee you TKO is not going to just not put on the show.

I realize this might not be fair, and my brain is so broken by society that I may not even be able to hold to his, but…Right now, I feel like I’m going to have a difficult time respecting anyone who performs at the Royal Rumble, ever again. If they’re as outraged as we are (and they rightly should be), they actually have a tremendous amount of leverage to get something done in this moment. If the roster came together and said, “This is heinous, and nobody’s walking through that curtain until Vince is gone and a serious investigation into this is started,” you can bet your ass TKO would find a way to get Vince out the door by bell time. IMO any other act is a tacit admission that you’re a self-interested dirtbag who doesn’t care that the yield of your labor enables horrific shit to happen, so long as your check arrives on time. Of course, I’m sure the wrestlers will use the fans as a shield. We don’t want to disappoint the fans. The fans already paid to see the show. Etc. But that’s all self-serving bullshit. The fans can get a refund. Card subject to change, motherfuckers.

Yeah, degrading this poor woman was clearly part of the thrill for them. Sickening stuff.

“You don’t want a celebrity doctor. You want a celebrity doctor.”

Ultimately, the NCAA is in a precious state of affairs, and I don’t think it’s in their immediate interests to bring the hammer down too hard on a big, influential program like Michigan, so I would honestly be surprised if too much comes of the Stalions investigation. But it is rather ironic that Harbaugh appears to be leaving college football under very similar circumstances as his old pal, Pete Caroll, in 2009: getting out of town just before the posse comes.

Moore is the obvious pic in a lot of ways. The only potential hiccup there is the Connor Stalions investigation. If there’s real smoke there (and Harbaugh’s insistence on an immunity clause suggests he certainly thought sanctions were possible), Moore is almost certain to be involved in it. Honestly, you could convince me that Harbaugh was insulated from it in the way that politicians get insulated from the dirt their underlings do, but there’s no way Moore and Minter weren’t involved, because they’d have to be the guys changing the plays. Michigan might want to make a clean break from the Harbaugh era to mitigate any potential sanctions, if they think that threat is real.* *I’m not so sure!

Okada having to start in NXT would be pretty ironic, given the reporting that a big reason why his last 6 months in NJPW tapered off was because he didn’t want to work with the young guys.

Yeah Sling, Roku, etc.

I will say that moving to Netflix makes a lot more sense if the long-term strategy is to end touring and move to being a TV product only, including possibly moving to taping Raw (and the other shows?) at a central location.

This is something I have my eye on, too. You really can’t overestimate the impact that Smackdown being on network TV and PLE’s being available for rock bottom prices on a Peacock sub had on fueling their current business. Increasing barriers to access the programming will absolutely have a trickle down effect on those metrics you listed. Of course, collecting roughly a billion per year in TV rights fees insulates you from any significant harm, but it’ll be interesting to watch.

I imagine ads will be handled similarly to how they are on Peacock currently. I don’t think ad breaks are going anywhere.

This makes a lot more sense than the Amazon rumors from a couple weeks back. But, as noted, Netflix’s ability to consistently pull off live broadcasts is a big question. They’ve got a year to figure it out, though. Be interested to see if they finally kill the third hour, since the story on that has always been that it was USA’s demand. But Netflix loves engagement hours, so…

Just when you thought Ohio State was going to buy their way out of their Michigan problem…

What’s funny/sad is that I vividly remember the night this happened, and the Raw thread was absolutely savage about this poor kid’s physique. *reads the rest of this thread* Never change, DVDVR.

I am straight up not having a good time.

That table bump…

Interesting request for an innocent man

South Alabama will be promoting offensive coordinator Major Applewhite to HC. Exactly what I figured would happen. He’s popular with the team, and as we’ve seen at the other jobs affected by Saban’s retirement, changing coaching staffs is a death wish right now. Promoting Major should preserve most of what’s expected to be a pretty good roster next season. Major was kind of a dud at Houston in his first go-round as the head man, so we’ll see what he’s learned since then. Whats funny is I’ve had some inklings that he might be on his way out at South, and now fate has handed him the big chair.

I watched Monsiour Spade and Night Country back to back. I enjoyed both, and it was actually kinda wild how both of them had virtually the exact same episode structure. I wouldn’t have guessed beforehand that Spade would end on the far more disturbing murder tableau of the two, though.

Alabama is now hiring Buffalo HC Mo Linguist for another defensive assistant position. So there’s another small school thrown into turmoil.

The trickle down from Saban’s retirement has been brutal. And yet another clear example of why there need to be significant reforms in how the transfer portal works. Through no fault of their own, poor San Jose State and South Alabama now have to endure 30 days of open season on their roster, yet they’re not allowed to be active in the portal to help themselves until it re-opens after spring ball.

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