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Welcome to the Defector College Football Watch Guide, where Israel Daramola and Ray Ratto will tell you which of the weekend’s college football games are worth giving a crap about. Ray: With all the braying about the blessed return of football games this past week, all by people who should be constantly monitored for their protection and ours, we note that while there were many games, there was only some football. So far this season, ranked teams have beaten unranked teams by an aggregate score of 1,085-241, which is an average score of 45-10. (We are omitting the Mississippi-Louisville game since both teams were ranked and therefore treated the opener like the event it should be.) All the ranked teams won, with the neon-green asterisk being Michigan. Now we will ignore the elephantine questions of who got fired at Kalshi after paying out on Western Michigan bets, and who is the guiltiest party in the swindling of those deeply screwed Kalamazoomers. It has been six days since the discovery of the Big Ten's Mystery Clock, and in a culture like college football's, where cheating can be the difference between the Bluebonnet and Peach Bowls, most outrages this obvious barely last three days, let alone six. Instead, we will note that three games last weekend were delayed by the bestial weather, and a fourth, between the Colorado School of Mines Orediggers and Washburn Ichabods, became the first tie game in 31 years, because even after starting the game early to avoid a heat index figure straight from Satan's colon, the two schools went into overtime and couldn't finish. And really, can you pick a favorite between Orediggers and Ichabods? Anyway, let the sad tales commence.

Britt McHenry, a former Fox host and ESPN reporter best known for a towing-yard tirade, says she’s taken a job with the Trump administration. McHenry posted on social media Wednesday to confirm that she’d been hired as a “press advisor” for the U.S. Department of State. Her announcement, which was first reported by Barrett Media, included vague details about what her duties will be. She said she would be developing "strategies to address media concerns and enhance public understanding of State Department initiatives" on her updated LinkedIn page. But McHenry did say she’s "beyond excited" about working for Marco Rubio. It's unclear what part of McHenry's résumé makes her a good fit for the State Department. The tiny and harmful secretary of state has gotten recent attention for hiring folks who’ve been caught on video being assholes. If that's an attribute Rubio's indeed after, McHenry made an unbeatable audition tape more than a decade ago. In fact, should McHenry somehow go on to broker an end to the Iran fiasco, negotiate a truce in the Ukraine war, and formulate some sort of McHenry Doctrine that ushers in an era of world peace, here’s betting that her obituary would still lead off with what a loathsome bully she was in the spring of 2015 at a Northern Virginia towing yard.

This week on Nothing But Respect, we welcomed back million-time guest Giri Nathan to talk primarily about his experience covering the U.S. Open. How bad is the phone situation? How does the memetic object of the Honey Deuce explain the current predicament? What's been the match of the tournament? We also touched on the biggest NBA news story of the past week, as well as the fallout from the NBA's hammer-style punishment of the Clippers. You can find Nothing But Respect in Apple Podcasts or whatever podcast app you use. Follow the show on Instagram, and contact the Broke Jumper Tip Line at (347) 380-6426. Thanks for listening!

On Sept. 10, ProPublica published a story by reporter Gus Garcia-Roberts detailing how Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz avoided prosecution after a traffic collision in the Dominican Republic, in which he rear-ended a motorcycle, killing all three passengers. The crash occurred in Cruz's hometown of Nizao in the Peravia province, on Sept. 21, 2020; at the time, Cruz was 21 years old and still a prospect. While an initial press release from the public prosecutor's office stated that "according to investigations, the accused had ingested alcoholic beverages prior to the accident," prosecutors never raised the subject of either alcohol or intoxication at Cruz's arraignment. A Pittsburgh Post-Gazette article from five days after the crash reported on the discrepancy, with a spokeswoman from the public prosecutor's office stating that Cruz "smelled of alcohol," but due to a "procedural error," no official sobriety tests were performed. By the time Cruz was called up to the Pirates' big-league squad for the first time in 2021, the story was broadly forgotten. Garcia-Roberts's story details how Cruz came to face no charges related to the incident. Garcia-Roberts spoke to the families of the victims—19-year-old Daniela Perez Garcia, 20-year-old Deby Beato Charles, and 20-year-old Yohan Saba Mercado—all of whom withdrew their charges. According to his reporting, Cruz's family, while he was still in custody, reached out to Dominican businessman Santo Caraballo as a fixer, on the advice of a trainer. Caraballo, who had political connections, reportedly helped persuade the families of all the victims to accept a cash payment in exchange for withdrawing any legal claims against Cruz. In interviews, each family details the emotional fallout, and how they accepted the payments, which totaled roughly $66,000, due either to deceit, financial pressure, or pragmatism.

The power of a well and oft-told narrative is not to be diminished, but it also should not be feared if countervailing information comes to light. And so it is that the San Francisco 49ers, irradiated scoundrels though they may be and summer vacation wastrels they absolutely proved to be, came up with the one enduring rebuttal to all the amused schadenfreude that has been aimed their way. Specifically, they answered it with a comprehensive kicking of that arse. The 49ers put that indisputably goofy offseason all the way behind them—for a week, anyway—by taking the preseason Super Bowl favorite Los Angeles Rams and choke-slamming them and their national reputations on an Aussie Rules ground, 27-7. People made a point of saying afterward that this was the worst opening-game loss by a preseason championship favorite in 50 years, and it was. What this tells us is that all pregame gambling information, like almost all pregame information, has only one utility: to bait degenerates into spending money in defense of or repudiation of that information. The football stuff, by contrast, takes care of itself. The Rams, whose preseason standing was somewhere between consensus pick and indomitable favorite, never came close to proving it on Thursday. The score, for what it's worth, was probably a flattery to the Rams. The whompage was evident everywhere.

The NFL is built on parity. The middle exudes a tremendous gravitational force, with the schedule, the draft, and the salary cap all conspiring to pull every team toward 9-8 or 8-9 records year after year. While the larger-order churn of the league hews to that pattern, a number of teams have found ways to consistently defy the schematic, either by consistently posting winning records or failing to take advantage of the considerable structural help built into the way the NFL is organized. But why? What makes these organizations capable of resisting the pull of the middle? Joshua Robinson and Jonathan Clegg ask these questions in their new book, The Playbook: The Hidden Forces Shaping Winners and Losers in the Modern NFL, which is available now. This is the Wall Street Journal duo's fourth book together, and it's the product of a year of reporting and research. On Wednesday afternoon, I spoke with Robinson about the book's arguments, what makes team-building in the NFL so fascinating, and his and Clegg's co-writing process. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

I knew I had gone too far when the question of whether we should buy a gun crossed my mind. This came at the apex of a weeklong anxiety spiral triggered by a New York Times feature about the possibility of an 18-month nationwide blackout. I was uneasy seeing the phrase “art form” used to describe the archaic manufacturing process of the transformers that underpin our electrical grid; the process involves painstakingly bespoke techniques of winding copper coils, wrapping paper insulation, and binding wiring, all by hand. The intensity and intricacy of that process means that there is a backlog of transformer manufacturing and repair, sometimes stretching as long as five years. There are more than 55,000 substations in the United States, but according to a Federal Energy Regulatory Commission official cited in the article, only nine of the most powerful substations would need to be taken out to trigger a nationwide blackout, which could go on to last as long as 18 months.  At the same time I read this article, an actual blackout was taking place in Gary, Indiana, a state where more than 370,000 people—the population is disproportionately black—were left in the dark for two weeks before power was restored. My social media feeds filled with videos of people rushing to put fresh batteries into their flashlights because the longer they stayed in a lit car, “the more chance you have of somebody running up and pistol-whipping you.” This same creator said that people were robbing each other for generators and called it “the motherfucking apocalypse.” I replayed the videos and then thought about them for days, imagining how I would respond in that type of situation and knowing that I was completely unprepared to defend myself if I needed to do so. Compounding my anxiety was the fact that I am five months pregnant with my first child. I am trying to keep a grasp on a sense of coherent identity as my body becomes unrecognizable and mega-doses of hormones wreak havoc on my sanity. I have historically been ambivalent about parenthood; as the oldest of four kids, I resented caretaking and never harbored dreams of being a mother. But as this fetus makes its presence more evident, I am increasingly aware of the way my brain is reorienting around this helpless being for whom I will be completely responsible in just a few months’ time. In my adult life thus far, I’ve imagined the future as wide-open and abundant with choice, where any successes or mistakes I make will primarily affect me and no one else. Now I can feel my attention, energy, and resources reorienting toward this small human who didn’t ask to be born and has no idea what they’re in for. I am responsible for me and for this person, and if I fuck up, they will bear the consequences. 

The quality of the average tennis broadcast has skyrocketed in recent years. Analysts assume far more curiosity and intelligence on the viewer’s part than I can ever remember, and they're no longer limited to tropes and cliches, recycled set after set. Instead the television audience receives tasty morsels of granular observation. Sure, you might still have to deal with a certain American legend entering the booth and freshly learning about the existence of any player ranked below No. 12, but a lot of bright minds are on the mic now, working hard to elucidate the game. Recently retired players like Andrea Petkovic and Chris Eubanks mesh wit with analysis, and former greats Andre Agassi and Andy Roddick get shockingly nitty-gritty about stroke production and point patterns. I feel heartened that some sizable audience cares about this stuff, and that networks like ESPN, TNT, and Tennis Channel have decided it’s worth investing in. My current favorite commentator is Jim Courier, the former world No. 1 and four-time major champ, whose stateside employers are Tennis Channel and TNT, where he is especially adept at interpreting the interplay of variables in every tennis match: conditions, technique, tactics, fitness. You'll learn something new every time you hear him on the call. This past Monday at the Open, I sat down with Courier to talk about how he sees tennis, in hopes that it would help other fans see it better. Our conversation has been lightly edited for clarity.

Name an iconic scene from the first Spider-Man movie, the one directed by Sam Raimi that came out in 2002. You’re saying it’s the upside-down kiss? Yeah, that’s fair. Let me ask my question in a different way: What’s the most iconic line from the first Spider—OK now that I’m saying it out loud, it’s definitely “With great power comes great responsibility.” Which I know is not a creation of the film but it did popularize it and … we’re already getting off-topic. Let me try this again: Hey, remember the part in the middle of Spider-Man that’s about 9/11?

It’s being shouted from all corners: The U.S. Open has become an overcrowded, overpriced circus awash in influencers, aspirational influencers, corporate stooges, drunken buffoons, brand activations, inane stunt food, weed smoke, and bettors. It is newly hostile to children, people who value personal space, and genuine fans of tennis. These louts and narcissists, armed with their ring lights and stacked empty Honey Deuce cups, are ransacking this once-dignified event. I've been attending this tournament for over two decades—I used to go to qualifiers with a brown-bag lunch—so I’ve been hearing some version of this complaint for years, but never at such a pitch as right now. Sometimes I don’t buy that the writer has been paying close enough attention to the tournament over time, but sometimes it’s all articulated succinctly by a diehard. I agree with the overall spirit that animates these complaints: The U.S. Open is no longer what we remember it to be, and it's getting pretty weird as it tries to figure out what it will be next. Lest we romanticize the past, many aspects of the current circus have held steady throughout the tournament’s 21st-century existence. It is not scandalizing to learn that America's biggest tennis tournament is a shrine to conspicuous consumption. And the good parts of the U.S. Open are still life-affirmingly good. My eyelid, like yours, might twitch when I read that Craig Tiley, the recently installed CEO of the United States Tennis Association, wants to make the tournament more like "tennis Disneyland," but I don’t know if the organizers are necessarily at fault for the present malaise. The Open appears to be drawing in more fan interest than ever before, which falls in line with the USTA’s mission statement of growing tennis participation in this country. If there’s a problem here, it might merely lie in mankind. At the intersection of broader disconcerting trends—everything is phone, everything is gambling, and nobody knows how to be around each other in public—lies the 2026 U.S. Open.