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Caleb Williams is carrying an unimaginable burden, and it's not just the matter of being the last living quarterback in the NFL, or easing into his place as the best Chicago Bears quarterback in three quarters of a century while running the most prolific Bears offense in 50 years. It's been only eight weeks since his season began, and already he is the preeminent face of Chicago sports. This looks like high praise, but while that praise would be deserved where Williams is concerned, consider the context. Williams is not working against a deep field—not in the NFC North, which is the toughest division in the league, but in the town in which he works. There, his opposition is Northwestern's football team, which is 6-2 but unranked and unlikely to break through the upper crust of the Big Ten. The Cubs were routed from the postseason in the shortest possible amount of time, and the White Sox are still striking out despite their season having ended four weeks ago. The Sky are notable only for having turned Angel Reese into a useful player by trading her to another team. And the Bulls and Blackhawks are demonstrably god-awful, well within the margin for error for having a spectacular margin for errors. You know, like the post-election Republican mood. How god-awful, you ask, since you've been averting your eyes? The Bulls are 1-7, and are losing their games by an average of 18 points per game, which ranks as the largest margin of stinkage in NBA history, albeit in this admittedly minuscule sample; they are allowing the second-highest number of points per game ever. They will doubtless revert to a gentler if still depressing mean, as all non-expansion teams tend to do, but with a starting lineup of Caleb Wilson, Norman Powell, Josh Giddey, Matas Buzelis, and Jalen Smith, it would be foolish to rule out the 11-71 outcome for their season.

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. Israel: Mike Norvell is finally, officially out of my life. I am ecstatic, but I am also left completely cold. The good thing about having a hatable figure looming large over your school is that they absorb all the problems that exist, in that program and everywhere else. My opinion about his coaching is a matter of public record, but I'll say this: Norvell and that dumb face of his made for a good lightning rod, all things considered. But now he's gone. Athletic director Michael Alford was gone in September. Thanks to an approximately $50 million buyout for Norvell and the general changing landscape of college football, the future of FSU football is more uncertain than it has ever been.

The Tesla car company "will be winding down production of the Cybertruck" in 2027, according to a tweet from Elon Musk. Like everything else Musk says, ever, this must be treated as having essentially no truth value whatsoever and at best a coincidental relationship to anything that later happens with or to Cybertruck production. It's noteworthy as an index of what Musk wants people to believe—it's noteworthy, then, that Musk wants people to believe that the era of Cybertruck production is coming to an end. And by "noteworthy," I mean: fucking hilarious! Few vehicles live on in history as metonyms for failure and embarrassment. Edsel, DeLorean, whatever poor beleaguered machine ferries the Sacramento Kings to a given road game instead of doing them the favor of exploding along the way. Add to these the Cybertruck, one of the most hyped vehicles of all time; Tesla's production capacity for the Cybertruck reportedly was something like 250,000 units per year, and, should the end of its production in fact come in 2027, it will wrap up its four-year run certainly having sold, in total, worldwide, under half of that number. Given the ballooning demand for electric vehicles, the relative lack of competition among all-electric trucks, Tesla's huge head-start in EV production, the unparalleled hype around the Cybertruck's release, and its flowering into a rolling emblem of Musk's personal toxicity, the Cybertruck deserves to endure in history as among the most embarrassing mass-produced products ever available for purchase by human beings. I'd rather carry a battery-powered Big Mouth Billy Bass around under my arm for a year than be seen, by any single person, climbing into or out of a Cybertruck once.

Bill Simmons got himself into some trouble a few weeks ago, when he admitted on his podcast that he had engaged in proxy betting. Simmons, who lives in California, where online sports gambling is still illegal, told his listeners that he had instructed his daughter's boyfriend, who lives in gambling-friendly Massachusetts, to log into his FanDuel account and place bets on his behalf. Because this practice is strictly prohibited by FanDuel's policies, his bets were voided. But a question remained: How much action was Simmons denied? Now, thanks to the Massachusetts Gaming Commission, we have an answer to that question. Sports betting reporter Geoff Zochodne pointed out that the commission's Investigation and Enforcement Bureau made a presentation to commissioners Thursday about Simmons's infraction. A memo announcing the presentation provided some details about how much Simmons was trying to bet: The incident involved an admission made by media personality Bill Simmons on his August 30, 2026, podcast pertaining to his placement of proxy wagers on his FanDuel account in Massachusetts through an acquaintance who was physically present in Massachusetts. FanDuel reported that the matter involved 22 wagers with a total handle of $21,800 placed over three (3) dates: August 5, 2026, August 7, 2026, and August 19, 2026.

Plenty of teams have lost their starting quarterbacks, to things like knee surgery (Giants), blood clots (Eagles), or an ancient Hittite curse (Chargers). But it's unlikely that anyone's had a rougher go of it under center this year than the Baltimore Ravens. Already sliding out of the ranks of the contenders, Baltimore was without Lamar Jackson for three punchless games due to an ankle sprain, and then, last weekend, he tore up his thumb on his very first snap in his return. His replacement Snoop Huntley is presentable as far as QB2s go, having been here on and off since 2020; Huntley was then promptly injured in the second quarter, and is out for the season with turf toe. Just about any NFL team is dead meat after the loss of two quarterbacks, but the Ravens are extra-pungent carrion. Joe Fagnano, an undrafted rookie out of Maine and UConn who walked on and played seven years in college, was the sacrificial lamb for Thursday night's game against the Jacksonville Jaguars. And while I have plenty of sympathy for Fagnano and the Ravens offense for only having a short week to prepare, this was indeed Thursday-ass football. https://twitter.com/DanDGriffis/status/2118536909962019135

Four different states put forward ballot measures on Tuesday that, if passed, would either strengthen or create new laws keeping trans children out of school sports. Though the night saw massive Democratic victories, even in typical Republican strongholds like Kansas, Texas, and South Carolina, the four initiatives on the ballot tell a different story. In two states, Arizona and Nebraska, the language will strengthen bans that were already on the books. In the other two states, Washington and Colorado, voters were asked to create new bans where none existed. As of Thursday, ballot measures in Arizona, Nebraska, and Washington were all projected to pass. Colorado's was too close to call, but the numbers leaned toward passage. Per TransAthlete.com, the passage of all four would bring the number of bans in the country, through either law or policy, up to 31. Here is how the four proposals break down:

Anyone familiar with the Free Press, and its institutional project of dehumanizing Arabs, would have known that Abdul El-Sayed's U.S. Senate election win was going to have a bad effect on some of its employees. Indeed, staff writer Olivia Reingold and reporter Maya Sulkin are currently competing to see who can crash out the hardest. Whereas Sulkin has taken the obvious route of recording herself quivering in fear at the sound of El-Sayed's name and his use of a few Arabic words, Reingold opted for something more perplexing: using artificial intelligence to produce an uncanny image of a woman's feet. "So far at Abdul El-Sayed’s election night event I’ve spotted, Valentino heels, a Chanel bag, a Moncler jacket, Rolex watches, and a YSL bag among other designer items," Reingold wrote on Tuesday night. She attached this photo to her message:

In 1974, scientists sent into space a radio message encoding some basic facts about Earth and humanity. In the "Arecibo message," we shared with the cosmos some information about the shape and size of human beings, and the composition of human DNA. This year, we should run it back, but with the following video message instead. Any life form out there should know that they are welcome here after receiving this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TGQUu-4g8pk Victor Wembanyama logged 52 points, 24 rebounds, and eight blocks in the San Antonio Spurs' thrilling 112-111 win over the Dallas Mavericks on Wednesday. It was a totalizing, two-way performance. Almost every possession offered a jump scare, as Wembanyama moved through space in ways heretofore unseen, or fused size and skill in ways not thought possible. Shots that would never been at risk of being blocked, at any previous point in NBA history, were in fact blocked. The 7-foot-4 guy blocking them was also beating his defender from the perimeter with a hesitation dribble. No one else mattered.

Drew Magary’s Thursday Afternoon NFL Dick Joke Jamboroo runs every Thursday at Defector during the NFL season. Got something you wanna contribute? Email the Roo. You can also read Drew over at SFGATE, and buy Drew’s books while you’re at it. I’m on my hands and knees, working in the backyard. I rarely engage in any sort of gardening work, and by “rarely,” I mean never. I still have bitter memories of being forced to do yard work at my parents’ house as a kid, grabbing at the little weeds sprouting out of the cracks in the front walk, feeling the sweat gush out of me as I yanked and pulled and twisted. Every weed I uprooted just made me think about the countless more I still had to deal with. I knew many people who adored tending to their land, my mother included, but I was not among them. All I ever wanted to do was go back inside and watch MTV. The only satisfaction I got from doing the job was when parents paid me after the fact. Even then, they’d still point out all of the weeds I’d missed. Gardening was a hobby for the sadistic, I believed. Three back surgeries later, I had an all-too-convenient out to save myself from every getting my hands dirty again. My wife and I now have a nice-sized yard that requires care, and for the past 20 years, that work has been handled either by landscaping pros, my green-thumbed mother-in-law—who would often come by our house unannounced just to garden—or my wife. I myself never bothered going out there. After all, I had a bad back: a legitimate alibi that men like me love nothing more than to abuse. I used to mow our law myself right after we moved in 20 years ago, but with only a push mower at our disposal, I quickly deemed that job far too taxing.

Tuesday sure delivered. The blue wave—a bluenami—is a great relief to people with brains and functioning moral senses, but much of the strongest juice produced Tuesday night was drawn from a few individual races. Some of those were incredibly stirring. It feels amazing to wake up in a world where Susan Collins is out in Maine, Greg Abbott is out in Texas, data centers took a beating everywhere, Virginia finally and resoundingly overturned a Jim Crow-era voting restriction, and Vivek Ramaswamy ate a fat one. A strong contender for the funniest result, though, came in the race for the U.S. House seat from Arizona's first congressional district. Voters there did what ESPN so far has failed to do, and waved away a braying MAGA jackass of a former NFL special teams player. Jay Feely kicked for six NFL teams over a 14-season career, with notable stops in Atlanta, Arizona, and East Rutherford, where he had stints with both the Giants and Jets. His playing career petered out in 2014. By then, he'd already made himself known as a right-wing blowhard. Feely is buds with Fox News host Sean Hannity, and it was on Hannity's show, back in 2009, when he was kicking for the New York Jets, that Feely foreshadowed the rise of MAGA nationalism. What he said was stupid, of course, but in listening to Feely summarize a bunch of hazy, barely coded, haphazardly gussied-up criticisms as legitimate concerns over Barack Obama's unwillingness to "defend America's greatness," you could hear an irritating future Republican elected official finding his form. Feely's notional appeal, as an ascending conservative striver, is that he once had a manly job, can formulate a complete sentence, and projects masculine authority, often ostentatiously. That, plus a square jaw and a razor-sharp hair part, made him a natural for football broadcasts, and eventually a contender for some cushy political office in an ironclad conservative sanctuary. If he were half an inch taller or played a skill position, today he might be Secretary of Blowing Up Brown People.