Michael

[Michael @mike50591]

@RealCJ10 go back to hooters you fat fuck

[Michael @mike50591]

@mike_petriello dumbass

[CFB Home @CFBHome]

Why does Taylor Lewan have a platform?

[flexburger @flexburgerr]

JUST IN: Daniel Larson to be released from prison today.

[Official Ohio State DG @DylanEveryday]

Why isnt Jim Harbaugh in PRISON

What a gross institution

[Zain @ItzzZain10]

Streets will never forget how peak jannik sinner had to beg the organisers to not play in the heat against a 76 year old crippled djokovic.

[Harrison Lee @HarrisonCLee]

Thierry and Zlatan saying they wouldn't have become soccer players because of the costs of the American youth system, then seeing Lalas say it's a great system because it makes a lot of money for some people really sums it all up nicely

[Aakash Gupta @aakashgupta]

In Germany, a talented 14-year-old earns his club money. In America, his parents pay the club $15,000 a year.

That single inversion explains why "we will not" is the most accurate line ever written about US soccer.

FIFA built a global system for this. Training compensation and solidarity payments send a cut of every transfer fee back to the clubs that developed the player, from age 12 onward. Develop one future pro and your academy gets paid for a decade. Barcelona's La Masia, Ajax, every Bundesliga academy runs on this logic. The kid is the asset.

US Soccer refuses to enforce those rules. When Seattle's Crossfire Premier claimed its $60,000 share of DeAndre Yedlin's transfer to Tottenham, it got nothing. Claims on the Dempsey and Bradley transfers died partly because the federation couldn't even produce the youth training records.

So American clubs earn zero dollars when a kid turns pro. They earn when a kid enrolls. Which makes the parent the customer, and the product is whatever keeps the parent writing checks: travel tournaments, hotel weekends, $500 showcase events, private training at $100 an hour. Elite pathways run $8,000 to $20,000 a year. A comparable academy spot in Italy costs about 120 euros.

Follow the incentive one level deeper and it gets darker. A club dependent on fees can't cut its weakest paying players, so rosters optimize for retention over development. The scouting pool shrinks to families who can afford the cliff, which appears around age 11, exactly when development matters most. The country runs a talent filter sorted by household income instead of ability.

Every four years someone proposes fixing this. The proposal always requires the people profiting from the $15,000 model to vote themselves out of business.

They will not.

[Sumeet @flameosumeet]

Interesting point on the Balogun situation that’s gone unnoticed:

Jenny Taft and now the NY Post are reporting that FIFA was already reviewing the red card (protocol?) before Trump made any calls, and that the USSF was threatening to go to CAS over the issue…

Entirely possible that Trump swooped in and took credit at the last minute, certainly not out of the ordinary for him

[JT @jltho]

To all the Europeans clutching their pearls over this after spending the last several days Eurosplaining the sport to us, let me explain it to you.

Even if Balogun deserved a red (he didn’t), the referee misused VAR under FIFA’s own rules. That resulted in a red card that couldn’t be appealed.

FIFA then correctly used Article 27 to review and suspend the ban because the initial VAR error led to an unappealable decision.

[Seattle Mariners @Mariners]

free folarin balogun

[That’s Baseball, Suzyn @Thats_BB_Suzyn]

Taking off my Yankees hat for a minute to assess the Mets situation.

The Pete Alonso situation captures everything about why David Stearns is not the secret genius we were told he was, and why he is, simply, a terrible GM.

You don’t let a Forever Guy, the franchise leader in HR, walk to another team. At least not without a good reason. And the reasons Stearns gave for not even making an offer to Pete simply don’t hold up. They reveal that he might just be an idiot.

1. “His defense is sub-par.” Sure, but then you signed Bo Bichette to play a position he never played, and he was already a terrible defender at the position he did play. And then you signed a roleplayer to play 1B who hadn’t even played 1B before. So even if you prioritized defense, you had no plan to make that happen.

2. “He won’t age well.” Pete never gets hurt, plays 162 games, and has been the most consistent right handed power hitter in baseball since coming into the league. He’s a lock for 35-45 HR every year with an .800 to .850 OPS. There’s a reason he’s the franchise leader in HR. Homegrown guys like that come along once in a generation.

3. “We didn’t want to hamstring ourselves with a long term contract, especially because we already did that with Lindor and Soto.” Understandable, but the Orioles only signed him through his Age 35 season. That’s a bargain in this day and age. Aaron Judge, Ohtani, Mookie, Vlad Jr., Soto, Trout, Harper, and Machado are all locked up through Age 39 and beyond. If you’re scared of signing an elite 1B to a 5 year deal through Age 35, you shouldn’t be a major league GM.

Simply put, all of Stearns’ reasons were complete BS.

Now I can think of some reasons to keep Pete:

1. Chicks dig the Forever Guy - Win or lose, some fans will always buy tickets to see an elite homegrown player they grew up with. Investing in someone like that is a good business decision. Insurance in case you don’t win. There’s something special about seeing a no-name prospect become a superstar over the course of his rookie year. Fans, especially kids, have been on this journey with Pete since he broke Aaron Judge’s rookie home run record in 2019. Obviously winning matters most. But take this from a Yankees fan. When we were mediocre and in between playoff windows in 2013-2014, we still paid to go see Jeter and Mariano.

2. The Quest for 500 - Pete is on a borderline HOF track. Every HR he would have hit at Citi Field would have been a new record. Unless he gets hurt—and so far he never gets hurt—he had a really good chance to get to 500. Why take that away from fans?

3. The Mets have never had a Forever Guy. Seaver. Straw. Doc. DeGrom. None of those guys stayed with the Mets. Pete not only had a chance to be a face of the franchise, but THE face of the franchise, for decades to come.

Look, I’m not emotionally invested in the Mets. I don’t hate them, even if I don’t root for them. And as a baseball fan, I think every team deserves a homegrown hero, win or lose. I count dozens of Mets fans amongst my family and friends. It’s painful to see what Pete on the Orioles has done to them.

There is certainly an argument to be made for being ruthless, doing whatever it takes to win. But David Stearns didn’t do that either. Instead of being a secret genius, it seems he had no plan at all. Now that they’re a dumpster fire, it doesn’t surprise me that Pete Alonso is the outlet through which fans are venting their frustration.

[dianna @runwildkian]

PETE ALONSO

[Justin Thind @JustinThind]

you can buy a team, you can even buy an entire national title - but you can never buy a program.

[vids that go hard @vidsthatgohard]

ALL OF NEW YORK SINGING EMPIRE STATE OF MIND 🔥

[ESPN @espn]

OmG.

[CONSEQUENCE @consequence]

Phoebe Bridgers is playing a pop-up show at Madison Square Garden on June 4th.

Tickets are priced between $1-$20, with proceeds benefiting the Immigration Bond Freedom Fund.

[Michael @mike50591]

@therealkenny69 @jyanksmsu

[Jon Heyman @JonHeyman]

https://t.co/zQOZODxrsz Time to look at what we know of David Stearns’ formulas 1 1/2 years after Pete Alonso told him this: “When my career is being evaluated for the Hall of Fame years from now, you’ll still be fiddling with your [flipping] formulas.”

[dianna @runwildkian]

WORLD SERIES HERE WE COME

[Mayor Zohran Kwame Mamdani @NYCMayor]

LGM