Thad Davis

who, what, where, when, why, 🍌

[Soap Box Gaming @SoapBoxGaming1]

Every single time man.

[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.

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

@UTDIMole Wasn’t it Depay?

[That Guy Rocked CFB @ThatFBGuyRocked]

Stephen McGee.

That guy rocked.

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

@MLB

[Mark @AgingRanchHand]

Bill Simmons: In terms of teammates with consecutive numbers on their jerseys, where do we rank Wemby and Harper with the #1 and #2 jerseys? You have to put McHale and Bird at the top spot with #32 and #33 right?

Joe House: I can't do this anymore. There has to be more to life

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

#NowPlaying
🎵 Appalachian Raised
👤 Cigarettes @ Sunset
💿 Appalachian Raised - Single

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

#NowPlaying
🎵 She Likes The Beatles
👤 William Clark Green
💿 Rose Queen

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

@Neduszn8

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

@TexansTORO1

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

#NowPlaying
🎵 Good Girls
👤 CHVRCHES
💿 Screen Violence

[Katherine Argent @effthealgorithm]

Search is full of ads and wrong answers. Every other email is an ad. Prime Video charges you and shows ads. Paramount? Ads. Peacock? YouTube? Hulu? Ads followed by more ads. Netflix full of ads. Meta and X, every other thing is an ad. Pinterest is nothing but ads. AI is in everything. AI finishes sentences incorrectly and won’t stop. AI reads your email and search history to target you with more ads. Every time you open an app or visit a site there’s an update making it worse. In a hurry? First, click here to agree to terms you don’t have time to read and must accept. You need an account to do that. Change your temporary password. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email and enter that code. Now use a passkey. Your password is too simple to remember. Change it. No, not like that. Now log on. Enter your 2FA code. Check your email for a code… Welcome back! We’ve updated our terms of service and privacy policy (you have none). Subscribe to the site. Subscribe to Netflix. Subscribe to toilet paper. Subscribe to these groceries. Pay a membership fee for the right to subscribe then tip your driver who delivers the subscriptions your membership lets you subscribe to. Time to work? We’ve got to update your laptop and will slow down everything you do until you agree to update. But first, click here to agree. Update installed — your laptop’s broken now. It doesn’t matter, since your boss just replaced you with AI. Go to your phone to complain on social media. Wait, your phone needs an update so we can add more AI. Click here. Oh sorry, your phone can’t handle this update. Now it’s useless. Go get the newest phone. Here’s a text from a friend, an email, a voice mail they left three days ago but you didn’t see until now because of sync problems with the cloud. It’s their GoFundMe. Their MLM. Their Patreon. Never mind, you didn’t respond to their text within 9 minutes and now you’re no longer friends. They blocked you. Make new friends. Download this app to find people in your area. In your neighborhood. On your street. Two doors down from you. Do you know this person yet, we think you’d get along. You need an account to use this app. That username is taken. Enter a password. Not that one, you used it on another site. You need to be connected to WiFi to download the app. Allow the app to connect to other devices on your network. Allow the app to access your contacts, know your precise location, store your credit card details. Oops, sorry, we got hacked now all that info is available on the web. There’s a class action suit. You can join. It’ll take a decade to get your $3.73 share of the ten billion settlement. We’ll send it via PayPal or deposit it to your bank, just tell us those details. Oh no, another hack. That info is circulating now, too. Here’s a spam call, a spam email, a spam text. Why are you angry? Why are you talking about getting rid of your phone? Why don’t you like AI, it lets us make all of this easier? Do you know how ridiculous that sounds? This is progress. You’ll be left behind. Do you want to be left behind? Do you???

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

I thought this was America!

[Barstool Sports @barstoolsports]

REPORT: Parents Getting Drunk At Little League Baseball Games And Harassing Umpires All Across America Is The Latest Stain On Youth Sports Culture https://t.co/MLYWAMZZuV

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

R.I.P. to a true legend

#NowPlaying
🎵 If This Is Just a Game
👤 David Allan Coe
💿 Human Emotions

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

#NowPlaying
🎵 Duality
👤 Slipknot
💿 Vol. 3 The Subliminal Verses

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

@GolfWYF

[11Point7 College Baseball @11point7]

BALL 5 IS LOUD

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

I need to see them nuke the poles

[Culture Crave 🍿 @CultureCrave]

#ProjectHailMary directors say the assembly cut was ~3 hours and 45 minutes long 🎞️

"[The major note] was, 'get it way shorter'"

(via Happy Sad Confused)

[Thad Davis @ThdDvs]

#NowPlaying
🎵 Life, Love, and Happiness (Entertainer’s Lament)
👤 Flatland Cavalry
💿 Work of Heart