“He can probably squat more than we’re even putting on the bar. He’s strong enough.” - Dan Lanning, Oregon Football HC, on DT A’mauri Washington.
🎙️ Leading Off
2026 Freaks List dropped.
I’m not an aggregator, and you people barely use the links in Over the Air. YOU PEOPLE. If there’s one piece worth highlighting, it’s the annual College Football Freaks List. Name says it all. A breakdown of 101(!) shamans of the Iron Temple. Legends tossing weight around like feathers. Track stars disguised in pads. Bruce Feldman (a real journalist) put together this list so you could know who to watch when you aren’t just watching the quarterback. I read the list like this:
Top 20 (Apex Freaks)
Scan for players on teams I know will be on TV (mental note)
Scan for CBs (who literally play the game in reverse)
Small School Freaks
All-Name Team (“Inky” Jones, Colby Cronk, Sully Burns, Yamir Knight, J’Mond Tapp)
It’s fun to quietly read the summary of each player’s bona fides and then whisper FREAK under your breath.
🏌️ Hard In The Paint
You no doubt heard our brave heroes at LIV announced a non-nation state investment partner to presumably keep the tour afloat through the end of 2026 and beyond. LIV (who completed their most recent “NY” event this past weekend) believes the financial life-line can support 10 events in 2027 (five in the US and five internationally).
I flipped back and forth between the Wyndham Championship and LIV’s final round on Sunday. The rest of this Hard in the Paint will avoid any name-calling, finger wagging, or societal-ethical breakdowns trying to answer the LIV or Let Die arguement. I will spell out all the headwinds facing the breakaway tour without debating if the PGA Tour needs Abraham Ancer.
If anyone (most likely your uncle), starts to defend LIV, they simply need to answer: where is the TV money and how do they get it? That’s it. That’s all this exercise has ever been. The “innovations” promised at the beginning of LIV were entirely concocted to support a “better” television product. 54 holes. Shotgun start. Team golf designed to make final rounds more interesting. Wearing shorts. All of it was a hypothesis that golf television production would be improved, and therefore, LIV could command more than the $700m annually delivered to the PGA by CBS.
LIV started with a rational hypothesis: if PGA ratings are declining, then change the golf tournament to make better TV, so that a golf tour can charge broadcasters more money and deliver bigger checks to players. Perfectly rational. Every single decision from there imploded. They made it to page 1, paragraph 1 before going off the rails.
Remember that $700m number above? Care to guess what LIV is pulling in from Fox? Maybe $4m. Maybe. The debate boils down entirely to: how can a Tour generating $4m in television revenue promise $30m tournament purses (and guaranteed annual contracts)? If you were wondering how Saudi Arabia could even burn $5b in 4ish years, the imbalance of TV revenue to tournament purses would be a decent place to start.
Does an opportunity to renegotiate a television deal exist? Potentially. LIV’s deal with Fox has only been described as “multi-year”. New LIV CEO Scott O’Neil is a former FOX executive who’s exclusive job is to secure a more lucrative rights contract. His biggest challenge will be finding another outlet to bid against FOX and drive the price up. In most rational worlds, CBS, who could not be more deeply ingrained with the PGA, would be out. A window might’ve existed years ago with NBC, but Peacock’s deal with the PGA also runs through 2030. ESPN’s successfully delivered the first two rounds of the Masters annually, and could only make a LIV deal with Augusta’s blessing. The chilliness between Augusta, Phil, and LIV has barely subsided. O’Neil can really on turn to Netflix, Amazon, and Apple. And for how much? How much do those platforms want to dip their toes into golf if they aren’t even the biggest game in town? Here’s the big one: how much does those platforms want to pay for 5 domestic tournaments? 5.
I will not watch a golf tournament in Hong Kong. I probably can’t watch the South African version. Scott O’Neil can tout all the “global” opportunities and the F1 parallels between the products, but the money is here in America and there is no reason for a television partner to expect any return on advertising slots for broadcasting final rounds taking place in Riyadh, Hong Kong, South Africa, or Australia. The money (me) is here. If the money is sleeping, don’t expect to earn enough for Bryson Dechambeau’s next contract.
Every business challenge Harvard Business School could possibly dream of exists with LIV. The fixed costs (annual contracts) are a nightmare. The variable costs (# of tournaments) don’t scale. LIV has broken every promise they ever made to players and fans. Bryson finished +7 and tied for 38th in NY. I just can’t see Netflix paying $500m a year for that.
📻 Over The Air
📡 JumboTron: Monday’s Must Watch
All times PST
Phillies vs Cardinals, 4:45pm FS1, the Scott Rolen Bowl
Brewers vs Padres , 6:40pm ESPN Unlimited, which I guess is better than ESPN+ and can be bundled with Hulu/Disney for $35/month?
☎️ The Phone Line
Best thing on the timeline today:
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Walkup Song
Walkup Song
Marshall Jefferson, Solardo
For the Freaks:
Spotify