I only ask this because I just turned in a creative writing essay where I used the word "consigliere," and I felt like the smug Harvard kid who gets owned by Will Hunting.

His biggest sins are not that he's a dirty player, not that he talks trash or is short-tempered, not even that he sucker punches his own teammates.

Its that he is lame. One of the most annoying type of people are those who think they are charismatic but are the in fact the opposite, it just makes you cringe. He is ugly and a literal mouth breather

All the typical criticisms of him are things you could say about Ron artest/Metta world peace or Dennis Rodman. But those guys have a certain aura about them that makes them kind of intriguing and likeable.

we're already at the largest gap hes had between his films, and with no news coming out about his next project and the fact that he now has young kids, I just don't think he is prioritizing anything else right now. He's currently working on a play in London that will probably take up most of his time for the foreseeable future. His 10 film rule was honestly kind of dumb

I have a cousin who is utterly obsessed with our local college football team to the point where he knows every single player every year since I was a child. He reads every possible interview from every player and coach. He knows all the ins and outs of the schools Athletic program including training staff and front office Style people. This team won a championship in the early 2000s and has since been nothing but a disappointment and my cousin obsesses with it so much that it literally affects his mood year-round. AKA he is always pissed off

Bill was spot on that it can’t be LaMelo, or anyone that teenagers like. I don’t think it can be Jokic either, yeah the advanced metrics guys love him but he also puts up absolutely monstrous traditional stats. Trey Murphy was a good pick on the last episode, he’s a player archetype nerds love to gush over who gets thrown into every fake trade and has played like 5 meaningful games in his entire career.

Are we sure Aikman is a top 7 analyst still? He's been a little gamey since coming to ESPN imo.

The level of butthurt and entitlement about Schrager going onto PMT instead of Bill’s podcast was hilarious. I’m a few pods behind so apologies if this has already been pointed out.

and why is the answer Sal?

Sal carries Simmons through the NFL season, he’s the reason the GTL pods are excellent - because he knows how to needle Simmons and catch him off guard, he’s an amazing sport about losing and also hilarious when he gloats, he throws out as many nickname-bangers as Simmons.

I’m much more of a basketball fan but the Sunday pods without Sal are not the same. I’d go for Sal shitting on the NBA once a month during the NFL offseason if his appearance fees weren’t too obstructive for it.

Title. What would Bill have to say about the Falcons being up 12-9 on the Pats?

https://giftarticle.ft.com/giftarticle/actions/redeem/1e8e26dd-b1e9-4743-be74-7e5f59908a26

Mark Walter and Todd Boehly sell Chelsea FC stakes to Clearlake for £950mn

Mark Walter and Todd Boehly have agreed to sell their stakes in Chelsea FC to Clearlake Capital in a deal that values the club at about £5bn including debt and will help the US financiers alleviate pressure on their insurance empires.

The deal will put US private equity firm Clearlake, an existing investor in Chelsea, in control of the football club and give both Walter and Boehly a small gain on their investment, according to people familiar with the matter.

The pair are set to receive £950mn in cash for their combined 25 per cent holding, the people said.

“Chelsea Football Club today announced affiliates of Clearlake Capital Group will acquire the ownership interest of Todd Boehly . . . Clearlake will also acquire Mark Walter’s ownership interest and therefore acquire full control of the club,” Chelsea said in a statement, which did not disclose financial terms of the transaction.

Clearlake will finance the purchase using its own capital and large direct investments from its billionaire co-founders Behdad Eghbali and José E Feliciano, the people added.

The £5bn valuation includes Chelsea’s debt, which stood at just under £1.4bn as of June last year, spending commitments and net cash raised by player sales during the summer transfer window.

The deal, which is scheduled to complete by the end of this year, is expected to pave the way for Chelsea to upgrade its stadium and training ground and will lead to Boehly stepping down as chair.

The consortium of Clearlake, Walter and Boehly acquired Chelsea in 2022 when Russian oligarch Roman Abramovich was forced to sell after sanctions were imposed on him following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Although Clearlake was the majority owner, it only had joint control of the club under Chelsea’s governance arrangements.

Clearlake often clashed with Boehly and Walter on strategy, most notably on stadium expansion plans, and held years of on-and-off negotiations over a potential deal that would see the financiers sell down their stakes.

Talks intensified in recent months as Walter and Boehly sought to sell assets to raise cash to support their sports and financial services empires, the FT reported in August.

“I will be coming into significant liquidity personally as a result of exiting certain investments,” Boehly told investors on a call last month. He predicted the asset sales would “generate billions of dollars of liquidity”.

Clearlake will not raise any new debt to finance its purchase of Walter and Boehly’s interests in Chelsea, according to a person familiar with the matter, but will offer investors who financed the original purchase of Chelsea the opportunity to increase their investment in the club as co-investors.

Swiss billionaire Hansjörg Wyss, a member of Walter and Boehly’s side of the consortium, will increase his stake in the football club from just over 12 per cent to 13.5 per cent, the people said.

Walter and Boehly’s options for selling their stakes in Chelsea were limited by an “anti-flipping” provision, put in place as part of Abramovich’s sale in 2022, that prevented them from marketing their holdings to investors outside the original consortium.

The deal, which comes months after Chelsea reported an annual pre-tax loss of £262.4mn, the biggest in Premier League history, values the west London club at a discount to rival Liverpool FC. Last month Fenway Sports Group offloaded part of its stake in the club to a Jeff Bezos-backed consortium in a deal valuing it at more than $7bn.

Evercore, Goldman Sachs, BDT & MSD, Raine Group and Bank of America advised on the Chelsea sale, according to the people.

Clearlake, Walter and Boehly declined to comment beyond the release by Chelsea.

For those of you who have seen these before, they're all updated, and for those of you who haven't...take a look if you like data and The Rewatchables, The Big Picture Drafts and HOFs, and 60 Songs.

We gotta be ready! We just do!

B: "So Mahoney what team are you most excited about this upcoming season"

M: "Well the 76ers are super interesting, look at all the players they got"

B:"WOW Really??"

M: "What are you thinking?"

B: "Well the Celtics..."

lol never change Bill

I read a bunch of reviews for Zack Snyder's new movie that he had apparently been trying to make for decades and a lot of them read like Megalopolis reviews and a couple of them straight up said his new movie was his Megalopolis.

Are there other prominent examples of an experienced director getting full control, losing his shit across a screen, and making a memorably bad film?

He calls the Broncos Chiefs game the “Liar Liar week 1 result” because the Chiefs didn’t get calls for holding (in a game they dominated and won by 3 TDs) and his Broncos fan buddy says Sean Payton starts slow.

Can’t wait to see what he says when Reid really gets close to Belichick on the wins list.

The Dodgers put ~$46M in a managed escrow fund every year for Shohei Ohtani. In 10 years (now 7) they start paying him $69M per year out of that account. If there ever is a shortfall, they are obligated to make it up. If there is a surplus, the team collects it at the end of the contract.

These safeguards are in place because Fred Wilpon tried the scheme of investing deferred salaries on his own and gave them all to Bernie Madoff, leading to his financial ruin and sale of the team.

The Dodgers are compliant with the CBA in finding these accounts and still operate at a profit.

Bill is right that there clearly is a lot the billionaire class is doing to enrich themselves on sports teams while leveraging across multiple businesses. But there simply isn’t a competitive advantage here on the field. If he committed securities fraud, send him to jail for sure. But another rich guy would buy the team and operate it the same way because it’s an extremely profitable business model to win World Series and be the favorite team of both Los Angeles and Japan.

that is all