The Week That Was (August 4-8, 2025)
A roundup of what I wrote, read, watched, etc. over the past week.
In this space on Saturdays, I do a weekly round-up of sorts: Sifting through what I wrote that you might have missed during the week, what I’ve been reading and watching myself, and some other fun things that have been going on.
What I did this week
Here are the things I wrote or podcasted about during the previous week, sorted in descending order by quality, popularity and/or current relevance.
⚾ MLB’s Ringless Teams Are All-In — and This Might Finally Be Their Moment - Suddenly, baseball doesn’t have very many franchises who’ve never won a World Series before, after the Rangers, Nats/Expos and Astros crossed themselves off the list in recent years. But among those remaining, a good number of them are staking out 2025 as their year to finally win it all.
⚾ The Red Sox Bet Big on Roman Anthony — and MLB's Favorite Contract Cheat Code - Boston signed 21-year-old phenom Roman Anthony to an eight-year, $130M deal buying out his pre-arb and arb years, a once-savvy front-office tactic that’s grown riskier over time. These extensions no longer guarantee big surplus value… but the Red Sox are betting Anthony will be worth it.
🏁 In Formula 1, No Dynasty Lasts Forever - Young McLaren hotshots Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris have all but officially ended Red Bull’s four-year Formula 1 reign, with the team basically assured a second straight constructors’ title and a drivers’ crown as well. But history shows F1 dynasties rarely last very long — and 2026’s new round of regulations could knock the new kings off their throne sooner than we think.
⚾ Have the Yankees Doomed Themselves — or Are They Just Victims of Baseball’s Chaos Theory? - Despite their recent struggles and Aaron Judge’s IL trip, the Yankees have consistently ranked atop the 2025 rankings by BaseRuns. Are the metrics missing something in their flawed fundamentals? Or are the Yanks just colossally unlucky?
🏈 Are the Miami Dolphins the NFL’s Most Underrated Mess? - On the one hand, the Dolphins feel like a walking disaster — their coach literally celebrated being another day closer to death the other day. On the other hand, their metrics are far better than the other teams joining them in the basement of the Super Bowl odds.
🏁 Who can win their way into playoffs in final three regular-season races? - With three NASCAR Cup Series regular-season races left, nobody is truly safe for the playoffs if they haven’t won a race yet. So who’s most likely to grab a last-minute playoff berth? Tyler Reddick, Alex Bowman, Ty Gibbs, Chris Buescher, Ryan Preece, and Brad Keselowski lead the winless contenders.
🏁🎧 You WILL Go Bowling at The Glen - In this week’s episode of Podracing, Tyler and I recapped William Byron’s fuel-mileage win at Iowa, sized up the “must-win” drivers still chasing a playoff berth, and previewed a potential Watkins Glen showdown between Shane van Gisbergen and teenage phenom Connor Zilisch.
Some interesting things I read/watched this week
A collection of articles (with a heavy focus on my fellow Substackers), videos and other media that I enjoyed and/or found thought-provoking over the past week. I don’t always 100% agree with or endorse what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.
🏈▶️ Jordon Hudson called us and it didn’t end well by
The Sports Gossip Show (Note: Congrats to Madeline Hill and Charlotte Wilder for joining The Athletic’s podcast network, and this wildly entertaining episode is exactly why their show is taking off.)
🏈 The NFL Owns ESPN // You don't need a majority share to get what you want by Michael Hendricks and Sports Journalism Is Dying — And ESPN and the NFL Are to Blame by Arif Hasan
🏈 Dark Side of the Moon // The Dolphins' 2025 plans have either come to naught or are half a page of scribbled lines. by Mike Tanier (Note: A counter-point to my own piece about Miami’s on-paper potential…)
🏈 Finally, Heisman Expectations for Receivers // And What it Means for One Heisman Preseason Favorite and What Makes a Running Back a Heisman Contender? by Edward Egros
🏈 6 College Football Teams On the Clock in 2025 by Tyler Schuster
🏈▶️ Note: I wanted to give a special shoutout to the videos that Daniel Evensen has been making at his Action Football Sundays channel — I really enjoyed his recent dives on NFL 2K5 vs. Madden 2005 and a text-based computer NFL sim from the 1980s that I somehow hadn’t heard of (called XOR NFL Challenge). Check it out if you love old football video games like I do!
🏈▶️ Madden's Decline, Leaving EA, and 2K Football: Ian Cummings Tells All by SOFTDRINKTV
⚾ Rewriting OPS: A Math Experiment and Are the Rockies an MLB owner's dream? by Joe Posnanski
⚾ First a Breakout, Then a Star? // An analysis of which Triple-A superstars conquer MLB by Maxfield Lane and Owen Riley
⚾ What can MLB learn from the Savannah Bananas? A lot, it turns out by Brittany Ghiroli
⚾ Where Are The Best MLB Ballparks for Home Runs? by Matt Musico
🏀🎧 Contender Building in the Era of Parity w/ Howard Beck by Aaron Bollwinkel
🏀 Klutch Sports' Quiet Takeover: Rich Paul's New Influence on the San Antonio Spurs and Pesca Random Offense Plus (with Mike Pesca) by Ethan Strauss
🏀 This WNBA Trade Deadline Could Be League’s Last Snoozer by Annie Costabile
🏀 SLAM Magazine Review - March 1996 by Chris Shorts (plus a special bonus for us Antonio McDyess fans!)
🏀▶️ How the Atlanta Hawks went from battles with MJ to a long playoff drought by Secret Base
🏒 NHL contract efficiency rankings 2025: Which teams spend their money most wisely? by Dom Luszczyszyn
⛳ TIGER WOODS / ... and then there's everybody else. What it looked like to a bystander at his peak. by Gare Joyce
🏁 Why driving fast in NASCAR’s Next Gen car is not like your car: You’re ‘on the limit’ by Jeff Gluck
🎓 What NAIA athletics looks like in the post-House era by Matt Brown
🎵 How One Man Changed Songwriting Forever by Chris Dalla Riva and Why Do People Hate Creed So Much? A Statistical Analysis by Daniel Parris
📺▶️ The Worst Interior Design Show from the 90s by gabi belle
📺▶️ The rise and fall of late night TV (what really killed It) by Michael Girdley
Old YouTube Game of the Week
18-Year-Old Tiger Woods Historic 1994 U.S. Amateur Comeback
Music to Play Us Out
Fatboy Slim - Praise You
Filed under: Weekly Round-up