📝 The Week That Was (January 27-31, 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. Let me know what you think about the format in the comments (or email me!¹), and if there are running sections you’d like to see on a regular basis.

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.

• 🏈 It’s the Chiefs and Eagles All Over Again - With Super Bowl LIX set to be a rematch of Super Bowl LVII, I looked at the history of big-game rematches within short spans of time — and how much these K.C. and Philly rosters have changed since the last time they met.

  

• ⚾ Fans Don’t Want Money to Determine Sports Outcomes — But They Don’t Want Chance To, Either - Following up on my previous story about the L.A. Dodgers’ rich-get-richer offseason, I wrote about what it means for a sports league to use randomness as a way to drive parity.

• 🧊 We’re Living in the Golden Age of Elite NHL Defensemen - Blueliners are seldom NHL MVP frontrunners, but we have not one but three (!) award candidates this season in Quinn Hughes, Cale Makar and Zach Werenski.

• 🏀 10 NBA playoff contenders: How to fix most imbalanced teams - At ESPN, I looked at the 5 teams most tilted toward offense and the 5 most tilted toward defense, seeing if there was a way for each to become more balanced (which does matter when it comes to winning NBA titles).

• 🏁 Which short-track aces have the inside line at Bowman Gray for the Clash? - In my first NASCAR.com piece of 2025, I ranked the best short-track picks for the season-opening Clash at Bowman Gray Stadium — and found a surprising factor that has predictive value for the season to come.

• 🏈 The Commanders’ Journey Is Just Beginning. The Bills’ Might Be at a Crossroads. - In the wake of the NFL’s conference championships, I compared and contrasted the trajectories of the two losing teams.

• 🏁🎧 Podracing 101 - Episode 1 of

  Podracing
  ’s third season saw me and
  Tyler
  welcome everyone back — including a new audience at NASCAR.com! — and we talked about the vibes we want to feel this year.

• 🏀 The Jimmy Butler Dilemma - I was happy to compile some of my feelings in

  Smayan Srikanth
  ’s round-up about the Jimmy Butler drama.

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.

• 🏈 Sports dynasties are good by

  Charlotte Wilder

• 🏈 Patrick Mahomes and the secrets of the Dad Bod: What we get wrong about athleticism by Rustin Dodd

• 🏈 Beck's South Beach Showcase by

  Alex Varghese

• 🏈 Pigskin Dispatch Podcast... The Football Helmet As Icon by

  Football Archaeology

• 🏈 Kansas City “Kinda” Played Philadelphia the Last Two Weeks by

  Jeff Fogle

• 🏈 The NFL has been testing optical tracking technology for first downs (but is that a good thing?) by

  Joe Pompliano

• 🏈 On the Dallas Cowboys and organizational rot by

  Tyler Dunne

• 🏀 Abolish the Quadrant System (And Use Win Quality Instead) by

  Evan Miyakawa

• 🏀 De’Aaron Fox Wants Out. Does Anyone Want in? by

  Above the Break

• 🏀 The Basketball State Of The Union One... Feat. 2X NBA COY Mike D'Antoni by

  Marc Campbell
  and
  Jacob Sutton

• 🏀 The NBA Has Another Gambling Scandal by

  Michael Hendricks

• 🏀▶️ How Vince Carter saved the Dino Jersey by Sideline Archive

• ⚾️▶️ The Most Interesting Wall In Baseball by Wilytics

• ⚾️ Roki Sasaki's MLB upside is uncertain — but he's worth the risk for the Dodgers by

  Ben Wylie

• ⚾️ Did Juan Soto Have A Career Year? by

  Sam Miller

• ⚾️ Let's Just Name Every Mountain, School, and Body of Water in the Country After Ken Griffey, Jr. by

  Jeff Maurer

• ⚾️▶️ Attempting to Hit a Home Run with Barry Bonds in EVERY MLB Game by KevinGohD

• 🧊 Trade Bait: J.T. Miller by

  Vinh Cao
  (Note: Miller was indeed traded back to the team he debuted with, the N.Y. Rangers, late on Friday.)

• 🏁 Top 30 NASCAR Cup Series Prospects for 2025 by

  NASCAR Probabilities

• 🎧 House of Strauss: Freddie deBoer by

  Ethan Strauss
  and Freddie deBoer

• 🎮▶️ how I fell out of love with sports video games by ram tyree

• 🖥️▶️ Why the World Went Nuts for Windows 95 by Nostalgia Nerd

Neil’s Substack Throwback of the week

Music to play us out

Glen Campbell Live in Concert in Sioux Falls (2001) - Wichita Lineman

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Filed under: Weekly Round-up

1. I’m at neil[dot]paine[at]gmail[dot]com.