The Week That Was (July 21-25, 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.
🙏 Before we get started, thanks again to all who participated in my reader survey over the past week! It gave me a lot of great information about what’s been working (or not) on the site, so I’ll leave it up here today for the last stragglers — then do some analysis to figure out how best to put it to use.
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.
🏀 Are WNBA Players Pushing a New Model for Athlete Pay? - Everyone is buzzing about the WNBA’s CBA discussions, some with better takes than others. My contribution to the conversation focused on the dilemma between players getting a share of present revenues — versus future valuations — in a sport that’s in the middle of an incredible growth phase.
🏈 The Chiefs Aren’t Super Bowl Favorites Anymore. What Now? - For the first time in years (and a rarity during the Mahomes Era in general), Kansas City will not go into an NFL season the Super Bowl favorite. What does that say about the Chiefs, and the league as a whole?
⚾ We Love the MLB Trade Deadline — But Is It Overrated? - Like most baseball fans, I am obsessed with the trade deadline — and don’t worry, I fired up the ol’ Doyle Number to track buyers versus sellers. But amidst all of that, I wondered: Do acquisitions at the deadline actually, you know, matter? (When you’re not acquiring future Hall of Famer CC Sabathia, that is.)
⚾ Ichiro and the 2001 Seattle Mariners Were MLB’s Weirdest, Winningest Team - With Ichiro set to join CC (and others, like the eternally cool Dave Parker) in the HOF this weekend, I dove into one of his signature teams: the record-setting, out-of-nowhere 116-win 2001 Mariners, led by Ichiro as one of only two players ever to win MVP and Rookie of the Year in the same season.
⛳ Scottie Scheffler Has Delivered One of Golf’s Great Seasons — and It's Not Over Yet - After Scheffler won the British Open on Sunday, I put his year at the majors — and overall, with the help of Data Golf’s rankings — in all-time context.
⚾ Did the Milwaukee Brewers Pull Off Baseball's Perfect Retool? - On the occasion of Milwaukee rising to No. 1 in the Elo rankings again, I unpacked the historic secret of their success — turning over 82 percent of their roster in the past few years alone, without missing a beat.
🏁 This is one of Hamlin’s best title chances yet — how many more will he get? - At age 44, Denny Hamlin is having one of the best seasons of his entire 20+ year career, in the face of historical trends that say an elite driver should be 90-95 percent done by now. But after a long career of heartbreak, can he finally parlay it into that elusive first career Cup Series title?
🏁🎧 Win or Lose, It’s a Ty - In this week’s episode of Podracing, Tyler and I broke down Hamlin’s rain-delayed overtime win at Dover — his fourth of the season — and dug into my story on his old-guy title chances. Then we turned our attention to the all-Ty finale of the In-Season Challenge, where Ty Gibbs and Ty Dillon made sure someone with the same given name as our own Tyler was winning the bracket either way.
⚾ MLB’s luckiest and unluckiest first-half teams: Time to buy low on the Yankees and Red Sox? - At The Athletic, I looked at the teams who’d exceeded (or not) statistical expectations — via Pythagorean and BaseRuns expected records — during the first half of the regular season.
Programming Note: Check out my NASCAR driver ratings page for updating probabilities of each driver to advance through — and win — the inaugural In-Season Challenge finale between Ty and Ty:
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 what’s linked here… but that’s also sort of the point.
🏈 Preseason Sundays: Baker Mayfield is in the Favre Zone by Freddie deBoer
🏈 Has QB Performance Become More Important to Winning? by Robbie Marriage
🏈 Revisiting How Much Every College Football Program is Really Worth by Edward Egros
🏈 Mailbag: What AFC Dark Horses Might Emerge in 2025? by Jeff Fogle
🏀 A Bleak Recent History of Restricted Free Agency by Owen Phillips
🏀 Houston Rockets Offseason Review: The Right Chemical Combination by Hardwood Paroxysm
🏀 The Most Proficient Scorers in NBA History by Justin Kubatko
🏀 Nobody Knows How Much to Pay WNBA Players by Ethan Strauss
🏀 Do WNBA Players Actually Hate Caitlin Clark? by Joe Pompliano and Christine Brennan
⚾ How Much Would MLB's Best Swing-Off Hitter Be Worth? by Lewie Pollis
⚾ The Cubs' Offense Is Being Led By a Trifecta of Power Breakouts by Matt Musico
⚾💪 1998 // Did anything happen that summer? by Patrick Glancy
⚾ How MLB stadiums are playing this season by Stephan Teodosescu
⚾▶️ Mr. “Ass In The Jackpot” Umpire Tom Hallion & former Mets manager Terry Collins REUNION & interview by The Terry Collins Show
🥎 I demand the United States win the next men's softball world championship by Rodger Sherman
🏒 When Joe Thornton put together an all-time Old Guy season by Brendan Farrell
🏒 On Seth Jones, Stars Thoughts, and Gratitude by Robert Tiffin
🏒 THE HOCKEY CANADA FIVE & DON CHERRY / The verdict widely expected & my feature drops by Gare Joyce
🏁▶️ Juan Pablo Montoya vs the Brickyard 400 by NRF Productions
🤠 How Country Music Took Over the Charts: A Statistical Analysis by Daniel Parris
🚇 Almost Famous: Close (albeit brief) encounters with the One Percent by Christian Red
📱 Smartphone Gambling is a Disaster by Jonathan D. Cohen and Isaac Rose-Berman
💼 The Weekly Zeed: Earning Some Attention by Jacob Sutton and ZeedRound
🌐▶️ Has The Internet COLLAPSED Culture? by FaceTatt Philosophy
Old YouTube Game of the Week
September 28, 2008 - Cubs at Brewers
Music to Play Us Out
Kenny Loggins - Heart to Heart
Filed under: Weekly Round-up
Thanks for the plug, Neil!
Appreciate the shoutout for ZeedRound!🙏🏼