The Week That Was (June 2-6, 2025)

A roundup of what I wrote, read, watched, etc. over the past week.

Jun 07, 2025

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.

🏈 Is the College Football Playoff Going to Recreate the BCS' Formulaic Approach? - After reading comments suggesting an appetite for an algorithmic selection process, I looked at how the expanded CFP might end up repeating the mistakes of the BCS era.
🏀 The Astrology of the 2025 NBA Finals (with
Michelle Grodnick
) - People seemed to like my ESPN NBA “horoscope” last month, so I enlisted the help of an actual astrologist to give us a reading on this Thunder-Pacers matchup.
🏀 The Pacers Have Always Been Just Good Enough to Fall Short. Could This Year Be Different? - After decades of near-misses, Indiana finally has a chance to channel its dynastic ABA past — and prove their greatness by beating OKC.
🏈 2025 College Football Power Index: Best Matchups, Title Odds - For ESPN, I wrote my annual breakdown of FPI’s preseason projections — including the playoff odds, most improved teams and must-watch games.
⚾ Baseball Bytes: Depth and the Dodgers - The Dodgers assembled a star-studded, ultra-deep pitching staff — but even that hasn’t insulated them from injury woes. Plus, I wrote about Pete Crow-Armstrong (again) and highlighted a rare could-be-worse Rockies stat.
🏀 Ranking WNBA Roster Cores: Stacking 13 Teams' Young Players - Which franchises are set up for future success? I analyzed the long-term outlook of every WNBA team, based in part on how much their young stars are set to produce over the following 5 seasons.
🏒 Who Wins A Championship Rematch? The Stanley Cup Final is Florida versus Edmonton again — so I took a cross-sport look at teams that met for back-to-back championships, and who came out on top the second time around.
🏁 Why Michigan is Where Speed Still Rules - In NASCAR, Michigan remains one of the sport’s true temples of velocity — so I explored why that is, and what makes it special.
- 🏁🎧 It’s Cool When Cars Go Fast - This week on Podracing,
  Tyler
  and I broke down Ryan Blaney’s dominant win at Nashville and asked the eternal question: Why doesn’t he always do this? We also had good words for the new Amazon NASCAR broadcast, we unpacked my deep dive on Michigan, and we made our weekly betting and one-and-done picks — where Tyler’s cold streak has me back in the lead. ☺️

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.