Change of Address

We’re pollen-coated ass-deep into Spring, which means the start of Major League Baseball and playoffs in the NBA and NHL. So of course we’re going to offer a few words about second-tier college football. Never say we can’t scratch a niche. 

William and Mary, at least the third-favorite college for many in the audience, recently announced that it would move its football program from its long-time home in the Coastal Athletic Association (formerly the Colonial) to the Patriot League, beginning in 2026. The move makes sense for both cultural and competitive reasons. 

The Tribe’s primary football rivals, Richmond, James Madison and Delaware, all departed for other locations; JMU and Delaware climbed upward to the Football Bowl Subdivision, Richmond moved laterally to W&M’s future home in the Patriot beginning this coming season. The CAA’s distended conglomeration that now includes the likes of Stony Brook, Hampton U., Monmouth, Albany, Campbell and North Carolina A&T doesn’t much move the needle for Team Tribe. 

The Patriot, meanwhile, is a collection of schools whose profiles more closely resemble W&M, in size and academic standing. It was also a relatively light lift, since W&M’s move is football only. The rest of the school’s athletic teams will continue to compete in the CAA. 

A segment of Team Tribe has pushed for years, with varying degrees of force, to join the Patriot. Again, like-minded schools, particularly as CAA expansion brought in colleges with little in common to replace the league’s better known programs. But that wasn’t and isn’t William and Mary’s call entirely. The Patriot is comprised of small, private schools – undergrad enrollments range from Lafayette’s 2,764 to Fordham’s 10,337 – that were and are justifiably concerned about getting Bigfooted by W&M’s broad-based athletic program. 

For many years, the Patriot also didn’t permit its schools to offer athletic scholarships, providing only what’s called need-based financial aid, a la the Ivy League. But more than a decade ago, conference Big Hats concluded that athletic grants weren’t a path to academic ruin and allowed their athletic programs to pony up. As a result, Patriot football is more competitive regionally and certainly with the CAA, which in its heyday was one of the nation’s best FCS conferences. 

William and Mary athletic director Brian Mann explained to a former colleague that the football move came about relatively quickly – in discussions over just a few weeks – and that football-only makes sense now and for the foreseeable future. CAA football is a separate entity from the rest of the conference. It has/had adjunct members Richmond, Villanova, Maine, New Hampshire and Rhode Island, schools whose entire programs compete in other conferences, and de-coupling was easier than a full move. He is quoted in the piece: “I don’t think anybody at this time is ready for a big decision like that. We’re happy with where we are in the CAA, and (the Patriot League is) happy with their full membership. And with all the changes coming to college athletics, any sort of a change like that right now feels premature.” 

“Premature” is an interesting word choice. College administrators – the more effective ones, anyway – are usually precise with language and can be as vague or specific as necessary. Given Mann’s entire thought, “premature” reads more like “not yet” rather than “not interested.” Indeed, former athletic director Terry Driscoll told my comrade in that same piece that W&M had discussions with the Patriot on three occasions during his tenure, without a move. 

Patriot League affiliation may be a single-sport endeavor for William and Mary, or it may be a wade into the shallow end of the pool for consideration of full membership down the line. In any case, it continues the Tribe’s historic rivalry with Richmond as a conference game. And rumblings that Villanova football will also move from the CAA to the Patriot would further enhance the league and give Coach Mike London’s program one more familiar foe. College power brokers sweat and fret over a shifting landscape with new seven- and eight-figure expenditures and legal taffy pulls. Meanwhile, schools down the food chain that simply want kids to be able to compete and to proudly represent the laundry can only hope to find their appropriate depth. Ain’t easy. Athletic officials all earn their keep these days.

zBouillabaise Returns

I have a few incomplete thoughts which I will stew together as zbouillabaise.

1. Fuck cancer.

My childhood BFF, whom several of you have met (including Danimal!), called me this week to share the good news that his mother appears to have beaten Stage 4 lung cancer through a combination of immunotherapy, chemotherapy, and surgery to remove 40% of her left lung.  Apparently she was cranky and bossing people around about an hour after she woke up from the procedure, which is to say she was fully back to normal.  She is an exceedingly tough person so her fortitude isn't a tremendous surprise, but still, fuck cancer.

2. Reading The Great Gatsby resulted in homework.

I recently read a post about a group of English professors who theorized that Jay Gatsby is Black.  I read The Great Gatsby in high school and saw Gatz about 14 years ago but I never heard this theory before, so I reread the book and I can see what they're getting at.  Alternatively, Gatsby is Jewish.  Or maybe both.  Also, I'm not convinced that Meyer Wolfsheim is really Jewish.  Anyway, I forgot that the book is only 150 pages long and that it's a damn good story.  And it's timely despite being 100 years old--the wealthy elite shit on the working man and blame his misfortune on the "others," and the working man gets violent at the others' expense.

I enjoyed the book (and the alternate theory of Gatsby's secret) so much that I contacted my high school English teacher (she's related to a friend) and we had a two and a half hour Z**m call about Gatsby, literature, and life in general.  She was my favorite teacher ever and it was great to reconnect.  She even gave me some reading assignments for our next call this afternoon.  So track down your favorite teacher and spend some quality time with them.

3. I am more optimistic about the Bills than ever before.

Or at least in a long time.  Going into the draft I told several Gheorghies that all I wanted to see them draft were cornerbacks and edge rushers.  My rationale is that it doesn't matter who the skill position players are on offense so long as they have Allen under center, and if you want to beat Mahomes you need to be able to get to him while only rushing four, and you need to cover everyone long enough for that four-man rush to get to him.  Beane largely listened to me, and they signed whatever is left of Joey Bosa (which I hope is significantly more than whatever was left of Von Miller over the past three seasons), so I am extremely optimistic going into the 2025 season.  Which means Allen gets hurt on the first snap.

4. Hell is other people.

I've said this here before.  This time it's less personal.  I've been plowing through Severance and pretty early on it reminded me of No Exit.  Then there's a scene in season 2 where a bizarre love triangle literally discusses who among them is going to hell.  Hopefully things will become clearer when I finish the season.  It's a great show, and you'll enjoy it even if you don't like existentialist references.  Check it out.

Ridiculous, Sublime, Filler

Just changing the drapes for a new look in here. Do enjoy this absurd catch by Daulton Varsho on a drive by Jarren Duran. Hat tip to the Teej for sharing.

I Guess There's Only One Thing Left to Do

My local professional footy side has been in the news lately, and it's not a good thing. 

Defender Robby Dambrot's father was
LeBron James' high school hoops coach

Loudoun United tops the USL Championship Eastern Conference table seven matchdays into the season, having won six and lost just one of their matches. This is a marked improvement for the Ponies, who've never once made the USL playoffs in their six seasons in existence. But that's not the news.

Veteran soccer journo Pablo Maurer published a piece in The Athletic with the following inauspicious headline: Bad turf, cold showers, wash your own kit: life at the top of US minor league soccer. The article detailed a litany of indignities faced by Loudoun United's players, ranging from an unfinished stadium (truly an embarrassment for the club and my county, and a legacy of D.C. United's penury and lack of leadership) to substandard investment in staff (players have to wash their own kits, as the team let its equipment manager go and didn't replace him) to indifferent and unengaged ownership.

The club just signed an agreement with Virginia Revolution, a deep-pocketed local youth club, which should inject some cash and at least stabilize things. Except that the rumors that followed the announcement suggested that Ryan Martin, the only coach in club history, would soon be sacked. Well-liked General Manager Oliver Gage was let go immediately. Half of the club's non-soccer staff have left the organization in the past six weeks. It's pretty bleak.

In the midst of all this fuckery, the team is off to a flier, with the best record in the entire division, the most goals scored, and the best goal differential. It's reminiscent of something. Said a member of the team, “We have one common enemy. Ownership. In my words? It’s ‘f— the owners.’ All we have is us, at this point. And who knows how long we have left together. A lot of us will be gone. Unless we keep winning.”

Vamos Loudoun! Up the Ponies!

GhPT

This post will make my children angry. That it will become recurring filler all the more so. 

Angry because, you see, generative AI still uses a metric fuckton of energy to work properly, taxing our resources far beyond the value of most outputs - especially those developed just for fun. That was their reaction when I sent this AI-created image recently:

And here's one I use for work-related purposes (Zoom avatars and such):

I'll be working on a GhPT gallery for all the Gheorghies, in a style and manner befitting each of your noble personalities. 

Fill 'er up. This'll keep the content bucket overflowing!

Run the Damn Ball

Spencer Hall is one of the best college football commentator in America. You won't see his work on a major network (for the most part, though he occasionally pops up on ESPN), but he's managed to build a brand around his singular combination of deep cultural insights, keen observation, lightly-breaded cynicism, and above all, a love for the uniquely American institution he follows.

This is what the best college football brain
in America looks like

We first knew him from his work at Every Day Should Be Saturday (EDSBS). That site has long since gone dormant, but you can catch Hall now at Channel 6, the multi-media empire he runs with fellow journalist Holly Anderson. He's also a frequent guest on Bomani Jones' podcast, where the two unlikely pals are as likely to talk about Steve Wonder as they are Lane Kiffin.

I say all of this as preface to a more important endeavor Hall and his Channel 6 cohorts have just completed. The team has been running an annual giving drive for nearly two decades to support New American Pathways, a refugee resettlement non-profit in Clarkston, GA. The event is called the Charitibundi Bowl, and it pits alums and fans of college football (mostly) teams against one another to compete to see who can raise the most money.

This year's event just ended, and as has been the case for the past several years, the University of Michigan and its prodigious alumni base topped the Money Cannon standings with a total $181,310 in donations. Your scrappy William & Mary Tribe came in a very respectable 29th out of 468, with just shy of $9k. Only Washington & Lee (?!?) and Virginia Tech gave more out of all of the schools in the Commonwealth, going to prove once again how much UVA people suck.

All told, the EDSBS community raised a record $1.3m this year, a remarkable achievement. In celebrating the final tally, Spencer Hall gave us some useful wisdom.

Run the damn ball. Advice for football, and for life, when life means resisting fast-running authoritarian takeover of your country. Three yards and a cloud of dust. Move the sticks. Run the clock. Riggo Drill, over and over. Make a little progress today, then a little more tomorrow, then blast your way into the end zone. Metaphorically. 

We can do this. Be like Spencer

Heartbeats, Part Next

I’ve written about my balky heart and the smart, capable people who attempt to keep it and me ticking. I’m beyond grateful for their efforts and for the fact that in many other places I might have expired by now. My heart doesn’t beat synchronously or efficiently, and I have an abnormally low heart rate, a red flag trifecta that’s resulted in numerous tests, procedures and installation of a pacemaker in June 2022. 

Recent photo of OBX Dave. 
Should get more sun.

To look at me, you wouldn’t immediately think: ‘I hope that guy has his affairs in order.’ I’m not overweight. I eat relatively well. I walk a mile or two almost daily. I do yard work and housework without issue. I’m always up for trips and outings and the occasional pub crawl. Over the past 15-18 months, however, I’ve begun to tire more quickly when I exert myself. 

When I informed my cardiac docs, they suggested that a pacemaker upgrade may be in order. Which is how I landed at the Norfolk (Va.) Heart Hospital recently, on National Tax Deadline Day for what it’s worth, for a procedure that the experts think will help. Check that: for the second time this year for a procedure that the experts think will help. 

I was supposed to have the procedure in January. The electro cardio specialist who performed two ablations on me was going to do the pacemaker upgrade. But when I was on the operating table and he opened me up, he discovered a blockage and tissue tangle that made extracting the thin wire leads and inserting new ones trickier than he was comfortable performing. So he simply closed me back up. He apologized profusely afterward, but that didn’t lessen the frustration and WTF? Factor, starting with: You geniuses had no way of determining that there was a blockage or that you couldn’t perform the operation *before* you sliced me open? 

Anyway, he referred me to a specialist’s specialist, a colleague who was comfortable and experienced with more complicated extractions and procedures. During a consultation with him in March, he said that pacemaker technology had made significant improvements, even since my first installation less than three years prior. He believed that a new device would help my heart beat more in sync and thus improve blood flow and limit fatigue. He allowed that, yes, there are ways to determine if a procedure might be more complicated than expected before surgery, but that doctors don’t employ them often enough for his liking. That said, he was completely on board with his colleague aborting rather than attempting something he wasn’t comfortable with. I was sold, which is how I ended up in Norfolk on April 15. 

A few words about my doctor, a gent named Erich Kiehl: early 40s, about 6-2 and thin, tousled brown hair, boyish face covered by about two weeks’ worth of stubble and facial hair flecked with gray; Brown University medical school; residency at the University of Virginia Medical Center; two fellowships at the Cleveland Clinic, where he studied under the guy who developed many of the techniques currently used for pacemaker extraction and installation; Master’s degree in clinical research from Case Western Reserve University; settled in Hampton Roads and said he's performed about 350 procedures similar to mine, and he and his cohorts have done more than 500; a reassuring confidence in his work and his ability; engaging and persuasive. In short, a professional badass. You want him handling your heart. 

We had hoped for a relatively speedy day that instead became a 15-hour slog, due largely to emergency situations in-house that pushed back my operation, as well as the fact that what the doc optimistically estimated would be an approximately two-hour procedure became 3½ hours. He also paved the way for me to be part of a National Institute of Health-funded clinical trial that will gauge the effectiveness of two different pacemaker install procedures. There's no compensation or costs waived, but patients in clinical trials, he said, statistically do 30 percent better than regular patients because of more diligent monitoring. 

Sure, sign me up. 

We left our house on the Outer Banks at 7:30 a.m. and didn’t arrive back home until 10:15 that night (it will forever be mind-boggling to me that a heart-related procedure can be an outpatient practice). The heart is a marvel, a mechanical pump and electrical organ and if poets and songwriters are to be believed, a wellspring of love and sorrow that makes life worth living. A lot to ask from a 10-ounce organ that’s about the size of a closed fist, don’t you think? No wonder it needs an assist from time to time. 

There’s no telling how my new little battery pack will affect me. I don’t need to run half-marathons or swim 50 laps a day. Even if it only keeps me vertical for a few more years, I’ll count that as a win.