Football is so back

Season Tracker

The NFL 🏈 regular season is kicking off this Thursday, ushering in excitement or the loss of partners every Sunday for the next 16 weeks. Regardless of how you feel, football season is here. At SportsBall, we'll be your guide through the long fall, bringing you up to speed on why this sport is so big in America.

We're also approaching the end of the MLB ⚾️ regular season. Expect intensity to ramp up over the next 4 weeks as teams battle for playoff spots. Keep an ear out for the Mariners, Rangers, Reds, Giants, and Diamondbacks as they push for the postseason. For more in-depth rankings of the best current teams, check out an analysis here.

Athlete of the week: Trea Turner

Trea Turner ⚾️ of the Philadelphia Phillies had an unbelievable week on and off the baseball field. His stats for the last 6 games are, and bear with me, .423 BA, 1.695 OPS, 6 HR, 14 RBIs, 9 Runs . Sorry about that we’ll try not to stats-bomb you too much.

The reason this is so random and fun is that Trea was a free agent last offseason which means he was free to sign with any team and try and make as much money as possible in the free market. He did just that and signed a monster contract with the Phillies for $300M 9 months ago to the day. Just speculating but it looks like signing on the dotted line may have kickstarted some family-building activities for our friend Trea as he was just placed on the paternity list for the team.

Learning Module: How does a sports team operate?

What we see on the field is only one part of sports, there’s so much going on behind the scenes that’s helpful to know about and can bring more understanding to why things are happening. Below is the main hierarchy of a sports team and some examples to guide you.

Last Week

Was there any bigger news than Kylie Jenner and Timothee Chalamet hard launching their relationship at a Beyoncé concert with Travis Scott in the crowd as well? Probably not but here is what happened in sports.

There was a monumental college football 🏈 upset last week as the University of Colorado defeated powerhouse TCU. This win was remarkable because Colorado has been one of the worst teams in recent years, while TCU was on the cusp of a national championship last season. Over the past 6 months, Colorado made a big gamble by hiring coach Deion Sanders, a former NFL Hall of Famer, to revive their program. The school couldn't even afford his $30 million annual salary at first, saying "We'll find the money if you can come win." Sanders delivered in his very first game against mighty TCU, immediately turning Colorado into giants. This underdog story has lots of rich context - you can dive into the full background here.

Bobbi Althoff interviewed Shaq 🏀 on her Really Good Podcast which is set to drop this week. Shaq is a hall-of-fame basketball player turned DJ who you may have seen throwing down at OutsideLands and he’s well known for his on-screen antics on “the NBA on TNT”. While Bobbi’s been getting some flack in recent weeks, she looks to have turned in another classically awkward sit-down with a superstar. Hopefully, it doesn’t have the same fallout as the ep with Drake.

The US Open 🎾 is in full swing in NYC as you’ve probably seen your friends posting with the signature “Honey Deuce” cocktail and not paying attention to the matches (adding the recipe here). The US Open is one of 4 major yearly tournaments in Tennis, and these days, there are really only 2 players to pay attention to:

• Carlos Alcaraz 🎾 is a 20-year-old phenom and ranked number 1 in the world. He’s thought to be the “new regime” in tennis as we’re coming to the end of an era that was dominated by 3 players for 15 years (Roger Federer, Rafael, Nadal, and Novak Djokovic).

• Novak Djokovic 🎾 is the last remaining of the old guard and remains a dominant figure in the sport. He’s come into his own as the “bad boy of tennis” while partying and breaking rules for the last 4 years (I’m pretty sure he’s still not allowed in Australia).

• These two will most likely meet in the US Open Championship coming up on Sunday the 10th which will be a must-watch and a “who’s who” type event for spectating in NYC. This week alone saw the likes of Justin and Hailey Bieber, the Obamas, Anna Wintour, Danny DeVito, and more showing up for the event.

Lebron James 🏀 was in Saudi Arabia for some reason. There is only speculation on what he was doing there but the lead theory is that he’s being courted to play there for a huge sum of money. The country has been going around trying to get big sports stars to play in their leagues for unbelievable cash for years now, most notably signing Cristiano Ronaldo ⚽️ to a team for $214M per year, the largest sports contract the world has ever seen (beating #2 by $45M). These attempts have sometimes been seen as “sportswashing” which is a way for countries to improve tarnished reputations via sports. We will talk about this in a later installment of SportsBall.

This Week

The NFL 🏈 is back this weekend. For some, this is Christmas morning but for others, it signifies losing the next 19 Sundays of spending time with your significant other. For perspective though, one NFL season is a third as long as Taylor Swift’s Eras tour.

As a reminder, the team that won the Super Bowl last year was the Kansas City Chiefs and they are favored to win again this year. Other teams that are supposed to be really good are the Philadelphia Eagles, Buffalo Bills, San Francisco 49ers, and Cincinnati Bengals. To prep you for the grueling schedule, the games are spread out as follows:

• 1 game every Thursday night at 5 PM PST

• 12-14 games every Sunday starting at 10 AM PST and ending around 8:30 PM PST (all day)

  • Sundays are split into two “slates”. There are 6-8 games in the morning starting at 10 AM and 4-6 games in the afternoon starting at 1:30 PM. Finally, there is one Sunday Night game that starts at 5:30 PM.

• 1 game every Monday night at 5 PM PST

Hopefully, this helps prep everyone for the season ahead so we don’t have to keep saying “Is there really another football game on tonight?”

The US Open 🎾 will finish up this weekend and a winner will be crowned. We’re big Carlos Alcaraz and Coco Gauff fans at SportsBall so hoping they can both make the finals and win. The schedule is:

• September 7th is the Women’s Semifinals. There’s one American in each semifinal this year, Coco Gauff and Madison Keys. It’s always nice to see Americans in the US Open final as it’s the only major tournament in the US so we’re rooting heavy for them.

  • The Women’s Final is Saturday, September 9th

• September 8th is the Men’s Semifinals. While the big story is Alcaraz and Djokovic hopefully meeting in the final, another great story is the young 20-year-old American Ben Shelton who is trying to take down Djokovic to reach his first major final ever.

  • The Men’s Final is Sunday, September 10th

There are a ton of college football games 🏈 this weekend but the one that will be getting the most attention by far is #3 Alabama vs. #11 Texas. Normally when you see a game where both teams are ranked #15 or lower, people will care extra hard. Also if the teams are in the south people will care extra hard no matter what. This game has both of those factors at play so it should be a good one. It’s on Saturday at 4 PM PST.

Have a great week everyone, thanks for reading ❤️ Please send any feedback you have, and feel free to be blunt, we just want this to be on the level of our readers and bring some fun commentary.

— Riley and Claire