SportsBallers! It’s the last Thursday before Thanksgiving, hopefully by this time next week you’ll be prepping pies and turkey with loved ones… But for now, SPORTS.

What we have for you today ⬇️

• NBA's Surprises and Slip-ups: Unpacking who's exceeding expectations and who's falling behind, with a spotlight on the wild world of Brazilian NBA Twitter. 🏀

• Quarter-billion dollar oopsie: How a VLOOKUP blunder at the University of Arizona could reshape college sports. 😵‍💫💰

• Coaching Drama 101: The latest from the college football coaching carousel, served with a side of Thanksgiving family dynamics. 🏈🍗

• NFL vs. the World: Looking at why you’re more likely to watch the Super Bowl than any other sporting event. 🚀📉

• Spotlight on Josh Dobbs: The underdog story of the year from the Minnesota Vikings. 🌟

• What to Watch Next Week: Game of the year coming up in the NFL for sports fans and Swifties 📺

THIS PAST WEEK ⏮

Who’s hot who’s not 🏀

After 3 weeks of the NBA season we have a good sense of who’s overperforming 👍 and who’s underperforming 👎. We also want to use this opportunity to introduce the Brazilian NBA twitter affiliates. Each team has one that’s meant to give updates to fans in Brazil as games happen since most people can’t stream the games there.

What’s interesting though is that these accounts are entirely out of pocket and post the wildest content 🤪 (usually AI-created) when their teams win or lose. We’ll give some samples below and link to the teams’ accounts and we recommend following a few.

VLOOKUP gone wrong

Everyone makes mistakes. We’ve all missed an input or calculation at work, not usually a big deal.

Yet some blunders are bigger than others. This past week, the University of Arizona reported that their finance department made a modeling error resulting in $240 million in missing funds 😵‍💫. Classic multiply instead of divide am I right? The situation will reportedly lead to some “tough decisions” which could include cutting varsity sports programs, a cost center that uses over $100 million of the school’s budget per year 💸.

As someone who can’t help but spend $40 every time I step out the front door, I can appreciate the difficult situations the Wildcats have found themselves in. Get well soon!

Coaching situationships 🏈

Plenty of drama to go around in the college football coaching scene this week. We were blessed with not 1, not 2, but 3 big stories involving coaches 🙏; and all were very different in nature. To make it easy to grasp, we’ll compare each to someone you will likely run into at Thanksgiving dinner next week.

LEARNING MODULE 💡

How the NFL is eating the world 🏈

You may have noticed that we spend a fair amount of attention on seasons, playoffs, championships, yada-yada 🥱 — but you may be wondering: which leagues or games are the most popular amongst the chaos? For example, when we talk about rugby, you may think, “Do people care about this?”

Well, on the heels of the MLB's announcement last month that the latest World Series sank to historically low viewership numbers, we decided to dig into the dynamics affecting each major sport’s championship viewership. Let’s examine why you didn’t hear about the World Series ⚾️ this year.

Analysis 📊
We positioned all other sports against the NFL 🏈 because as you can see below, they’re in a league of their own in terms of viewership.

Since the ‘70s, NFL championship popularity has been increasing while the MLB has been decreasing. During that early period of tracking, the Super Bowl garnered around 55% more viewers than the World Series. Since then, things have changed drastically — in 2023, the Super Bowl got 1200% more viewers than its MLB counterpart. What caused this?

Why the NFL has skyrocketed 🚀
The NFL boasts a remarkable 187% viewership growth since 1968, up to 112 million viewers in 2023. The league did this by:

🌎 Transforming the Super Bowl into a national event
🎰 Leveraging fantasy football and diving into sports gambling
⭐️ Star-studded halftime shows (cue Rihanna)
📺 Iconic commercials
🇺🇸 Strategic branding as "America's Game"

No longer bound by geography, the Super Bowl stands as the premier sporting event in America, captivating fans regardless of where they're from.

Why the MLB has slipped 📉
The average viewership of the World Series plummeted to 9.08 million fans per game in 2023, a staggering 79% decline since 1978. The MLB faces many challenges:

⏱️ Lengthy games
📊 An intense statistical focus
📱 Minimal "clip-worthy" highlights
📆 A season that tests viewer endurance.
🌆 Dependency on major cities like NY, Chicago, or LA making it to the finals.

The league hasn’t adapted to what fans really want and they’ve been left in the dust because of it.

Conclusion 🎬
Simply put, the MLB hasn’t been able to cater to a new generation of viewers and relies on big markets to carry their success. In contrast, the NFL has expanded fan engagement through so many interactive experiences that the game itself has become secondary, fueling football's rise as an unrivaled behemoth.

ATHLETE OF THE WEEK 🏆

Josh Dobbs - Minnesota Vikings 🏈

Sports are about those moments when an underdog gets their time in the spotlight – and nails it. That's exactly what's been happening with Josh Dobbs over the past couple of weeks. He's brought a fresh spark to the Minnesota Vikings, turning heads and winning hearts. It's the kind of story that not only rallies current fans but also draws in new ones — creating connections that last long after the season ends.

Background
To put it lightly, the Vikings had a terrible start to their season. They lost their first three games, along with all of their star players coming down with various injuries. In October, quarterback Kirk Cousins tore his achilles (the 5th player with a torn achilles this year), and our friend Josh Dobbs got the call to replace him. With hope fading for the season, Josh stepped up in a big way, leading the battered team to two straight wins and re-igniting their chances of making the playoffs.

Why we love him
Dobbs has already built a cult following for a few reasons ⬇️

1️⃣ First, he’s been dubbed “the passtronaut 🧑‍🚀” as he interned at NASA and graduated from Tennessee with an aerospace engineering degree.

2️⃣ Second, he doesn’t have eyebrows 🧑‍🦲 due to alopecia, leading fans to shave their own eyebrows in support of their new quarterback.

3️⃣ Finally, he wins .🏆 Nothing is more important to football fans than winning, so whichever quarterback can succeed is immediately in good favor with the fanbase.

THIS NEXT WEEK ⏭

NFL 🏈

After a week of bad games and boring matchups, we’re blessed with an awesome slate this week. Anyone trying to spend 10 hours on the couch this week has good reason.

Thursday - Bengals vs Ravens: Great matchup between two playoff favorites.

Monday - Eagles vs. Chiefs. This game is expected to be one of the best of the season and also serves as a matchup between the Kelce brothers. It’s reported that the Swift family will be meeting the Kelce family for the first time at the game as well. Quite a “meet the parents” moment.

Thank you all for reading and have a great weekend!

— Riley and Claire