Our man Ryan Glasspiegel of Front Office Sports is here to discuss how Ross Barkan and others are joining his MLB > NBA bandwagon. Is it true? What are the numbers to support the idea that MLB has surpassed the NBA? Topics! Include!

* World Baseball Classic Buzz: Is our media rooting against us?

* Rob Manfred’s Reforms

* One fascinating theory on why March Madness is fading from culture

* Why did the PGA Tour outlast Liv Golf?

* The strange bedfellows in Iran War media coverage

* JD Vance getting surpassed by Marco Rubio as next president on Kalshi?

I visited the friendly confines of Basketball Illuminati, only to be at a severe rhetorical disadvantage versus Amin Elhassan. He was strongly anti Luke Kornet’s criticism of now cancelled Magic City Night, and argued that case with energy. I was more understanding of Kornet’s position, but wasn’t inclined to vigorously defend it. Still a great talk that included, but wasn’t limited to, Adrian Wojnarowski’s troubles in college basketball, and Pablo Torre vs. Adam Silver. Enjoy!

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It’s a convoluted world out there and I trust Stratechery’s Andrew Sharp to help us navigate it. In this podcast we humble former NBA media types dared entered the fraught topics of Anthropic vs. Trump, world affairs, reason for America’s Israel alliance, the Iran war, and always, fixing the NBA. Enjoy!

This audio article is up. Happy Friday, folks.

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Author, filmmaker and ardent basketball fan Sherman Alexie joins me to discuss one of my favorite topics: The 1990s. Though, to be honest, we stray from that subject and get into others subjects of interest. Such as!

* Rob Mahoney thinks “Smells Like Teen Spirit” is bad. Fair?

* Smells Like Teen Spirit changed everything

* What was the last great movie?

* Why, exactly, Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red White and Blue” became a hit again two decades later

* The cognitive dissonance for White Liberals seeing people who look and talk like them having different politics

* McDonald’s as blue collar space

* Sherman could plausibly be from half the world

* I’m mesmerized by how different the Canadians are

* Sports media’s been socially pressured into softness

* The laudable grandiosity of Timothée Chalamet

* The theory behind YouTube athletic stars

* Is more fictional content political or are we just more sensitive to political messages?

* Who are the ALL TIME “Pretendian” actors

Mike Pesca wrote a fine piece for the Free Press on how oddly not controversial the supposedly very controversial Eileen Gu is. She’s from the United States, but competes for China, and yet receives…mostly glowing mainstream American coverage? What’s with that? And beyond Gu, what’s the elite American consensus on China? But before the topics are introduced…

Per the new Substack/Polymarket partnership, I’m posting an Eileen Gu involved competition. As someone incapable of accurately pricing Winter Olympics events, I’m interested in whether bettors reflect Gu’s true odds for winning the Ski Halfpipe. As of this writing, Polymarket has her favored to triumph. Fame halo effect, or accurate probability?

And onto the Pesca pod topics…

* Would we bet that Chuck Klosterman has a secret North Dakota accent?

* Eileen Gu is certainly beautiful, but does she also look a little terrifying?

* Is the lack of elite anger towards China rooted in corporate considerations?

* America is less patriotic now, especially among the young. Bad thing?

* Is the United States the best country?

* Per the Jeremy Carl congressional dustup, is there such a thing as White American culture?

* Stuffwhitepeoplelike was a great website

* Is there such a thing as a “white guy basketball assist”?

* Is it plausible that Spike Lee’s All-Star Game Palestine outfit had nothing to do with Deni Avdija?

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This pod was so hot, so provocative, that our man Ryan Glasspiegel was worried about career consequences. Personally, I believe we were just being reasonable about potentially fraught topics, such as…

* Not everyone loved Ryan’s reporting on the viewership drop during Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl halftime performance

* Was the bigNBC viewership falloff another “Bud Light” style boycott, or simply lack of American median fan connection with the artist?

* Who SHOULD the halftime show artist be next Super Bowl?

* More people are criticizing Adam Silver these days

* A solution to the NBA All-Star game

* A solution to NBA tanking

* Artists are dropping Casey Wasserman due to Epstein files revelations. But what’s the specific allegation against him?

* I think there’s less to the Epstein story than Ryan thinks

First of all, congratulations to our SportsPredict Super Bowl winners SFZevi, Nathan Shea and Peter V. I had fun competing against all of you this NFL season, even though I reliably fell short of prize territory.

But before we completely say goodbye to football, I present this look back at the game/season with John Middlekauff, absolute contest BEAST for The Volume network. Of course, we got off topic into issues of interest, as tends to happen. Subjects include!

* How much is Michael MacDonald worth on the open market?

* Why are NFL coaches paid so low relative to impact?

* Why does nepotism work better in the NFL than the NBA?

* Should NBA GMs make more than NBA coaches?

* James Pearce Jr., coming off a 10.5 sack rookie season for the Atlanta Falcons, has been arrested and the details are horrific. How would you assess the pick and process if you’re the new GM of the team?

* NFL media seems happier than NBA media. Why?

* Is the NBA past its peak?

* John’s boss Colin Cowherd famously warned against hiring golfers. Does golf nut Middlekauff still find time to play rounds?

* Can Scottie Scheffler reach a higher echelon of fame?

* Why are pitchers better than hitters at golf?

* Is there a big market to watch non golf athletes compete playing golf?