College football has always meant more to me than the final score. It carries memories of Saturdays with my father, Navy playing Air Force in Colorado Springs, regional rivalries, marching bands and traditions inherited across generations. My father once enlivened a college performance of “The Stars and Stripes Forever” by transposing the famous piccolo solo for his sousaphone. Whether that stunt or his grades eventually ended his collegiate band career remains part of the family mythology.

That is the college football I still love. Unfortunately, I am no longer certain it is the college football we are watching.

Oklahoma opened its season by beating UTEP 51–0. Next comes Michigan at the Big House, a game filled with history, uncertainty and genuine consequence. After that, Oklahoma plays New Mexico. At some point, we should stop pretending these mismatches are serious contests and admit that major programs are purchasing glorified scrimmages from schools that need the money.

The problems run much deeper than scheduling. NIL was sold as an opportunity for athletes to profit from autographs, endorsements and their public identities. It has instead transformed recruiting into an auction and the transfer portal into free agency. Major universities now operate professional football teams without the contracts, salary controls or roster stability that govern actual professional leagues.

Meanwhile, the institutions supporting college sports are facing their own reckoning. Tuition is soaring, enrollment is declining, public confidence is weakening and some colleges are consuming reserves merely to maintain their existing staffs and facilities. Wealthy football powers such as Oklahoma and Notre Dame will survive. Smaller universities may not. Their football programs depend upon student fees, institutional subsidies, local donors and payments received for playing games they are expected to lose.

College football is becoming extraordinarily wealthy at the top while the educational structure beneath it grows increasingly fragile. I will still watch Oklahoma play Michigan, and I will care deeply who wins. But somewhere between the multimillion-dollar rosters and the purchased blowouts, the sport must decide whether the word “college” still means anything.

#CollegeFootball #NIL #NCAA #OklahomaFootball #PlausiblyLive #TheDaveBowmanShow

The Thought Police Are Watching the Taproom

There was once a useful boundary between public conduct and private conviction. You could buy bread, order coffee, or enjoy a pint without first demanding a political confession from the person behind the counter. That boundary is rapidly disappearing, particularly when activists can search public records, identify a business owner’s political contributions, and organize economic punishment without pausing to consider what the person actually supported.

Today’s Plausibly Live begins at a Tacoma brewery whose owners contributed to a Washington ballot initiative campaign. Their money was specifically intended to help repeal the state’s capital gains tax, but political nuance proved inconvenient once activists discovered that the organization also supported another initiative involving transgender participation in women’s sports. The resulting controversy raises a question extending far beyond beer, taxes, or any single ballot measure: Can citizens still petition their government without placing their livelihoods before a self-appointed tribunal?

From there, the show heads to Thailand, where two sailors from the USS Abraham Lincoln managed to turn an ordinary night of liberty into an international headline. The official account describes a “drunken brawl.” Anyone who has served aboard ship may recognize something considerably less extraordinary: young sailors, a foreign port, an argument, and shore patrol arriving before matters became genuinely memorable. Dave draws upon his own Navy experience to explain how quickly “us versus them” can change after somebody insults the ship.

Finally, a conversation about Dolly Parton, Whitney Houston, and The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas wanders into dangerous cultural territory: tattoos. One lyric from the film has remained lodged in Dave’s memory for decades, and he is prepared to defend its wisdom despite knowing perfectly well what the response will be.

Political surveillance, sailors ashore, craft beer, Dolly Parton, and an opinion almost guaranteed to generate angry email. It is exactly the sort of Friday journey one should expect from The Dave Bowman Show.

#PlausiblyLive #DaveBowmanShow #FreeSpeech #PoliticalCulture #USNavy #DollyParton #Podcast

Congress has managed to discover socialism. This might seem encouraging until you remember that the national debt has reached $40 trillion, the federal government still lacks a genuine budget, and lawmakers apparently have plenty of time for nonbinding resolutions designed to produce campaign advertisements.

House Resolution 1490 was presented as a condemnation of socialism. It could not create a law, reduce spending, reform an agency, or change the life of a single American. What it could do was force members of Congress to cast a politically useful vote. Republicans could declare themselves defenders of capitalism. Democrats could either oppose the resolution and be accused of supporting socialism, or vote for it and advertise their supposed independence from the party.

That brings us to Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, the Democratic representative from Washington’s closely divided Third Congressional District. Her vote for the resolution has been celebrated as evidence of moderation and independence. Perhaps it was. Then again, principles that emerge shortly before a difficult election deserve closer inspection. Was she exercising the judgment Edmund Burke believed a representative owed the people, or mailing campaign literature through the House voting board?

This episode of Plausibly Live examines the difference between representation and pandering. If a congressional vote carries no legal force and produces no policy consequence, what exactly are taxpayers purchasing? While Congress performs ideological theater, the debt climbs, budgets remain unfinished, and the difficult work of governing waits patiently outside the chamber.

From there, Dave ventures into the darker corners of public irrationality, online discourse, and the peculiar humor people develop when ordinary language no longer seems adequate. It is an episode about politics as performance, social media as a carnival of certainty, and the increasingly strange ways Americans persuade themselves that uncomfortable realities need not be real.

After all, Congress did condemn socialism. Surely that fixes everything.

#DownWithSocialism #Congress #PoliticalPandering #NationalDebt #GovernmentSpending #ElectionYearPolitics #PlausiblyLive #DaveBowmanShow