CFB is now pay for play (as fairness dictates it should be). And the SEC/B1G/ESPN/FOX Industrial Complex operates to ensure the SEC/B1G get millions more per program, the best game slots, relentless promotion, and preferential CFP access (an enterprise that ESPN & FOX co-own). CFB is no longer a sport. It’s the Harlem Globetrotters vs Washington Generals. An anti-competitive SHAM. The emperor has no clothes, yet CFB’s main press pool continue to cover CFB as if he does. “P4” is a load of bunk. It’s P2 >>>P-rest. And the P-rest exists to create the illusion of competitive integrity. @aadelsonESPN @ADavidHaleJoint

Oh joy! Once the SEC & B1G self-restrict on NFL players, fairness will be restored. Well, except for those two leagues and their business partner “networks” having created an insurmountable P2 >>P-rest Class Divide via the P2 getting billions more dollars, relentless promotion, preferred game slots, and CFP over-representation (an enterprise ESPN & FOX literally own). Maybe someday some brave journalist will care enough to meaningfully cover the thing that’s actually gonna kill the sport we used to love now that the SEC/B1G/ESPN/FOX machine has unilaterally made CFB an anti-competitive sham. Cc @Brett_McMurphy @TimBrando @RossDellenger @DanWolken @slmandel @PeteThamel @BruceFeldmanCFB @dannykanell

Eventually the ACC/B12 is going to wake up and realize the SEC/B1G as part of the whole of college sports is why ESPN/FOX shower the P2 with multi-billion dollar deals. Leverage through non-association. Reasonable fairness restored.

With the last grotesquely excessive round of QE behind us (and with a secular bond bear mkt possibly in its multi-decade early days), it’s at least possible policy makers will show committed restraint and allow interest rates to organically find their long term equilibrium. We all know that would be a healthy but very painful thing to do. And if that’s the choice, Jeremy Grantham is almost assuredly going to be right about bitcoin and everything else. If, on the other hand, once the organic calibration of rates begins to cause enough pain (or if there is some exogenous shock to markets that has the same pain causing effect) it’s possible policy makers will intervene in the way markets have become accustomed and will undoubtedly demand. In that scenario, imo Jeremy Grantham’s “dwindle away” claim about btc is going to be spectacularly incorrect. Eventually markets will presumably become so broken that intervention, no matter the scale, either won’t work and/or will cause second order effects (hyper-inflation, social unrest, etc) that are worse than the pain it’s supposed to ameliorate. But even in that pushing on a string scenario, imo gold and btc, though likely hyper-volatile, will be among the least bad choices of purely economic assets. Lastly, in what I acknowledge is rank speculation on my part, I believe the current 100 year pivot (to use your and Demetri’s well crafted long cycles of history terminology) will involve at least one more very overdone QE that will be either the Weimarization QE for America and the west, or the penultimate QE to the even more massive Weimarization QE that will follow. And the result either way will be five figure gold, three figure silver, and six figure bitcoin.

My SWAG: Thus far, btc is kinda sorta adhering to the cyclicality it has exhibited around the other three mid-term years of its existence. Tiny sample acknowledged. Consistent with that cyclicality, my expectation is a Q4 ‘26 low and a recapture of the 200D in ‘27 on the way to a new ATH. That said, a secular btc bear is non-zero b/c we’re seemingly in the first decade of a rising yields secular bond bear, which I surmise is a natural btc headwind. A secular btc bear could also happen for other reasons . It becomes my base case if the cyclicality as roughly laid out above fails. I think gold remains in a durable bull. And if the gold bull is at least partly attributable to something more than central banks being on the bid (a legit debasement trade + speculation for example) then I think btc participates to ATH’s although it may not outperform gold in the way that it has. If there is a meaningful change in monetary policy due to a crisis or whatever, I also believe btc ATH’s. Obviously a full Saylor unwind, also non-zero, overrides everything and likely means a long deep bear.

To claim to be talking about a holistic approach without addressing what will prove to be CFB’s existential problem — that being that the SEC/B1G get tens of millions more per program annually, better “coverage” from their business partner networks, better game slots, favorable playoff treatment, etc etc, than the ACC/B1G and all the rest while everyone is supposed to be fairly “competing” for the same trophy in a pay to play sport is mind bogglingly short sighted. The P2 as part of the whole of college athletics is worth more to advertisers than a perpetual SEC/B1G challenge. That’s the hammer that the P-rest must wield to reestablish reasonable competitive balance instead of the wholly anti-competitive structure that SEC/B1G/ESPN/FOX has crammed down on college athletics over the last five years. Everyone assumes P-resters will collectively keep burning millions per year per program so the P2 can win nearly all the championships in what is in reality an illusory “competitive” landscape. It may take a minute, but that WILL NOT continue.

If the opportunity for success now effectively resides in two conferences because the two networks that are supposed to cover CFB have become the multi-billion dollar business partners of those leagues (giving them all manner of preferences including way more money than anybody else), then why in God’s name would the ACC, B12, and everyone else keep investing those millions just to serve as The Washington Generals to the P2 Globetrotters? At some point, it will become obvious to all this grotesque overreach is **the** problem and everything else is noise.

The SEC/B1G and the anticompetitive shame that is CFB: Imagine if the NFL allowed a network to become an investor in the two AFC divisions, which as a result would receive far more rights money of the NFC divisions. And that going forward all players would be wholly unrestricted free agents (and that the extra rights money could be spent on them or coaches or whatever); and that there would no longer be a draft; and that said network could cover the AFC and NFC (pre-game, game slots, post-game) so as to ensure its investment in the AFC was maximally profitable. Everyone with ten or more brain cells would think that to be an idiotic non-sport. That’s CFB right now regardless of this bill. Locking the conferences doesn’t fix it. Allowing expansion doesn’t fix it.

I recently asked Perplexity and Grok how someone who is secularly bearish on US higher education in its current form (financially and otherwise) might express that view via trades in the public markets. I don’t feel qualified to recommend anything specific, but playing around with your favorite AI via a series of ever more refined prompts will get you to some actionable trades. And working through prompts improves your framework too. Maybe start with back half of my first sentence and go from there. 🍻

Hopefully the rest of college football pauses its Sorsby pearl clutching in time to realize the sport-destroying bad guys reside within the SEC/B1G/ESPN/FOX industrial complex.

Which means Miami doesn’t make the CFP. CFB is an anti-competitive sham of a non-sport. The P2 are going to win nearly all the CFP/NCAAT championships because that’s the outcome their business partner networks have to have to survive their multi billion dollar existential bets. Tens of millions more per school annually. Relentless promotion instead of coverage. Best game slots. Post season over-representation. bUT iTS nEVer bEEn HeAlThiEr.

Nothing. It’s a low hanging fruit flex by the putative global hegemon around its 250th birthday.

We’re obviously going to end up with a player’s union of some sort, and a CBA that will allocate a percentage to the players and a percentage to the schools. The more pressing concern is the attempt by the SEC/B1G and their broadcast partners to ring fence that latter share so as to ensconce an unassailable monopoly on success.

Without pooled revenue you don’t have a sport. You have a performative charade with every program except the SEC/B1G effectively serving as props in the Power 2 hit parade. Think Commodus and the wooden swords. The 75% threshold requires unanimity by the rest of CFB.

The B1G/SEC now receive tens of millions more annually than even their ostensible peer conferences (ACC/B12). Imagine how anti-competitive the NBA would be if all the teams in the West got to make and spend 2X the teams in the East. Would the NFL even be a sport if the AFC was able to make and spend 2X the NFC? Would the Masters be a legit competition if American players got to play the forward tees? Would the Boston Marathon be anything other than a crock if certain runners got to start at mile 5? Tinkering with playoff size doesn’t fix anything. Unless the schools competing for the NCAA football and basketball national championships receive approximately the same money in order to spend approximately the same amounts (predicated on a CBA based salary cap) then all you have is an anti-competitive joke. The B1G/SEC get to be the Harlem Globetrotters, the ACC/B12 get to be the Washington Generals, and no other leagues even rate. The ACC/B12 should immediately revolt and refuse to participate in the B1G/SEC’s self serving sham. Don’t play them in anything (including the post season). Let those leagues and their broadcast partners (FOX/ESPN) learn the hard way how advertisers would value a perpetual B1G/SEC challenge in football and basketball relative to today’s broader championships. Numbers Go DOWN.

Respectfully, there is no flourishing when two conferences get 10’s of millions more per year than everyone else in a pay to play “sport”. It’s an insult to the word “sport” to even describe it as such. Again, it’s no different than if the NFL unilaterally restructured on the fly and allowed the two NFC Divisions to make and spend twice as much as the two AFC Divisions. It’s disgusting, disastrously unhealthy, and utterly ridiculous. And it’s all anyone who cares about CFB (and college “sports” in general) should be talking about. Cc @ClayTravis

In legitimate sports, you begin with a generally level playing field and then compete for championships on merit rather than a bunch of structural advantages. Revenue sharing, luxury taxes, salary caps, a draft, all serve that purpose in professional sports. College football has become a wholly illegitimate non-sport not because of NIL (which can be fairly managed by a CBA based salary cap) but because two leagues and their broadcast partners have destroyed the conditions of competition.

This is far more preposterous. If Reece and the Game Day cared about CFB, it would be all they’d talk about notwithstanding their employer’s multi-billion dollar investment in the SEC.

The ACC and B12 have already been relegated Matt. They compete for the same NC trophy despite getting multi-millions less annually, lesser coverage, throw away game slots, and far less playoff spots. It’s already a non-sport. An uncompetitive joke.

There were no conditions where Chinese citizens would sustainably absorb all those condos, but they built them. And doing so stimulated the Chinese and global economies for years. With AI, the Mags++ will spend years and billions of free cash flow in the real economy instead of on buybacks building all the infra. Along the way, “AI” must durably add the “G” (AGI), and prove to be socially productive & profitable.