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This week, NFL writer Patrick Daugherty bemoaned what he sees as The Athletic’s retreat from local sports coverage:

The Athletic's slow-motion exodus from local coverage obviously directly contradicts the original stated purpose of the publication, and is exacerbating the problems that were created when they initially vacuumed up so much of the local talent.

To which newsletter writer Kendall Baker replies:

The reality is that everyone says they want great local coverage... but then they don't actually read it, or won't pay for it. Instead, they click on trade rumors, power rankings and hot takes, all while complaining that "the media" writes the stuff they consume.

It’s that gap between stated and revealed preference, but also something else. The collective might want a sort of coverage to exist, but through a tragedy of the commons, won’t allow it to. Obviously, as you easily could have guessed, The Athletic predicament reminds me of Emeril Lagasse’s rise and fall as Food Network star.

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It’s Cowherd Week at House of Strauss! Roughly once a year, we explore the state of sports media with one of the biggest voices in this industry. I’m pleased to say that Colin did not hold back.

Topics! With time stamps:

• 0:00 — Colin opens with his vacation movie reviews—and why modern horror films have completely lost him.

• 3:30 — Why Hollywood, sports media, and even Nike increasingly make products for insiders instead of consumers.

• 7:00 — Colin’s broadcasting philosophy

• 10:30 — The Portland debate: Could the Trail Blazers actually be at risk? Colin defends his controversial tweet that ignited social media.

• 22:00 — Colin unveils his favorite Warriors/Patriots theory on current GSW struggles

• 29:00 — Adam Silver’s NBA

• 44:00 — Colin believes the WNBA simply became too popular, too quickly—and why that’s created organizational growing pains.

• 1:19:15 — Colin’s “This will get Aggregated” Tony Romo take

• 1:23:00 — Colin closes by reflecting on vacation, returning to work, and why he still reads House of Strauss every day.

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I am kindly asking the WNBA to stop generating so much news. Please. I can barely keep up. The league’s main Twitter account posted and deleted a video where two of the sport’s most prominent stars bet on a game that was just played. A similar incident might qualify as the biggest NBA news item of the year but it’s not even the main WNBA story out there right now. This is.

The wild scene among spectators at Fever-Storm on Tuesday broke sports-world containment and became a political flashpoint. The vignettes are surreal because it’s like archetypal NPR tote bag owners are acting like classic inebriated bleacher hooligans. But these people aren’t tilted off booze. They’re drunk on politics. These Seattle louts are so unhinged over people agreeing with Sophie Cunningham’s support for a super majority position that it’s now helping the side they despise.

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It’s been an entire two games since I did an analysis of Caitlin Clark’s current productivity but I already feel compelled to reassess. Don’t look now, but the Indiana Fever lead their conference, are second in league-wide point differential and Clark’s been fantastic of late. To reference old Bill Simmons columns, Caitlin might be making The Leap. Some of my friends roll their eyes when I bring up WNBA, but a Caitlin-powered Indiana Fever title run would objectively be a huge sports story.

Clark, whose efficiency has been questioned a lot, is now scoring 21.5 points at 60.3 true shooting. She’s doing that in only 29.4 minutes per game. League-wide, she’s fourth in points per game, and second in assists per game. This run has been enabled by her own growth as a player, but as a frequent watcher of Fever games, I suspect there’s a secret element to the recent success. It’s very counter narrative. I’ll just say it. I think NBA commissioner Adam Silver made the call.

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Almost every smart NBA analyst has arrived at the same conclusion this week: The Warriors are wasting the end of Steph Curry’s NBA career. He’s 38, still great and the team has done nothing this offseason. Nothing! Warriors fans are emailing me about this, expressing their understandable anger. It’s a consistent theme from podcast friend Saam Esfandiari.

Clearly I agree, right? Obviously I’m aghast at how the Warriors are failing their greatest player ever?

Well, it’s complicated. The Warriors are clearly at fault for choices they made in the past that have come to bear, but also: I’m not sure we’re having an honest conversation about how difficult it is to contend, in 2026, with even a great old superstar.

The Curry Cope

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I checked my phone on Saturday morning because I craved a light distraction. I’d played a horrible 9 holes of golf on this family vacation and was counting on the start of San Francisco 49ers Training Camp to adjust my focus. Football was finally back, a predictable rhythm had returned to our lives. Except, there was a surprise in store. On the first day of camp, the 49ers announced that head coach Kyle Shanahan had been in a serious car accident. The other driver is fine, apparently, but Kyle is recovering.

Via ESPN:

Shanahan broke his nose, three ribs and his hand, needed more than 40 stitches in his face, and suffered a severe concussion during a July 14 car crash when he collided with an SUV near his northern California home, according to sources familiar with the situation.

A broken nose? Three ribs? His hand? An entire 40 stitches? Nobody was cited, somehow. Downtown Palo Alto?

Then the real kicker.

Wait, it happened back on July 14??? And oddly, as I read over this ESPN article on a Monday morning, there’s still a typo in this massive story’s second paragraph?

This was arguably the biggest sports news of the weekend, featured on the ESPN.com front page, and two days later, the story still has a misspelled word in the second sentence, just hanging there. I don’t want to focus too much on typos because I live in a glass house here and it’s irrelevant, but something about that aspect fits with the general messiness of the revelation.

That lingering typo isn’t why some critics were lamenting the demise of sports journalism, though. Instead it was the timing of the news reveal, which occurred an entire 11 days after the crash. Why did the 49ers keep the incident secret? What were they hiding? Did the official sports media conspire with the team to keep a huge story under wraps? That last question has resulted in open argument between sports media figures. One of the people involved in that debate is my friend and former boss Tim Kawakami. I’ve got some thoughts on why and how this 49ers news was processed in such a confounding way.

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On Wednesday, I outlined the bull case for cheap new Trail Blazers owner Tom Dundon keeping the team in PDX. Some of my smart subscribers think otherwise. One of them works in the highest tier of the ultra-rich guy finance world. The other has significant local connections. I knew about both these guys before they reached out. They aren’t “randoms.”

Let’s start with the Money Man I’m calling Subscriber A:

I think you are too optimistic about Portland keeping the team. I do not have inside info but believe this is a slight misread of how the “Arb Man” likely thinks about this. I also don’t get the sense that NBA owners are especially interested in expansion given how drawn out that process has been

So I present to you a “Who Says No” style Bill Simmons NBA trade machine alternative:

Uh oh. This doesn’t promise to be the fun kind of Simmons trade from the Portland perspective.

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Jac Mac of Barstool lives in a bizarre universe that sometimes overlaps with my world. He’s immersed in explaining Internet trends, often with an eye towards sports. So I asked this ZOOMER what the hell is going on out there. Can he convey where social media is headed to an aging millennial?

Topics! Include!

• The real origin story of the viral Green Lines Test

• How Jack Mac became the internet’s culture translator

• Why bizarre online trends reveal real cultural shifts

• The rise of “Clavicular” and the new manosphere

• Andrew Tate’s decline—and who replaced him

• Are controversial internet stars entertainers or true believers?

• The Nick Fuentes rise: Why it’s dangerous to dismiss fringe online movements

• How influencer culture has evolved since the Cavinder Twins

• What internet culture predicted about the 2024 election

• Why young men have shifted politically—and what it means

• The growing online gender war and modern dating crisis

• Ozempic, relationships, and unexpected social side effects

• Why the WNBA suddenly became one of sports’ biggest conversation drivers

• Caitlin Clark, culture wars, gambling, and the WNBA attention explosion

• We read Nancy Armour’s non apology apology for her crazy Caitlin Clark column

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On the day Ryan Glasspiegel and I discussed just how shockingly famous an Indiana Fever role player had gotten, Sophie Cunningham was applauded on social media by JK Rowling. Later that evening Cunningham was approvingly featured on Australia’s Fox News analog. Though Sophie is, by her own accord, “not a very political person,” and “very much in the middle,” she’s now a hero to many in what I might call the worldwide “non-left.” Every day, the Klosterman prophecy of Sophie Cunningham as 2050 Vice President grows more probable.

What the hell is happening? For one, Cunningham’s brand has shifted to new territory. As I’ve said, Sophie’s fans see her as Oberyn “I will be your champion” Martell, protecting superstar Caitlin Clark against a league that hates its box office sensation. Now she’s getting heralded as a different sort of guardian. She’s done it by staking a position that roughly 80 percent of Americans agree with, but much of the sports media finds distasteful to explicitly adopt. Here’s what happened, and why this theoretically fringe topic won’t just fade away.

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A lot of fascinating ESPN dynamics to discuss this week. Ryan and I get into the nitty, the gritty and so much more. Topics! Include!

• The dynamics of Ryan Clark’s ESPN firing

• Inside the bizarre race between OutKick and Andrew Marchand to break ESPN’s biggest layoff story

• Is ESPN quietly becoming less political—or is something else really happening?

• The real forces behind ESPN’s layoffs—and why Disney deserves more of the blame than McAfee

• Why losing your ESPN job isn’t the career-ending disaster it used to be

• How YouTube completely changed the economics of sports media careers

• Sophie Cunningham is now probably more famous than A’ja Wilson

• Why the WNBA keeps making decisions that seem to work against its own popularity

• Could Sophie Cunningham become an even better player now that she’s become a cultural phenomenon?

• Can the Blazers really leave Portland—or do NBA expansion economics make relocation almost impossible?

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The Portland Trail Blazers are a definitionally average team, tucked away up there in Country. They aren’t a plausible LeBron James destination and shouldn’t theoretically be front of mind for the NBA world. And yet, the Blazers lead off Brian Windhorst’s Summer League buzz column and are prominently featured in John Hollinger’s.

The reason is new Blazers owner Tom Dundon, whose last name sounds like the start of a Law & Order episode. Nicknamed El Cheapo by Bill Simmons, the loan magnate has made immediate waves in the league with his ruthless penny pinching. Our guy is among the latest Blazers employees to be impacted by Dundon’s shrinkage efforts. Such cost-cutting wouldn’t be a national-level story except for a growing Pacific Northwest worry about losing another NBA team. Dundon wants taxpayers to fund long-needed renovations to the Moda Center and there is wrangling to be done.

I think I have good news for Blazers fans. Just don’t hold me to it. I’m not saying that all Tom Dundon’s cheapness is for show, but, to quote Logan Roy, “it’s a move.” And I don’t think that move is out of Oregon, but for a specific worst-case scenario. Let’s go over why.

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