Anchor Drop, June 7, 2023: 80 Days to Kickoff

Good morning.

Optional Musical Accompaniment

We are now 80 days away from Vanderbilt football’s season opener against Hawaii. 80 for the Commodores is wide receiver Wilson Long. The 6’0”, 200-pound redshirt junior walk-on from Austin, Texas, has appeared in one game in two years — but reportedly he impressed in spring practice?

All right, you knew this was going to be a topic. LIV Golf is merging with the PGA Tour and the DP World Tour, only the terms of the deal make it sound like the Saudi Public Investment Fund just bought both tours. I guess the whole point of LIV wasn’t to be a competitor to the PGA Tour, it was to be the Michael Scott Paper Company, just inconvenient enough to the tour to force Dunder Mifflin into a merger. Only it’s not clear why this happened, because it didn’t seem like LIV had any momentum, their product was crap, and the exodus of players seemed like it had slowed down a lot.

But I guess the Saudis paid a lot of money. And then again, the PGA Tour’s changes with the elevated events sure seemed like they’d already bought it.

I’m not going to go into the sportswashing accusations, because (a) I don’t care but also (b) I don’t care. But I am concerned about the product going to crap. If this ends up being “the PGA Tour, but with a few more tournaments outside North America,” then fine, whatever. If it just means the players get paid more, whatever. If this means teams and shotgun starts, then that’s obviously bad. I’m somebody who doesn’t actually care how much the players get paid, but I also loathe the concept of load management, and unfortunately we’re going to get a lot more of that in sports. Which is less fun.