Welcome to the 101st edition of Content Nausea. You can read No. 100 right here. Please let me know what you think. Thank you for being here. Here is the welcome blog.
I’ll always remember when and where I was when I officially became “in” on Mike Leach: It was Nov. 1, 2008, and we were at Kristi Snyder’s house after Homecoming. Texas Tech was playing Texas, and we got back from the dance just in time for the end of the game, which means that I saw Graham Harrell throw the game-winning touchdown pass to Michael Crabtree live. It was capital-F Formative.
During my freshman year of college two years later, I discovered that I could buy games off of iTunes, so I bought Texas-Texas Tech and later Super Bowl XLV. I also bought the “Miracle at the New Meadowlands” later on. That feature was short-lived, I guess, but I still have those files somewhere, and I used to watch them during plane rides all of the time.
For whatever reason, though, that college football moment stuck with me, and I’ve thought about it plenty since Leach’s sudden passing earlier this week. I wanted Maryland to hire him after the 2010 season, even though he was enmeshed in a lawsuit with Texas Tech. I got Swing Your Sword, his autobiography, for Christmas in 2012 and read the whole thing on a cross-country flight. I watched Washington State and Mississippi State play football, two teams that aren’t necessarily relevant to my daily life. I don’t think I’ll ever go to Starkville or Pullman.
Leach was an incredibly imperfect person, which had bubbled up again over the past few weeks and months, but it was easy to see his influence everywhere. I have a ton of obituaries bookmarked that I haven’t read yet. Kent Babb’s trip to a bar in Key West, Fla., in The Washington Post was a good window into Leach, along with Bruce Feldman’s memories in The Athletic.
It was a heavy obituary week. Will Leitch, Joe Posnanski, and Dan Wetzel all wrote beautifully about Grant Wahl.
Some content I wrote this week
A little bit about leadership and what it means for the Rose Bowl.
Some content I listened to this week
Parsing through some albums that came out in 2022 that I didn’t know about and will not factor into year-end lists if I ever get around to it, but “Liminal” by Shannen Moser off The Sun Still Seems To Move is a pleasant song:
I posted “I Don’t Ever Wanna Leave California” by Allison Crutchfield on my Instagram story four years ago today because I was flying from LA to Philadelphia after spending a weekend there for work, so I went back through Tourist in This Town. “Dean’s Room” is a great song:
Tiny Desk Concerts aren’t usually on my radar because typically, I don’t really care. I went to college with too many dorks who couldn’t be normal about Tiny Desks, so it made me kind of apathetic toward the whole venture. Every once in a while, though, I’ll take a look, and it’s no surprise that I really enjoyed Alex G’s:
Ran back a classic that I had neglected a little bit:
Some content I read this week
I spent the past two or three months mired in entertaining but dense baseball books. A couple days ago, I finished The Long Season by Jim Brosnan, which is a pitcher’s journal over the course of a season. It was unexpectedly funny with some unexpected characters popping up. Solid, if time-consuming, read.
Terry Nguyen on EOY lists in Dirt.
“This Is Not Your Story” by A.J. Daulerio in The Small Bow. At some point in the past few months, my Small Bow subscription disappeared, and I’m glad I rectified that.
Adam Serwer on “the right to post” in The Atlantic.
Ryan Kartje on Caleb Williams’ journey to The Heisman Trophy in The Los Angeles Times.
Kirsh on Williams’ Heisman weekend in GQ.
David Roth on long baseball contracts in Defector.
“Faced with an ALS diagnosis, Sarah Langs — MLB’s research star — keeps going” by Zach Buchanan in The Athletic.
Kalyn Kahler on what it’s like to be a rookie wide receiver with Aaron Rodgers in The Athletic.
Zach Berman on Eagles linebacker T.J. Edwards in The Athletic.
Dave McKenna on the closing of Patterson Bowling Center, one of my favorite places to hang in Baltimore, and duckpin bowling in Defector.
Some other content I saw or thought about this week
“On My Team” by The Babies is on a couple playlists that I listen to frequently, so the songs gets a lot of run for me. Every time I listen to it, I’m also reminded that it’s in an episode of New Girl, and then I forget about it. Last Saturday night, I remembered it and googled “the babies on my team new girl episode” and then watched said episode, “Bathtub” (Season 2, Episode 10). The song plays when Nick Miller approaches Olivia Munn’s character at the bar. It was a solid episode. Some really good Jess and Winston hijinks, some funny Schmidt antics that outweigh the “serious” storyline of his pursuit of CeCe and then Nick-as-romantic bumbler works, too.
Anyway, New Girl needs to enter my non-existent rotation of background television shows (right now it’s just Seinfeld). It occupies a similar sphere to Workaholics, where I was mostly watching it as it was airing, but I felt like it was much older. I thought New Girl started in 2009 or maybe early 2010. It premiered on 2011. The flaw in that thinking is that Jess Day as a character wouldn’t have worked in 2009. Also, always fun to read about a TV show and see a season with 20-plus episodes in it.
Thank you for reading the 101st edition of Content Nausea. It will get better. Thank you, and see you soon.
The warm blanket of TV
Coma complacency
We slept in
We can't wake up
—D.G.