Sports

NBA punishes Clippers for Kawhi Leonard scheme, DOJ opens criminal probe into the same scheme a week later

By GusThe Sports Desk · the milkman edition, 11 September 2026

The NBA fined a guy worth more than some countries thirty million dollars and gave him a year off — that's not punishment, that's a bonus with a cooldown period. Now the actual Justice Department is looking at the same paperwork, because apparently it takes federal prosecutors to find out if "off-court income opportunities" is a fancy way of saying we cooked the books. Watch how fast the league's version of justice stops mattering once somebody can actually go to prison.

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Bill Simmons, under investigation for proxy betting, puts a colleague on his 's--t list' for skipping the show.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the matinee edition, 11 September 2026

This reporter has covered a great many workplace disputes, rarely with the theatrical fury Bill Simmons brought to his own microphone Thursday. Simmons, host of the top podcast on his ESPN network, announced that colleague Peter Schrager, absent for a scheduled appearance, now sits "on my s--t list." A banishment, delivered live, over a missed taping.

TRUDY: Wrong network, Gus — Simmons hasn't hosted for ESPN in years. That show runs on The Ringer, the site he founded, now owned by Spotify. Doesn't soften the s--t list any, just fixes who's cutting the checks.

Brand-new trouble, this reporter assumed, for a host who runs his operation on loyalty and access — until the paperwork corrected that assumption, too. Massachusetts gaming regulators, this reporter had understood, opened their file on Simmons's own betting just this week, a coincidence of timing almost too tidy to print.

TRUDY: Try again. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission opened that file September 2nd — nine days before Thursday's episode aired. Whatever's brand-new around here, sugar, it isn't the paperwork.

The commission's interest, this reporter is given to understand, centers on a friendly wager Simmons had a family member place on his behalf — the sort of favor that keeps a sports-talk empire running warm between segments.

TRUDY: Not a favor — a rule. Massachusetts bars using a proxy to place your own bets, full stop. Simmons told his own audience he asked his daughter's boyfriend to do it. That's the violation the commission's file is about, not a bonding exercise. Take a nap before the next taping; you'll hold the facts better rested.

Two files, then, on one man. The s--t list moved in the time it takes to record an intro. The gaming file has sat open nine days and counting, one man's discipline outrunning the state's.

HOTMIC: A man can excommunicate a colleague from his own broadcast in the time it takes to say the words, and the agency licensed to police his own gambling needed nine days just to open a folder on him. That gap is not bad luck. Somebody on the political desk should be asking why the public body charged with enforcing Massachusetts gambling law moves slower than a podcast host settling a personal grudge. Get me the political desk.

TRUDY: Settle down, hotshot — the political desk covers appropriations bills, not podcast beef. But you landed the paper trail by accident: the commission's own docket lists Simmons's file opened September 2nd, still open as of Thursday's show. Go lie down. Mushrooms for that memory wouldn't hurt either.

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Tiafoe pulls off the biggest comeback of his career, then gets rolled by Shelton.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the breakfast edition, 12 September 2026

Ben Shelton rolled past Frances Tiafoe Friday to reach the U.S. Open men's final, one win from ending an American men's drought this reporter can date with total confidence: Arthur Ashe's title in 1968.

TRUDY: Ashe is still the last Black American man to win this thing, but not the last American man. That's Andy Roddick, 2003. You're off by fifty-eight years — basically your whole broadcast career.

Fine — Roddick, 2003. By this reporter's math, that's American men shut out of their own championship for a punishing thirty-one years running.

TRUDY: It's twenty-three, sugar, not thirty-one. Subtraction hasn't gotten harder since March. Shelton's shot Sunday is real either way — you just keep stretching the wait.

The man he beat to get there, Frances Tiafoe, arrived on what this reporter calls the first great comeback of his career, clawing back from a deficit against Alex Michelsen that had this reporter reaching for the remote.

TRUDY: First nothing. CBS Sports had it September 8th: his third U.S. Open semifinal in New York, off the biggest comeback of his career. Third rodeo, not his first.

Elsewhere in the draw, the women's side has its own number moving: Elena Rybakina is a win from world number one, and this reporter has her taking it from two-time major champion Naomi Osaka.

TRUDY: Osaka's the woman Rybakina just beat, not the one she's chasing. That ranking belongs to Aryna Sabalenka, and Rybakina takes it once she gets past Zheng Qinwen — Morning Star, Monday.

That win over Osaka, this reporter is reliably informed, came by a workmanlike 6-4, 6-3.

TRUDY: 6-1, 6-4 — same drawer, same reporter, four misses in one column: a year, a count, a ranking, a score. Go lie down for twenty minutes before the desk needs you back on air.

HOTMIC: This network barely points a camera at the women's side of this draw until somebody's chasing history, and Sunday's number-one clinching will still air behind a rerun of Shelton's press conference. Broadcast rights fees for the WTA remain a fraction of the ATP's, negotiated that way, not earned that way. Somebody get this reporter the political desk.

TRUDY: Nobody asked you to run for the political desk on live television, Gus — sit down. He's still right that Morning Star buried it: Rybakina beat a two-time major champion 6-1, 6-4, and this page still ran the men's drought bigger. Receipts don't lie, even when you do.

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Model picked Oklahoma State to lose by 22.5 after predicting a punter-QB flop; they beat No. 6 Oregon.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the late evening edition, 12 September 2026

This reporter has covered college football since the wishbone offense was cutting edge, and what Oklahoma State did to the top-ranked Oregon Ducks on Saturday is the finest upset this reporter has witnessed in the modern era — a program ending, by this reporter's count, the longest losing streak in the history of the sport.

TRUDY: Oregon was ranked No. 6, not No. 1 — CBS Sports has that plain as day. And "longest in the history of the sport" is yours, sugar, not theirs. The streak was 21 games against FBS competition, dating back to 2024.

The oddsmakers, this reporter is reliably informed, had Oklahoma State as 32-and-a-half-point underdogs, the kind of number normally reserved for a junior varsity squad taking on the varsity, and one has to wonder how a computer model gets something that catastrophically wrong.

TRUDY: The number was 22.5. SportsLine's model published it through CBS Sports on September 10th, and again two days earlier on September 8th. Wrong is wrong — you don't need to pad it by ten points.

Credit belongs to young Drew Mestemaker, a boy who this reporter understands was punting footballs to a handful of cheerleaders on Friday nights not so long ago, and who repaid Oklahoma State's faith with a workmanlike 217 yards through the air on Saturday.

TRUDY: Mestemaker went from his high school's B-team to starting quarterback at Oklahoma State — not punter to cheerleading detail. And he threw for 317 yards, ran for 109 more, and had a hand in three touchdowns. Sit down a minute, Gus.

This reporter recalls it was sometime in October when the very same computer brains first turned on Mestemaker's new-look offense, calling it dead on arrival before the season even had a pulse.

TRUDY: That was September 6th, CBS Sports' Week 1 wrap, one week before the same model missed Oregon by 22.5 points. Two calls, two misses, and it wasn't October. Take the nap, Gus.

HOTMIC: This reporter would like it noted, mic allegedly off, that the operation grading these teams for entertainment is the same SportsLine model CBS Sports runs and publishes as content — a model that forecast an Oklahoma State loss on September 8th, forecast it again on September 10th, and never once printed its own record from the week before. Somebody put this reporter on the political desk, there is a real story about who audits the auditors and nobody at this network wants it.

TRUDY: Gus, that's a manifesto, not copy, and nobody following the Cowboys needs your media-oversight theory before kickoff — but he's not wrong that CBS Sports' own SportsLine model published the same losing forecast twice, September 8th and September 10th, without ever disclosing the miss from the week before. Have the mushrooms for the memory ready. We're doing this again next week.

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Oklahoma State, priced to lose by 22.5 by the industry's own model, beats No. 6 Oregon outright.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the wee small hours edition, 13 September 2026

This reporter watched Oklahoma State walk into Saturday having dropped thirty consecutive games against Football Bowl Subdivision competition, a skid that, this reporter is prepared to argue, began sometime during the second Clinton administration.

TRUDY: Thirty games and the Clinton administration are both wrong. Per CBS Sports on September 13th, the Cowboys had lost twelve straight outright and gone twenty-one straight without beating an FBS opponent — a streak that started in 2024, when Bill Clinton was collecting speaking fees, not votes.

The oddsmakers, this reporter is reliably informed, had installed Oregon as something on the order of forty-point favorites, the kind of spread that gets a program's mascot repossessed before kickoff.

TRUDY: The number was 22.5, not forty. CBS Sports's own SportsLine model published that exact line twice — September 8th and again September 10th — holding the same number both times.

Leading the upset was quarterback Drew Mestemaker, a converted punter this reporter understands threw for somewhere north of four hundred yards while also handling the team's long-snapping duties, a workload this reporter has not seen since the leather-helmet era.

TRUDY: He threw for 317 and ran for 109, three total touchdowns, per CBS Sports — and he wasn't snapping anything Saturday. The real improbable part is that he started on his high school's B-team before ending up the starting quarterback at a Big 12 program.

What this reporter cannot get past is that the network running that 22.5-point model spent the following two days explaining how stunning it was when the number came in wrong.

HOTMIC: CBS Sports and SportsLine share one byline, which means the same outlet that priced Oklahoma State to lose by 22.5 is the same outlet that got to call the result a stunner two days later — that's a company grading its own bet, and it deserves scrutiny, not a highlight package. Get me the political desk.

TRUDY: That's a reach, sugar — go lie down before you finish that sentence. Both SportsLine postings, dated September 8th and September 10th, ran under the same CBS Sports byline as the recap calling Oklahoma State's win a stunner.

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Ryan Day's late-game collapse costs Ohio State the No. 1 ranking in both major polls, again

By GusThe Sports Desk · the supper edition, 13 September 2026

This reporter arrived in the press box for Ohio State's season opener against Ball State on September 5th prepared to type what he's typed for a decade: the Buckeyes are, and shall remain, the finest program in the sport.

TRUDY: Nobody's arguing Ball State, sugar. The receipts start mattering the minute somebody with a pulse shows up.

By September 7th this newspaper's own power rankings had Ohio State and Texas bookending the top five ahead of what everybody called the season's marquee matchup, a phrase this reporter uses to mean the game the network wanted.

TRUDY: That's CBS Sports, and "bookending" means exactly what it sounds like — one team on top, one closing in.

Then came Week 3, and this reporter can confirm the final score sent the No. 4 Buckeyes reeling to the surging, freshly crowned No. 1 Longhorns.

TRUDY: Flip it around, hon. CBS Sports has it as the No. 1 Buckeyes losing to the No. 4 Longhorns — Ohio State was on top before kickoff, not after.

The AP Top 25 responded instantly, crowning Texas the new No. 1, and this reporter considers that poll's word final on the sport.

TRUDY: There's a second poll, sugar. The Coaches Poll dropped Ohio State from the top spot that same week — two separate ballots agreeing without so much as a phone call.

Credit belongs to Arch Manning, who channeled his uncle Eli with a slow start, a big deficit, and a comeback that had this reporter checking whether the Giants had relocated to Austin.

TRUDY: That's the New York Post's line, not an actual relocation — but you're not wrong it played like a Manning bowl.

What CBS Sports won't say plainly is that Ryan Day's late-game decisions, not some Texas miracle, are why the Buckeyes' hold on the top spot lasted exactly one week.

TRUDY: They said it plainly, Gus — "Ryan Day's decisions continue to cost Ohio State," same paper, this weekend. The pattern's not a mystery. It's a byline.

Elsewhere in the Big Ten power rankings, a name resurfaced from Evanston: Pat Fitzgerald, fired by Northwestern, now drawing up a game plan for Michigan State against Notre Dame on NBC.

HOTMIC: Somebody get this to the political desk — a man fired by one Big Ten program is this week coaching another one's sideline, and this reporter has covered plenty of firings; he cannot recall an autoworker let go for cause getting rehired at the plant down the road by kickoff Saturday.

TRUDY: Take the mic off before you say something the FCC remembers — and the New York Post already confirms the hire: Fitzgerald's 2-0 running Michigan State, same paper, same paragraph as the firing. Go lie down, sugar, and let the polls do the arguing tomorrow.

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AP crowns Texas No. 1 off one Saturday, drops Ohio State five spots for the same game.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the wee small hours edition, 14 September 2026

Texas rose to No. 1 in the Associated Press Top 25 this week after defeating Ohio State, and Fox News reports the loss sent the Buckeyes tumbling eight spots down the board — proof, in this reporter's estimation, that the human polling apparatus can turn on a single Saturday like a jilted spouse.

TRUDY: Eight spots, Gus? Read your own wire. Fox News, September fourteenth, calls it "the Buckeyes' five-spot drop." Five. Not eight. You've inflated the fall before the column's even warm.

The road to that Saturday started September fifth, when both clubs opened at home — Texas installed at No. 5 against Texas State, Ohio State hosting Ball State the same afternoon, per the New York Post's coverage that week. By September seventh, CBS Sports had the two programs bookending its top five power rankings, Ohio State and Texas, ahead of what CBS itself called the Week 2 showdown.

TRUDY: So far, so accurate.

Then came September eleventh, when CBS Sports' SportsLine model ran ten thousand simulations on that very Ohio State-Texas matchup as part of its Week 2 predictions slate. Two days later, on September thirteenth, CBS Sports published the result under a different banner — "Week 3 college football rankings" — with Texas installed at No. 1. Same numbers, evidently, simply carried forward a slot.

TRUDY: It is not the same numbers, sugar. CBS's own headline says Week 3. The real Week 2 numbers are the September eleventh predictions — the simulations, the picks for Ohio State-Texas, Oklahoma-Michigan, Iowa-Iowa State. You've got two different Tuesdays wearing the same jersey. Go lie down before you file the next paragraph.

HOTMIC: The September fifth story that opened with Arch Manning's Heisman campaign for No. 5 Texas was built around a DraftKings Predictions promo code — spend five dollars, get two hundred — run in the body of the New York Post's football preview, sportsbook copy sitting inside what read as a news article. The political desk should be asking how often the preview is actually the ad now — one example turned up in a single week without looking for it.

TRUDY: Take a breath, Gus — that's not a conspiracy, that's a receipt. The Post ran the DraftKings promo code inside its September fifth Texas-Texas State preview, the trade-five-get-two-hundred line sitting right there with the Heisman talk. You're right.

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Ballmer apologizes, Clippers accept $30 million fine confirming the league's own cap-circumvention scheme.

By GusThe Sports Desk · the noon edition, 14 September 2026

Steve Ballmer stood before the assembled press this week and did the one thing no owner enjoys doing more than losing money: he apologized. The Clippers, this reporter is prepared to state with confidence, accepted a $20 million fine for paying Kawhi Leonard too much, too cleverly.

TRUDY: Twenty's a nice round number, sugar, but the receipts say thirty. The Hill has Ballmer apologizing as the Clippers accept a $30 million salary cap circumvention fine, filed September 14th.

This reporter finds it fitting that a franchise capable of dodging a salary cap could not, in the end, dodge the arithmetic — the league's own investigation, and its own fine, closing the loop the Clippers opened when they went looking for Kawhi Leonard's signature back in the day.

TRUDY: The loop closes with real numbers: five first-round picks gone, 2029 through 2033, plus a one-year suspension for Ballmer — all confirmed by the league's investigation and reported the same week by ESPN and the Post.

Kawhi Leonard himself, the recipient of these "off-court income opportunities," as the league so delicately termed them, escaped with a fine this reporter clocks at roughly $2 million — a rounding error for a man of his earning power.

TRUDY: Leonard's fine is $700,000, not two million — the New York Post ran the number the same week. Go lie down a minute, hon, before you invent a third figure.

What strikes this reporter most is the tidiness of it all: the league investigates itself, finds itself guilty, fines itself, and the guilty party says sorry — a closed loop, gals, that would make any accountant proud.

TRUDY: It's not "gals," it's the whole sport, and the loop you're describing has a name — self-regulation — and it's exactly how the league wanted this to end: Ballmer keeps the team, Leonard keeps the money, the fine's a rounding error against either man's net worth.

HOTMIC: This reporter has sat through enough league investigations to recognize the architecture when he sees it — sham deals, shell arrangements, money moved sideways to dodge a rule everyone agreed to follow. The NBA at least writes the rule down and enforces it against its own. The Federal Election Commission does not require that same disclosure from a 501(c)(4); since Citizens United v. FEC in 2010, political money moves through nonprofits with no donor named, no salary cap, no fine. Somebody send this reporter to the political desk.

TRUDY: That's not a hot mic, that's a civics lesson, and you're not wrong — the Supreme Court's 2010 Citizens United ruling opened the door for unlimited independent spending through groups that don't disclose their donors.

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