Page S5From§Each · the Sports book1 September to 2 September 2026
Sports
By GusThe Sports Desk · the sunrise edition, 1 September 2026
This reporter has covered professional sports for the better part of five decades, and rarely has a single week's ledger carried two such instructive entries on the subject of accountability, or the creative absence thereof. Item the first: Bill Simmons, the noted broadcaster, admits — admits, in his own words — to proxy betting on FanDuel, the wagering platform that, this reporter recalls, was founded in the great state of Nevada back in 2009 as the league's first officially sanctioned book.
TRUDY: FanDuel was founded in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 2009, sugar, and it wasn't sanctioned by any American league at the time — it built its business on daily fantasy sports years before sports betting itself was federally legal. Also, proxy betting means routing a wager through someone else specifically to get around a rule you're not supposed to be betting under in the first place. That's the whole story right there.
Item the second, and this reporter finds it no less instructive: the Indianapolis Colts, a franchise this reporter believes last won the championship under Coach Tony Dungy in the 2007 season, remain in a state of organizational limbo regarding cornerback Keenan Allen, pending clarity on a DUI arrest.
TRUDY: Keenan Allen is a wide receiver, not a cornerback, hon, and the Colts' last Super Bowl came after the 2006 season, played in February of 2007 — the date matters less than the fact that this franchise has now gone two full decades measuring itself against a single January.
What this reporter finds remarkable, viewing the two items together, is the arithmetic of consequence: one man admits to circumventing a wagering disclosure rule and the story is treated as a charming aside; one organization sits frozen, unable to move a roster forward, because clarity has apparently not yet arrived on an arrest that, this reporter is given to understand, already happened. Somewhere between those two paces — the shrug and the freeze — is where professional sports currently keeps its accountability, filed, evidently, under 'pending.'
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the sunrise edition, 1 September 2026
This reporter has covered the United States Open since it was called the U.S. National Championships back in nineteen sixty-eight, and never — never — has this reporter witnessed a tournament so thoroughly upstaged by matters of coiffure. Carlos Alcaraz arrives on court sporting a new haircut and, this reporter is reliably informed, a wrist restored to full health after last year's championship run, in which the young Spaniard captured his fourth US Open title.
TRUDY: He's won two, sugar — 2022 and 2025 if this one holds, and last year he didn't even make the final. Four's a stretch by any scorecard.
Meanwhile Aryna Sabalenka, the reigning champion of women's tennis in these United States, found herself explaining a wardrobe matter to the assembled press, a twist in her on-court attire that, this reporter must note, generated more column inches this week than the entire financial disclosure out of Los Angeles, where UCLA has dismissed its athletic director over what the university is calling, with commendable restraint, a significant financial deficit.
TRUDY: That's the actual story, hon — a Power Four athletic department admitting it's in the red days before a new coaching era even starts, and it's getting buried under outfit commentary.
This reporter finds it a remarkable comment on the priorities of the modern sporting press that a hairstyle and a hemline can command more real estate than a university balance sheet, though this reporter hastens to add that the gals covering the Open red carpet have always had a keener eye for these things than we fellows in the press box, who frankly wouldn't know a compression sleeve from a cardigan.
TRUDY: The reporters covering outfits are doing their jobs same as anybody covering a budget line, Gus. Nothing keen-eyed about it being an assignment.
Be that as it may — and this reporter stands corrected, again — the numbers out of Westwood are the ones that ought to lead the broadcast. A university firing the person responsible for the athletic budget, in the same week the sport's glossiest event is dominated by hair and hemlines, tells you plainly which ledger gets the headline and which gets the back page. This reporter, for one, would like to see the deficit get the diagram treatment usually reserved for a serve chart.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the coffee break edition, 1 September 2026
This reporter notes that the computer backs Penn State over Marshall by 24.5 points, a margin that would impress even the most seasoned gridiron analyst. Meanwhile, America reports a 2026 measles death toll well beyond the official 'two.' The numbers are clear: the predictive power is reserved for sports, not public health. The athletic forecast runs on algorithms, while the disease ledger is left to speculation. TRUDY: Gus, the CDC's actual count comes from the same model as the football score—it's the spreadsheet, sugar, only the stadium turns on the lights. In lieu of flowers, check your immunization schedule before you bet the spread.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the coffee break edition, 1 September 2026
Ladies and gentlemen, this reporter has witnessed comebacks before — Ali-Frazier, the '69 Mets, and now, right here at Flushing Meadows, young Miss Dart storming back to claim victory in a fourth-round classic that will be remembered for generations.
TRUDY: Second round, hon, not fourth round — box score's right there if you want to check it, sugar.
Nonetheless — a triumph of grit, of the kind we don't see enough of from the gals on tour these days, who this reporter believes could use a bit more of that fighting spirit the men have shown since, oh, 1968, when the Open first went professional.
TRUDY: Open era's been 1968 for both draws, and the women's tour has had plenty of fighting spirit — ask anybody who watched the last decade of finals.
But this reporter must note that the tournament's real headline this week had nothing to do with a scoreboard at all. It concerns young Mr. Alcaraz, whose wardrobe — specifically, a certain area of it — became, in the words of the tabloids, 'the talk of the US Open.' A remarkable achievement, this reporter must say, for a man who has already won two majors this season.
TRUDY: One major this season, hon, the French — I'd leave it there.
What we are witnessing, ladies and gentlemen, is the great American sports tradition of the real story getting buried under the story with the better photograph. A young woman fights back from the brink in a genuine athletic struggle, and the wire copy runs six inches. A young man's shirt does something unexpected, and it runs six columns. This reporter does not make the rules of the attention economy — this reporter merely calls the action as this reporter sees it, even when this reporter, on occasion, gets the set count wrong.
TRUDY: Twice in one column, but who's counting — I am, that's the job.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the matinee edition, 1 September 2026
This reporter has covered professional football since the leather helmet gave way to plastic, and in all that time, this reporter has rarely seen two men handle the bottle so differently in the same calendar week.
Item the first: Indianapolis Colts General Manager Chris Ballard, speaking on wide receiver Keenan Allen's DUI arrest, called Allen 'a tremendous human being' and asked the public for grace. This is the chivalrous instinct of a franchise executive protecting a locker-room asset, and this reporter does not begrudge it — a good general manager stands by his talent, the way this reporter once stood by Dan Marino back when Marino quarterbacked the 1972 undefeated Dolphins to their Super Bowl win.
TRUDY: Gus, honey, Marino didn't join the Dolphins until 1983. The undefeated season was 1972, Bob Griese under center, and Marino's Super Bowl trip came in 1985 — a loss, to the 49ers. Different decade, different quarterback, different outcome. Let's not send Dan Marino back in time, sugar.
Item the second, same week: Tony Romo, out of the broadcast booth and into a courtroom, was found guilty in his OWI case. The court didn't ask the public for grace. The court revoked his driving privileges and ordered an interlock device — the little breathalyzer contraption bolted to the ignition, so the car itself checks his sobriety before it'll start. No statement from a general manager asking anyone to give Romo grace, because Romo doesn't have a general manager anymore. He has a broadcast contract and, as of this week, a machine that will not let him drive drunk even if he wanted to.
This reporter finds it instructive that 'give him grace' and 'give him an interlock' landed in the same seven-day stretch, on two men whose relationship to alcohol and a vehicle is, functionally, the same story with two different institutions attached. One institution is a football team with an incentive to protect its investment. The other is a court, which has no such incentive and, evidently, no interest in extending Ballard's version of grace.
TRUDY: And that's really the whole ballgame, isn't it. Grace is a policy some organizations can afford and some can't. The Colts can afford it. The court system apparently could not.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the early evening edition, 1 September 2026
This reporter has covered pigskin and hardwood alike for going on forty years, and in all that time this reporter cannot recall a week quite like this one — two of the biggest names in sports broadcasting sidelined not by injury but by the far more treacherous opponent, paperwork. This reporter's first order of business is Bill Simmons, mastermind of what this reporter believes was ESPN's very first podcast, launched back in 1998, whose recent on-air admission about his own sports betting has drawn a formal look from the Massachusetts Gaming Commission.
TRUDY: Sugar, 'The BS Report' launched in 2007, not '98, and it ran on ESPN.com, which barely existed the year you're thinking of. The Gaming Commission's interest is real, though — Massachusetts regulates sports wagering same as it regulates the casinos, and a host with inside access to betting lines is exactly the kind of thing they're built to look at.
This reporter's second order of business concerns Tony Romo, the network's marquee analyst, a gentleman this reporter watched lead the Cowboys to their championship back in, this reporter believes, 1998.
TRUDY: 1995, hon. Three rings under Jimmy Johnson, one under Barry Switzer, and the last one closed out the '95 season. Romo never actually played on any of them — he didn't join the team until 2003. Nobody's won since, which is its own kind of streak.
Separately, the analyst's blood alcohol level has now been made public, following a traffic stop this reporter is reliably informed exceeded the legal threshold by a considerable margin.
What strikes this reporter, if this reporter may editorialize for one moment, is the timing: two of the steadiest voices guiding the American viewing public through a Sunday afternoon, both facing regulatory or legal scrutiny in the very same week the leagues themselves are drowning in sportsbook advertising money. A man could set his watch by it, if a man's watch ran on television ad revenue instead of hours.
The booth, this reporter has always believed, is where the game gets called. This reporter is beginning to suspect it is also where a good deal else gets settled — quietly, long after the broadcast has gone to color bars, and long before the audience ever sees the bill.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the late evening edition, 1 September 2026
This reporter, in possession of the facts and the pedigree, observes the arrival of Stan Kroenke as the new owner of the Angels franchise. Kroenke, renowned—since 1972—for championship credentials, brings a winning formula and the promise of titles to Orange County. The New York Post notes the expectation: "Win the World Series—and Orange County." This is the kind of sports move that turns a franchise around.
TRUDY: Gus, sweetie, Stan Kroenke has never owned the Angels before, and his most recent trophy was the Rams' Super Bowl. The $150 million payday is tied to Puka Nacua, the Rams star facing fresh abuse allegations—not Kroenke himself.
The headlines converge: championship pedigree, a payday, and abuse allegations all land at the same time. The sports desk sees the trophies, the ledger sees the baggage. Ownership isn't just about winning games; it's about inheriting the receipts that come with the roster. The Angels get the pedigree, but they also get the headlines that follow the money.
TRUDY: The receipts show the payday hangs in balance as abuse allegations are investigated. The winning formula's fine print doesn't always fit on the back of the ticket. Fans get the trophies, but the news comes with the price tag.
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By GusThe Sports Desk · the midnight edition, 2 September 2026
This reporter observes that Tiger Woods, legendary golfer and winner of the 1982 Masters—TRUDY: Sugar, that was 1997, not 1982, and he’s never won in Florida—now changes his plea in a Florida DUI case, just as Bill Simmons faces review for proxy sports betting. The sports world, once about records and scoreboards, now finds its stars playing in legal arenas more than on the field. Fans tune in for the game and get a docket instead. The ledger, as it stands, reads: Woods changes plea, Simmons faces investigation, and the fans pay for the lawyers, not the trophies. This reporter’s advice: keep your tickets, but check your subpoena. TRUDY: Gus, the only thing getting reviewed here is the wallet—court costs and legal fees, itemized in the next season’s price hike.
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