…But he will make some wise predictions about your college football team. The actor-slash-legend Mississippi native and Rebels fan will be this week’s guest picker on College Gameday in Oxford for Ole Miss-LSU. More on that game below, by the way. Hold onto your hat. 

Artie Melo? Carmelo Anthony is an avid art collector, so much so, he doesn’t even know how many pieces he has. Time Magazine’s Sean Gregory details Melo’s art collection and the future plans he has for it here. 

Everyone’s watching “Crew Girl” on Netflix. It’s a high school drama-slash-love story wherein a girl joins the boys rowing team and falls in love with two of her teammates. Let me know if you watch it and it’s good. Or bad. 

Caitlin Clark called, and she wanted her team to have her shoes. Really, everyone gets a pair. You can get them too, on September 24 if you live in China, and October 1 elsewhere. And although almost the whole team is wearing Caitlins, if you want these Adidas joints Raven Johnson is wearing, they come out tomorrow, according to this comment from the Three Stripes. And oop–  looks like Caitlin replied. 

Burna Boy is For Everybody. Especially NFL fans in Paris, because he’ll be playing halftime of the Steelers-Saints game on October 25 And by the way, if you or someone you know is a plug on tickets to that game, I will be in Paris and will buy us matching berets to wear. Merci! 

This weekend, Lane Kiffin is returning to the place from whence he came just a few short months ago. The place he left in hopes of a better (I guess) and certainly more lucrative future. Really, he just wanted more money — something LSU has loads of. I think that’s ok to acknowledge.  

Lane is his own attention economy. Everyone and their dog wants to bark about him. His game arrivals feature influencers, rappers, reality TV stars. His daughter’s even cashing in on the noise with her own clothing line.

What’s very interesting to me is that the Lane Kiffinification of college football feels like a watershed moment. He’s maybe the most polarizing figure in the game. It kind of feels like you’re either seething at the very thought of him; waiting for what you believe to be his inevitable fall; obsessively reading the longform pieces about his alleged troubling past indiscretions and how it all intersects with… ChatGPT; laughing at the thought of him being fired on a tarmac; or insisting he is the perfect metaphor for where things went south for one of the most magical sports in the world. Or you’re an LSU fan. He’s either the antithesis of everything you believe we should stand for or you are the proud owner of a tailgating spot in Baton Rouge. And now that he may or may not be pretending his starting quarterback is hurt, people are only more split. 

And Ole Miss is holding extra space in their hearts for hatred. Wednesday night, they had a Lane Kiffin roast. And they are anticipating actual blood being spilled over this. 

I have to say I wish things went differently with Lane and Ole Miss for a number of reasons, but most of all because Lane and I were both card-carrying members of the hot yoga fan club. Now I have no one (except Bobby Cannavale and Tate McRae who have weirdly both been in my hot yoga classes). 

This newsletter is usually about good vibes, but it’s also about storytelling, education, and entertainment. And I had to dive into the emotions fans are feeling right now. 

So I spoke to comedian and Ole Miss alumni, Mack Hubell, to get a vibe check straight from the Rebels’ mouth. Disclaimer: I am merely the middleman here; a neutral party down in SEC country. These words came from Mack. 

I asked Mack one question: How bad do you want to win this game? 

Mack Hubell: On a scale from one to 10… one billion.This is not just a revenge game. This is like a day of vengeance of Biblical proportions. A man who not only abandoned a playoff team, has zero moral character, is probably a sociopath, but tried to destroy the program that he needed more than they needed him on his way out. That’s what he did. 

He's gone on an unfathomable revisionist history campaign in the last year, which has only fanned the flames of this fire. Now LSU [is] playing the card [of] the plucky underdog coming into Oxford against the big bad Ole Miss Rebels. You know the SEC schedule is brutal. It's not like this is the championship.

I cut out about half of what he sent in his voice note, but you get the idea. These guys want to win. And, to end the brief chat on a positive note, I asked him to say one nice thing about Lane Kiffin. 

So Mack sent me another voice note where the first five seconds were silent while he pondered an answer. There were lots of “hmmms” scattered throughout but eventually he landed on:

MH: He's good at pretending to do hot yoga. 

Regardless of where you fall on the Lane Kiffin binary, this level of petty is worth clearing your schedule for. 

In my personal experience, meeting a romantic partner through sports results in a very high success rate. Sure, it’s a small sample size, but I did meet my husband because we both worked for the same football team. And we aren’t divorced. Yet. 

The Atlanta Hawks agree with me. Or at the very least, they agree people will agree with me and therefore buy tickets to their “Single AF” night January 7. 

They aren't the first ones to do it. The Mets did it. The Liberty did, too. The Dodgers have a singles section. Arsenal produced a whole dating show. 

And despite having several examples of this happening, I need about 10,000 more, please. I truly (eh, not really, whatever) believe the last ethical place to meet someone is a sporting event. Not only is it the ultimate place for a meetcute — hello, foul ball almost right to the face, the person next to you catches it and saves your life, bam, you’re in love — but it’s just generally wholesome. You’re probably mostly sober, or at least not four drinks deep at the club. 

It’s also a place where you can either be trauma bonded or riding a euphoric win. And you know the person you’ve met shares your interests (of allowing a bunch of grown adults in matching clothes, dictate your mood for at least 24 hours at a time). 

So, people of Atlanta, go to that game. Fall in love. And report back. 

Forget touching grass. Eat it. 

But a cool hat! Like this one from Woodn Grail.

Write some WNBA poetry.