🔥 CoachGPT

🤖 AI has become a football coach's best friend. Seahawks coach Mike Macdonald is apparently using AI models to game plan for opponents, tweak plays, and sift through film — a strategy that began during their Super Bowl-winning season last year. Jon Gruden probably punched a wall when he heard about this. 

• Lane Kiffin, on the other hand, has had less success with his AI strategy. The LSU coach has reportedly been using ChatGPT to produce the school’s legal justification for signing former NFL players. Kiffin apparently shared screenshots of his ChatGPT conversations with his lawyer, who told ESPN that the chatbot was blatantly making things up to appease the Tigers coach. Not exactly the sharpest tool in the shed.

⚾️ Ichiro Suzuki threw a 127-pitch shutout against the best women's baseball team in Japan. The 52-year-old Hall of Fame outfielder decided to show up to a women's All-Star game and casually strike out 17 batters in a complete-game shutout. You just can't get this guy off the baseball field. Pure love of the game. 

💵 Travis Kelce is reportedly one of the victims in a multi-million dollar Ponzi scheme. Because of course he is. File this under the category of “fork found in kitchen”. Good thing his wife is worth $2 billion.  

💥 I miss the old ESPN show Jacked Up so I’m bringing it back here. Sometimes you just want to watch a back-breaking hit on the football field to get you through the day. This week’s winner, courtesy of BYU:

🏎️ Four-time Formula One champion Max Verstappen spent his week embarrassing 100 amateur drivers on the go-kart track. Verstappen started the race dead last and ended up passing the entire field within 13 laps, avoiding a 30-car pileup en route to the victory. I guess racing the fastest cars in the world gets boring after a while. 

🏈 Giants’ coach John Harbaugh laid a hit on Malik Nabers to get him ready for their game against the Cowboys. Harbaugh apparently tackled Nabers pre-game to get rid of any post-surgery jitters he might’ve had. Unorthodox? Yes. But the Giants took down Dallas 28-20, so you can't argue with the results. I’d love to see Andy Reid start doing this.

🥩 The Tampa Bay Rays swapped champagne showers for tomahawk steaks in their clubhouse celebration. First of all, I think it's ridiculous that baseball teams pop champagne for clinching a playoff spot (and then every time they win a series). That said, I’m in full support of eating celebratory tomahawks like cavemen with the boys. Tip of the cap to whoever made this happen. 

🏆Arch Manning pulled off a 20-point comeback against the best team in College football. In the 3rd quarter against Ohio State, trailing 23-3, Texas had less than a 2% chance of winning. Arch went to work in the 4th quarter and pulled off the largest comeback college football has seen in nearly two decades. That Heisman Trophy is looking more and more like a lock. 

• Don't ask about his press conference a few days later. Not great. 

📋 An Akron football fan got the keys to the team's offence and looked like a veteran. For the first drive of the season, superfan Martin Whimms II put together a masterful plan for the Zips (yes, that’s really their name), ripping off a couple of good-looking no-huddle plays. His team unfortunately let him down, coughing up a fumble and ending his coaching tenure early. I would personally give up my season tickets over that. 

💰 LeBron James is making $11 million more from his Polymarket sponsorship than he will from his 76ers contract. This is the type of “If the cheque clears, I'm there” behaviour you’d expect from someone with a crippling golf addiction. 

👴 Drew Brees almost came out of retirement to play in last year's AFC Championship game. The Hall of Famer said he was very close to signing with the Broncos after Bo Nix went down in the playoffs last season, but tweaked his wrist during a workout and decided against it.

• If Phillip Rivers and Joe Flacco can roll off the couch and win football games, I’m pretty confident that Brees could’ve beaten a terrible-looking Drake Maye in that AFC title matchup.

🛻 A new sport has captured Americans' hearts. I’m actually not sure what it's called, but the objective is to race cars around a dirt track trying to park them on a moving trailer. Speed, danger, a bit of stupidity, great tailgate potential: It’s got all of the ingredients to become the country’s next great sport. Maybe Max Verstappen will give it a shot when he’s done with racing. 

Alright, that’s enough for one Friday.

If you enjoyed the newsletter, do us a solid and forward it to a friend.