The Great Hambino

Just think: under last year's rules, Tulane would've gotten a bye and Ohio State would've played James Madison this weekend

https://www.sportsmediawatch.com/2025/12/fanduel-sports-network-shutdown-possible/ Main Street Sports Group, the artist formerly known as Diamond Sports Group and current owner of what's left of Fan Duel RSNs, just missed a scheduled payment to the Cardinals and apparently will be shuttered permanently if the proposed deal for them to be purchased by DAZN falls through. Roughly half the NBA still has local rights through them, and they're apparently takings steps to move all those in-house if necessary. It looks like the Twins might have some new roommates in the MLB.tv clubhouse come the start of the 2026 season. This could ultimately be a good thing for the Twins - the more local rights controlled under MLB.tv, the more lucrative that package potentially becomes

There is no salvaging the Correa trade. The longest-of-long-shots lottery ticket has already been discarded, and the salary savings have been pocketed by ownership. The payroll this year will at best be last year's payroll minus the Correa savings. There's no argument to be made that this was anything other than a salary dump. It should have been the final chapter of this era of Twins baseball, but they're insisting on adding an unnecessary epilogue to the story by refusing to move on from the current core.

In my opinion, Tom is already going back on his words about accountability and no half measures by even allowing Falvey to proceed with the ultimate half-measure strategy that has failed the last two seasons and is even more likely to fail again after stripping the team of its bullpen: trying to enhance a fatally flawed core with little FA nibbles on the margins. But if you want to argue that this is Tom giving Falvey one final chance, or perhaps its too far along in the offseason to pivot in a meaningfully different direction/find a viable replacement, then he has to decisively follow through with his promise of accountability if (lets be honest, when) this strategy fails yet again. If they're once again sellers at the trade deadline, Falvey has to be gone. Don't even wait for the end of the season. At the very least, remove him from the baseball ops side and have Zoll manage the trade deadline. Falvey can have no hand in the deadline if you're sellers and actually serious about accountability. Then clean house in the offseason. No internal hires - show that the country club mentality no longer flies here. Get an actual business mind to run the business side. Get a creative mind from an actual successful front office to run the baseball side. Demonstrate that you're willing to perform an exhaustive search to truly bring in the absolute best people for the job; you're no longer just looking down the hallway for the least incompetent person available. Familiarity means nothing. Hire based on actual talent. Then proceed with the rebuild that you weren't honest with yourself enough to admit began with the 2025 trade deadline.

Oh yeah? According to what code section or treasury reg? There is nothing preventing a business from taking out a loan/drawing on a line of credit/etc, making a distribution of cash to owners, and then contributing that cash to another entity. Any basis rules would not apply since there's no way the Pohlads are close to being out of basis in the Twins. Hell, if the two businesses were both wholly-owned subsidiaries of the Pohlad Companies, the IRS wouldn't even consider the two businesses to be separate. I'm sure there's MLB rules preventing using the club as collateral for outside interests, and at some point doing too much of this might violate some debt covenants with your bank, but the idea that there's no way to get loan proceeds into a different company's hands is just not true My current organization just did this exact thing. Had the bank's blessing and everything

The owners are also the ones putting on this whole WBC shindig (and benefiting from its revenue) in the first place. I'm sure they understood that their players might be involved in this from time to time and happily accepted whatever risks resulted from that.

Not often you see a take age so poorly so quickly. I don't see Tulane losing by less than negative ten

That's not a bad idea

Clyde's awesome

Calls to Finebaum after the game are gonna put the Alabama power grid in peril

Tulane will keep their game closer than Bama. This is not a good team

This family is an excellent argument for an estate tax of 100%

I hope they're planning on a lot of Oliver & Ham in max protect schemes if they plan on letting Rouse be involved in any way. It's not a simple as "just give him a shot and see what happens" when it puts the young QB you've staked your entire professional reputation on in a shooting gallery

I'll be ... let's call it irritated if they're willing to pay a free agent reliever more than Duran's $7.6MM projected arb figure

Very well said. In the first of what somehow turned into several embarrassing open letters to the fans coming from Twins leadership, Falvey tried to sell us on how the returns from the trades were going to deliver an immediate impact. As we enter 2026, that "immediate impact" at the major league level appears to be a couple of backup outfielders and two young starters that very well may be competing with each other for the final rotation slot. But they're still operating as if they plan on competing this year. It's hard to be honest with your fanbase when you can't even be honest with yourselves. So what will it take to win back trust? Time. The organization is fundamentally broken and there are no quick fixes. If they really want this to work in the long-term, they're going to have to be willing to endure some more tough times to build this thing back up. I'm not sure they can damage fan morale any more than they have already, so I don't think that would make things much worse on that front. Then, once they've actually built a sustainable core, follow through on your promises and do what it takes to push that core over the top. Nothing short of a World Series will get the fans' trust back, so plan and act accordingly. And no more excuses. I don't want to hear the word COVID from a Pohlad's or a Pohlad lackey's mouth ever again. No other MLB teams racked up that much debt because of it. No other Minnesota sports teams racked up that much debt because of it. The failure was yours, full stop. Want to regain fan support quickly? Sell the team.

Calling it now: Seahawks lose at Carolina next week but still somehow get the one seed while the Panthers miss the playoffs anyway

Joe will definitely have to play Boar On The Floor (IYKYK)

Random ominous thought: why did the family pick Joe to run the team before Tom in the first place?

High bar to clear for the rest of this week's slate

They should

I think the Monstars stole Stafford's talent some time around the end of the third quarter

This is feeling like a tie or a defensive score is coming our way

See also: Manning, Eli (I will absolutely die on that hill)

Announcers suck, Part Infinity Seahawks biggest plays have been screen, long run, punt return, busted coverage, and the flukiest 2 pt conversion ever Translation: Is Sam Darnold about to win the big game?