Ok, ok. I've been doing a lot of complaining lately. So let's make this a happy post! Instead of complaining, I'll say something nice about something, like, um, maybe....

...

...

Oh, fuck it. I'll try again next time.

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Earlier this week, the ESPN headline read "Daniels sends cease and desist to LSU after Pickett given No. 5." In a nutshell, it appears that Jayden Daniels, former Heisman Trophy winner and current quarterback for the Washington Commanders (who beat the Miami Dolphins in yesterday's first preseason game), claims his now-expired 2023 Name Image Likeness (NIL) deal with LSU included ownership of his player number. That's fucking bonkers.

Per the 2026 NCAA® Football Rules and Interpretations, Rule 1 Section 4 Article 2 a (aka "The Game, Field, Players and Equipment > Players and Playing Equipment > Players' Numbering" or simply Rule 1-4-2-a):

All players shall be numbered 0 through 99. Any number preceded by the digit zero such as "07" or "00" is illegal.

"Shall" here means "must."¹ If players owned their own numbers, a team would run out of eligible players as they all graduated or, given how things have gone lately with enforcing NCAAF eligibility, aged out of competitive play.²

Teams may choose not to reissue numbers, inaccurately called "retiring" a number — the only place "retire" appears in the rulebook is Rule 3-1-3-a: "Immediately after the conclusion of the fourth quarter, officials will instruct both teams to retire to their respective team areas." Retiring a number is just a gentleman's agreement that the team won't reuse it.³ Gentlemen always reserve the right to stop being gentlemen.⁴

Since Daniels can't actually stop LSU from issuing a number, what Daniels (or his representatives and their lawyers) is really doing here is arguing that his NIL contract provides for compensation following a broken promise about whether LSU would do that. I haven't read it. Maybe it does. LSU has made some pretty foolhardy promises in recent years;⁵ this could certainly be another one of them. Maybe someone should make a rule about that.

¹ Rule 1-4-1-1 recommends numbers for all positions, but some rules explicitly define which numbers players in certain positions must wear. For example, Rule 7-1-4-a-3 defines who must be on the line of scrimmage at the start of every play: "At least five linemen must wear jerseys numbered 50 through 79." (Amusingly, when punting, per rule 7-1-5-a, you can use any numbers. So you could give away all but five of your hundred numbers if every play was a punt.)

² Rule 9-2-2e buys a team a little bit of extra time in this scenario. It explicitly prohibits team members from having more than two instances of any single number.

³ Wikipedia has a pretty fun list of "retired" college numbers here.

⁴ The Rules wisely includes rules about which rules can be ignored "by mutual consent of the competing institutions." Neither Rule 1-4-2 nor any of the other rules I quote in this post are among those.

⁵ In 2021, the school paid $17 million to fire head coach Ed Orgeron. Having learned their lesson from that, in 2025, the school paid $54 million to fire head coach Brian Kelly. Having learned their lesson from that, they are paying their current coach, famous shitbag Lane Kiffen, $91 million. Geaux Tigers!

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Speaking of things to complain about, I've been reading the 2007 DC Comics maxi-series Countdown that I acquired from the collection of late Friend Michael. While the series was still coming out, I asked Mike if it was worth reading, and Mike's short answer was "no." I happy to report that he was right.

For many years, when I wanted to moan about a comic, I'd just call Mike. But he's not here anymore, so I might as well blog-bitch about it instead. If you don't care about superhero comic books, sorry. I'll try to complain about something else next post.

Still here? In that case, as I'm sure you know, Countdown was the follow-up to 52, which was both critically and commercially successful. 52 was a 52-issue weekly series, meaning a new book was released each week instead of once a month. It was an incredible collaboration between a team of very talented creatives that told the intertwined stories of several heroes. It's good. If you have any interest in long-form superhero comic book stories, read it.

The 52 issues of Countdown, on the other hand, while trying to plug the financial hole left by 52's conclusion, only succeeds at being a mess. Producing a weekly American superhero comic book is incredibly difficult, so DC reduced the number of writers and increased the number of artists (and apparently gave the latter instructions never to coordinate styles). Yet at the same time, they exponentially increased the number of crossover titles, mini-series, and tie-in one shots in a transparent effort to squeeze extra sales out of a captive audience. This plot dispersal and art clash makes reading the Countdown series feel too often like you're skipping chapters. There's no continuity to anything; it's all more confusing than satisfying, a marketing exercise designed to frustrate and alienate attentive readers.

Is it the worst thing I've ever read? No. It's not even the worst thing I've read from DC in the past 6 months. It's just not very good, and I thought Mike would want to know that I agree with him.

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FYI: My power is out again.

Some rough weather came through the neighborhood yesterday afternoon. About 15 miles up the road, several trees and some traffic lights were downed. We thought we got through unscathed,, but no sooner had the sun gone down then the power went out. As I type this on my phone at midnight, it's been out for three hours. Georgia Power tells me a tree fell on our lines. Current estimated time of restoration is four hours from now.

This is the second extended outage this summer. It happened back on June during the day. At least at night I don't miss the air conditioning.

What's so wrong with my neighborhood that this sort of extended blackout happens at least twice a year? Isn't there a long term solution to this? I bet data centers don't have this problem.

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They say I complain about everything. They might be right. I'm a pretty sour individual who's no fun at parties. But tonight I have a new reason to gripe:

For most of the past two decades, I've made a point of turning on WXIA-TV at 11:30PM on Sunday nights to watch their weekly Sports Extra recap of Georgia sports. On tonight's episode, host Maria Martin announced the show has been canceled to make way for a longer regular newscast.

What terrible timing. Football season is finally just around the corner! I was anticipating another delightful season of watching each weekly Atlanta Falcons meltdown slowly grind Maria and company's determined optimism into a more appropriate pessimistic fatalism. It's the annual rite of passage in Atlanta sports!

I'm sure that WXIA has its reasons for making the change. At least it had The Pandemic to blame when it canceled Wake Up with Chesley in 2022. (For about a decade, it was the show I watched while getting ready for bed.) Television shows come and go, of course, and they keep telling me that no one watches late night television anymore. They might be right, but it still sounds like self-fulfilling prophecy when the networks are the ones canceling all the content that's worth watching. All I can say for certain is that I'll not be making the same weekly effort to watch an extra thirty minutes of "if it bleeds it leads" local news.

Such is life, sadly. Everything you love abandons you eventually, if you don't leave it first. Which perfectly summarizes a season of Atlanta Falcons football. I found my way to Sports Extra once upon a time. I can only assume I'll eventually find my way to another source of weekly local sports coverage. Turn, turn, turn.

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