Month: July 2024

Do you hear the faint sound of giggling over the word “banana”? Is your local clothing store out of overalls? That means the minions are back and heading to a theater near you! Hopefully without Gen Z in tow.

Despicable Me 4 hits theaters this weekend, which means it’s time to brush up on your Minion history, or watch the little guys for the first time if you feel so inclined. The animated franchise follows Gru and his minions, the Minions, as he transitions from super bad guy to father of three girls. Luckily, they are all available on streaming.

You don’t need to watch the first Despicable Me films to follow the story, but if you want to understand the context of Gru and Co, you can find Despicable Me, and the two sequels Despicable Me 2 and Despicable Me 3 all streaming on Peacock.

If you want even more Minion fun, they have two spinoffs of their own that acts as a prequel. 2015’s Minions is currently streaming on Netflix and 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru is on Prime. These two take place before the events of Despicable Me.

Once you finish those, you are set to watch Despicable Me 4, which stars Steve Carell, Kristen Wiig and Will Ferrell.

In the fourth installment, Gru welcomes a new member to the family, Gru Jr., who loves to torture his dad. But the peace is disrupted when Gru’s enemy Maxime Le Mal escapes from prison and vows revenge against Gru, who must take his ever-growing family on the run. You can catch it in theaters on July 3rd.

The Kid Laroi finally released the song his Erewhon smoothie was named after, so that’s obviously the headline of this week in pop. Elsewhere, Omar Apollo continued to showcase his range with his God Said No album, and Tinashe dropped a more-than-worthy follow-up to “Nasty.”

Check out all of that and more in Uproxx’s Best New Pop Music roundup below.

The Kid Laroi — “Girls”

The Kid Laroi has been teasing “Girls” for months on social media. The Australian supernova could have dropped “Girls” at the tail end of August, and it would still leapfrog to the top of the “summer anthem” rankings. This is the full-send Laroi pop boy crossover we’ve been awaiting, punctuated by the early 2000s-coded video starring Alix Earle.

Hailey Knox — “On Nothing”

Hailey Knox is building toward The Best, her EP due out on July 19. The R&B-infused single “On Nothing” follows “What Do You Need” and “Double Tragedy” and keeps in the vein of Knox recognizing her self-worth. “On Nothing” is her perhaps most confident offering yet, underlining the liberation found in hindsight in the incredibly catchy and impeccably produced chorus: “Does she treat you like I did? / Grant your every wish? / Gave you all you want, then why you comin’ back for something? / Shouldn’t have got involved, but I’m glad I did / I went through it all, to know I’m missin’ out on nothing.”

Omar Apollo — “Drifting”

It should be noted: “Pedro” earns honorable mention from Omar Apollo’s freshly released God Said No album because it is epic for “internet daddy” Pedro Pascal to dispense fatherly advice to Apollo in the penultimate track. However, “Drifting” stands out because it stands out sonically from Apollo’s usual slow-burning, silky R&B/ soul-pop (and sometimes jazzy?) pocket. At the very high-probability risk of being too on the nose, “Drifting” exemplifies Apollo’s ability to drift between genres, and the pulsating track helps the listener feel weightless as well. “Past life, oh, past life,” Apollo sings, as the song beautifully interpolates “Edge Of The Ocean” by Ivy. “Have we been here before?” The line is especially poignant because Apollo repurposed an indie-pop song from the turn of the century, and while it does feel like a satisfying taste from a past life, it also feels entirely fresh.

Sophie Feat. BC Kingdom & Kim Petras — “Reason Why”

Last week, the late Sophie’s family announced her forthcoming posthumously self-titled album, which will be the final Sophie album. “Reason Why” featuring BC Kingdom and Kim Petras is the album’s first single, and predictably, it’s a vibe. Of course, listening to a great new Sophie song surfaces an inherent pang of sadness because we have to live in a cruel reality where Sophie can’t create the sort of unique pop only she could. The silver lining? Sophie, due out on September 27, will feature “some of her most cherished collaborators” and enrich an already eternal legacy.

Tinashe — “Getting No Sleep”

Tinashe already left her mark on 2024 with “Nasty,” her biting Billboard Hot 100 charter asking, “Is somebody gonna match my freak?” With “Getting No Sleep,” Tinashe appears to have found a worthy (and “whipped”) candidate. “Not a dog, but it’s in me,” she softly sings with a flitting delivery. “Taking shots like I’m Lindsay / We ain’t getting no sleep, no no.” Tinashe also confirmed an August 16 release date for Quantum Baby, which will delve even further into “exploring who I am as a person and who I am as an artist,” as she said in a statement, according to Pitchfork. “I’ve never been one to be put into a box, so the name Quantum Baby encompasses all the different parts that make up who I am as a creative.”

Alexander 23 — “American Boy”

“Deleting all social media off my phone until I make the best album ever,” Alexander 23 posted on Instagram on Sunday, June 30. So, savor “American Boy,” his latest lovely, melodic, and lyrically driven single. “I’ll be your American boy,” he sings. “Blue jeans and a faded T-shirt, baby / Pick me up and down like a toy / Wear me like a cross when you need some saving.” Since Aftershock, his 2022 debut studio album, Alexander 23 has produced for some of America’s favorite girls — Olivia Rodrigo, Reneé Rapp — so the intrigue is high for his next solo effort.

Lisa — “Rockstar”

“Rockstar” is Lisa’s first solo release since 2021, and she made it count. Lisa doesn’t need to tell anyone that she’s a rockstar. She’s a member of the world-beating Blackpink, and she’ll join White Lotus for Season 3. Range. But that’s precisely the beauty of “Rockstar”: Lisa’s earned the right to spit such braggadocio (“Gold teeth sittin’ on the dash, she a rockstar / Make your favorite singer wanna rap, baby, la, la”). And through sonic osmosis, the electro-pop banger produced by and Sam Homaee (!) and Ryan Tedder (!!) will make listeners feel like Lisa-level rockstars, too.

Cat Burns — “Met Someone”

Emerging UK singer-songwriter Cat Burns is peak singer-songwriter on “Met Someone,” and I mean that as the utmost compliment. Burns’ ability to cram a rom-com’s worth of plot points into three minutes of less is impeccable. With “Met Someone,” Burns rolls out a lovely and all-too-relatable coming-of-age arc. From the outside looking in, strangers may roll their eyes at how love drunk she is, but she’s earned the right to “seem a little smug”: “Had my fair share of bullshit growing up / The constant rejections / Too many to mention / Been the ugly duckling for long enough / Right now, I’m doing just fine / And don’t hate me if I tell you why / ‘Cause I met someone.” Fittingly, Burns’ forthcoming debut album is entitled Early Twenties and will act as “a mirror reflecting the complexities and emotions of this exciting era of adulthood.”

Crash Adams — “Hotel Party”

About ten seconds into watching Crash Adams’ “Hotel Party” visualizer, I wondered, Wait, is this a trailer for another Neighbors movie? Where’s Zac Efron? Crash Adams’ Rafaele Massarelli and Vince Sasso don’t take themselves too seriously, and their admirable attitude bleeds into their enthusiastic pop. “Hotel Party” encourages everyone to shed self-consciousness in favor of fun. “We made this song with the McDonough brothers, along with Ryan Daly,” Crash Adams said in a statement. “As soon as you hear the opening lick, you know that you’re in for an amazing time — crowd surfing, beach balls, people just letting loose! ‘Hotel Party’ is about the ultimate party experience; the neighbors are either going to call the cops or join the party!” Go on. Add it to your Fourth Of July playlist.

Indy Yelich — “East Coast”

Indy Yelich pulled off the ultimate pop dichotomy: Assembling a song equally suitable for anyone wanting to dance and forget or anyone helplessly ruminating over a toxic ex-relationship. In a literal sense, “East Coast” depicts the New Zealanders’ “codependency across two coasts” in her past relationship and her decision to sacrifice “such a strong sense of identity in New York” to pursue her career in California. But more than that, it’s a vivid vignette into the mental gymnastics necessary to arrive at true fulfillment.

This article contains spoilers!

The third season of The Bear hinges on the outcome of a restaurant review. Like so much of the “action” in this latest data-dump of 10 episodes, it’s a seemingly small matter presented with life-or-death urgency. Other narratives this season include: Will my girlfriend take me back? Can I feel happy for my ex as she marries someone else? What if I take this new job? Should I call my Mom?

What’s interesting about the restaurant review subplot is how it unintentionally echoes the current response to The Bear itself. After the first two seasons were showered with accolades (along with all those Emmys), the “I always thought it sucked” contingent of the critical community has pounced on Season Three, essentially sending it back to the kitchen with complaints that it is severely undercooked.

Nothing happens, it’s self-indulgent, it’s all tics and flourishes and no substance — the criticisms of The Bear have come to resemble the Chicago Tribune’s climactic takedown of Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto’s embattled eatery. More than that, Season Three of The Bear has been turned into a referendum on the sins of Prestige TV. And look, I get it. I kind of hate prestige TV now, too! We are in a moment in which hacky TV writers have learned how to construct a facsimile of a critically adored, Emmy-feted and social media-wooing television program, while at the same time putting nothing of actual value inside the televisual meat suit. It’s annoying, and makes me want to go outside.

Also, as a loyal viewer of The Bear, I can enumerate the show’s flaws. Does it sometimes spin its wheels narratively? Yes, chef. Are the many famous guest stars turning up in small roles distracting? Yes, chef. (John Cena is not a Fak brother, John Cena is John Cena.) Does the cycle of emotional breakdowns and heartfelt reconciliations, at times, feel repetitive? Yes, chef.

And yet, for all these flaws, I was pretty much riveted for the roughly five hours I spent watching Season Three. This show’s magic trick is that it can put two people in a room, have them talk for 10 minutes, and make it as exciting and intense as any battle scene from House Of The Dragon. Is The Bear self-indulgent? Sure. But to simply dismiss it as “bad” strikes me as an overreaction to the acclaim this show has garnered rather than a fair accounting of The Bear’s strengths and weaknesses. The fact is that the main creative minds behind this show — creator Christopher Storer and executive producer Josh Senior — are attempting the TV equivalent of changing the menu every single day. They are trying some shit, in other words, and while they don’t always hit the mark, I don’t think they can be credibly accused of doing boring work (unlike many of their peers in the Prestige TV business). Even the episodes that don’t fully cohere have at least one scene that’s as good as anything you’ll see on television.

One of the most fascinating aspects of The Bear for me is the soundtrack, which is carefully selected by Storer and Senior. In the past they have shared with me how they picked the music, and while some viewers might find their choices to be corny or overbearing, you can’t say they don’t put a ton of thought into it.

On The Bear, the soundtrack isn’t the typical sonic window-dressing it is on most shows. The music functions partly as a Greek chorus and partly as a window into the psychology of the characters. It also — and this is even truer after Season Three — acts as a kind of narrative thread for the entire series. The songs are like memories that bring you back to certain moments from previous episodes, while also foreshadowing what lies ahead.

I’ll explain what I mean while reviewing the 10 best needle drops from Season Three of The Bear.

10. R.E.M., “Strange Currencies” (Episode Nine)

An unwritten rule for TV soundtracks is that you don’t repeat songs or draw multiple tracks from the same album. Music supervisors make their money by finding that one song nobody has used yet. Call it The Obviousness Doctrine — going for the more obscure or unique musical option is always viewed as preferable.

The Bear violates this doctrine constantly. Nine Inch Nails’ Ghosts V, the Van Morrison live LP It’s Too Late To Stop Now, Tangerine Dream’s score for Michael Mann’s Thief — this show has returned to these albums repeatedly over three seasons. And that plays into the overarching theme of The Bear, which is about how the past controls the present and the ways in which your omnipresent emotional damage never fully escapes the front of your mind. Your memories don’t change, and the songs that stick in your head don’t really change, either.

And so it goes for “Strange Currencies,” a major song from Season Two that is briefly revived as a love theme for Carmy’s estranged love interest, Claire, in the current season. (It’s the sister song to Refused’s “New Noise,” The Bear’s unofficial “anxiety” theme, which pops up again during Natalie’s frantic pre-labor traffic jam in Episode Eight.)

9. Counting Crows, “A Murder Of One” (Episode Nine)

The stock joke about The Bear is to point out how many times a Wilco song turns up. But the better joke about The Bear is that the show uses Counting Crows at least as often. Whereas Season Three is Wilco free, Counting Crows is now for 3-for-3 after this August And Everything After track popped up at the end of Episode 9 (after “Have You Seen Me Lately” in Season One and “Baby, I’m A Star” in Season Two).

8. The Rolling Stones, “Mixed Emotions” (Episode Five)

Another musical motif of The Bear is an unusual preference for somewhat off-brand classic rock songs. In Season One, the show used “In Too Deep” by Genesis (from their mega-selling 1986 album Invisible Touch) with subtly strategic precision to evoke the setting of a neighborhood Midwestern restaurant, where everything feels static and out-of-date. (As Storer explained to me at the time, it’s that feeling of “even though it’s 2022 out there, it’s 1998 in here.”)

The same could be said of “Mixed Emotions,” the hit single from 1989’s Steel Wheels that is surely playing at some random Chicago beef place as we speak. An added layer of resonance comes from the song’s inspiration — the fractured relationship between Mick Jagger and Keith Richards that nearly derailed The Stones in the mid-’80s — which echoes Carmy’s strained partnerships with Syd and Richie.

7. Weezer, “Getchoo” (Episode Four)

A criticism of The Bear this season concerns Carmy’s abusive behavior toward his co-workers and the alleged rationalization — he’s a tortured guy who’s been emotionally abused by Jamie Lee Curtis and Joel McHale — the show makes on his behalf. Is it possible this guy is just a toxic jerk? Sure. It might even be probable. But this is beside the point from whether he’s an interesting protagonist (which he is).

I would make a similar case for Pinkerton, in which another problematic genius tries to rationalize his behavior even though he might just be a toxic jerk. For that reason, bringing The Bear and Pinkterton together for the closing credits of Episode Four was especially inspired.

6. Smashing Pumpkins, “Disarm” (Episode 10)

Another violation of The Obviousness Doctrine, and not only because Smashing Pumpkins is yet another Chicago band appearing on an already Chicago-saturated soundtrack. “Disarm” was previously used during one of the most dramatic moments in the history of the late great cop show The Shield, another show I love. I know this should make me dislike this choice. But it does not. I was, shall we say, disarmed by this needle drop.

5. Charles Laughton and Walter Schumann, “Main Title/Dream Little One, Dream” (Episode Five)

Forget The Obviousness Doctrine for a second. Pulling the opening theme from the classic 1955 noir The Night Of The Hunter is a big-time “We Know Film History” flex. But what does it mean? The parent-child dynamic — and how it continues even after the child becomes a parent, as evidenced by Natalie’s “expecting mother” storyline this year — is one of The Bear’s central obsessions. But I’m thinking specifically about the scene at the end of Episode Five, in which Uncle Jimmy confides to Syd that he feels responsible for not stepping in to help his niece and nephews when they were kids. It’s the inverse of Robert Mitchum wannabe child-murdering swindler from The Night Of The Hunter, no matter Jimmy’s own mysterious (and possibly criminal?) history.

4. Cocteau Twins, “Pearly-Dewdrops’ Drops” (Episode Four)

Or: Maybe the powers that be were drawn to that Night Of The Hunter song because the word “dream” is in the title. A certain dreaminess recurs in several songs this season. There’s “(Nice Dream)” — from another “house” artist for The Bear, Radiohead — at the end of Episode Two. There’s all that “dream, dream, dream” talk from “A Murder Of One.” And there’s this track from a definitive dream-pop act, a natural accompaniment for one of Carmy’s romanticized daydreams about Claire. Is it possible that Carmy has invented a version of Claire in his mind that doesn’t match up with reality? Do “pearly-dewdrops’ drops” exist in real life? I’m not so sure.

3. Adrianne Lenker, “No Machine” (Episode Seven)

Another “I’m thinking about Claire” song for Carmy. But since this is an Adrianne Lenker heartbreaker, there’s plenty of misery to go around. It also soundtracks Richie’s misery over his ex’s impending marriage and Syd’s growing emotional separation from Carmy. But what I’m most intrigued by is the relative newness of this song — it came out with the rest of Lenker’s stellar 2024 album Bright Future at the end of March. Was this plugged in last minute? Was there another song originally in this spot? Perhaps a different Lenker tune that casually rips your heart out and shows it to you right before you die?

2. James, “Laid” (Episode 10)

A song about how the thing that gets you off eventually becomes an overriding obsession that ruins your life. And the scene that it soundtracks starts off as a party and ends with Syd crying and hyperventilating in the hallway. It’s the perfect capper for the episode, and for a season where nothing and yet everything happens.

1. Nine Inch Nails, “Together”

In the Season Two finale, Storer and Senior took “Hope We Can Again” from Ghosts V and looped it three consecutive times for most of the episode. For the Season Three premiere, they took a different Ghosts V track and did essentially the same thing for possibly the most formally inventive episode of The Bear yet. “Together” is woven so well into the episode that some media outlets initially misreported that it was an original score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross. It’s not. It’s just an extremely well-executed needle drop.

Kate Beckinsale was once saved from a red-carpet wardrobe malfunction by Keanu Reeves, but context matters, and she wasn’t too afraid to show things off from a high rise window overlooking a London department store. The suggestive fruit stylist and former Pete Davidson flame undertook a mission to make herself feel better about a year ago after having an excruciating week.

This involved the loss of a pet and an undisclosed piece of “horrific news,” which (as she wrote on Instagram) left her inviting a girlfriend over “to show up as hard as possible and spend the evening making prank calls and mooning Harvey Nichols.” Then the Underworld star launched into wordplay: “because sometimes when the bottom falls out of your world the only response after crying till you’re sick is your own bottom.”

“Cheeky” is also a word for this stunt, and although the commenters on Kate’s Instagram aren’t exactly enjoying the antics, she apparently has her own way of coping. Too bad she didn’t provide more details on those “prank calls,” although Kate has been in quite a mischievous mood on social media lately. Here’s something about a “58 second fart,” which nobody probably expected from the star of 1996’s Jane Austen’s Emma, but there you go.

(Via PEOPLE)

As we get ever-closer to the July 19 release date for EA Sports College Football 25, we continue to get more and more information about the highly anticipated game. While we got an early look at the game back in May, with a chance to play the game for a few hours and hear a lot about Dynasty mode, Road to Glory, and more, we didn’t get an actual opportunity to see the full mechanics of things outside of gameplay.

Dynasty mode is everything for longtime fans of the game, and on Tuesday, EA Sports released a deep dive video looking into how everything will work, from the coaching carousel to recruiting and the transfer portal. They also provided a 43-page(!) document detailing everything about how the mode will work, and here we will take you through the key elements of the thing that makes Dynasty so fun: the recruiting process and transfer portal.

To start, the good folks at EA listed their four core goals for the recruiting and transfer process that guided their decision-making when it came to building out those areas of Dynasty.

Humanize recruits by giving them unique needs and motivations that the player has to discover by interacting with the recruit

Differentiate regions of the country by player caliber, quality, and type to authentically capture high school talent based on historical real-world data

Represent the different resources available to schools ensuring the top schools can blanket the country, while smaller schools will need to be more targeted with their approach

Make the transfer portal feel authentically unpredictable

My School Grades

Everything starts with your school’s pitch grades for each recruit or portal player, where you’ll have a grade from D- to A+. Those grades are broken into 14 categories, and will cumulatively determine your program’s Team Prestige rating.

Playing Time: How quickly can they get on the field? Each recruit/portal player’s playing time grade will be different as it calculates your current depth chart versus their OVR or projected OVR.
Playing Style: This is built out more than years past, where each player archetype has a stat that links directly to the Playing Style grade. The example they give is a Field General quarterback’s grade will be determined by passing yards.
Championship Contender: How likely you are to win a title, based on top 25 rankings and Bud Elliott’s Blue Chip Ratio.
Program Tradition: Your program’s history and success with titles, wins, and awards.
Campus Lifestyle: This is one of a few grades that you will not be able to impact or change.
Stadium Atmosphere: Where your school ranks on the game’s Toughest Places to Play ranking, which is based on your historical performance at home.
Pro Potential: How often are you developing and sending players to the pros?
Brand Exposure: The NIL stand-in for this year, looking at how often you play national primetime games, your name-brand recognition, and NIL opportunities going to your school affords.
Academic Prestige: Another grade you cannot impact or change.
Conference Prestige: Strength of your conference.
Coach Prestige: Your entire coaching staff matters for this grade in the new game, with the head coach carrying the most weight but coordinators factoring as well.
Coach Stability: How long has a staff been in place and the likelihood they’ll still be there for four more years.
Athletic Facilities: Quality of your facilities (not clear if you can upgrade this one or not).
Proximity To Home: How close your school is to the recruit’s pipeline. Another one you can’t change.

Some grades can change dynamically through the season (Championship Contender, Playing Style, etc.) while others only update at the end of the year. Players will continue to care about these grades while on the roster, as they’ll be determining factors in whether guys look to enter the transfer portal each offseason. You can track your grades in the My School page in the Recruiting Hub, and get a detailed breakdown of why you are graded out in a certain way and see what you need to do to improve it, while also showing you any players on your roster that are at risk for transferring because of that grade — so, you can see if someone who came to your school for playing time isn’t getting enough snaps and decide whether to bump them up the depth chart or let them walk.

Dealbreakers

Each recruit will care about the 14 grades differently and will have three “ideal pitch motivations” they care the most about, with their star rating helping determine some of that. A 5-star will care more about championship contender, brand exposure, and pro potential, for example, while a 2-star will be more likely to care about academics, coach stability, and proximity to home. However, you still could run into a 5-star with proximity to home at the top of his list, and no matter who you are, you could get locked out for that reason.

Your job in recruiting will be to figure out their pitch motivations and pitch them on your school in those areas. Some players will have Dealbreakers for one of their pitch motivations, and if you don’t meet their criteria in that specific area, they will straight up not talk to you. The Dealbreaker also stays with that player for ever, so if Playing Time is their Dealbreaker and they lose their starting spot as a junior, they’re hitting the portal.

Pipeline Changes

This year there are 50 recruiting pipelines in the game, but it’s not as simple as being one for each state. The states that produce the most recruits are split into regions, while other areas are combined. For example, Florida is broken up into North, Central, and South Florida pipeline regions, while Metro Atlanta, East Texas, and Southern California are all unique pipelines as well. Conversely, New York and New Jersey are combined into on pipeline.

They also went beyond just randomly putting recruits into different areas, and worked to identify traits that you tend to see out of each region and put more prospects with those traits into those pipeline areas. For example, Southern California will produce more top QB talent, East Texas will produce big, physical receivers, while South Florida will have more speedy, smaller receivers. While not confirmed, I hope this also means places like Iowa and Wisconsin will produce more big, corn-fed offensive linemen.

The EA team also looked at the last decade of recruiting data to create a tiered ranking system for each school’s pipelines, with there being five levels for each pipeline. That means a smaller school that recruits heavily locally will have a pipeline in that area, but it won’t be as strong as the bigger school nearby. For example, LSU dominates the Gulf Coast and stretches into East Texas, so their pipeline will be stronger in those areas than, say, Tulane which operates in the same areas but doesn’t wield nearly as much power. That pipeline ranking will determine players initial interest in your school, and you’ll be incentivized to stick to recruiting your pipeline — as will the computer schools, meaning you’ll often be competing with the same schools for talent, much like real life. The example they gave is a team like Oregon regularly battling Washington and USC for players in Southern California and Arizona.

Staged Recruiting

Staged recruiting is back in CFB 25, and you’ll go through three phases: Discovery, Pitch, and Close. Each recruit will be in different stages at different times, with some starting by being willing to talk to any team, while others could have a defined top 10, top 8, or even top 5 that they will talk to. You’ll also be dealing with the two signing days like in real life, and there’s plenty of incentive to close the deal by Early Signing Day, as once that’s done, the Transfer Portal opens and you’ll have to balance high school recruiting with the portal.

Stage 1: Discovery

The Discovery phase is all about trying to identify which of the 3,500 recruits the game creates each year you’ll have a legitimate shot at landing as quickly as possible.

Searching The Prospect List

The Prospect List will default to a Recommended filter, using your position needs, pipelines, star rating, and a recruit’s interest in your school to set up the list. You also can filter the list yourself by Position, Player Type (Archetype), State, Minimum Star Rating, Height, Weight, Handedness (QB Only), and Interest in Your School. I will say being able to sort right and left handed QBs is huge, because I can’t stand playing with a lefty as I like rolling out too much and want to roll out to my right naturally. There was nothing worse than working hard to recruit a new top QB and starting your first game only to learn that kid was a lefty.

From the Prospect List you can see bio information on recruits and whether they have a Dealbreaker, their interest in your school, if they fill a team need, what recruiting stage they are in, and how many offers they have. You can then add them to your recruiting board, which once again is capped out at 35 players. To see your team needs in any screen in the Recruiting Hub, you can hit R3/RS to pull up a breakdown of your positional needs, which will also be determined by your scheme — for example, a pass heavy scheme will require you to have 10 WRs while a Pro Style will only require 6.

Recruiting Hours

The number of recruiting hours you have to use each week will be determined by your Team Prestige ranking. Teams with higher prestige have more recruiting hours, while lower-level teams have fewer (just like real life). That means building up a smaller program will take more time and also require you to be really smart about who you’re targeting and investing your time into. For example, 5-star program will get 1,000 preseason recruiting hours, while a 1-star team will get 350 hours. You’ll also get more hours in the preseason and offseason, when there’s not game prep, than during the season, making it imperative to maximize those portions of the year. Each prospect also has a max number of hours you can spend on them, with the standard being 50 but if you have the Always Be ‘Crootin ability as a coach, you’ll be able to spend 70 on a recruit. Your recruiting hours also become your Transfer Portal hours once that opens after Early Signing Day, meaning you’ll have to make some decisions at that point whether to keep chasing high school recruits you’ve spent the year going after or pivoting off some of those kids to go after portal guys.

Scouting

The scouting process has been expanded considerably this year, as you’ll see 10 attributes for each prospect that represent the top 10 ratings for their archetype. To learn those attributes, you’ll have to scout the player and each attribute has four levels of scouting: Unscouted, Partially Scouted, Mostly Scouted, and Fully Scouted. Unscouted attributes will have ???, Partially Scouted attributes will have a bar from 0-99 and a gold zone over 25 percent that indicates the range that attribute could be in, Mostly Scouted narrows that bar to 10 percent giving a much better idea of where they’re at, while Fully Scouted gives you a firm number. Every time you scout a player you’ll get different information, and each attribute will reveal itself at different rates. You’ll also learn that player’s Mental and Physical abilities as you go through the scouting process.

The Gem/Bust system is also back, as you can find diamonds in the rough as you scout, or you may find out that the highly rated prospect isn’t actually that good. As a small school, scouting will be vital to your success and ability to quickly improve your program, as finding underrated recruits will give you a chance to make up the talent gap quicker. The level of variance on gems and busts will be higher for low-level recruits (like in real life), creating more opportunity to find some sneaky talent. There will be 5-star busts and 4-star gems, but those players are better known and more likely to end up in the expected zones.

Finding The Pitch

Once you’ve done your initial scout and decided to make a move to really recruit a guy, you will begin trying to figure out what’s important to them and learn what their three ideal motivations are so you can craft your pitch once you get into their top 5. To do so, there are five actions you can take each week in recruiting with a player. Each of the actions has a recruiting hour cost and a benefit that goes along with it.

Offer Scholarship: Scholarships show the prospect you are very interested in them. As a result, you will gain a small weekly influence bonus with the prospect after offering them a scholarship. Additionally, you will not be able to bring them on campus for an official visit or receive a commitment from a prospect until you’ve offered them a scholarship.
Search Social Media: Spend some time scrolling through the player’s social media to learn a little bit more about them. This will also give you a very small amount of influence when they see you liked their story. Just be careful not to like an image from three years ago.
DM the Player: Message the player directly on social media to start a conversation and learn more information about them. DMs will give you a small amount of influence as you start to build that relationship.
Contact Friends and Family: Make a few phone calls to the player’s family and close friends to learn a lot more about what the prospect values. This action will also gain a significant amount of influence with the prospect when word gets back to them that you called and when Grandma starts raving about you and your program at Thanksgiving dinner.
Send the House: From the recruiting coordinator to every other coach on your staff, send every available resource you have after a prospect to gain as much influence with them as possible.

As you learn information, you’ll uncover which motivations they care about (a green check) and which they don’t (a red X).

Stage 2: Pitch

Once you’ve reached a recruit’s Top 5, you’ll be in the pitch stage. How much time you spent gathering information in the Discovery stage will determine how confident you can be going into this point. The more you know, the more confident you can be in making your pitch, because pitching the wrong thing (i.e., a motivation they don’t care about) will knock you down their list. You can do a Soft Sell or a Hard Sell on a prospect. The Soft Sell gives you a smaller amount of influence if you choose the correct pitch but with less risk of hurting your standing with the recruit for pitching the wrong thing. A Hard Sell offers the biggest upside for the correct pitch, but if you miss the mark, you’ll take a tumble down their board.

There are 20 pitches you can make that are different combinations of the 14 grades. For example, there is Sunday Bound, which sells a recruit on championship contender, conference prestige, and pro potential. How successful your pitch choice is will be determined by how much those motivations matter to the recruit and what your school’s grades are in those areas. If your school doesn’t align with a recruit’s ideal pitch, you can try and sway them and change their motivations to something your school is better at. If that’s successful, it’ll create a second ideal pitch for that player that may better align with your school by pushing for a pitch that’s close but takes out a weakness of your school.

The example EA provided is if the ideal pitch for a recruit is Hometown Hero (Campus Lifestyle, Proximity to Home, Program Tradition), you could try and sway them to the College Experience pitch (Academic Prestige, Campus Lifestyle, Stadium Atmosphere) if you don’t have the Tradition or Proximity to Home elements in your favor.

Stage 3: Close

The final stage in recruiting is the visit, which you can schedule once you’re in the top 5 and have offered them a scholarship. You will only be able to host four recruits in a week (and, as always, on a home game or bye week), so you’ll have to be smart about when you schedule guys. Complementary and Competitive visits are also back, meaning you’ll want to bring a quarterback and receiver on the same week to get a boost, but avoid bringing all your QBs the same week as you’ll lose points.

Who you play will also matter, as you get Gameday Stakes which will determine your influence bonus for that week if you win, or how detrimental a loss would be. A big game against a rival or highly ranked opponent brings a big time bonus opportunity and lower downside, while bringing a kid to a game against a low-level opponent will bring minimal bonuses and the chance to lose a lot of points with the recruit if you lose.

Once you’ve scheduled a recruit for a visit (which counts for 40 hours of recruiting, but doesn’t count towards their max), you will determine which activities they will do. There are 14 activities, corresponding to a pitch grade, and you’ll want to choose activities that show off something your school is great at that the recruit also cares about to maximize that visit. If you do well on a visit, you could get a verbal commitment. However, that’s not the end of the journey, as you’ll have to stay on top of that recruit up until signing day to get that official signed commitment letter or risk a decommitment.

Signing Day

Early Signing Day comes to the game this year, and recruits that have verbally committed (and stayed committed) will sign once Early Signing Day arrives at the start of Bowl Season. That means they’re locked in and you can shift attention to the portal (which opens right after ESD). Those that haven’t committed will remain part of the recruiting process through Signing Day, which takes place seven weeks after the National Championship — and is also when transfers will sign. Also, no longer will a player go from being actively recruited to just not committing anywhere. Some low-level guys that weren’t getting recruited at all will become walk-ons, but a guy being recruited will not just fade off into the ether.

The Transfer Portal

The biggest addition to the game is the Portal. Dealbreakers and motivations will stay with players once they’re in school, and as your My School grades change, you could end up losing a player to the portal. That may be Playing Time if you bring in guys that will challenge him for his spot, or it could be hirings and firings to your coaching staff that change your Coach Prestige rating or Play Style that could push a guy out. You also can lose high OVR guys to the NFL, as their draft round projection will show next to them when they tell you they’re leaving.

Once a player says they’re leaving, you can choose to try and convince them to stay. You will have a limited number of persuasion attempts, and you’ll be able to see the likelihood of convincing a player to stick around. It’ll be harder to convince higher OVR players to stay, but your coach archetype build and coaching skills can give you boosts in this area.

You also can encourage a player to transfer if you need that roster spot. You can’t push a new freshman signee into the portal, but you can encourage a player already on the roster to transfer out if you need to dip under the 85-man roster limit.

The portal will open alongside offseason recruiting and will last four weeks. Some players will commit quickly, as players will have schools in mind (just like real life) and they’ll all sign on Signing Day at the end along with the remaining high school recruits. Recruiting the portal takes the same hours as recruiting high school guys, meaning you’ll have to decide how you want to allocate those recruiting hour resources in the offseason. Five-star guys in the portal will only consider five schools, and if you’re not in their top 5, you won’t be able to talk with them. Lower tiered portal recruits may be more open to hearing offers from all over.

The recruiting process will be the same as with high school recruits, but things will move much faster. You’ll have recruiting actions, pitch your school, and bring them on campus, but it all happens in a very short window of four weeks.

Americans are known as some of the best salespeople in the world. The country has been the home of some of the most influential business communicators of all time, like Steve Jobs of Apple or filmmaker Walt Disney. America is also the birthplace of people who became legends for their ability to excite people with their incredible, audacious promotional skills, such as P.T. Barnum or Muhammad Ali.

There’s also a dark side to the uniquely American gift of gab. Americans have the reputation of being masters of BS. Hunter S. Thompson, a writer with a fondness for exaggeration, once referred to America as a “nation of 220 million used car salesmen.”

An X user named Alz, born in Hong Kong, was curious about why Americans are so great at sales, presenting ideas, and (less favorably) BS-ing than people in other countries. The tweet went viral, receiving over 1.4 million views. Nearly everyone agreed that Americans are the world’s best salespeople, but there were many different answers to why.

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“Why are Americans, on average, so incredibly good at presenting/selling/ (you could uncharitably call it) BS-ing? Is it something about early/middle/high school education? Culture? Parents teaching their kids?” Alz asked.

“I troll, but this is an incredibly important skill, and for some reason observationally, America, which has an early education system few are generally jealous of, seems to systematically produce ppl with a much higher distribution of presentation ability than anywhere else,” Alz continued.

I troll but this is an incredibly important skill, and for some reason observationally, America, which has a early education system few are generally jealous of, seems to systematically produce ppl with a much higher distribution of presentation ability than anywhere else

— alz (@alz_zyd_) May 30, 2024

Some respondents believe Americans are great at sales because so many work in the service sector. Over the past 50 years, globalization has altered the labor landscape, with many jobs moving from manufacturing to the service sector. Thus, Americans have learned to place a significant value on those who can communicate one-on-one, such as people who work in hospitality, retail, or personal training.

Honestly I think it’s because we were the first major economy to really transition from an industrial to service based economy. The vast majorities of our jobs are all about providing a service, and many of those are about selling said service as well

— Alex (@nycwebs90) May 30, 2024

The service sector in the U.S. reached 70% of GDP when millennials were born (circa 1990). My theory is that kids raised in a service-sector family have these traits. pic.twitter.com/1cN9kn3s9D

— Jiageng Liu (@jiageng_liu) May 30, 2024

Others believe Americans have the gift of gab because its education system highly values communication skills, which are favorable in the business world. However, some believe this emphasis comes at the expense of STEM skills, which are seen as more important in other countries.

Probably the fact that *every* class in primary school had multiple presentations a year.

Its probably the easiest way to pass time in a classroom, split the 30 students into 10 groups of 3, have each present for 15 minutes, boom that’s like 3 days of no work.

— John Ruf (@JohnRuf6) May 30, 2024

It is the education system My daughter was taught to write, critique, present, argue, structure and edit from kindergarten. Woven through her school experience. It is pretty amazing.

— Neela Saldanha (@NeelaSaldanha) May 30, 2024

American education emphasizes synthesis, argument, and persuasion over rote memorization and rule-following.

Identifying patterns + convincing others

Which is maybe surprising b/c we also infantilize our youth, giving them very little personal freedom outside the classroom.

— Joey Katzen (@joeykatzen) May 30, 2024

Many people think Americans are great communicators because it’s crucial to be able to sell and persuade in a competitive, free-market capitalist system. If you aren’t able to sell the goods and services you provide and produce, then it doesn’t matter if you’re in business at all. Further, American business culture is also seen as more relationship-based than in other countries, where buying and selling is merely transactional.

This is a great question and having lived in the US for a few years here’s what I think:

America is a capitalist society and this capitalism is rooted in a Protestant ethos (Max Weber has a book on it).

In this Protestant worldview, creating a business means serving the…

— Mushtaq Bilal, PhD (@MushtaqBilalPhD) May 30, 2024

The free market rewards it

— Triple Bankshot (@triplebankshot) May 30, 2024

I’ve wondered the same thing. It’s definitely cultural, and I think it’s connected to how Americans tend to do business relationally rather than transactionally. Europeans often take a more formal, regulated approach while American business is more trust-based.

— Gil Gildner (@gilgildner) May 30, 2024

Social mobility and the myth of the “self-made man” basically inculcates the idea that anyone can talk themselves into wealth and status. Plenty of these types are lionized in American history.

— David Kiferbaum (@DavidKiferbaum) May 30, 2024

It could be that it’s all part of a culture that values openness and confidence which bleeds over into other aspects of American life. Persuasion and sales come a lot more naturally to people who’ve been raised with zero fear of calling attention to themselves. Outside the business world, Americans are also seen as friendly in social situations and have no problem engaging in small talk with strangers. Americans’ extroverted nature can sometimes shock people who travel to the U.S. on vacation.

Founding principles of the country. You can do anything here.

It’s highly ingrained within society

— Ashish “Logmaster” (@ashishlogmaster) May 31, 2024

Egalitarianism. Americans learn naturally to speak to everyone as if they were friends. This is good for sales although not everywhere in the world.

— Alex Tabarrok 🛡️ (@ATabarrok) May 31, 2024

I’m going to throw it out there: Because Americans are also REALLY good at buying things – they’re great consumers of products and ideas. Old world places – like Europe tend to be suspicious of new ideas (but not ideologies it seems) which makes selling them much harder.

— James Clark 📈📉¯_(ツ)_/¯ (@mr_james_c) May 31, 2024

High openness. People are not afraid of talking with others.

The fact that one might call it “BS-ing” might indicate the root cause issue of why others are not good at it.

— Peter Kazanjy (@Kazanjy) May 30, 2024

Or, it could be that Americans just have a ‘rizz that’s the envy of the world.

Yeah I don’t know how else to describe it except calling it a culture of rizz, it’s a huge difference I noticed coming here from Europe as a kid

— dog that lays eggs (@l_wzbr) May 30, 2024

It’s called CHARISMA, and we invented it

— Rhett Ullmann (@rhettullmann) May 30, 2024

In case you missed it, Donald Glover made waves at the 2024 BET Awards this weekend when he took the stage to lament his lack of historical success at the awards. He joked, “It doesn’t really make sense: I have more Grammys than Will Smith, which makes no sense, but I have the same amount of BET Awards as Sam Smith. Does that make sense to you guys? Me and Sam Smith are neck-in-neck at the Black Entertainment Television…”

Will Smith, it turns out, is a fan of the bit.

On Instagram yesterday (July 1), Smith shared a video of himself in what looks like a hair and makeup room, watching the aforementioned part of Glover’s speech on a TV. He laughed after he was mentioned, then let out a bigger laugh at the Sam Smith punchline.

Glover was up for Best Actor at this weekend’s show, ultimately coming up short as the honor went to Denzel Washington. Glover was also part of the massive Usher tribute performance, opening the multi-artist medley by singing Usher’s “U Don’t Have To Call.”

Will Smith didn’t have any nominations, but he was on hand to give a performance of a very Kanye West-like new song.

We have to go back… to watching Lost. Every episode of the ABC series, which follows the survivors of a plane crash who land on a mysterious island (to severely understate the premise), is now available on Netflix. So get ready for renewed arguments about whether the series finale is good or not. Yay!(?).

The best way to watch Lost is to, well, watch every episode of Lost in order (no matter what some people claim). But if you only had time to watch a single episode — the one that’s considered the best — what episode should you pick? The pilot is a good place to start, obviously, but that’s not the top-rated episode, according to IMDb users. That honor belongs to season four’s “The Constant,” with a 9.7 rating. It’s not only the objectively correct best episode of Lost. It’s one of the best episodes of any TV show this century.

Written by showrunners Carlton Cuse and Damon Lindelof, “The Constant” is an time-travel episode focused on Desmond (played by Henry Ian Cusick) whose consciousness keeps jumping from 1996, from before he was trapped on the island, to 2004, and back again. While in the past, he finds his ex-girlfriend (his constant), Penny (Sonya Walger), and tells her not to change her phone number as he’ll call her on Christmas Eve in the future. You will cry.

Composer Michael Giacchino didn’t have to go this hard, but he did. For us.

But seriously, start watching Lost from the beginning.

Alan Ritchson’s notorious stature left Guy Ritchie unable to find anybody big enough to fight him in The Ministry of Ungentlemanly Warfare — although Reacher‘s third season definitely found somebody — so he slipped on a pair of tiny glasses in an effort to un-Reacher himself. That didn’t quite work, so Ritchson is trying harder with his tattoo miracle worker‘s help.

The Blue Mountain State: The Rise of Thailand star will soon lead Motor City, an upcoming action thriller from Wanted director Timur Bekmambetov, and magic needed to happen in order from him to disappear into a new role. Did it work? Well, he’s got a new head of hair and slightly less bright teeth, and he needed to “drop weight fast,” but there’s only so much that a dude can do within a few days. As he wrote on Instagram, “I refuse to play myself.”

Additionally, he did make clear that, for Motor City, he wanted to “get as close to unrecognizable as possible,” but “[n]ot having days off between jobs makes it hard to go as far as I want.” How did he do?

Well, he failed at “unrecognizable,” but he did so with style and made a valiant effort. If there’s a “good” type of fail, Ritchson nailed it with aplomb. In a different post, his snack time cravings on set are also something else. Apples, peanut butter, and M&Ms? Craft services must have so much fun with him.

According to Variety, Ritchson’s Motor City character, John Miller, leaves prison in Detroit and embarks upon a vengeance-filled rampage. The movie shall be “characterized by immersive visual storytelling, with stunningly choreographed and stylized action sequences.” And plenty of hair, too.

Meanwhile, we are hanging tight for a Reacher return date.

While Drake’s beef with Kendrick Lamar appears to have largely died down, his feud of Rick Ross has been picking up steam. Days ago, Ross got punched by some apparent Drake supporters in Canada, and now the rappers are trading blows on social media.

As HotNewHipHop notes, Drake shared a photo of himself on Instagram yesterday (July 1), sitting outside wearing a sleeveless Toronto Raptors shirt. Tia Kemp, Ross’ ex and the mother of one of his children, commented, “Drakeeeeee,” along with a starry-eyed emoji. Drake responded, “my goat.”

Ross didn’t take this lying down: He tagged Drake in a comment of his own and wrote, “pedo vs. granny.”

Earlier this month, Ross celebrated the fact that he had paid his last child support payment. Kemp didn’t like that, as she responded (as Complex notes), “Listen here, b*tch — every day I’m f*cking hustlin’. I heard you was over there talking about you the best Father’s Day gift you could have got was you sending your last child support pay payment or something. You stupid, silly motherf*cker. Who the f*ck give a f*ck about your child support payments, b*tch? And if I want some more, I’ll take my ass over to family court and get some while he going to college.”