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The unfortunate end of an era has come in the world of Jeopardy! The death of Alex Trebek after a bout with pancreatic cancer occurred late last year, and at the conclusion of last week, the program ran through all of the episodes that were filmed before his passing.

This has led to a ton of speculation about who will take over the reins of the television institution, which Trebek had hosted since 1984. Figuring that out on a full-time basis is still up in the air, but we have seen the show experiment in the aftermath of his death, with Jeopardy! GOAT and person who is speculated to be a potential full-time host Ken Jennings getting a crack at things this week.

Once his residency on the Jeopardy! stage is done, the show will move on to other guests. One such person will be Green Bay Packers quarterback Aaron Rodgers, who appeared on The Pat McAfee Show and revealed that he’s going to spend some time at the lectern where his “idol” once stood.

“They’re doing some guest hosting spots, and it’s gonna be released here pretty soon, but I got the opportunity to do one of those,” the odds-on favorite to win the NFL MVP award said.

As Rodgers mentioned in the clip, he has appeared on the show in the past. His Celebrity Jeopardy! cameo went well, as he knocked off Shark Tank star Kevin O’Leary and former astronaut/current U.S. Senator Mark Kelly to win $50,000 for Midwest Athletes Against Childhood Cancer. There’s no word on when it will air, but at the very least, we don’t expect him to try and make this a permanent move any time soon as long as he keeps up his play on the gridiron.

It’s been a volatile week around the country. Last Wednesday, violent Trump supporters stormed the Capital building in D.C. in a surreal and disturbing scene that was unlike anything we’ve witnessed. The fallout is still ongoing, but it has since prompted athletes to respond with peaceful protests, such as kneeling during the national anthem, an act that has been hypocritically vilified by the same faction that took part in the riot in Washington.

Several NBA teams took a knee during the anthem last week, and over the weekend, some college teams joined them in solidarity. The Kentucky Wildcats were chief among them, which has since erupted into a whole slew of controversy that has even involved local police.

After players knelt before Saturday’s game against Florida, Laurel County Sheriff John Root and County Jailer Jamie Mosley posted videos on social media of them burning Kentucky uniforms.

Together as one pic.twitter.com/4cWrZw8z74

— Kentucky Basketball (@KentuckyMBB) January 9, 2021

Since then, university officials have voiced their support for the team with school president Eli Capilouto and athletic director Mitch Barnhart issuing a joint statement defending their right to peaceful protest, via Myron Medcalf of ESPN.

“A value we all hold dear in our country is the right of free speech and self-expression,” Capilouto and Barnhart said in a joint statement. “That right for young students such as these is important, too, as they learn, grow, and find out who they are and what they believe. We won’t always agree on every issue. However, we hope to agree about the right of self-expression, which is so fundamental to who we are as an institution of higher learning. We live in a polarized and deeply divided country. Our hope — and that of our players and our coaches — is to find ways to bridge divides and unify.”

The backlash was expected, but no less stunning in the double-standard that has been routinely applied to athletes over the past year. Still, it’s crucial that the university come out and support their team for simply exercising what is arguably the most American of rights.

(ESPN)

The NBA season appears to be nearing a crisis point, as the league has now reached five games being postponed — three of which have involved the Boston Celtics. Two other teams, the Mavs and Wizards, have recently had to shut down their facilities due to positive tests.

As case counts rise across the country in the post-holiday season, the NBA finds itself in a precarious position. They pushed for the pre-Christmas start date and seemed to hope that regular testing would be enough to mitigate the spread and keep games on track. However, unlike football and baseball, which played seasons outside of a bubble atmosphere (up until the playoffs when the MLB went to a bubble setting), basketball faced a unique challenge that would be far more difficult to navigate.

For one, the numbers game was against the NBA, which has 17-man rosters (expanded from 15). This means nine players out for injury or health and safety protocols would lead to postponements. On top of that, playing more games with more travel meant more opportunity for spread, and the nature of basketball having more continuous contact on the court than even football — where it’s really just the lines in those tight quarters consistently — and you have a recipe for trouble.

As such, the league and players association got together on Monday to work out updates to the safety protocols that, in effect, will try to replicate how players were handled in the Disney Bubble, just without the controlled environment (which was the biggest reason for the Bubble’s success).

We’ll see how much this helps, if at all. There is certainly something to be said for mitigating the opportunities for spread between players and teams, and these protocols try to limit that contact to what is only absolutely necessary for playing games. That is a good thing to try, but the reason the NBA Bubble worked was because it was a controlled environment that, once they got everyone in and tested through, could keep it that way. The problem now is, even the best laid plans can go awry with travel and players at home, and beyond that it will be very difficult to enforce these rules all the time, whereas in the Bubble players had no choice but to follow protocols because there wasn’t another option.

The league apparently didn’t have a choice of trying another Bubble, as players (understandably, I must add) had that as a non-starter. However, this was the risk they ran in trying to play basketball in home markets with regular travel, and even with these new measures in place, I think most are skeptical that it will change much at all with regards to postponements and teams playing with hastily thrown together rotations of eight or nine players.

While live touring remains shut down until at least fall this year, many artists and event organizers will continue to host virtual versions of their popular festivals. ASAP Mob has joined the trend, announcing that the 2021 Yams Day will be a virtual event live streaming on January 18, plugging the festival with a hilarious documentary-style trailer that finds ASAP Rocky accosting random people in the street to implore their attendance. There’s even a subtle call-out to the late MF DOOM, whose mask appears via an illustration floating over a fan’s face.

The video also includes the website YamsDay.com, but doesn’t offer up much other information besides that. At Yams Day 2020, the crew paid homage to their favorite WWE wrestlers and invited guest stars Kenny Beats, Lil Yachty, Metro Boomin, Nav, Pi’erre Bourne, Slowthai, Smooky MarGielaa, Young M.A., and more to perform at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, New York.

The Yams Day tradition started in 2015 as the Harlem-based rap collective sought to pay homage to their departed founder ASAP Yams, who died that year as a result of an overdose. Yams was instrumental in the group’s rise to prominence, helping to engineer the breakouts of ASAP Rocky and ASAP Ferg, and was referred to by them as “the mastermind behind the scenes.”

For more information, which is presumably forthcoming, visit YamsDay.com.

For years, the website Bandsintown has been a leader in helping music fans stay up to date on what concerts are happening where. Last year, there wasn’t much data for them to track, but they’ve bounced back with a strong new idea for 2021: They have launched Bandsintown Plus, a livestream concert subscription service.

For $9.99 per month (a 7-day trial is available), the Bandsintown Plus website promises “over 25 streaming shows a month with all your favorite artists,” “Q+As, live chats, and exclusive interviews,” “HD image and hi-fi-sound,” “exclusive interactive events with artists,” and “new shows and series added every week.”

They got a lineup of esteemed musicians to kick things off, as they have shows on the way in January and February from Adrianne Lenker, Chrome Sparks, Chromeo, Claud, Empress Of, Fleet Foxes (“solo,” so probably just Robin Pecknold), Flying Lotus, Nicole Miglis, Ian Isiah, Jeff Tweedy, Little Dragon, Local Natives, Lomelda, Omar Apollo, Phoebe Bridgers, Poolside, Q, Rexx Life Raj, Rodrigo y Gabriela, Sir Chloe, Soccer Mommy, Toro y Moi (DJ set), Tycho, Wallow, Waxahatchee, and “more TBA.”

For music fans who have enjoyed livestream concerts during the pandemic, $10 a month for a livestream show pretty much every day sounds like a great deal, so learn more about Bandsintown Plus here.

Pennsylvania Lt. Governor John Fetterman is a verified Shakespeare when it comes to crafting articulate, downright eloquent takedowns of the worst GOP members.

Take his recent Josh Hawley takedown for example. Fetterman, who just announced a prospective Senate bid, guested on a Daily Beast podcast recently and unloaded on the senator from Missouri who championed Trump’s Electoral College challenge. Speaking to host and former GOP campaign consultant Rick Wilson, Fetterman called out Hawley for refusing to recognize Pennsylvania’s electoral votes, and for at least indirectly inspiring the attack by MAGA supporters on Capitol Hill last week.

“You know, he went to Stanford and Yale Law,” Fetterman said when addressing Hawley’s actions last week. “He knows better than anybody that this is all garbage. And this is the point, and that’s what makes him so reprehensible. You know, I don’t care what your political beliefs are. If you’re willing to damage and endanger over your ambition, your soul is dipped in dogsh*t. I don’t know how else to say it.”

Hawley infamously supported challenging the electoral college votes, which certified that Joe Biden had been elected president, claiming there was enough evidence of voter fraud and malpractice by certain states to warrant an investigation. Of course, plenty of court judges disagreed with him, throwing out lawsuits from Trump’s legal team by an embarrassing amount, but that didn’t stop Hawley from continuing to dissent, even after domestic terrorists stormed the Capitol and appeared ready to hold Congress hostage in the hopes of keeping Trump in power.

But being told your “soul is dipped in dogsh*t” also feels like just the right insult for someone who threw a tantrum over losing his book deal after sparking a political coup. Let this be a lesson to all GOP clout-chasers: don’t invoke George Orwell if you’ve never read 1984 before.

(Via Daily Beast & RawStory)

The Alabama Crimson Tide are national champions once more. On Monday night, Nick Saban’s bunch took on the Ohio State Buckeyes in the College Football Playoff championship game, and by the time the dust settled, the Tide came out on top, 52-24, cementing themselves as the undisputed kings of college football.

The score matched up with how the game looked. While the Buckeyes are an excellent team, Alabama appeared to just be a cut above — they outgained Ohio State by nearly 300 yards and did not trail at any point. That’s how it looked to the untrained eye, at least, because Bama running back Najee Harris made it clear after the game that he did not exactly have a good time playing against the Big Ten champions’ defense.

Harris was asked about “effortlessly” dicing up the Buckeyes to the tune of 158 total yards and three total touchdowns. When that specific word came out of the reporter’s mouth, Harris made a face and stressed that he had to work awfully hard to move the ball against the opposing front seven.

“Bruh, they was blowin’ my ass up,” Harris said. “You trippin’.”

A case can be made that this is the best team that Saban has ever had in Tuscaloosa, and their ability to make something as hard as playing against a very good defense look easy deserves plenty of admiration. Just don’t say that they didn’t have to work to make it happen, because they will not agree.

One of the primary jobs of being a parent is setting a good example and teaching your children right from wrong. 18-year-old Helena Duke caught her mother being a terrible role model and, in a powerful reversal, punished her for it publicly.

What else can you do after catching your mother harassing a Black woman while attempting to overthrow the U.S. government?

It all started when Helena’s mother, Therese Duke, claimed she was going to visit Helena’s aunt to accompany her for a medical procedure. However, Helena suspected she was really going to Washington, D.C. to attend the “Stop the Steal” Trump rally near the White House.

Therese conveniently turned off the geo-tracking app on her phone so she wouldn’t get caught.

But as the rioters have learned over the past week, there were a lot of cameras and photos taken of the insurgency. The day after the riot, Helena’s cousin sent her the video of a physical encounter on the stress of D.C. that featured some familiar faces.

The video shows multiple people harassing a Black woman who eventually becomes fed up and punches a woman in the face. That woman is Therese.

“My initial reaction was more like, Oh my gosh, I was right. I was actually right about them being there,” Helena told BuzzFeed News. “It was very surreal because it was an insane video, first of all, and then it was the revelation that, Oh, that’s my mother. That’s her.”

So Helena decided to out her mother as well as her aunt and uncle for their participation in the ugly scene.

On Thursday, Helena texted her mother asking where she was on Wednesday and didn’t receive a response. The day after, Helena texted again asking, “how’s your nose?”

“Please call me or talk to me if you really wanna know,” her mom wrote.

A big reason why Helena outed her family is that she had been kicked out of the house multiple times for being a liberal lesbian and attending a Black Lives Matter protest. Her mother was once a Democrat, but after Trump’s election, became a right-wing extremist.

“She told me she thought Black Lives Matter was a violent organization and they would be inciting violence,” she recalled.

“I always felt almost heartbroken over how they viewed the world and how skewed it was and how they wouldn’t allow me to express my views. But showing that they can act in such a horrible way is just really appalling to me,” she said.

“I am honestly very disappointed to have to be part of this family that is so…just, very not welcoming or supportive,” she added. “I don’t feel safe being part of this family.”

The Black woman, who later identified herself as Ashanti, was arrested for the assault but claims she wasn’t the aggressor in the heated situation.

“A video has surfaced where I was surrounded by a group of Trump extremists, and I honestly feared for my life. The video makes me look like I am the aggressor, but it does not show what happened prior to my defending myself,” she wrote on a GoFundMe page.

“People shoved me, tried to take my phone and keys, yelled racial epithets at me, and tried to remove my mask,” she wrote. “I asked them to social distance and stay out of my personal space due to COVID. They refused, and I was afraid of being hurt and harmed. After being assaulted, I defended myself.”

In the video, a man who was identified by Helena as her uncle, Richard Lorenz, is seen throwing a punch.

via Twitter

Since Helena’s tweet about her family went viral, her mother has been fired from her job at UMass Memorial Medical Center.

Helena has started a GoFundMe campaign to help with her college expenses.

Exactly one year ago tomorrow, the nominees for the 92nd Academy Awards — a.k.a. the Parasite Oscars — were announced. That won’t be the case for this year’s Oscars, after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences pushed back the ceremony from late February to mid-April and the eligibility period to February 28. Meaning, any film released between January 1, 2020 (like Sonic the Hedgehog) and the end of next month can be nominated for an Academy Award, including Judas and the Black Messiah.

The biopic, produced by Ryan Coogler and starring Daniel Kaluuya as Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and LaKeith Stanfield as FBI informant William O’Neal, will premiere at the Sundance Film Festival on February 1 before hitting theaters and HBO Max on February 12. Warner Bros. is clearly positioning Judas and the Black Messiah for a big Oscar night. With a cast that talented, can you blame the studio?

Here’s the official plot synopsis:

FBI informant William O’Neal infiltrates the Illinois Black Panther Party and is tasked with keeping tabs on their charismatic leader, Chairman Fred Hampton. A career thief, O’Neal revels in the danger of manipulating both his comrades and his handler, Special Agent Roy Mitchell. Hampton’s political prowess grows just as he’s falling in love with fellow revolutionary Deborah Johnson. Meanwhile, a battle wages for O’Neal’s soul. Will he align with the forces of good? Or subdue Hampton and the Panthers by any means, as FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover commands?

Directed by Shaka King, Judas and the Black Messiah also stars Jesse Plemons, Dominique Fishback, Martin Sheen, Ashton Sanders, and Algee Smith.

Dan Le Batard has ventured off on his own after two decades at ESPN, as the longtime columnist, radio host, and TV personality parted ways with the four-letter on January 4 with an emotional goodbye on Highly Questionable.

In the week-plus since, Le Batard’s radio show has been doing a “pirate” broadcast now that it is independent and while there was ample speculation about where the wildly popular show would land, the answer we got over the weekend was that Le Batard and former ESPN chief John Skipper would be teaming up to launch a new media company. While we don’t know specifics on a launch date for the new outlet or even a name, we do have some details on who they will be targeting to bring on board.

According to Front Office Sports, they are going after a number of Le Batard’s former ESPN colleagues, including Jemele Hill (who confirmed discussions in the story), Bomani Jones, Kate Fagan, and Erik Rydholm — the producer and creator of Highly Questionable, PTI, and much of ESPN’s afternoon block.

“We’re trying to figure out the most productive way to work together,” Hill told Front Office Sports. “Both John and Dan know I have such a deep level of respect for them. So me working with them again always felt like it was inevitable.”

Hill has a number of projects she is working on, like her Vice show Stick To Sports with Cari Champion as well as a Spotify podcast, so it seems the biggest hurdle is figuring out exactly what her role would be and how involved she is. Jones is still under contract with ESPN, having taken over Highly Questionable in Le Batard’s absence among other responsibilities, so swiping him away would be quite the task.

In any case, the Le Batard and Skipper company clearly has a vision for the type of personality they want to bring on board and see themselves as capable of landing some very big fish — which also indicates they will have ample funding behind them.