Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

if you can’t see it, then you are useless in the fight to stop it.

No offense, but this thread hasn’t been about you for quite a while.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

If you thought you’d already seen people saying the stupidest things possible on the internet, prepare yourselves.

Baby steps, because the Republican Party is full of angry babies.

Republican obstruction dressed up as bipartisanship. Again.

Yeah, with this crowd one never knows.

I did not have this on my fuck 2022 bingo card.

Let me eat cake. The rest of you could stand to lose some weight, frankly.

Can we lighten up on the doomsday scenarios?

Nikki Haley, who can’t acknowledge ‘slavery’, is a pathetic shill.

When do the post office & the dmv weigh in on the wuhan virus?

If you are still in the gop, you are either an extremist yourself, or in bed with those who are.

Republicans don’t want a speaker to lead them; they want a hostage.

Some judge needs to shut this circus down soon.

Oh FFS you might as well trust a 6-year-old with a flamethrower.

If marriage is the equivalent of selling yourself into slavery, women with self respect should reject the offer.

I desperately hope that, yet again, I am wrong.

Joe Biden can go out like FDR, not by dying in office, but by crushing the fascists.

I conferred with the team and they all agree – still not tired of winning!

Stamping your little feets and demanding that they see how important you are? Not working anymore.

Washington Post’s Catch and Kill, not noticeably better than the Enquirer’s.

If you tweet it in all caps, that makes it true!

“But what about the lurkers?”

You are here: Home / Economics / C.R.E.A.M. / Late Night Open Thread: Bad Sports

Late Night Open Thread: Bad Sports

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The winners of the 2026 World Cup men’s soccer tournament will hoist the vaunted gold trophy at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, FIFA announced Sunday.

Gov. Phil Murphy was among the first to spread the stunning announcement from the worldwide soccer body that the East Rutherford venue will host the tournament’s final game…

News reports and speculation in the sport in recent weeks had the final match going to AT&T Stadium in Texas, home of the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys.

This past fall, Murphy said MetLife Stadium had a 50/50 shot at hosting the final — scheduled for July 19, 2026.

In all, MetLife will host eight games in the tournament, Murphy and FIFA said.

FIFA previously announced the 2026 tournament would have some firsts: Canada, Mexico and the United States would host, the first time three nations would do so, and 48 teams would qualify, up from 32 teams.

The tournament starts June 11, 2026…

(Looks like Ted Cruz remains a sports jinx for his state.)

======
And yet the Meadowlands World Cup may end up as just the second-worst sporting event of the decade…


Per Vice, “Tech Libertarians Fund Drug-Fueled ‘Olympics’ Where ‘Doping’ Is a Slur”:

The Peter Thiel-backed sports organization that is building “the Olympics of the future” for athletes using steroids (and other enhancers) is employing the language of inclusivity, oppression and libertarianism in its push for acceptance in the broader athletic world.

“After all, if it’s your body, it should be your choice,” the organization states on its website.

The so-called Enhanced Games has been at the center of a firestorm of media coverage in recent days after announcing that it had closed a multi-million dollar seed round that included funding by Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and government contractor, and venture capitalist Balaji Srinivasan, who is currently also engaged in a project to build new libertarian “network states” that run on Bitcoin.

The for-profit organization—which is the brainchild of its president, Aron D’Souza, best known for his role in the Thiel-backed lawsuit that brought Gawker Media down—bills itself as a “modern reinvention of the Olympic Games” that embraces performance enhancers and scientific progress…

The organization’s goals are many, but a primary one is “elevating humanity to its full potential” by making athletes as strong and fast as possible—using whatever enhancers are made available to them—and pushing back “against the anti-science dogma” and “oppression” that it believes proliferates throughout the sporting world.

Christian Angermayer, a venture capitalist and investor in the project, said in a statement that the program aligned his “vision for the Next Human Agenda” and could lead to “scientific breakthroughs and otherwise nurture “human advancement.” D’Souza told Motherboard he hopes people will come to see the Enhanced Games like they currently view Formula 1, but instead of the “athlete and the engineer” working in concert, it will be an athlete and a scientist…

Throughout the website, Enhanced employs the political language of inclusion in an attempt to reframe steroid users as an oppressed class, saying it takes inspiration from the “brave fight” of the LGBTQIA+ movement and going so far as to call itself “the most inclusive sports league in history,” as it welcomes people regardless of if they are “natural, adaptive, or enhanced, an amateur or a former Olympian.” (The site has a tab that offers tips on “how to come out as enhanced.”)

“I think enhanced athletes today are very much like being gay 50 years ago,” said D’Souza, who told Motherboard he is openly gay. “It’s conducted in secret. It’s something you have to hide. You’re always fearing the police and the authorities. But it’s underground and it’s kind of fun.”…

“Peter is always challenging institutions,” D’Souza said of his investor. “He knows that when you have a calcified, bureaucratic incumbent controlling a large market, that’s a real big opportunity for disruption.” (He added that Thiel, who has denied injecting himself with the blood of young people, was interested in anti-aging science.)

Enhanced plans to run its games like a Silicon Valley startup attempting to disrupt a bloated industry. Compared to what it describes as “the inherent wastefulness” of the nonprofit Olympics, the for-profit Enhanced plans to create a “cost-efficient” event funded with private money and other “incentives” to fund the games and turn a profit without spending billions or “burdening taxpayers.” (D’Souza said the organization is “open” to tax incentives but not planning to rely on them.)…

Cynic that I am, I suspect the Enhanced backers are very much interested in rooting for injuries. Perhaps they can revive the retiarius for a generation raised on WWE and MMA cage matches. Or introduces some of Pablo Escobar’s surplus hippos to the aquatic events?

Reader Interactions

99Comments

  2. 2.

    SiubhanDuinne

    I heard some reference to the Enhanced Games a week or two ago. I thought it was a joke, and not a very funny one.

    When we launch Elmu into the Sun, can we arrange for Peter Thiel to keep him company?

  6. 6.

    eclare

    @Shalimar:

    AT&T is enclosed.  Metlife is not.  NJ can still get hot, so weather could be a factor.

    I think Dallas would have been a better choice, given that it is closer to Mexico, where soccer is more entrenched.

  7. 7.

    Anne Laurie

    @Shalimar: Dallas in July is really hot. I think they made the right choice. And I despise New Jersey.

    I’ve been to New Jersey in July… and I’ve been to the Meadowlands (although not the stadium).  Strong probability it will be hot, it will be unspeakably humid, and it will smell like fifteen different kinds of chemical effluvia mixed with raw sewage & animal waste.

    Appropriate for the FIFA officials, but not something I’d wish on the players!

  10. 10.

    eclare

    @eclare:

    Plus I’ve watched high profile college football games at AT&T on tv, it is gorgeous, state of the art.  It is the image the US should want to present for the most popular worldwide sporting event.  TX fucks up a lot of stuff, but it does football stadiums very well.

  11. 11.

    wjca

    FIFA is the most corrupt organization on Earth

    I might buy “FIFA is the most corrupt sports organization on Earth.”  (Not knowledgeable enough of the field to have an opinion.  Although they certainly are in the running.)   But the most currupt organization overall?  Let’s face it, they’re pikers.

  12. 12.

    wjca

    @eclare: TX fucks up a lot of stuff, but it does football stadiums very well.

    Because, in Texas, football matters.  Possibly more than anything and everything else.

  13. 13.

    SpaceUnit

    Will betting be permitted on the life expectancies of enhanced athletes?

     

    I keep thinking this world can’t get any stupider and I’m always wrong.

  16. 16.

    Jesse

    There’s a misunderstanding in that first sXeet. NJ didn’t win out in a bid process against Arab states. It has already been decided, many years ago, that the 2026 World Cup would be hosted by the US, Canada, and Mexico. The question was: where (in the US, Canada, or Mexico) should the final match be held?​

  17. 17.

    Chetan Murthy

    A long, long time ago (mid-70s) I read a story in OMNI magazine about a boxer named Teichert Bohannon.  In that world, boxers were enhanced in any way they wanted.  I found the story again just now:

    https://www.williamflew.com/omni36a.html

    Thiel and his cronies are evil motherfuckers, for creating these Games.

  18. 18.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    Some rich people are bored and want to convince some stupid people to turn themselves into roid-raging human pitbulls to have them compete against each other for their entertainment (and to cash in on the streaming/events/tickets)? Fencing ought to be fun to watch! I wonder if they will have equestrian events and allow doping of the horses to add fuel to the fun? Footraces fueled by meth and coke!

    Ruining people lives and profiting from the entertainment is just SOP for the wealthy. Maybe they can have their own coliseum where they can give the thumbs up or down for all to see!

  21. 21.

    Odie Hugh Manatee

    @fish bicycle:

    Be fair, they’re “enhanced bum fights” for the Forbes crowd. My preference would be to have fights between wealthy people. First, jack up taxes on corporations and the wealthy. Then put up a few big tax breaks and government contracts for whatever their business is for the winners and let them loose in an arena. No ringers allowed, only pasty, lumpy rich people.

    Make it deathmatch style, last man/woman standing. It would be worth it.

  26. 26.

    Anne Laurie

    @Craig: Thiel is much more dangerous to the world than Musk.

    I honestly doubt Musk will be around in ten years — possibly even five.

    Thiel’s in it for the long haul.  And it doesn’t matter to him how many not-Thiels have to die to keep Thiel immortal.

  34. 34.

    satby

    @Betty Cracker: Right there with you, and I only have to go sell at the market, not fake feeling sociable. Well, I do, but it’s a limited dialogue version. Still, up early to pound coffee befor it.

  35. 35.

    satby

    @Baud: It doesn’t particularly. Just that that language always pops up to justify all sorts of behavior and is acceptable; until it’s not. Guess it’s just more striking how often it’s used when you’re a member of the class it doesn’t apply to.

  39. 39.

    Jeffro

    @SpaceUnit:I keep thinking this world can’t get any stupider and I’m always wrong.

    I know, right?

    Related: I think we’re going to need to do something about these billionaires.  As in, let’s not have any anymore.

  41. 41.

    Jeffro

    Unrelated but: President Biden should call a prime-time press conference, and then…play any number of trumpov gaffes, misstatements, and insane BS on a TV screen.

    (that’s 90% of what his social media team is doing)

    “Oh but I’M THE ONE with the memory or cognitive issues?  Give me a f***ing break!”

  44. 44.

    EarthWindFire

    Enhanced Games sounds like the next Frye Festival but with roids. What could possibly go wrong?

  45. 45.

    mrmoshpotato

    @Jeffro:

    Unrelated but: President Biden should call a prime-time press conference, and then…play any number of trumpov gaffes, misstatements, and insane BS on a TV screen. (that’s 90% of what his social media team is doing)

    “Oh but I’M THE ONE with the memory or cognitive issues? Give me a f***ing break!”

    “Holy mackerel! What malarkey is this? Look at this orange-faced sick fuck!”

  48. 48.

    Baud

    Christian Angermayer, a venture capitalist and investor in the project, said in a statement that the program aligned his “vision for the Next Human Agenda” and could lead to “scientific breakthroughs and otherwise nurture “human advancement.” D’Souza told Motherboard he hopes people will come to see the Enhanced Games like they currently view Formula 1, but instead of the “athlete and the engineer” working in concert, it will be an athlete and a scientist…

    Oh, sure. But when I pitched him a plan to advance humanity by dissecting the living brains of billionaires to learn what makes them successful, he wouldn’t invest a dime.

  50. 50.

    bjacques

    @Chetan Murthy: there was another such story, The Mickey Mouse Olympics, by Tom Sullivan. I read it in Omni, apparently published 1979.

    Thiel and his fellow tech bros really suck at science fiction.

  52. 52.

    NorthLeft

    The winners of the Thiel Games will be required to “donate” two Imperial gallons of blood to the organizers/investors.
    The initial harvesting/draining will take place on the victors podium.

  55. 55.

    David 🌈 ☘The Establishment☘🌈 Koch

    Right now, it’s 9:00 PM in Tokyo.   Taylor Swift’s current concert ends in 30 minutes.  Afterwards, she should be at the airport in 60 to 90 minutes. So in about 2 hours from now, she’ll be airborne for a 12 hour trip from Tokyo to Las Vegas.  Meaning she Land in LV at 6 PM local time, tonight.

  60. 60.

    lowtechcyclist

    So let’s say I’m a libertarian. (I’m not; this is just a hypothetical.) I’m all for ‘their bodies, their choice’ across the board. You should be able to have abortions or dope up your body without any legal limitations. But just like evangelicals don’t have to let pro-choice people join their churches, athletic organizations don’t have to allow doped-up athletes to compete in their events. Neither of these things is any sort of issue about inclusion, let alone civil rights.

    My WAG is that these ‘doped-up games’ will be a big flop. Few of the best athletes will want to compete, and I just can’t see these events attracting many viewers.

  62. 62.

    Feathers

    Speaking of doping, the Kamila Valieva case ruling came down. Guilty and banned for four years, the maximum. Yes, she was a minor, but gave a completely unbelievable story about how the drug got into her system, involving a strawberry dessert allegedly carried on the train, in front of a coach who yelled at athletes for having more than one shrimp on a salad. As someone pointed out, if she’d just claimed it must have been contamination from one of the 60 other supplements (!) she was taking she probably would have gotten two years, max.

    So now the ISU (figure skating’s governing body) gets to screw things up. Rules say when athlete competes but is later declared ineligible, their score is erased and everyone else moves up. So it should be US gold, Japan silver, Canada bronze. But the ISU decided its own rules don’t apply to Olympic team event and deletes Valieva’s scores, but doesn’t reassign the points in the ladies field. Which leaves Russia with the bronze. All hell breaks loose because the Russians are furious about the gold being taken away. The Canadians, despite not saying a word about the doping over the last two years, leaving the US to fight to make sure the case isn’t swept under the rug, are challenging the decision. Honestly, the Canadians did horribly in the team event, the ISU may well have cooked the books for these reason alone. ISU of course made this worse by just posting their decision and refusing to say why they were ignoring the rule book for several days.

    Sorry to not have individual links, but Christine Brennan from USA Today has been the reporter covering all of this and everything is in the  last week or so of her Twitter feed: https://x.com/cbrennansports?s=21&t=mG9oWY_sUs8FMjuoMPDDQQ

  63. 63.

    Princess

    Man, that photo of Thiel… if he is what juiced looks like (and you know he is) I’ll be over here aging gracefully and naturally, thanks.

    Also I’m guessing his “scientifically enhanced” super athletes won’t include trans people.

  67. 67.

    prostratedragon

    @Baud:
    The propaganda. My own first thought was that there are significant Brazilian and Argentine communities on both sides of the Hudson but especially Jersey, also Italian and other soccer-playing American counties. The game has always been bigger there than most places in the US.

  69. 69.

    Matt McIrvin

    @lowtechcyclist: If I recall correctly, speeds in Formula 1 racing have been decreasing for some time. It’s because Formula 1 is a sport defined by a byzantine set of rules, which keep changing, and the rules are determined not just by the desire to maintain an interesting competition but also to keep too many people from killing themselves. If there were no rules, it’d just become this horrifying suicide arena. There are always considerations apart from simply creating an awesome spectacle.

  70. 70.

    Princess

    @Baud: Can’t have that. I just checked — he’s a year younger than I am. Musk too is about my age. Ugh. I guess no one loves them enough to tell them to tone down the treatments a bit.

  72. 72.

    Princess

    @Betty Cracker: I bet she’ll be high as a kite from the energy from performing for a few hours (heck, I get that way after teaching a class) but I hope she gets some sleep.

  73. 73.

    Feathers

    @lowtechcyclist: Evegenia Medvedeva, 2 time world champion in figure skating and Olympic silver medalist, product of the Russian doping system, is 24 and has a spine permanently fused into with a twist matching her jump direction. And she was just doing triples, not the quads the Russian girls are doing now. Her international career gave her basically three years at the top.

    People think of doping as juicing for a boost on race day, but it’s really about allowing the athletes to train beyond what their body would normally be able to sustain. Some speculation that the Russian skaters get heart medications (you can hear Dick and Peggy talk about it in competitions from the 90s) to counteract the heart damage from their eating disorder levels of calorie restriction.

  74. 74.

    Raven

    @Matt McIrvin: They scheduled the Georgia-Texas game in Austin the same weekend as the F1 race there. Needless to say it’s nearly impossible to get a room there that weekend. Lots of pissed off Dawgs!!

  75. 75.

    Raven

    @prostratedragon: We had the Olympic soccer final here in Athens in 96 and the word was that there were 25000 Brazilians who were going to come if they advanced. They lost and it was Nigeria vs Argentina and Nigeria won. We had great crowds here and will have the same for 8 World Cup matches in the ATL!!

  81. 81.

    Shalimar

    @prostratedragon: My memory from when I followed American soccer closely is that New Jersey was considered the soccer hotbed in this country before the sport took off nationally after the 1994 World Cup. Maybe 1/3rd of the players in the national team from 1988-2010 including many of the stars were from New Jersey.  There is a long history with the sport there.

  83. 83.

    H.E.Wolf

    @Chris T.: ​
     Interesting question. D’Souza, a Portuguese surname, is not all that uncommon in the area of India which Portugal invaded and colonized.

    You can look up “Goa” for more details about the Portuguese presence in India.

  86. 86.

    Searcher

    So let’s ignore the problems with the Doplympics itself, how a lot of top athletes won’t touch it with a ten foot pole.

    Will thiel be creating a whole new league with hundreds of regional and national competitions?

    Athletes don’t just train for four years and then show up at the Olympics.  They are constantly testing themselves at every possible venue, and showing off in between Olympics at various national events that matter much more for local advertisers than placing 40th in the Olympics.

    All or these smaller events have the same policies as the big ones, even if they can’t afford mandatory testing before each competition.  But competing in the Doplympics is basically voluntarily disqualifying yourself for any other competition, not just the Olympics.

    So who the hell is going to do that?

  88. 88.

    Anne Laurie

    @Searcher: But competing in the Doplympics is basically voluntarily disqualifying yourself for any other competition, not just the Olympics.

    So who the hell is going to do that?

    [Quietly] Dopes?

    If you read the article, there’s language about ‘paying the contestants a salary for months’.  So, I guess Thiel & his buds will be curating their own gladiatorial teams from the mobs of desperate, roided-up wannabes.  Funzies!

    I mean, us hoi polloi have to settle for collecting little plastic Warhammer 4000 figures, or Lego minifigs, or even Pokemon cards.  In best Libertarian tradition, watching Our Billionaire Bettors amass actual live armies for their entertainment will inspire us all! (to set fire to the arena and stage assaults on the billionaires’ private boxes, probably).

  89. 89.

    JML

    @Shalimar: You are correct. Jersey and California were the biggest poles in the 90’s and 00’s, with a push in NC because of the women’s college program at UNC. I’m fine with having the Cup Final there rather than effing Texas.

    Still wouldn’t surprise me if there was corruption involved; FIFA might not be the IOC, but they try hard.

    In other soccer news, eff Citeh.

  91. 91.

    Burnspbesq

    @wjca:

    in Texas, football matters.  Possibly more than anything and everything else.

    Case in point: a school district near Austin has hired a head football coach for a high school that isn’t scheduled to open until 2026.

  92. 92.

    Burnspbesq

    @Raven:

    They scheduled the Georgia-Texas game in Austin the same weekend as the F1 race there. Needless to say it’s nearly impossible to get a room there that weekend. Lots of pissed off Dawgs!!

    Trust me, you don’t want to be in Austin during F1 week. Wall-to-wall rich, entitled, and rude Eurotrash.

  95. 95.

    wjca

    @Burnspbesq: Case in point: a school district near Austin has hired a head football coach for a high school that isn’t scheduled to open until 2026.

    Makes sense to start by hiring the guy with the highest salary.  That way you know how much money you have left to pay the little people.

  96. 96.

    Tehanu

    @Searcher: ​ “Athletes”? the only people who’d consider signing up for this are wannabe celebrities, like on Survivor.

    @Anne Laurie: ​
    curating their own gladiatorial teams

    I really am beginning to think about investing in guillotine stock.

  97. 97.

    currawong

    I presume that instead of representing their countries at the Enhanced Games, ‘athletes’ will be representing their pharmaceutical companies.

  98. 98.

    toine

    OMG! I have been joking around with friends for years that someone would eventually come up with a free-for-all, doping encouraged competition. That it would be Peter Thiel in the end doesn’t seem like such a surprise.

    TBH, it kind of saddens me to say that there may very well be a market for this… tons of people watch NASCAR for the pileups after all…

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