🏌️ Golf's New Rule Makes You Worse

A quick peak behind the curtain: it’s much easier to cover negative stories.

So while I may have set myself up to talk about positive stories in sports every week by including a “Winner’s Circle” section, just know that this week I’m feeling especially pessimistic.

Plus, these topics were just too good to pass up:

🗞 The Big Story: Why Golf Got Worse

📉 Biggest Loser: UArizona Misplaced $240M

🏆 Winner’s Circle: Football and Political Discourse

🗞 The Big Story

Starting in 2026, golf balls aren’t going to fly as far and this decision isn’t just going to affect the pros anymore.

But how much distance are you actually going to lose off the tee?

How Far is Too Far: In March, two of golf’s governing bodies the United States Golf Association and the Royal and Ancient Golf Club proposed a controversial rule change that aimed to decrease the distance balls would fly in elite competitions.

Here’s the rationale:

• Pros are hitting the ball too far

• This is making many courses “too easy”

• This trend hurts the “sustainability of golf”

But now, according to Golf Digest, this rule change is going to be implemented for every golfer in America… from Rory McElroy to you and me.

What’s the Difference: These new balls will, on average, cover 5% less distance than today’s balls, meaning a 250-yard drive would only go about 238 yards.

But it almost wasn’t like this, because as Rory points out on Twitter there was already a plan in place to start making two kinds of golf balls when this rule goes into effect for the pros in 2026.

And then it got thrown out, but why?

The Orignal Plan: Titleist, Callaway, TaylorMade, and others would make two kinds of golf balls:

One for amateurs that wouldn’t change, and then another for pros that wouldn’t fly as far.

But it turns out it wasn’t that simple.

Because we’re talking about a market that’s currently valued at over $1 billion and these manufacturers have been able to make all of their money selling amateurs on the fact that they’re using the exact same equipment as the pros.

But what if that’s not the case?

Well, as Rory points out they likely feared that selling two kinds of balls would “negatively affect their bottom lines.” So they just decided to nerf every golf ball so they wouldn't have to change their marketing.

You’re Not That Guy, Pal: Now, luckily for most of us, this change likely won’t matter.

In fact, a study by the USGA shows that there won’t even be a noticeable change in distance on iron shots and this rule won’t even go into effect for amateurs until 2028.

All I know, is I’m stocking up on these juiced golf balls while I can.

📉 Biggest Loser

The University of Arizona made a quarter of a billion-dollar mistake and now they have to start cutting their sports teams.

Not Adding Up: The University of Arizona recently made headlines because of an accounting error that led to them having $240 million less than they thought they had.

Basically, they overestimated how much money the school would be bringing in between athletics and admissions and now the university president has come out and said that in order to fix this problem, “everything is on the table.”

Including cutting sports… the only issue is that probably wouldn’t help.

How We Got Here: Part of the reason that the University of Arizona is in the mess in the first place is because the school loaned the athletic department $55 million during the pandemic, but apparently, that loan isn’t being paid back fast enough.

Arizona thought the Pac-12 would come through with a huge media rights deal to help cover the cost of the loan but the Pac-12 ended up folding leaving the athletic department without a way to pay back the school.

Doing Too Much: Another issue is that Arizona currently offers 23 varsity sports, which is 7 more than the average Big-12 school offers, the conference they’ll be moving to next year.

So the logical thought would be to cut the athletic department by at least 7 sports to help decrease costs, or maybe cut some non-revenue driving sports (basically anything that isn’t football or men’s basketball).

But doing that doesn’t save the school much money:

• $13.3 million - Cost to run all women’s sports

• $7.7 million - Cost to run men’s baseball, track & field, golf, swimming, and tennis

Sports Aren’t The Problem: While looking at athletics to save money seems like the obvious choice, the department actually only lost about $600K last year.

And many administrators are pointing out that the real issue is with the school's unsustainable admissions structure which guarantees static tuition for each student’s four years of study and $300 million in financial aid and scholarships.

Something Arizona’s president has called “not financially sustainable.”

Help is on the Way: However, if Arizona can hang on until 2025 when the Big 12’s new media rights deal kicks in, they’ll be collecting close to $50 million per year just from football… which may be enough to save every other sport.

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🏆 Winner’s Circle

We officially live in the most hilarious timeline…

After Florida State got snubbed from the College Football Playoffs, Florida politicians started threatening to sue the College Football Playoff Committee and launched some of the most insane conspiracy theories I’ve ever heard.

CFP v. The State of Flordia: Immediately after the final four teams were announced on Sunday, we got a flood of responses from state senators, governors, and even a former president:

But former FSU and Philadelphia Eagles player and now Florida state senator, Corey Simon, took it a step further:

Now, Republican Florida Politicians and Disney have a long-standing beef that I won’t get into here but just know this isn’t the first time a Florida governor has called out the College Football Playoff committee about a Florida team not getting in.

Unrest in the Mouse House: But this time, politicians are taking it a step further and claiming that ESPN, which is owned by Disney, has a vested interest in making sure an SEC team gets in over Flordia State, who plays in the ACC.

They claim that ESPN wants to promote the conference it’ll be paying $300 million per year to for the next 10 years, with US Senator and former Flordia governor, Rick Scott, calling for all of the emails, texts, and recordings of the committee process to be released.

Even Donald Trump got in on the action:

Debunking the Noise: Now, these claims are ridiculous for a bunch of reasons, the most obvious of which is the fact that while ESPN does have a $3 billion contract with the SEC starting next year, they also currently have a multi-million dollar per year deal with the ACC through 2036.

Or how about the fact that as recently as last year, the committee left out a two-loss Alabama in favor of a one-loss TCU team (who got blown out in the championship by the way)?

Regardless, this is top-tier comedy and will probably be the highest-rated College Football Playoff anyway so who really cares?

⏱ In Other News

• A former Jacksonville Jaguars employee stole $22 million from the team.

• Can someone check in on these Iowa fans for me?

• Did we just become best friends?

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👋 I never updated you all, but Uncle Charlie found a project manager! Matt just started this week.

He’s already asking for things like “insurance” and a “paycheck.” The nerve of some people… Happy Friday!