4 Sports Things You Missed this weekend, featuring the Kings of Spring Football

Plus a surprising swimming record and some important cricket rainouts

Sorry for just the one post last week—I got to cover the USA-India cricket match for GQ, which was awesome, and I hope you’ll like the article. I think… I think I’m considered a cricket writer now? I think a solid 50 percent of my subscribers on here are specifically eager for cricket updates? I think I need to rename the Substack “The Silly Mid-Off?”

Unfortunately, that didn’t leave me time to get my planned posts on here. In exchange, I’m bringing you a FOUR POST WEEK this week. Unless, like, Vogue reaches out to ask me to cover the Team USA swimming trials or something like that. Crossing my fingers.

The Kings of Spring

All hail the Birmingham Stallions, the first team ever to plausibly call themselves a dynasty in a league which is one year old. The Stallions won both seasons of the USFL 2.0 in 2022 and 2023. This season, that league merged with the XFL to create the new UFL. Each league got to bring four teams, and it would’ve been pretty messed up to exclude the back-to-back champs, so the Stallions survived.

In the new league, Birmingham went 9-1 in the regular season, only losing a Week 9 game after clinching the top seed in the playoffs. And Sunday, they completely dominated the inaugural UFL championship game, shutting out the San Antonio Brahmas of the former XFL 25-0 to pull off the extremely rare two-league three-peat. The championship game MVP trophy was handed Tom Brady, a pathetic loser who never won more than two championships in a row.

Mock the concept of a spring dynasty if you must, but what Skip Holtz and the Stallions have done is objectively impressive. They’ve lost players, switched leagues, and learned new rules—and simply continued winning. All-time, they’re 32-4, with a 6-0 record in playoff games.

The nature of a minor league team is that your best players have dreams elsewhere. Last year the Stallions were led by Alex McGough, who won USFL MVP after leading the league in passing yards per attempt and touchdowns. He left to sign with the Packers, who have since shifted him to wide receiver. The Stallions replaced him with Adrian Martinez… who won UFL MVP, leading the league in passing yards per attempt and rushing yardage. (Yes, he led the league in rushing yardage as a QB! Step your game up Lamar Jackson!)

The Stallions’ most prominent alum is probably kicker Brandon Aubrey, who won first-team All-Pro in the NFL as a rookie with the Cowboys last season. But he’s just one of seven ex-Stallions now on NFL rosters. Even the players who don’t go to the big leagues sometimes move on: Running back Bo Scarbrough, who had a 36-yard touchdown in the team’s 2022 championship win, retired during training camp this year, saying: “You can love this game all you want, but at the end of the day, the game can’t love you back because it’s not a person; it’s a ball.” I think about this quote a lot.

The UFL will probably exist next year. The 2025 Stallions can probably win with an entirely new set of players, I say we should let the Stallions cash in their championships for a Money In The Bank matchup against the worst team in the NFL. It’ll be awkward when the UFL has two teams called “the Panthers,” but it’s only fair.

An odd time for the best time

The Team USA Olympic swim trials are happening in Indianapolis in a pop-up pool at Lucas Oil Stadium—between this and the NFL Combine, the Colts’ stadium is officially the #1 building in the world for timing people in Speedos. The trials got off to a spectacular start on Saturday night in the semifinals of the women’s 100 meter butterfly, when University of Virginia swimmer Gretchen Walsh broke the world record with a time of 55.18:

You’re not supposed to break world records at the Olympic trials. Swimmers ramp up their training to produce the best times at the Olympics. Nobody had done it at Team USA trials since 2008, the year everybody had the freaky fast suits which were eventually banned.

You’re definitely not supposed to break world records in the semis at Olympic trials. That’s not even the race you need to do well in to make the Olympics! It was, apparently, an accident, in case you couldn’t tell from Walsh’s completely shocked reaction to seeing her time. “I didn’t know I was going that fast,” Walsh said.

Walsh had been somewhat shaky in international events in her short career, but just put together an absolutely dominant college season for Virginia. She broke the NCAA record in four events in three different strokes and winning seven NCAA championships. But there were questions about whether she could do it in the Olympic pool, since college pools are 25 yards instead of 50 meters and play to swimmers who have strong turns. (In that AP article linked above, Walsh mentioned that she “considers herself a stronger swimmer in the short-course pool.”)

By setting the record in the semis, Walsh put herself in the awkward position of needing to come back and officially clinch her Olympic spot in the finals a day after becoming the fastest swimmer of all time. It turns out, she needed that record-setting pace. Walsh finished in 55.31—slower than her world record from the semis, but fast enough to beat the previous world record of 55.48. Right behind her were Torri Huske and Regan Smith, who both finished under 55.62—meaning they’re third and fifth all-time in the event. Team USA could sweep the event in Paris, but unfortunately, they’re only allowed to have two swimmers per event. Hopefully Walsh can set another world record in Paris—maybe next time in the finals instead of the semis.

Walkoff time in Omaha

The College World Series is the final event of the college sports season, and it’s going out with a bang. Several bangs, actually!

The first three games ended with walk-off hits: North Carolina beat Virginia on a 2-out hit by Vance Honeycutt, the projected first-round pick who also hit a walk-off home run last week against West Virginia. (If any other Virginias face Honeycutt in the ninth inning—Virginia Tech, Virginia Union, literally any Virginia—just walk the guy.) Then Tennessee rallied back from a five-run deficit against Florida State and won on a hit by Blake Burke seconds after Burke was controversially ruled not to have swung at a third strike which would’ve ended the game. Then Kentucky scored in the ninth inning to tie NC State, and walked it off in the tenth on a Mitchell Daly homer.

Then Florida’s Cade Kurland drilled a ball deep to right in the ninth inning against Texas A&M… but Jace LaViolette robbed the homer, breaking the walk-off streak. Just a boring-old game-saving home run robbery.

Rain? IN FLORIDA?

As America’s newly minted No. 3 cricket expert, I feel compelled to provide updates on the T20 World Cup now. And what a thrilling weekend it was, if you enjoy rules technicalities and absurdities more than actual sports competitions. (You’re reading my Substack, so this may be true.)

Cricket is unusual in that rainouts count in the standings. In baseball, if a game gets rained out, they try to make it up, or simply end the season with 161 games played instead of 162. Cricket, however, treats rainouts as ties: Teams get two points for a win, zero points for a loss, and one point each if a game gets rained out. You can imagine how this strategy would cause chaos in tournaments like the World Cup, where the world’s elite play against tiny nations that barely have cricket teams. If a rain-out happens between two relatively even teams, OK. If a rainout happens between England and Namibia… England feels like they got a raw deal, right? Read on.

The first issue is that the ICC scheduled four games in South Florida, banking on the weather and local government, both of which are famously unreliable. 'It’s true that there were historically massive rainstorms in the state last week. But the rain mostly stopped on Thursday, and yet games on Friday and Saturday were also called off due to a “wet outfield.” All in all, three of the four games were rained out. The stadium in Broward County didn’t provide rain covers for the entire field and had a Super Sopper which allegedly ran out of gas while attempting to dry the field. This was exceptional news for Team USA, which could have been eliminated with a loss to Ireland, but instead got a rainout point and advanced to the Super 8 round. Pakistan was mad about the weather and the Super Sopper situation—but they had their chance to advance, and lost to the United States.

England almost didn’t get that chance. The English needed a win over Namibia to advance past Scotland, but that game was threatened by rains in Antigua. And the reason they needed a win to beat Scotland is because their previous game against Scotland in Barbados had been rained out. This left Scotland in the hilarious position of being able to eliminate England without beating them because they’d gotten to play and beat Namibia while England’s game was in danger of getting rained out.

Tragically, it stopped raining. England won easily and is now slotted into the next round of the tournament, where they’ll play Team USA. But I’ll tell you more about that later this week!