College Football Newsletter: What's your Venmo?
One quarterback raps, another sends conspicuous payments, and Scott Hanson teases us
Welcome to The College Football Newsletter, where our Venmo transactions are set to private.
John Mateer was part of the weirdest story in college football this week, one involving “Sports Gambling.” He claims he didn’t actually gamble and that the Venmo notes on the transactions were inside jokes, however, there was a purchase in 2022 for “Sports Gambling (UCLA vs USC)” the day after UCLA played USC. There are some other transactions that back his claim up, because I don’t think he paid someone for [checks Venmo] “slapping some balls.” I’m sure we’ve all either sent or received transactions with goofy notes. Here’s $10 for “nothing illegal.”
What made this even more absurd is that this was brought to light by a fake reporter Twitter account who used a photo of former Northeastern hockey player Zach Aston-Reese as their profile photo and claimed to work for Deadspin.
The one lesson you should take from this is that online privacy concerns are real and all too rampant. Always double check to see if your sources are real people. Check your settings to make sure your transactions are private. It’s a shame that you have to opt in to this rather than it being a default.
We’re actually an NFL podcast
Scott Hanson, of NFL fame, threw out the idea of having a college-football RedZone channel, now that ESPN has purchased the NFL Network and the rights to RedZone for its new streaming service. Some might say that’s a whole hog production.
It sounds like a great extension of NFL RedZone but I don’t think whoever hosts this will be ready for the wonderful mess that is college football Saturday. First off, college football rights are all over the place, so having everything in one channel feels like a dream. Realistically, we would only get games that ESPN has the rights to, and they have attempted that before (remember ESPN Goal Line?)
Kickoff times aren't as nicely lined up as an NFL Sunday either. And we haven’t even mentioned how long a college football Saturday really is. Covering noon eastern to whenever Hawaii finishes its game is much more than seven hours of commercial free football.
Here’s what the SZD crew dropped this week:
Godfrey filled in for Alex this week and talked about the American with Richard. This conversation was less about the existential nature of the former AAC and more about looking at what will happen on the field.
Over at the CBS Sports Youtube channel, Richard tells the CFB Insiders that DJ Lagway is ready to go for the Gators after some health concerns. His wide receivers, on the other hand, are a different story.
Elsewhere in the college football world:
The Shutdown Fullcast started a Patreon, where you’ll be able to get their After Dark episodes during the season.
Over at Phantom Island, Godfrey and Parker Fleming talked about college football roster construction
Eastern Michigan posed in their new “You wouldn’t survive a quarter in Ypsilanti” t-shirts courtesy of the Sickos Committee
We’re also a few days away from The Sports Podcast Festival in Raleigh, NC. That’s on Saturday, August 23rd. Godfrey, Richard, and Alex will be there with Matt Brown of Extra Points. There’s still time to grab your tickets (promo code SZD for 25% off)!
Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next week. If you’re looking for some jams to ring in the weekend, may I recommend this corrido about Diego Pavia where he’s lip syncing in the video?
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one of my favorite games is to leave irreverent comments on my friends’ Venmo transactions if they don’t set their activity to private
Didn’t realize I could probably go pick teams I don’t like and try and end their QBs’ college eligibility