Welcome to the first dump, and happy Labor Day to everyone except the Big Ten officals! - Charlie
MICHIGAN WINS OFF LAST SECOND HAIL MARY WITH 1 SECOND LEFT (KIND OF)
Western Michigan did everything you're supposed to do in Ann Arbor. Four Dieter Kelly field goals, three takeaways, a 20-play drive that ate 13 minutes and 40 seconds, and a 12-7 lead over a team favored by 27 and a half points. The Broncos even covered the Hail Mary. Bryce Underwood's heave sailed out the back of the end zone, the clock read triple zeros, 'final' read on the broadcast screen. Officals then decided to call for a review. It should be noted this was a fully Big Ten referee crew, and somehow gave the second back. Underwood got a do-over, JJ Buchanan hauled in a 47-yard touchdown, and Michigan survived 13-12 in Kyle Whittingham's debut, a night that had already produced audible chants of "fire Kyle" ended with a Michigans students storming the field. The Big Ten's explanation showed up about two hours later, citing NCAA rule 4-2-3-a and safety Micah Davis touching the ball with his left foot established out of bounds at 0:01. The league also noted that every replay camera, including the one pointed at the game clock, is synced with a strobe system 85 minutes before kickoff, which is a lot of technology to arrive at a number nobody else saw anywhere. NBC's Terry McAulay, working off a clock he'd been told was synced to the stadium's, said on air the ball was still airborne at zero and was left speechless on air about the call. MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher reviewed the footage and sided with the Big Ten anyway. (That's what we like to call a sellout)
AFD WINS GERMAN STATE ELECTION, FIRST GERMAN FAR-RIGHT PARTY TO WIN SINCE WWII
Germany's AfD won the Saxony-Anhalt state election Sunday with 44.5 percent, according to ARD projections. Friedrich Merz's CDU, which has held the state's top job since 2002, came second with 18.5 percent. Die Linke got 9.5, the SPD got 8. The AfD more than doubled the 20.8 percent it pulled in 2021, and turnout hit a record high, so nobody gets to write this off as a sleepy protest vote. If you're wondering what all that means and why it's important, this is the first time a 'far-right party' has won a major election in Germany since WWII. Lead candidate Ulrich Siegmund said the party had made history, which is true and also the single most uncomfortable sentence available in German politics. The catch is that winning and governing are separate problems. The new Landtag has 83 seats, a majority takes 42, and every other party has spent years swearing it will never work with the AfD. That promise is called the firewall, and tonight it is doing all the heavy lifting. Domestic intelligence in several states classifies the AfD as right-wing extremist, which is a direct government filing, and classification not a political smeer. Then there's the actual platform. Saxony-Anhalt has 2.1 million people and leans hard on foreign-born workers, especially in health care. The AfD's fix is less migration, baby bonuses, and a polite invitation for German expats to move back. The German Economic Institute called that approach ruinous for the state. It safe to say the AfD has an uhill battle to get their agenda in place, but it is still a concerning political step for Europe's biggest heavyweight.
NEW JERSEY IS TAKING KALSHI TO THE SCOTUS, FOR SOME REASON YOU CAN'T BET ON IT
New Jersey went to the Supreme Court on September 2 with a 332-page petition for certiorari, filed by Attorney General Jennifer Davenport and gaming enforcement interim director Mary Jo Flaherty. The question they want answered: does a wager on a sports team stop being a wager the second it trades on a CFTC-registered exchange. Justice Alito had granted extensions that pushed the deadline to September 3, and the state used basically all of it. The reason this is live is that the federal courts have split down the middle. In April, a divided Third Circuit panel ruled 2-1 that Kalshi's sports event contracts are swaps under the Commodity Exchange Act, which shielded the company from New Jersey's gambling laws. On August 28, the Ninth Circuit went unanimously the other way for Nevada, holding the contracts are not swaps and flagging major-questions concerns. The dissenting Third Circuit judge said Kalshi's branding amounted to "acts of alchemy" turning gambling into futures trading, which is the strangest way anyone has ever described a parlay. Kalshi is unmoved. Spokeswoman Dani Lever said the company is a nationwide financial exchange and "cannot be regulated by 50 different regulators." Meanwhile 44 state attorneys general say the contracts are sports bets, and the Fourth and Sixth Circuits are still sitting on their own versions of this fight.
BAD BUNNY WON SEVEN EMMYS FOR THIRTEEN MINUTES OF WORK
The Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Starring Bad Bunny won seven Emmys Saturday night, more than any halftime show in history. The old record was three, set by the 2022 show with Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg, Eminem, Mary J. Blige, Kendrick Lamar and 50 Cent. Six rap legends, three trophies. One rabbit, seven. The big one was Outstanding Variety Special (Live), his first Emmy ever, won as both lead performer and producer. Check who lost that category: the Oscars, the Grammys, the Golden Globes and the Tonys. Four ceremonies whose entire purpose on this earth is handing out awards, all of them beaten by a guy singing in Spanish next to a fake bodega during a football game. It was aylso the first Spanish-language program to ever win it. The other six wins were directing, music direction, choreography, sound mixing, lighting design, and technical direction and camerawork, off a record nine nominations. Remember the runway on this thing. There were months of national howling about a Spanish-language halftime show, Trump included, who called it a slap in the face to America. Roger Goodell defended the booking and said he was confident it would be a great show. For once Goodell might have actually made a decent call.
TUCSON REALTOR GETS DUCT-TAPED TO HIS OWN FIRST-CLASS SEAT, LOSES THE JOB TOO
American Airlines Flight 618 left Dallas-Fort Worth Thursday night bound for Newark and landed in Baltimore instead, because a 67-year-old Tucson realtor allegedly decided the front of the plane was the place to lose it. Passengers say the man turned belligerent about halfway through, started hurling racial and anti-gay slurs at the crew and the cabin, then got physical, hitting the passenger beside him and a woman who tried to step in. A flight attendant tried to calm him and got nowhere. So the crew handed duct tape and zip ties to three male passengers, one of them a retired New Jersey cop named Juan Mejia, and they wrapped him to the chair. Photos show tape across his body, zip ties on his wrists, his head pinned back against the seat. The plane touched down at BWI around 10:15 p.m. Officers boarded, cut the tape off, and police say he then hit one of them in the chest, a bold move from a guy who had just been gift-wrapped by strangers in row three. He's charged with second-degree assault and disorderly conduct, was released on his own recognizance Friday, and is due back in court October 19. The FBI is consulting the US attorney about federal charges. TMZ reports his real estate firm has already cut him loose, which is the second time this week somebody removed him from a seat he thought he owned.
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