SMU Swimmer Luana Alonso Has The Olympic Committee's Attention, ESPN Ripped For ESPY's Choice & Naked Bride
We're over the hump and through the woods just to get to … a debate. My God. What a punch to the gut.
Maybe y'all like debates. Do you? I can't stand them. They just make me so, sooooooo angry. I'm an angry person by nature.
I have a buddy who once dubbed me the ‘World’s Youngest Angry Old Man,' and he was 100% right. I'm a 60-year-old living in a 30-year-old body, and it gets worse each passing year.
So, you can imagine how sitting through a debate – on CNN – with Donald Trump and whatever the hell corpse they pull out of Camp David would make me feel. It's going to be insufferable. I've sat through enough of these to know exactly what it's gonna look like.
After about five minutes, it'll just turn into angry yelling and accusations from both sides, but you'll mainly just hear Biden's point of view because they'll cut Trump's mic and/or refuse to let him talk.
Trump will at some point get pissy with whoever the hell is moderating this debacle, Biden will at multiple points be inaudible, and social media will be filled with such scorching hot takes your screens will melt.
You're going to sit there and watch it and get so annoyed and angry and frustrated that you'll eventually get a headache. To counter that, you're going to drink more. When you do that, you're going to start getting really mouthy with whoever else is in the room with you, and the night will spiral worse than when the sun went down on April 14, 1912.
Wow! I didn't even expect to make a dark Titanic joke today, but here we are. See? I'm already getting worked up.
So, I won't be watching. I'm sure I'll see plenty of it in various Twitter clips, but beyond that, I ain't doing it. I'll stick with Homeland and/or whatever bingeable Gordon Ramsey show is on the CW tonight.
Whew. On that note, welcome to a Thursday Nightcaps – the one where we welcome Paraguay’s Luana Alonso, also an SMU swimmer, to class mere weeks before the Olympics. She punched her tickets and we're riding with her in August.
Never too early to get to know the competitors, you know.
What else? I've got a hilarious CNN pregame stage going viral on Elon's Twitter, ESPN getting DRAGGED through the mud for being just the dumbest group of humans alive, temporary wartime golf rules (yep, it's how it sounds), and the newest wedding season fad – assless dresses!
Again, it's how it sounds!
Grab you one of them Carvel cakes for National Ice Cream Cake Day and settle in for a pre-debate Thursday 'Cap!
Give CNN credit (yuck), this College GameDay studio has me ready for Saturdays in the fall
I feel dirty even saying it, but I'm also fair – unlike CNN. So, I have to give Kaitlan Collins credit for this below tweet ahead of tonight's debate.
It got me so fired up on an otherwise slow Thursday in June. I can smell it. We're so close to the fall. To Saturdays full of gambling and boozing. To the theme songs. To the crowds. To that glorious feeling around 11 p.m. when the Game of the Week is wrapping up and you realize you still have a full slate of NFL games in 12 hours.
Tell me you don't love that feeling. You can't. Because you do.
God, I miss it. Two more months, almost exactly. In the meantime, here's the closest thing we'll get to it for now:
Let's check in with ESPN while we're talking about woke media companies
Look, I know it says CNN, but try to look past it. They're the worst. You know it. I know it. Hell, they probably even know it anat this point. I just miss football, OK. That's all.
Now, let's move from woke CNN to the World Wide Woke Leader! Shoutout to OutKick's crack bettor, Geoff Clark, who brought this to my attention earlier today:
From ESPN:
In honor of his tireless work in making a positive impact for the veteran community through the power of sport, Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex will receive the Pat Tillman Award for Service, an award given to a person with a strong connection to sports who has served others in a way that echoes the legacy of the former NFL player and U.S. Army Ranger, Pat Tillman.
Now, to be fair to the Prince, he's done some solid work. No doubt about it, as Collinsworth would (and will, in two months!) say.
After serving for 10 years in the British Armed Forces, including two tours of duty in Afghanistan as a forward air controller and Apache helicopter pilot, Prince Harry founded The Invictus Games Foundation.
See? I didn't know that. Did you? The problem AMERICA has with this little move by ESPN is … well, you can figure it out:
Bride bares all, wartime golf & Paige hits a bomb
I'll be honest, I don't care one way or the other, because there isn't enough money on this planet to get me to watch this stupid show, but it's certainly a weird choice.
But, it's also ESPN. And if they can check a box, they're gonna check the hell out of that box. So, check!
Rapid-fire time on this final Thursday of June. First up? I don't know why, but this tweet came across my timeline this morning and I found it fascinating:
Wild. I love stuff like this. We're so soft as a world now. Scared of our own shadows. You know what they were doing in England in 1940?
Hitting bombs and then dodging BOMBS. And they did it with a smile on their face. Wore it like a badge of honor.
A player whose stroke is affected by the simultaneous explosion of a bomb may play another ball from the same place. PENALTY OF ONE STROKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Hey, hotshot. I don't care if you just lost a leg. No excuse. Drop another Noodle and pitch it up there. You're lying three now, so make it count. Sorry.
What a world.
Next? Fine, here's Paige ripping stripes while we're talking about bombs:
You think a bomb is stopping that pipe job from rolling 350? Don't think so. Love the yellow ball, too. Colored golf balls are the way to go.
Finally … I couldn't be more all in if I tried on this new wedding trend:
Olympic and SMU swimmer Luana Alonso is ready for the dance
No clue if that's AI or not, but whatever. Honestly, I have a couple fall weddings coming up, and this may be just the thing to get me there during football season.
Usually, it's an automatic no. But if the bride is flashing the crowd during her ‘I Dos,’ I may – may – just skip the 3:30 game. We'll see.
OK, that's all for today. Enjoy the debate tonight. I'm sure it'll be fair and balanced!
See you tomorrow.
OutKick Nightcaps is a daily column set to run Monday through Friday at 4 p.m. (roughly, we’re not robots).
You watching the debate? Email me at Zach.Dean@OutKick.com.