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What Happened to the Game that I Love? Basketball After the Vibe Shift
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
By christopher sloce
fewer people than ever were happy about the nba. I was high on the hog, watching the detroit pistons return from irrelevance after spending half my life in the gutter. Giddy as could be, i unmuted and refollowed everything related to the team (the 28 game losing streak in 2023-2024 was a genuine mental health hazard) and the league. What i found is, somehow, everybody else was in the opposite boat as me.
i noticed it first when shaquille o’neal couldn’t remember who coached the pistons on national tv, and then on his podcast proudly said he didn’t watch them. Shaq is a color commentator, so i don’t look for him to be deeply analytical, but it was the pride in dismissing a team that was in the process of ending tripling their win-total from the prior year, winning 44 games instead of 14, something only the pistons have done. Some people chalk this up to a dismissive attitude about detroit, but the nfl flacks don’t talk about the lions like this. Other contexts abounded. Stephen a. Smith got caught playing solitaire during the nba finals while a cinderella indiana pacers team were on the way to upsetting the knicks. Stephen a. Smith is a knicks fan. It’d be preferable if he was calling in an airstrike. (As part of his contract negotiations with espn, he has stepped away from the nba countdown, after years of being one of its defining voices, to spend more time on other things, including a sirius/xm politics show).
speaking of airstrikes: for the 11th time in 13 seasons, a record was set for 3 pointers made. Maybe it’s because reigning champions the boston celtics were winning and had won the prior year by shooting an absurd number of 3 pointers (close to 4000 in 82 games) that it caused so much discussion, because people spoke as if the boston celtics braintrust had solved basketball. It was annoying. There’s a beauty in watching steph curry curl off of a screen and fire a prayer; this felt more like marc andreessens group-chat talking about disrupting the water supply. The three pointer was wormwood, the great star falling from the sky and poisoning a third of the waters. That now these shots were being launched by power forwards and centers, who traditionally played close to the basket instead of 23 feet away, had taken on near eschatological proportions.
and from the sea came victor wembanyama unto the san antonio spurs. A 7’4 center with the mobility and shot diet of a guard was part of an evolutionary trend in the game: taller, more skilled players. That means a lot of threes. He was the most vaunted prospect since lebron james, someone who would rewrite the entire era of the game. In the eyes of someone like shaq, evolutionary centers with a perimeter game couldn’t hang with yesterday’s physicality. In his view, it’s a softer game now, and all they could do by getting backed down by shaq is “shoot them motherfucking 3s.”
wembanyama is also french. A majority of the top five players were, for the first time, european. People began to worry: there hadn’t been an american mvp in close to a decade. It got so bad people thought that minnesota’s anthony edwards was a bastard son of jordan. They also conveniently forget that ant-man wound up taking the trophy home for making the most threes that season (320).
with all these threes, all these europeans, and all these experts citing all these reasons (by implication or otherwise), there was an nba vibe shift akin to the cut’s, and the nba fandom was inundated with questions about the game. In 2024, after the start of the season, there was a sudden ratings drop of about 28%. No matter what else happened that season, the ratings question loomed over it. A variety of reasons were given, as were solutions. Commentators throughout the field pitched would-be solutions, including aforementioned gummy candy mascot, friend of the general, and podcaster shaquille o’neal.
where there was once joy was suddenly anxiety, and everyone began trying to answer mark jackson’s now memetic question, a lament fostered because d’angelo russell caught a flagrant for knocking jamal murray to the floor: “what happened to the game i love?”Liking basketball had gone from beyond a hobby. Liking basketball meant you had staked out a position; you liked it in opposition to all of the concerns being raised.
i still do. I think basketball isn’t just a sport, though it is. It’s america’s “beautiful game”, a world export that is like our version of what we call soccer, and contains with it all the complications of world football and our country. Where the game is now makes sense when you look at the developments of the “commodified” aspects of the game: the development of its own logic towards dividing the labor of the game, its cultural impact, and that impact’s intersection with marketing. The existence of such does not invalidate the cultural value of basketball and it certainly doesn’t invalidate its beauty, which would constitute another essay. But the people who were supposed to explain the value of the game were interested in something else, and the questions of basketball felt like they were about something more fundamental.
a necessary history of the nba positional revolution
the following story is a story of how a game went from “positions” to “responsibilities”, something that has been seismic in the history of the nba. It’s a broad, imperfect history. As a method, i’ve mostly used mvp votes combined with championships won to talk about “defining players”. I use this rubric because this is the rubric everybody uses. There is certainly a place for basketball in sun and shade or a people’s history of the national basketball association, but it helps to understand how the nba braintrust views its history first and foremost.
we envision the league’s founding fathers as two colossi standing on the atlantic and pacific coasts, romulus and remus with nothing above them but sky. Bill russell was in boston, wilt chamberlain was in los angeles. The unwritten rule of basketball history is to never let facts get in the way of feeling of largesse in the sport (you should read this essay in that spirit); it doesn’t matter that chamberlain was only a laker near the end of his career because his showmanship and finesse have tied him to the franchise forever. He feels like a laker.
throughout the sixties, the “most valuable player” award went overwhelmingly to his somber, defensive counterpart, bill russell, who led boston to 11 championships with an unbroken run from ‘59-’66. These were also two centers: tall players whose job is to guard the rim from easy points or other big men. From the 59-60 to the 78-79 seasons no wingman or guard other than prototypical “big point guard” oscar robertson won an mvp.
the fall line is the ‘79-’80 season: the year julius erving became the first mvp wing (shooting guard or small forward, basically players who hang out on the “wings” of the court) to win mvp in the modern era. Erving was known for athletic dunks, a hallmark trademarked in the flashier american basketball association. An equally important idea followed erving: the three-point line.The three meant distances could become a weapon in the game. Its time would come: in the 1980 finals, where erving faced off against kareem abdul-jabbar’s lakers, he shot two three pointers the entire series.
a pattern was emerging: small-forward sized players like magic johnson (who was a point guard, but 6’8) and larry bird became the sport’s most important players, as opposed to the centers of the 60s and 70s. While bird and johnson’s teams both featured dominant centers like robert parish and kareem abdul-jabbar, bird and magic’s burst, speed, and playmaking meant (pun intended) the “center” of the game went t to what either of those players would do with the ball in their hands. It’s hard to argue against their dominance. 1980s championships went to either one of magic’s lakers or bird’s celtics, with the exception of the detroit piston’s bruising “bad boys” grabbing two in the late 80s. The mvp awards followed suit in the 80s: the only three players to win mvps in the 1980s were bird, magic, and michael jordan. Jordan’s ability to turn any game to his side just by application of a will that seemed to encompass basketball meant that players on jordan’s team were more there to do what he couldn’t do in that very moment. Jordan surrounded by specialists (and the greatest sidekick in nba history, scottie pippen) could not only win but dominate.
sometimes, in a sport, somebody embodies its great qualities so completely they become synonymous with the sport. Jordan is basketball the way jimi hendrix is guitar; even their gear (the air jordan, the fender stratocaster) are as much a stand-in for disciplines. He was a figure we could celebrate without complication, even emerging as a possible great at the 1984 olympics. Here in the late 1980s/early 1990s is where basketball’s cultural dominance truly began. A little snapshot of our brains at the time: michael jordan did a commercial for mcdonald’s with bugs bunny, basically our modernist american loki, and that was so popular they made space jam. But even jordan was human (watch him act in space jam for proof). He retired three times, two of which we remember fondly. The ghost of jordan hung around the league, in forms that were uncannily close in some ways but neurotic, feuding with co-stars openly instead of privately (kobe bryant), in shooting guards who had a minor resemblance to jordan’s style of play and were forced into a mold they never quite filled (vince carter), or jordan himself in a disappointing run with the washington wizards. A search began for the next living legend. They found him in akron.
every great player exists in continuity with basketball as it was played before him. Kareem has evolutionary links to russell and chamberlain, jordan combined erving’s high flying style and larry bird’s tenacity. But they complicate our understanding of the game, highlighting lost parts and buried trends. This is part of what makes lebron feel prophesied by the game up until that point. Two specific portents: magic getting subbed in for kareem-abdult jabbar, a big guard for a center, during the 1980 finals to play center and advice bobby knight, jordan’s olympics coach, gave to trailblazers gm stu inman about what to do in the draft if they needed a center but could get jordan (who gave up 5 or six inches to most centers): “play michael jordan at center.”
lebron james was the answer to a question implied by bobby knight’s quip to the trailblazers brass: what if you could have michael jordan at center? Lebron has played every position, lining up mostly as a small forward and a power forward but passing like a guard and protecting the rim like a center when necessary. What’s more accurate to say is that if you have lebron on your team, you have the four classic positions and a position called lebron. He became the league’s most adaptable player, winning in multiple different contexts: as part of a super team (the miami heat “heatles” with chris bosh and dwyane wade), a redemption arc run with the cleveland cavaliers, and in his dotage as a laker. He was the best player on every one of those teams, even alongside fellow nba legends.
he was also there to become the game’s goodwill ambassador and its dominant marketing figure. Lebron was more fun than jordan, less likely to play one of the greatest games of his career hungover. He became a legend in his home state and came back to give them their only championship. Lebron married his high school sweetheart, and he danced on the side lines. His greatest controversy was an ill-advised free agency announcement and the maintenance of his hairline.
everyone began a search for a lebronian hybrid, not realizing he was as sui generis as jordan. People began looking for someone who replicated lebron as an archetype, not the lessons of positional advantage being unmoored. That would ultimately involve the nba’s three point revolution.
steph curry was a leap in how the game was processed, because he took full advantage of that aba export, the three ball, and became the greatest shooter in league history in the process. Despite only two mvp awards, he’s presided over one of the most dominant runs in history, including the winningest single season team of all time (the 2015-2016 warriors, who bested the ’96 bulls’ 72 wins by one game). What athletic advantages he had flew by bad scouts (i’ll remind everyone the timberwolves drafted 4 guards that draft, none of whom were steph curry): his relentless motor allowing him to endlessly run off of screens and his quick release compared to thunderous leaping ability and a burst. He landed in a place that was committed to his advantages. Steph curry could have just as easily been like his father dell: a mere shooting specialist. But the dam broke. Steph curry could shoot so efficiently from three it created an arms race mentality. In order to beat the warriors, it would require making up the three gap.
here we see a completion of the positional revolution. At a point in time, your strategy being built around a high usage point guard was mostly considered a gimmick. Point guards were there to pass and score if they absolutely had to. But with curry, you could have him moving tirelessly around the court, able to pass to other great shooters like klay thompson and kevin durant. At the rim, you can put a low scoring but high iq defensive forward like draymond green out to control the paint. More than anything, it gave the court two great centers of gravity: the three point line and close to the basket, all on a quest for efficiency. If someone can make three pointers at a high clip, they are encouraged, just as someone like nikola jokic (7’0 foot tall center and probably the best player alive, pound for pound) is encouraged to initiate the offense for the denver nuggets. Steph curry’s dominance has been as much a victory of metabasketball. Now the game desires either broad generalists or specialists, all of whom are expected to shoot 3s if open.
it all calls to mind antoine walker, a lottery pick out of kentucky. He was a power forward. About a third of his shots per game were threes. This drove everyone crazy. Someone finally thought to ask him: “why do you shoot so many threes a game?” He responded, “because there are no four pointers.”
to say this has had no effect on the game itself would be ludicrous. Players are expected to carry as many skills on them as they can; the archetypes that are fading out of the league are the most specialized ones. But the logic that led us to this point has always existed in the nba game: scoring efficiently and setting up your teammates is good, a guy who can do three things is more valuable than a guy who can do two. The historical element of how we got to this point is rarely discussed. Even more rarely discussed is how the how the rarified air basketball finds itself in has had an effect on how the game feels, how the drive towards its marketable aspects has put basketball in conflict with some of the more democratic elements we could purport it to represent.
personality, product, and prep schools
sports entertainment is a commodity with an internal history you buy and sell as a part of the product. You buy jordans to feel like jordan. You also buy the sweatshop, the shoe store, and the intersection of those anxieties on what was supposed to be “just a game”.
for all of its utopian promise of escape for children scarred by ethno-religious war or the poverty embedded in the existence of the projects, the professional game is an industry that produces two products: one a product as watched, and one a product as experienced in a phenomenological sense.
in “towards a unified theory of uncool”, ock sportello writes:
the nba’s crisis of cool concerns culture around it insofar as the nba, more than anything else, is in the business of selling cool…[t]he nba is itself a sort of advertisement for its aesthetics, personalities, and sneakers—if there’s an nba deep state, the nike headquarters is where they conspire. The league is, not coincidentally, the primary intermediary between many among its multiracial fanbase and black american culture.
these players become oriented towards product: both the game and becoming one themselves. A starting point for the “crisis of cool” is a neoliberal economism that orients society towards an unending consumption and thus unending production.
if you feel like the league lacks genuine characters, one of the 2000’s nbas greatest strengths, you are not wrong. The professionalization of the sport has favored an american middle class that can afford athletic trainers and gear, a class that can set them up with travel teams and send them to prep schools. That this coincides with the game’s obsession with positional efficiency, raw output of a player and what labor he saves, is not an accident. Large in part, true coolness is nothing if not inefficient. There is still a dialectic that takes place between common sense and the miracle of the game, but there are plenty of people who wouldn’t mind if athletes were ai generated spokespeople for wheaties you could bet on.
this is, in many ways, incongruous to the spirit of the sport. Basketball can be played anywhere someone has thought to set up a hoop. It has been a game of farm boys and city park pick-up players and jewish vacationers and high school kids on the rez. It’s in these folkways that something grew that captured imaginations from milwaukee to moscow, and it was these folkways that grew a game into a business doesn’t care that his game has had a democratic level of access, played by rich and poor, and with that, created professionals the people who benefit from all of the shared history with none of the initiative to give back.
here’s a basketball folk tale. There was a mixed income housing development called 23 oakwood that had a hard road to its development in atherton, california, which was behind california’s state housing goals. The remedy was the city would build 16 townhomes, with up to 20% being labeled “affordable” or roughly priced to being about 30% of the area’s average income or three affordable houses compared to 13. Atherton’s powerful, including future trump booster marc andreesen, raised hell at the prospect of this. One couple in particular asked for the development to be stopped outright, and if that request “should that not be sufficient for the state, we ask that the town commits to investing in considerably taller fencing and landscaping to block sight lines onto our family’s property.” Signing the letter was two time mvp steph curry.
“i live here but it’s not really my country”: nba and the memory of the civil rights movement
the nba is black by majority. It is black because of who made it the global phenomenon it is today, because of the cultural semiotics attached to the game. Many teams had white coaches and white owners, but you can’t remove blackness from basketball. The nba has been proud to be black, and should be: basketball is one of the dominant expressions of black identity in america. Black folkways are the game’s folkways, and the game exists where those folkways meet other streams.
bill russell and kareem abdul-jabbar are not just greats in their sport; they were also a part of the civil rights movement. In 1961, bill russell and six other players, refused to play in an exhibition game in lexington, kentucky when several black players were refused service at a coffee shop. One of the singular frustrations of discussing the civil rights movement is how often history is discussed in a way that doesn’t connect it with other american struggles. Players not playing because the city refuses them hospitality is as much a strike over unfair and unequal working conditions as what happened in the textile mills of lowell. Our misunderstanding of labor is but one part. The other part is our belief that because we idolize these players and we watch them, they owe us something. No small part of that has to do with who plays in the nba.
for everything bill russell gave the boston celtics--and the organization are trailblazers in the nba’s racial equality, though a good portion of the fanbase would rather make brian scalabrine jokes than celebrate that– the city gave him inattention, rarely selling out the boston garden during their 50s and 60s dominance. Boston gave him grief. His quote about the city in his autobiography second wind speaks volumes: “boston itself was a flea market of racism… had all varieties, old and new…corrupt, city hall-crony racists, brick-throwing, send-’em-back-to-africa racists, and in the university areas phony radical-chic racists…other than that, i liked the city.’’ One night, the greatest player of the 1960s and a genuine hero had his house in reading broken into. Racial slurs were written on the walls and he found feces in his bed.
the harlem riots of 1964 began when an off-duty police officer shot a black teenager, and kareem abdul-jabbar, a harlem native, knew it could have been him who died instead. This began a life-long interest in racial justice. When the ncaa banned dunking, kareem abdul-jabbar knew the cultural valence of the decision, telling the chicago defender, “when you look at it … most of the people who dunk are black athletes.” In 1968, kareem refused to play for the usa team at the olympics to protest of american racism.When kareem went on the today show to discuss the basketball clinics he hosted in harlem that summer, his decision came up. He told the host, former baseball player joe garagiola, that while he lived here in the united states, it wasn’t his country. Joe garagiola said, “maybe you should leave.”
as the sixties curdled into the 1970s malaise and 1980s reaganite morning, the black radicalism of the 60s was not so much fading out of its own poor decisions– though any political movement will make mistakes, especially under deep pressure– as it was vanquished by american state repression, chased into less disruptive terrain. It allowed for moderates to call the black liberation army misguided gangsters and the black panthers a radical chic club; it chased the anti-capitalist elements of the civil rights movement into regroupment. This misunderstanding of the civil rights movement as being vibes focused is a propaganda tactic in and of itself. In twenty years time, fred hampton’s rainbow coalition had become jesse jackson’s and even jesse jackson proved far too radical for democrats.
there was some explosion of material growth in the 1980s for some, not for others. Reagan’s war on municipal and federal employment was an undeclared war on a black middle class. The cities were inflamed with crack use; the aids epidemic was a background plague reagan couldn’t be bothered with. However, he felt it necessary to disavow the h.R. 3966, the childrens television act of 1988. This act would limit the amount of advertising to children to anywhere from 10 ½ to 12 minutes per hour.
around this time michael jordan became the example of a celebrity-athlete and he knew he had to be careful with his words. This gained him millions, but there are unforetold costs. What would have happened if michael jordan, now an mvp and icon even before winning a ring, chose to endorse harvey gantt against arch conservative jesse helms? We can’t know, but we can know what he reportedly said: “besides, republicans buy sneakers, too.” It was true. Consumerism has always been a great leveling in our society with even children cut in on the bounty. Andy warhol said the beautiful thing about coca-cola is you drink the same coca-cola as elizabeth taylor and we wore the same jordans as michael.
in 2008, somebody who exemplified similar cultural currents as the nba ran for president. Here was a community organizer from chicago, one with a decent jumpshot and enough charisma you can put him on espn without embarrassing himself. The nba and barack obama were a match made in heaven.
it’s pointless to judge nba players for identifying with obama: they are highly paid black professionals who understand how deep white scrutiny masks hatred in this country, and how that scrutiny is another form of surveillance. In a way, they were paying it forward after jordan’s declaration about republicans and sneakers. Perhaps he could have gotten through to jordan; obama made everyone feel like he understood, even me, unfortunately too young to realize ron paul was printing lew rockwell in his 1990s newsletter.
then things began being spoken about in terms of necessity, a direct opposite to the message of hope. Obama had to sell a number of ideas that fell into the same logics clinton and reagan without being crucified by some of those people it was harming. Presidents have always pointed to their experts to sell bad news, but obama was able to imbue those expert’s analysis with what resembled a moral clarity and deep consideration of the unfortunate implications. We were told: we have to bail out the bankers who caused the financial crisis, they’re too big to fail, the experts say so. We have to join a nato mission in libya because america is the beacon of liberal democracy. The best healthcare we can have is a rebranded version of a republican-helmed measure called heart from 1993. We have to compromise because its doing politics the right way.
it was here barack obama’s embrace of basketball helped. No other sport could have given that to obama, because no other sport made him like other black people like basketball did. There’s no reason to discount other sports and their civil rights history, but all one had to do was to listen to the people most terrified of obama and their words about the league. Nba players were flashy thugs who relied on athleticism instead of fundamentals and barack hussein obama was a black radical muslim socialist from kenya. Obama’s embrace of the league allowed him to stake cultural ground more radical than he was as a political figure, and with that ground was the legacy of the civil rights movement easily caricaturized as a bunch of parades.
all of this culture cache made him an arbiter of a hip, urban centered liberal democratic order with the message everything was coming up according to plan. There was no reason to pay attention to the protests taking place on the hinterlands, other than to calmly explain to people that we were beyond waving confederate flags and holding a sign that said “we came unarmed this time.” Be sensible. Why would you burn all this down? We’ve got a good thing going. You’ve got a president who fills out march madness brackets, what more could you want? The questions persisted. The idea that we might ever escape the discussion of race started to look more cynical than anything. The answer came when, in four years, a man who spent much of the prior decade claiming obama wasn’t from america became president.
“u bum”: nba in the trump era
when donald trump was first elected, the only heartening thing about it was everyone you could ever respect thought it was the worst thing that had ever happened. Basketball was the official sport of the obama era. Players were happy to go to the white house and see the man they voted for. Donald trump was to be a negation of barack obama, a negation he has remained as a cultural figure. This explains why, to date, no nba teams visited trump’s white house.
the san antonio spurs gregg popovich is the greatest nba mind and coach to ever pick up a clipboard. He also became something of a resistance sage for fairly eloquently describing his own dismay. Kyle lowry, up in toronto, said he thought the muslim ban was “bullshit.” All stan van gundy could say during a pistons shootaround in phoenix was, “most of these people voted for him. Like, shit, i don’t have any respect for that.” The golden state warriors refused to go to the white house, so donald trump rescinded their invite. Lebron responded by retweeting him with “u bum!U bum @stephencurry30 already said he aint going! So therefore aint no invite. Going to white house was a great honor until you showed up!”
as monstrous as he was, the first trump administration settled, at some point after the midterms, into feeling like a number of misadventures than slow, fascistic creep. Not to discount any of the harmful policies pursued by the trump administration, but after a point it mostly settled into incompetence and public distaste until the covid-19 virus.
in summer 2020, the nba invited the teams who had a snowball’s chance in hell at winning a ring to disney world for the “bubble” to qualify for the playoffs. When the season reconstituted itself, it was with protests against the police violence that killed george floyd, breona taylor, and countless others as cultural ambiance. Nba teams wore black lives matters shirts and knelt during the anthem, further linking the league’s image to its civil rights lineage. Stephen jackson, former nba cult hero and personal friend of george floyd, spoke eloquently in minneapolis:
im here because theyre not gonna demean the character of george floyd, my twin…a lot of times, when police do things they know thats wrong, the first thing they try to do is cover it up, and bring up their background -- to make it seem like the bullshit that they did was worthy. When was murder ever worthy?”
protests cropped up around the country, even in places no one would expect, and the american police continued murdering predominantly black citizens. This created a feedback loop: with each overreach, the truth of the protests shone.
august 23, 2020. Jacob blake was shot four times in the back by a kenosha, wisconsin police officer named rusten sheskey during a domestic disturbance stop. 40 miles north was milwaukee, home of the bucks, one of those remaining nba playoff teams. It was game 5 and they were preparing to play the orlando magic. They heard the news and made a decision. They didn’t come out. This would have been considered a forfeiture if not for one thing.
in solidarity, the orlando magic refused to play. In minneapolis, stephen jackson’s ultimate prescription was protest: so where do we go from here? Were going to the front line and anything you see, so be it, so be it, so be it. I want you to see it because this is real pain.” It was pain realer than basketball. The remaining nba teams on that night’s schedule followed suit. Across american sports leagues, other teams stopped playing as well. The message was clear: we’re a part of this society, and in order for us to entertain you, we have to end the extrajudicial killing of all people by police.
some players didn’t even want to continue the season. In a meeting with the nba union boss michele roberts, the lakers, led by lebron james, and the los angeles clippers voted to cancel the rest of the playoffs. Somehow the conversation kept coming back to money. At a peak in the discussion, the lakers and clippers walked out. The nba season was almost ended by a strike.
hours later, high profile players like lebron james and chris paul had a phone call with someone important. It was somebody they had placed their trust in, someone they had helped elect. To let a spokesperson tell it:
as an avid basketball fan, president obama speaks regularly with players and league officials. When asked, he was happy to provide advice on wednesday night to a small group of nba players seeking to leverage their immense platforms for good after their brave and inspiring strike in the wake of jacob blake’s shooting.
they discussed establishing a social justice committee to ensure that the players’ and league’s actions this week led to sustained, meaningful engagement on criminal justice and police reform.
the season was back on. The dominant image of the george floyd protest went from burning infrastructure to nancy pelosi in kente cloth kneeling. The world was no longer upside down. All it took was one basketball fan.
nba in the ice age
donald trump lost his election that year but that strange period we called pandemic never ended. The knowledge that at any point america could be felled by a respiratory virus induced a new malaise, something new york based magazines call a “vibe shift” with a sort of erotic zeal. Donald trump lost once, but the wreckage of the east wing makes a definitive case that the joe biden presidency never adequately dealt with him. Armed with the knowledge that at any point this could all fall apart, people began to change. In an imperfect world that was trying to recover, plenty of people decided they preferred the before, when donald trump was president, if just because it was a moment they could get a haircut and not have anyone stop them, if just because they didn’t see scary protests on the tv, if they didn’t have to pretend they got their shots on time, if they’d just shut up and play. As our overall culture shifts further right, all the artifacts of yesterday’s common sense come into question. That includes the nba, arguably the most liberal coded of the major american male sports.
on the edges of the discourse, you can see prairie fires of reaction in a sport. You can safely joke that karl anthony towns is on the downlow to a lot of nba fans as long as you call him ‘zesty’. Nobody could beat the ‘96 bulls because people are too busy doing tiktoks. Jared mccain paints his nails, end of discussion. Even darker is a xenophobia that hides itself behind an interest in keeping the game as having its original, american character. America is a nation so focused on exports that one of our political thinkers developed a theory that any two nations with a mcdonalds won’t go to war with each other. That is a logic endemic to capitalism: the total pointedness of society to continuing overproduction, one it ends all political strife. It never does; what it breeds is new answers. In the age of ice, it’s no accident we decided something is wrong with basketball because some of the best players are european.
sport media’s attitude towards basketball coincides with what we can call an open rightward turn. Barstool sports is run by anti-union dave portnoy, so terrified zohran mamdani is going to nationalize calling 19 year old women a smokeshow he might run to newark. When stephen a. Smith isn’t ignoring a thriller eastern conference finals, he’s lambasting jasmine crockett for not being deferential enough to donald trump. Pat mcafee is a shockjock and would-be aryan superman; when he isn’t spreading vicious rumors about college student’s sex lives and forcing those same students to go into hiding, he has donald trump on, who said “i’m only joining you because i hear you say such nice things about me from your very large audience.”
with that, football takes up more of the landscape: a sport where owners colluded to keep colin kaepernick out of a job. For the american reactionary imagination, football is akin to the aztec “flower wars”, ritual battles that prep the brain for blood. It is to the institution of american masculinity what the english boarding school was for the english elite: where you learn to kill. Donald trump tried to buy a football team, not a basketball team. And there’s a very simple reason the nba doesn’t have as much purchase amongst these types: the nba lives here but it’s not the nba’s country, to quote kareem.
you don’t have to look far to see how acceptable talking about basketball unlike any other sport is. At the beginning of the essay, i linked a piece far below my own standard about nba ratings (here it is again). The back half of this piece discusses topics all found in the article by ethan strauss, a golden state warriors beat writer (besides a single mention of bill simmons saying the season has too many games, making this a rare time i agree with bill). Reasons cited by strauss include the nba’s social justice focus turning the sport into a “woke pinata” alongside a lack of continuity (it’s pretty easy to fall behind in an nba season) and, gasp, too many top european talents in the sport. In fairness to strauss’s original piece: it’s obvious he’s not denigrating basketball for these things so much as he’s trying to diagnose the problem. This is also a well worn beat for him, one he was walking back in 202o as well. The issue with his diagnoses are as follows: 1) ratings are important for tv owners, not fans and if you think that’s a cop out, 2) it means you have to cede some of basketball’s strengths. And that means ceding parts of the argument to someone like charlie kirk. You don’t have to think long about why he might have had a problem with basketball. But it’s telling when his breaking point with the league is: 2011 and 2012, when lebron james finally began winning rings. Charlie kirk was a pretty good youth basketball player; he, too, in his own way was asking what happened to the game he loved.
q: what happened to the game i love a:
that grand memetic question, “what happened to the game i love?” Has been a stand in for anything you don’t like or feels abrogated to the spirit of the game for you. Fitting, then, that mark jackson was also as much of a jackass as any of the anti-nba right we’ve talked about here: people wonder why he doesn’t get another shot coaching and it’s probably the fact he forced team prayers on the golden state warriors while getting caught up with sex workers. All he said of jason collins coming out of the closet was “not in my locker room”. Hypocrisy abounds. What else is new?
at base, conservatism believes that there are worthy subjects of societal protection because everyone who doesn’t get what they need either didn’t deserve it or weren’t meant to, and any change of this is like resetting the laws of god. William buckley and mark jackson both sit astride history yelling not just “stop!” But also “go back!”
in some ways, he doesn’t deserve an answer. But here are two for mark jackson and his ideological coterie. The first is for the people who are afraid of sports that change along with the world, and think that players are there to shut up and be bet on. For them, my answer is, “nothing happened, you just never loved basketball.”
here is the second answer: at the end of the hillbilly highway is a city that became the home of my ancestors, one of america’s poorest and blackest. It was also a proud city, one that housed one of america’s strongest industries. It was a team they named after a machine part that converted temperature and pressure into motion. It was a destiny decided by the name, like so many names before. The team became synonymous with the same grit the city was associated with, embodying its imagine in a way teams rarely do. They managed to win two rings they never had any business winning against larry bird and magic johnson, never playing the way anyone wanted them to, even striking up controversy when they said if larry bird was black, he’d be some other guy (a statement that’s as true about race as it’s untrue about basketball prowess). When nelson mandela was finally freed, he wore that team’s gear and spoke with uaw members who campaigned to get him freed. It defined something about that city hearkening up north, some industrial north star. I could understand that place because where i was born, everything was rust, too, and the team defined what i thought we should be as a people.
and for years, they lost in every way they could. Mundane, unimaginable, ugly. They played the way the world was starting to feel. But when i felt like things were gone forever in this world, they started to win again. But there was a problem. They were owned by a man who got all of his money from an equity firm called platinum equity that owns securus technologies, who take $12.99 from prisoners and their families just so they can speak on video for 20 minutes. A sport defined by black ingenuity is part of the investment portfolio that also feeds off of black pain. When they win, sometimes i think about all this, it’s too much, and i tear up at the enormity of it all and how one court can hold it all. Only in fragmentary moments in our culture does america happen like it’s supposed to. Basketball just makes it happen in 24 seconds, until the shot clock rings.
christopher sloce is from wise, virginia and lives in richmond, virginia. He publishes nonfiction regularly and short fiction intermittently. His ezine kentucky meat shower is hosted at kittysneezes.Com along with his monthly culture column apophany. His contributions to the studies of football metaphysics are conducted alongside raven mack and others here.
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
Newspaper
it was the early ritual of my school days: wake up, grab the newspaper before anyone else got to it, and devour every word as if it were sacred morning scripture. Headlines, classifieds, obscure columns on fisheries in goa or wheat production in haryana, even the tv listings that nobody read. I used to read everything. So thoroughly, in fact, that my friends teased me for it. They said i consumed “all the useless information,” which was their polite way of saying i had the reading habits of a retiree trapped in a teenager’s body. I didn’t mind. Those pages gave me a sense of the world far bigger than our little town.
here is a fun fact about my association with newspapers. I paid through my high-school and college, working for a few local newspapers, helping with the composition and print templates in aldus pagemaker.
then came the 2010s, and like many of us swept up in the gospel of digital efficiency, i stopped. The newspapers were replaced by news apps, then by twitter, then by nothing. Somewhere along the way, the need to know everything turned into the need to know nothing. I didn’t really plan that transition; it sorta happened, slowly and silently. Then, i stopped the news altogether.
the world seemed noisier. News felt engineered to provoke. Every headline screamed; every story was laced with masala;1 every argument had to be packaged as a war. I withdrew. For more than a decade, my relationship with news was like a polite nod to an acquaintance i no longer wanted to speak to.
recently, i picked up the newspaper again. It started as a trash collector of sorts, instead of the plastic bag, during the pandemic. After a while, i started reading bits and pieces, here and there. I didn’t return to my old habit of reading every word. Age and sanity have cured me of that. I no longer feel compelled to plough through the political gossip or the sensational crime stories written like screenplay drafts for low-budget thrillers. I skip the masala. I skip the drama. I skip anything that feels breathless or over-seasoned.
but i read again. This time with intention. With distance. With a detached affection. Something about the physical newspaper still feels honest. Not necessarily the news itself, but the act of reading it. You sit down. You unfold it. You slow yourself to the page’s pace. There is no infinite scroll, no algorithmic trapdoor pulling you deeper. There are edges. There is an end. There is quiet.
growing up, reading the newspaper made me feel connected. It was my window to the world beyond classrooms and exam timetables. Today, reading it makes me feel grounded. It reminds me that the world is not just a stream of alerts and hot takes. It is still full of people doing real work, real reporting, authentic storytelling, even if buried beneath the usual circus.
something is humbling about returning to an old habit with new eyes. The teenage version of me wanted to know everything because the world felt vast and exciting. The adult version of me knows that too much information can make the world feel chaotic and exhausting. So i read differently now. I skim with grace. I pick the bits that matter. I enjoy the cultural notes, technology columns, and the tiny human-interest stories tucked away at the bottom corners of the page.
and strangely, this return to newspapers helps me detach from the noise rather than fall back into it. When you read digitally, you’re consuming news the way junk food is consumed, which is addictive, impulsive, and engineered to hijack your instinct for more. When you read on paper, you consume with a fork and a plate. You eat more slowly. You know when to stop.
sometimes i wonder how younger me would react to older me picking up a newspaper again. Would he laugh? Would he approve? Would he roll his eyes and go, “see, all that reading wasn’t so useless after all”? My friends certainly would. Somewhere out there, they’re still teasing me in spirit for being the guy who read the property ads and agriculture reports like they were plot twists in a novel.
but the newspaper has become something else for me now. A reminder of continuity. A small bridge to a past life. A nudge that curiosity should be nurtured. I don’t need to absorb every detail anymore. I don’t need to chase every headline. I don’t need to debate every point. I just read. Quietly. Calmly. Without being pulled into the cyclone.
we talk a lot about going back to basics, but most of us rarely do it. Restarting the newspaper habit is one of those rare returns that actually change something. It reminds me to take things slow. To step outside of the algorithm. To give my attention weight again.
this may be what growing older does. It teaches us to curate not just our time but our minds. It teaches us that information is not wisdom. It teaches us that sometimes the best things in life are the ones we left behind because we thought the future would always be better.
i don’t think i’ll ever go back to the way i used to read as a kid. That obsessive scanning, that all-consuming curiosity, that unfiltered consumption, it belongs to a younger mind. But i am grateful that i can return to the practice in a gentler, more thoughtful way.
the world is still loud. The news is still spicy. But i don’t have to be.
all i need is a quiet morning, a cup of chai, and a newspaper waiting to be unfolded. A little ritual revived. A small act of reclaiming myself in a world that keeps trying to speed everything up. Some habits are worth returning to. And some stories read better when they’re printed on paper.
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the spices that, we indians, add to everything to make it “tastier and flavorful.”
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Who Is the Mother of Patriots Receiver Kayshon Bouttes Son? | Usa new news
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
Boutte was selected by the new england patriots in the sixth round of the 2023 Nfl draft.
Two years later, the team made the playoffs for the first time since the 2021 season. On jan. 18, 2026, the pats faced the houston texans in the divisional round. In that game, boutte had three receptions for 75 yards and one touchdown in the 28–16 win.
Just days before the afc championship game, boutte wrote a piece about his past gambling addiction and how having a child changed him. Here’s more about the wide receiver’s family.
when boutte became a father
Before entering the nfl, boutte played his college ball at louisiana state university. In his junior year at lsu, he became a dad.
Boutte’s son, kaylan, was born on sept. 22, 2022. Shortly after his birth, the wideout gushed about his little one, telling nola.Com that he wasn’t getting any sleep after kaylan came home from the hospital but didn’t mind because “it’s real. I love him so much.”
The mother of boutte’s son is kayla fortenberry. While the athlete has tried to keep the details of his personal life private, her name was revealed in connection with a 2024 online gambling investigation and legal case. Boutte was accused of using an online sportsbook account under fortenberry’s name while underage. The affidavit provided some other details about her identity, including that fortenberry lived in georgia and was born on nov. 30, 2000.
In january 2024, boutte was arrested for underage gambling and computer fraud.
boutte says having his son changed his life
Boutte detailed the dark times in his life and the spiral his gambling took him down in his piece for the players’ tribune. But he said that having his son is what made him turn his life around.
“I wish i could tell you i came to my senses on my own … but honestly, only two things saved me,” he wrote. “One was getting healthy enough to play football again. The other was becoming a father, as a junior in college. Nothing wakes you up faster than that. I just looked at myself in the mirror one day and realized, ‘bruh the way you living ain’t healthy.’ And if i’m being honest, i think there was probably a little bit of shame to that realization, too. Growing up, my dad was a real hard-working dude. I didn’t really come from a rich household, but anything we wanted, my parents made it happen. And i wanted to be that for my family.
“Having a kid coming into the world. I think that’s when i started taking my mental health more seriously and things got better for me. After my junior year, because of everything i went through, i still wasn’t 100% physically. But by the grace of god, i made it to the nfl. By the grace of god, new england saw potential in me.”
The gambling and fraud charges against boutte were dropped in july 2024.
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
Key points
- blades brown shot a course-record 60 at pga west, nearly achieving a 59.
- skipped college to turn pro at 17, breaking historic records as a junior golfer.
- draws motivation from family, seeks to learn from top players like scottie scheffler.
last friday, blades brown stood over a seven-foot birdie putt on the 18th hole at pga west’s nicklaus tournament course, needing to make it to shoot 59. The 18-year-old from nashville had already torched the course for eight birdies and an eagle through 17 holes. One more and he’d join golf’s most exclusive club.
he stroked it on his line. It didn’t break.
“i may have made it in my mind, but the putt did not go in,” brown said afterward, flashing the kind of perspective that makes you forget he’s barely old enough to vote. “But i made it in my mind, so really happy about it.”
that 60 set a new course record and put brown in a tie for the lead heading into the weekend at the american express. More importantly, it announced to the golf world what those who’ve been paying attention already knew: this kid is different.
the untraditional path
brown’s journey to professional golf reads like a case study in trusting your gut. At 16, he broke bobby jones’ 103-year-old record as the youngest medalist at stroke play in u.S. Amateur history. He won three consecutive tennessee state high school championships. He was ranked number one in both the junior golf scoreboard and the american junior golf association.
then he did something that would make most parents nervous: he skipped college entirely.
in december 2024, despite being pursued by the nation’s top collegiate programs, brown announced he was turning pro. No four years at a powerhouse program. No ncaa championships. Just straight from high school to the professional ranks at 17 years old.
“everyone’s got their own path and i’m running my race,” brown said when asked about his decision. “But i think that there’s a lot of really good junior and amateur talent coming up and i wouldn’t be surprised if we saw another amateur make a run.”
it’s the kind of confidence that could come off as cocky from someone else. From brown, it just sounds honest.
basketball genes and golf dreams
understanding blades brown means understanding where he comes from. His mother, rhonda blades, was the first player in wnba history to score a three-point goal and was inducted into the missouri sports hall of fame in 2023. His older sister millie made more than 220 three-pointers in her high school basketball career and led her team to a state championship.
brown grew up trying to be “as good of a shooter as my sister is.” That competitive fire, combined with his mother’s athletic dna and his father parke’s guidance at nashville’s richland country club, created something special.
“he’s a little more mature,” his mother rhonda said. “His personality is perfect for the golf course.”
learning from the best
sunday at the american express didn’t go as planned. Brown struggled to a final-round score that left him well off the pace. But even in disappointment, he was soaking up knowledge.
playing in the final group with world number one scottie scheffler, brown couldn’t stop marveling at what he witnessed.
“one of the coolest things that i learned today was how underrated scottie scheffler’s short game is,” brown said. “To see it in person and just to look at kind of the trajectory and the spin and just the control that he has with his wedges and short game. Obviously his putting is insane too. It was really cool to watch. So i’m definitely going to go work on that.”
this is what separates brown from other young phenoms. He’s not just talented. He’s a student of the game who understands that every round, every pairing, every moment is a chance to learn.
what’s next
brown will be playing primarily on the korn ferry tour in 2026 while receiving exemptions to pga tour events. After his performance this week at the american express, those exemptions will certainly be more than a week ago.
“i just think that it’s cool that the golf ball doesn’t know how old you are,” brown said when asked about competing against players decades older.
he’s right. The golf ball doesn’t care about age. It only cares about talent, preparation and nerve. And blades brown seems to have all three in abundance.
after eight days of competitive golf in a week, brown admitted he was ready for a rest. But not before making one thing clear: “i got some things i got to sharpen up and hopefully we see if we can do what scottie’s doing.”
translation: this is just the beginning.
scottie by the numbers: his 20th career win at the american express
scottie scheffler’s 20th career win was built on 32 birdies, clutch putting and bombs off the tee. Here’s what the stats reveal about his desert dominance.
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reed claims first true dp world tour victory with commanding performance at emirates golf club
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0scheffler opens 2026 campaign with statement round at american express
world no. 1 fires opening 63 while lee and coody share lead in desert scoring-fest
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Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
Closings and delays 1-26-26
- a children’s habitat closed
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- lakeview churchlcp childcare closed
- lawrence co independent schools synchronous e-learning
- lawrence township msd e-learning
- lebanon community school corp. E-learning
- lebanon presbyterian preschool ministry closed
- legacy bible church closed
- legacy christian school closed
- lewis cass schools virtual learning
- liberty grove schools no classes or activities monday
- liberty kids preschool & kindergarten closed monday
- liberty perry comm schools e-learning
- life pointe nazarene-mooresville activities canceled – no am or pm classes
- light & life free methodist church-avon no activities – no food pantry mon
- lighthouse christian academy closed
- lindner learning center, inc. All monday sessions canceled
- linwood christian church-indpls all mon activities canceled
- little learners early childhood center closed
- logansport comm school corp e-learning
- lumen christi catholic school no classes or activities
- lutheran high school closed monday
- maconaquah school corp. Virtual learning, day care open, no preschool
- madison-grant united school corp e-learning
- marian university e-learning
- marion county clerk’s office closed monday – election board closed
- warren twp. Small claims court closed
- marion county superior & circuit courts closed
- marion public library closed monday
- martinsville church of the firstborn no am services
- martinsville schools msd e-learning
- matchbook learning no classes or activities
- mays community academy e-learning
- meals on wheels inc serving indpls area closed – no meal deliveries on mon
- meals on wheels of hamilton county no meal delivery
- meals on wheels of hendricks co closed – no deliveries
- midwest academy of carmel closed monday
- midwest bartenders school opening 2 hrs late
- mill creek community school corp. Closed
- mini blessings childcare ministry no classes or activities
- mississinewa community schools e-learning
- mitchell community public library closed
- mitchell community schools synchronous learning
- monroe central school corp. Virtual learning
- monroe co community schools closed, no elearning
- monroe-gregg school district e-learning
- mooresville christian academy closed
- mooresville consolidated schools e-learning
- mooresville public library closed monday
- msd of decatur township e-learning asynchronous
- msd of wabash county e-learning
- msd of warren county closed
- mt bethel christian academy closed
- mt. Olive missionary baptist church no activities jan 26-31
- mt. Vernon comm school corp (hancock )e-learning
- mti school of knowledge monday e learning
- muncie community schools closed
- mursix corp closed – sun 2nd shift & mon 1st shift
- nettle creek school corp. E-learning – monday
- new beginnings fellowship church building closed, no meetings/rehearsals
- new castle comm. School corp. Virtual learning
- new liberty missionary baptist church no am services – no sunday services
- new life christian fellowship fortville no pm services – no youth group
- new palestine comm. Schools virtual learning
- next step school of dance no classes or activities
- nine13sports closed – sports and logistics
- nineveh hensley jackson schools e-learning
- noah’s ark christian child care closed
- noble of indiana all locations closed monday
- north central parke schools e-learning
- north miami community schools virtual learning
- north montgomery comm. School corp. E-learning
- north putnam community schools e-learning
- north west hendricks school corp e-learning
- north white school corp. Closed
- northminister presbyterian church closed
- northwestern school corp-howard co e-learning
- oak hill united school corp e-learning
- one christian church greenwood online services only
- opportunity day preschool closed
- options schools-noblesville e-learning
- options schools-westfield e-learning
- options schools aba fishers e-learning
- orchard school activities canceled
- our lady of greenwood school closed
- our lady of lourdes catholic school e-learning
- outlook christian preschool /asc closed
- outside the box inc activities canceled – all locations closed mon
- paramount brookside e-learning
- paramount cottage home e-learning. No on-site programs
- paramount englewood e-learning. No on-site programs
- park place church of god-anderson daycare closed
- park tudor school closed
- paul mitchell the school indianapolis no classes or activities
- pebble brook preschool closed monday
- pendleton christian church preschool closed
- pendleton community public library closed
- perry township government center closed
- perry township msd e-learning
- perry township small claims court closed
- peru community schoolssynchronous learning
- phalen leadership academy @ 93 remote learning
- phalen leadership academy @ ips 103 remote learning
- pike township msd closed
- pioneer regional school corp. Synchronous learning
- pla48-louis b russell remote learning
- plainfield christian church preschool closed
- plainfield community school corp. Closed
- plainfield public library closed
- polly panda preschool closed
- primelife enrichment closed
- prince of peace lutheran school closed
- professional police officers credit union closed
- promise land day care-anderson closed monday
- purdue polytechnic high school e-learning
- purpose of life academy closed monday
- putnam co head start closed
- randolph central school corp. Closed
- randolph eastern school corp closed
- randolph southern school corp closed
- ready set grow closed
- realife steam academy closed
- richland-bean blossom comm. School corp. Closed.Synchronous learning
- richmond community schools e-learning – self-paced instruction
- rise learning center e-learning
- rising star childcare academy closed
- roncalli high school e-learning
- rooted school indianapolis e-learning
- rossville cons. School district virtual learning
- rush co senior citizens ctr activities canceled
- rush county schools e-learning
- saint anthony catholic school e-learning
- scecina memorial high school e-learning
- school for community learning closed
- second presbyterian church closed
- sense charter school corporation e-learning. No on-site programs
- seven oaks classical school closed
- shakamak schools msd e-learning
- shalom health care center closed
- shares inc closed – wap llc & shares inc all locations
- shelbyville central schools e-learning
- shelbyville community church closed
- shepherd community center e-learning. No on-site programs
- sheridan community schools closed
- shining stars child care academy closed monday
- skjodt-barrett contract packaging no 1st shift – 2nd shift pending
- small small world daycare closed
- south madison community school corp. Closed
- south montgomery comm. School corp. Closed
- south putnam comm. Schools synchronous e-learning
- south ripley comm. School corp. E-learning
- southeast fountain school corp. Closed
- southland community churchoffice & tlz preschool closed mon
- southminister presbyterianloving hearts learning place closed mon
- southwestern con. Schools of shelby co. Closed
- spectrum brands noblesville plant closed monday
- speedway christian church activities canceled
- speedway moose 500 lodge activities canceled – closed thru monday
- speedway public schools closed
- spencer-owen community schools e-learning
- spirit of life churchchurch & victory academy preschool closed
- springville community academyclosed – little hornets preschool closed
- sram llc closed
- st barnabas catholic school e-learning
- st basil food pantry carmel closed
- st christopher schoole-learning. No on-site programs
- st joan of arc indpls. Closed
- st john’s united church of christ no sun service – office closed mon
- st jude catholic school closed monday
- st lawrence school e-learning
- st louis de montfort school e-learning
- st luke school closed monday
- st luke’s united methodist church closed monday
- st malachy school e-learning
- st maria goretti parish catholic school e-learning
- st marys school-greensburg e-learning
- st matthew comm preschoolwest & main campuses closed
- st michael-st gabriel archangels e-learning
- st monica catholic school e-learning
- st paul’s episcopal church no am services/activities sun
- st peter’s lutheran school e-learning
- st philip neri catholic school e-learning
- st pius x catholic school e-learning
- st stephen’s lutheran church closed – no services
- st susanna school closed
- st vincent de paul food pantry-brown co closed
- st vincent depaul distribution center closed
- st vincent depaul food pantry closed
- st. Michael catholic school-muncie e-learning
- st paul catholic school-marion closed
- sts joan of arc & patrick school-kokomogr2-8 virtual learn – grps-1 learn
- summit salon academy closed monday – anderson campus
- swofford dermatology center closed monday
- sycamore school no classes or activities
- tabernacle christian school-martinsville closed
- tangrampennwood bldg & clinic services closed
- taylor community school corp. Closed
- teddy bear day care-brownsburg closed
- teddy bear day care-e 65th st closed
- the benjamin harrison presidential site closed
- the excel center – anderson closed monday
- the excel center – shelbyville closed
- the excel center muncie closed
- the excel center-bartholomew co closed – no classes on mon
- the excel center-decatur closed monday
- the excel center-grant co closed
- the excel center-kokomo closed
- the excel center-lafayette closed
- the excel center-meadows closed
- the excel center-michigan st closed – no school mon
- the excel center-noblesville closed
- the excel center-richmond closed
- the excel center-shadeland closed – no school mon
- the excel center-university heights closed
- the excel center-west closed
- the match hs & career ctr synchronous e-learning
- the nature school of central indiana e-learning – no preschool
- oaks academy closed
- the path school e-learning
- the philippine cultural comm ctr activities canceled
- thermal structures closed
- thomas gregg neighborhood school no classes or activities
- thrive preschool closed
- tindley accelerated schools e-learning monday
- tippecanoe school corporation closed
- tipton community school corp. E-learning. No on-site programs
- tipton county public library online services only
- town of plainfield opening at 12:00 pm
- traders point christian schools closed
- train up a child daycare closed
- tri central community schools e-learning
- trinity christian school e-learning – child care closed
- trinity free clinic-carmel closed monday
- trinity lutheran school closed, children’s care closed
- triton central schools e-learning
- turning point schools closed
- u.S. District court-southern district of in closed monday
- university heights um children’s center closed
- university united methodist church no am services
- venture christian preschool closed
- very early childhood education center no classes or activities
- vet tech institute of indiana closed monday
- veteran health indiana no b’ton, terre haute, shelbyville, wakeman clinic
- victory college prep closed monday
- village roots collective closed monday
- vincennes aviation technology center closed mon. No classes or activities
- vision academy @ riverside closed monday
- warren township msde-learning
- washington township msde-learning
- washington twp gov’t center – trustee’s office closed
- wayne township schools closed
- wes-del community schools e-learning
- west lafayette comm schools closed monday
- western boone co community school corp e-learning
- western school corp synchronous learning
- western wayne schools closed
- westfield public library closed – monday
- westfield washington schools e-learning day – elc closed
- westlake church no am services – no volleyball sun & mon
- white river valley school district e-learning
- wilkinson church of christ office closed monday
- willoughby industries inc closed monday
- yorktown community schools e-learning
- zion lutheran school e-learning
- zionsville community schools e-learning
I Thought My Daughter Was Sleeping At Her Friends House
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
A mother thinks her teenage daughter is safely sleeping at a best friend’s house, a routine built on years of trust and casual texts. One unexpected message cracks that routine and raises a question no parent expects, where has her child really been spending the night.
what starts as a simple check in quickly turns into a tense phone call and a race against time. The situation forces a parent to confront fear, assumptions, and the uncomfortable reality that a child can hide an entire life in plain sight.
this story is about secrets, family history, and the damage adults can cause when they pull children into unresolved conflicts. It sets the stage for hard conversations, broken boundaries, and a decision that will reshape how one family defines trust going forward.
i’m 40f and my daughter, jordan, is 13.
she’s had the same best friend forever-alyssa. I know alyssa’s mom, tessa. We’re not “tell each other our secrets” close, but we’ve done enough birthday parties and carpools that i trusted her.
so when jordan started asking to sleep over at alyssa’s more, i didn’t think much of it.
once a month became every other weekend.
then it turned into a routine. Friday afternoon, i’d see the backpack come out.
“you asked tessa?” I’d say.
“yeah, mom,” she’d sigh. “She said it’s fine.”
the first month i was careful. I’d text:
“jordan’s on her way! ????”
tessa would reply:
“got her!”
or,
“okay!”
after a while, it felt automatic. Safe. Normal.
so i stopped texting every single time.
i just did the mom script at the door.
“be good. Be respectful. Text me if you need me.”
“mom, stop,” she’d groan. “I know.”
then last tuesday happened.
jordan left with her overnight bag, headphones on, shouted “love you!” Over her shoulder.
i was loading the dishwasher when i remembered my birthday was coming up. I figured i’d invite a couple of friends. Maybe tessa too, since she was basically my daughter’s weekend landlord.
so i sent a text:
“hey tessa! My birthday’s soon and i’d love to have you over if you’re free. Also, thanks again for letting jordan stay the night-i really appreciate it ????”
ten minutes later, my phone buzzed.
tessa: “hey… i don’t want to freak you out, but jordan hasn’t been here in weeks.”
my hands went cold.
i stared at the screen.
then i hit call.
she picked up right away.
“hey,” she said, already sounding guilty. “I’m so sorry, i didn’t know how to say that.”
“tessa,” i said, “jordan just left our house. With a bag. She told me she’s staying with alyssa. Tonight.”
silence.
“she’s not here,” tessa said finally. “She hasn’t slept over in… i don’t know, three, four weeks? You stopped texting, so i thought you knew. I figured they just weren’t hanging out as much.”
my heart started thudding in my ears.
“okay,” i said, trying not to scream. “Okay. Thanks for telling me.”
“do you want me to ask alyssa-”
“no,” i said. “I’ll handle it.”
i hung up and immediately called jordan.
she answered on the second ring.
“hey,” she said, too casual. I could hear traffic.
“where are you?” I asked.
“at alyssa’s,” she said, instantly. “Why?”
i swallowed.
“we have an emergency. I need you home. Now.”
“an emergency?” She repeated. “What happened?”
“i’ll explain when you get here. I’m grabbing my keys and driving to alyssa’s to pick you up.”
there was a beat of silence.
“don’t come here,” she blurted. “That’s so… unnecessary. I’ll come home if it’s that big of a deal.”
my stomach dropped.
“jordan,” i said, “where are you? And if you say ‘alyssa’s’ again, i swear-”
“i’m coming home,” she cut in. “Please don’t go to alyssa’s. I’ll be home in a bit.”
“how long is ‘a bit’?”
“i don’t know. Forty minutes? I’m coming, okay?”
“you have one hour,” i said. “If you are not in this house in one hour, i am calling every parent i know. Do you understand?”
“yes,” she muttered. “Please don’t freak out.”
too late.
i spent that hour pacing the living room and doing mental crime-scene maps. Bad parties. Older guys. Drugs. Creepy adults. Everything.
at 58 minutes, the front door opened.
jordan walked in, clutching her backpack like a shield.
“sit,” i said, pointing to the couch.
she sat.
i sat across from her. My hands were shaking.
“you’re grounded,” i said. “Until further notice.”
tears filled her eyes instantly. “You don’t even-”
“i know you’ve been lying,” i snapped. “Tessa texted me. You haven’t been at alyssa’s in weeks. So start talking.”
she stared at her hands.
“where have you been sleeping?”
she mumbled something.
“louder.”
“at grandma’s,” she whispered.
my brain stalled.
“my mom is dead,” i said slowly.
“not her,” jordan said quickly. “Dad’s mom.”
everything in my body went tight.
“explain,” i said.
jordan took a shaky breath.
“she moved here,” she said. “Like, a month ago. She showed up after school. She was waiting near the gate.”
“she approached you at school,” i said, my voice sharper than i meant.
“outside,” she said. “Not in school. She said she was my grandma and gave me her address. I recognized her from photos. She said she moved to be closer, that she missed me, that she knew you guys hated her, but she wanted to know me before…” she trailed off.
“before what?” I asked.
“before she dies,” jordan said quietly. “She said she’s sick.”
my throat went dry.
“so you just… went with her?”
“the first time she only took me for ice cream,” jordan said. “She cried a lot. Said she made mistakes with dad. That she was stupid and proud and she’d do anything to take it back. She begged me not to tell you yet because she didn’t want to ruin things for dad again.”
“jordan,” i said, “do you have any idea how messed up that is? To put that on you?”
“i know,” she said, crying now. “But she was so lonely, mom. Her apartment is tiny. She made pie and let me pick cartoons and showed me pictures of dad as a kid. She’s the only grandma i have.”
she looked at me with this mixture of guilt and longing that just broke me.
“and the sleepovers?” I asked.
“sometimes i really was at alyssa’s,” she said. “But other times, grandma would text me and ask if i could come. I’d tell you i was going to alyssa’s and then take the bus to grandma’s.”
i closed my eyes.
my husband’s mother and i have history.
when we started dating, he made a lot more money than i did. I came from a broke family and worked two jobs through community college. She never let me forget it.
she’d say things like, “you know he could marry someone stable, right?”
or, “we didn’t pay for his education so he could support another person’s debt.”
at our engagement dinner, she “joked” that i was “marrying up.”
my husband wasn’t having it. He told her if she couldn’t respect me, she didn’t get him.
he walked out. I followed. That was pretty much the end.
once jordan was born, there was one last blowup-some nasty comment about “our genes” and “what kind of family are we creating”-and he blocked her completely.
so yeah. I had reasons.
i opened my eyes and looked at my daughter.
“i’m angry you lied,” i said. “I’m furious she dragged you into this. But i understand why you wanted a grandmother. I do.”
jordan sniffled. “Are you going to make me stop seeing her?”
“i’m going to tell your father,” i said. “And then we’ll decide together. No more secrets. Do you understand me?”
she nodded, small and scared.
“go to your room,” i said. “No phone. We’ll talk again when dad gets home.”
she walked down the hall like she was headed to her execution.
a few hours later, my husband came home.
he stepped into the kitchen, saw my face, then jordan’s empty place at the table.
“what happened?” He asked.
“sit,” i said.
i told him everything.
he went very still.
“she moved here?” He said. “Without saying anything?”
“yep,” i said.
“and she saw our daughter behind our backs.”
i nodded.
he stared at the table, then he called jordan out.
“is it true?” He asked.
she nodded.
“i’m sorry, dad,” she whispered. “I just wanted to know her.”
“you lied to us,” he said. “Over and over.”
“i know,” she said. “I’m grounded. I get it. I’m not mad about that. I just… i didn’t want her to die without me ever meeting her properly. She said she messed up with you and she didn’t want to mess up with me.”
he flinched.
“is she actually sick?” He asked.
jordan nodded. “She has a bunch of medicines. She gets tired. She didn’t tell me everything, but… it’s bad.”
he put his head in his hands.
“i am so angry,” he said. “At you. At her. At myself. All of it.”
we were quiet.
then he lifted his head.
“i need to see her,” he said. “Right now.”
“together,” i said.
he nodded.
we drove as a family. Jordan gave us the address.
it was a small, old apartment building across town.
jordan hesitated at the door, then knocked.
my mother-in-law opened it.
she looked older than i remembered. Thinner. Smaller. Like someone had turned the saturation down on her.
her eyes went straight to jordan. Then to her son. Then to me.
she gripped the doorframe.
“oh,” she said softly.
“can we come in?” My husband asked.
“of course,” she said.
we stepped inside.
the place was neat. Tiny. A blanket on the couch. Pill bottles on the counter.
she sat down slowly. Her hands shook.
“i’m so sorry,” she said. “To all of you.”
my husband crossed his arms.
“you went behind our backs,” he said. “You dragged my kid into your mess.”
“i know,” she said. “I was selfish. I was scared that if i asked you first, you’d say no. I wanted to see her so badly i used her. I hate myself for that.”
she looked at me.
“i was awful to you,” she said.
she turned back to him.
“i don’t expect you to forgive me,” she said. “But i am sick. And i didn’t want to die without trying.”
“what is it?” He asked. “The sickness.”
she told him.
i won’t get into medical specifics, but it’s serious. Not “any minute,” but not “twenty years from now” either.
“i’m alone here,” she said. “I rented this place near jordan’s school because i knew she existed, and i thought if i could just… see her…”
she looked at jordan, eyes wet.
“i should never have asked you to lie,” she said. “That was cruel. I’m sorry, baby.”
jordan burst into tears.
“i didn’t want to hurt them,” she cried. “I just wanted a grandma.”
my husband closed his eyes.
“do you love her?” He asked his mom.
“more than anything,” she said instantly. “Even if i don’t deserve her.”
“then you don’t ever put her in the middle again,” he said. “If you want to see her, you talk to us first. No secrets. No back doors. No guilt trips.”
she nodded, clutching a tissue.
“i agree,” she said. “I’ll do whatever you say. Just… please don’t cut me off from her.”
the room went quiet.
i watched my husband’s face. The anger was still there, but so was the little boy who’d wanted his mom to show up for him.
he exhaled.
“we’ll try,” he said. “That’s all i can promise right now.”
he looked at me.
“what do you think?” He asked.
i thought about my younger self, crying in a bathroom after something she’d said. Then i looked at jordan, sitting on the edge of her seat, hope all over her face.
“i think,” i said, “our daughter deserves a grandmother.”
jordan made a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
she launched herself at him. Then at her grandmother. Then at me.
that was two weeks ago.
jordan is still grounded.
we set up clear rules. No visits without us knowing. No secrets. If grandma wants time with jordan, she texts us first.
we’ve had two short visits since then. One at our house. One at hers.
there have been apologies. Awkward silences. Some stories. Some tears.
but my daughter finally gets to say, “i’m going to grandma’s,” without lying about where she’ll sleep that night.
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
 – pardon me, your leadership is showing – january 24, 2026 – sullivan arena.
– goffstown grizzlies hockey –
leadership is critical in team sports, community, and family. Tremendous leadership shows itself in wonderful ways just as poor/no leadership shows itself in chaos and dysfunction. I am not sure that there has ever been a time where this is more clear than the present.
saturday, the grizzlies skated to a 4-0 win at sullivan arena against the winnacunnet warriors who came into the game with a 4-4 record in league play. From the booth, i thought, “pardon me, your leadership is showing”. Bad and good, and i do believe this is trending better, toward the good.
there were positives and negatives. So, pretty normal.
bad news first. Some bad habits crept back into the goffstown grizzlies game on saturday.
- defensemen taking liberties up ice with little to no positive outcome regardless of the risk taken.
- with said players out of position, forwards were forced to do the same, drop back to defense to cover their teammates.
- once in a while this is okay. This happens time and time again. It becomes a strain on systems, structures, and ultimately results.
- legendary university of maine hockey coach shawn walsh once said, “the system doesn’t win games, players do. The system just puts players in the best position to succeed.” Either the system is wrong or players are taking liberties.
- when there is a player on the ice for one of the few times so far this season, rally around the kid. Also play to protect another teammate’s chance at his first career shutout. 5-0 is no more a win than is 4-0. The goaltender helped himself immensely by making some great saves. Team, my friends. All, before me.
- walsh emphasized that “hockey is a game where you have to trust your teammates completely.” He has stated, “when you have a group that’s willing to battle for each other, that’s when you can accomplish great things.” Don’t leave a teammate on an island, especially one who doesn’t get as many game reps as many others do.
there was plenty of good news too. Energy levels ebbed and flowed. Team depth is a critical factor in managing these energy levels, as a deep team allows for shorter shifts, more frequent rest, and consistent energy levels across all lines.
- the team’s energy over the first period was amazing! The second line in particular was very effective on the forecheck and offensive zone pressure. They did everything but score.
- the whole team moved the puck well which led to a 16-4 shot advantage in the opening period. Even in the booth and boxes, we were remarking about the puck movement and team energy.
- finally, in the last two and a half minutes of the period, the goffstown grizzlies scored, and won the period, 1-0.
- despite the onslaught in the opening period, the score was just, 1-0 (similar to the alvirne-milford game which was 2-2 despite an 18-3 advantage in shots). The team came out and added two goals in the first 4:01 of the period. Way to pick up where you left off!
- the goffstown grizzlies continued to roll three separate lines, to the winnacunnet warriors who were running two lines for the most part.
- in the final period goffstown played a fourth line for a few shifts. This kind of stuff does more than just give other lines a rest.
- some kids who rarely get ice time, got some ice time.
- the risk of playing kids deemed ‘lower on the totem pole’ in the area of roster depth rather than beating the first line into the ice to get more goals or wins is a sizable risk. But i would be willing to bet that the reward is far greater than a defenseman rushing the puck up ice into traffic and ultimate obscurity.
- it’s the buy-in from the team. If every player has a buy-in to the team, the greater good, so many more things are possible.
- nick saban, winner of 7 ncaa national championships said this: “the thing about a team is you have to trust each other. You have to count on each other to do their job. When that happens, you have a chance to be successful.” Saban often emphasized that his players needed to “play for the guy next to you” and understand that individual success was tied directly to team success.
- scotty bowman won 9 stanley cups and nhl coach of the year 3 times: bowman believed that “the best teams are those where players understand that their success is tied to the success of their teammates.” He has stated, “when you have a group that’s willing to sacrifice for each other, that’s when you have something special.”
- bill belichick won 6 super bowls and 17 afc east titles: belichick has consistently emphasized that “team beats individual” and that players must “put the team first.” He has stated, “when you’re part of a team, you understand that your success is tied to the success of the people around you. You have to be there for them, and they have to be there for you.”
- hmmm, there must be something to this ‘team thing’.
- john wooden by whom almost all great coaches are measured against. He won 10 ncaa national championships, in basketball, including 7 in a row. Wooden famously said, “it’s amazing how much can be accomplished if no one cares who gets the credit.” He also emphasized that “the main ingredient of stardom is the rest of the team,” highlighting his belief that individual success was meaningless without collective support.
before i move on to the descriptions of the goals and the numbers, i think it’s pretty clear that even in sports, ‘the more the merrier’ still applies. Perhaps the major catalyst for these team themes really is the leadership. Wooden was known for tailoring his coaching to each player’s strengths while maintaining his core principles. He once said, “a coach is someone who can give correction without causing resentment.”
imagine how free you could play if you held no resentment, got to play more often, and showed up every day with complete buy-in to the team. Roster, coaches, managers. All of it. All for one.
goffstown grizzlies vs. Winnacunnet warriors.
sullivan arena, st. Anselm college, goffstown, nh.
nhiaa hockey: game twelve.
saturday, january 24, 2026.
nhiaa hockey:
scoring:
goffstown grizzlies: 01 – 02 – 01 = 04Â
winnacunnet warriors: 00 – 00 – 00 = 00Â
shots on goal:
goffstown grizzlies: 16 – 13 – 06 = 35Â
winnacunnet warriors: 04 – 05 – 10 = 19Â
goffstown grizzlies penalties:
- there were zero penalties called in this game.
goffstown was 1-for-2 on the power play, while brady-valley was 1-for-4.
- goffstown grizzlies – jake o’neil (jr.) Made 19 saves on 19 shots (1.000). (First career shutout)
- winnacunnet warriors – logan muirhead (jr.) Made 31 saves on 35 shots (.886).
buckle up. Here we go. All the points were scored by our kids:
-
- 1st 12:39 – goffstown grizzlies – even – owen st. Onge from zach lessard. – The grizzlies scored first. Zach lessard and owen st. Onge batted the puck around at their own blue line before lessard settled the puck and took off. Lessard skated up the right wing with connor bernard on his left all the way up ice. The warriors had to respect the rush, the shot, and the potential pass across to bernard. It was a clean 2-on-1. Lessard shot. Muirhead made the save. The rebound came out past the second warrior defender who raced back. Then it was owen st. Onge who settled the puck and fired a shot inside the far post for the goal. Good rush. Great result. 1-0.
- 2nd 2:28 – goffstown grizzlies – even – jackson horne unassisted. – The line of aj tramontozzi, cam desruisseaux, and teddy beal were on the fore-check again. Winnacunnet flipped the puck up the boards, and over tramontozzi’s head. Jackson horne stepped in from the point to bat the puck down to his stick. He settled the puck and fired from the top of the circle. The puck found the back of the net with aj, cam and teddy all in the crease area. Â 2-0.
- 2nd 4:01 – goffstown grizzlies – even – aj tramontozzi from zach lessard and zack tarrier. – Carrying momentum from the first period and an early second period goal, the grizzlies scored again, 1:33 later. Goffstown kept the fore-check pressure up and it led to a goal. Tarrier caught a lofted puck with his gloved hand and dropped it to his feet. Then he fired a pass across the zone to lessard at the point. Lessard stepped in and fired a shot toward the far post. The puck was en route when tramontozzi got a stick on it. The puck changed direction and hit the netting behind the crossbar on the nearside. Muirhead’s reaction told the story as he started to one side and then the puck entered on the opposite side. Good pressure. Good traffic. Good goal. 3-0.
- 3rd 9:49 – goffstown grizzlies – even – jackson horne from owen st. Onge and connor bernard. – Jackson horne worked hard to get the puck up ice while battling along the end boards behind his own net. He eventually got the puck to zack tarrier who shifted through his gears quickly while accelerating up the ice. He hit owen st. Onge with a pass at center ice. St. Onge made a nice play to control a tough pass while maintaining speed. Connor bernard was trailing his linemates. St. Onge fired a low hard shot that hit the apron of the goal at exactly the precise angle that allowed the puck to bounce back at a 45 degree angle to the post and toward the face-off dot. Crazy angles in play. Bernard ripped a shot into a 2-car pile up of defensemen in front of the goalie. The puck caromed up into the air, coming back from where it was shot. Horne had followed the play as the whole team was now on the ice and lined up (not really) to take a shot at the elusive puck. Horne took a good hard shot from the face-off circle. The puck caught the goaltender a bit handcuffed and it snuck into the net on the far side. Good play end to end. Third period energy comes from desperation, or from a balanced approach using three-plus lines all game long. I believe it was the latter. 4-0.
integrity based leadership. What a concept. Actions reflect values. This is not only a core tenet of the coaches listed in this article, it’s a great way to approach life.
“i am not defined by my opponent, but my opponent may demand the best of me. My system, the pursuit of the greater good, is a part of every opponent i face and everything i do.”
1 peter 5:2-3
new american standard bible
2 – shepherd the flock of god among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion but voluntarily, according to the will of god; and not with greed but with eagerness; 3 – nor yet as domineering over those assigned to your care, but by proving to be examples to the flock.
this is a call to lead and compete willingly, eager to serve the pursuit of excellence. Not a foe to crush or a score to run up. Rather, an opponent who serves as a catalyst that allows you to be an example to the flock (team) by demonstrating integrity under pressure. In this example your system gives you the freedom to give your very best challenge without using the opponent to define your worth. (Don’t play to your opponent, just play your system, the very best you can play in pursuit of excellence with no fear of the opponent nor the result).
you can remain fixed in your principles by not forcing your will (self over team) upon the game, and fluid in your response by serving the moment with exactly what it demands (stay home, support your mate, and get the team shutout). This proves that true leadership and strength are found in humble service to the greater good rather than the pursuit of victory at all costs.
you can find news, video, updates, and all kinds of interesting tidbits involving goffstown grizzlies hockey here, goffstown grizzlies hockey.
the goffstown grizzlies are hosting their annual comedy night on friday, january 30th. Honestly, every single season this is a blast! It really is. A time to gather with friends, even ones not involved in hockey! Great food. Some unbelievable raffle baskets/prizes to win while raising money. Then of course, there are the comedians. Absolutely hilarious. It is a great night every year. There is almost always snow or winter weather on the comedy night, so just plan ahead. You have been informed. We live in northern new england. No big deal. Please help us if you can. Thank you.
the qr code goes to this link: comedy show.
remembering jen cheney…
the jen cheney memorial scholarship and sportsmanship award (awarded each season)
as a sixteen-year-old junior, jen cheney was a manager for the very first goffstown grizzlies hockey team in the 1999-2000 club season. Her infectious smile and friendly nature was a joy for everyone fortunate to know her. Jen is now our eternal team angel. The spirit of jen lives on…our team champions an angel memorial patch sewn to each uniform jersey.
on thursday, may 18th, 2000, jen was killed by a drunk driver. We are dedicated to memorialize jen’s life with the jen cheney memorial scholarship and sportsmanship award. But we also want to deliver a message from our team angel… simply…if you choose to drink, don’t drive.
the thoughts and opinions expressed here are those of the individual contributors, mostly mine. They do not necessarily reflect the views of the leagues, schools, coaches, players, or characters listed in any of these blog posts. Or, maybe they do. Either way, you would have to ask them directly.
jesus said to him, “i am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the father except through me.” ~ Jesus of nazareth. John 14:6.
i agree with this statement from a great hockey coach, “it’s a great day for hockey” ~ the late “badger” bob johnson.
“we should be dreaming. We grew up as kids having dreams, but now we’re too sophisticated as adults, as a nation. We stopped dreaming. We should always have dreams.” ~ The late herb brooks.
“to me, there are three things we all should do every day. We should do this every day of our lives. Number one is laugh. You should laugh every day. Number two is think. You should spend some time in thought. Number three is, you should have your emotions moved to tears, could be happiness or joy. But think about it: if you laugh, you think, and you cry, that’s a full day. That’s a heck of a day. You do that seven days a week, you’re going to have something special.” ~ The late jim valvano on how to live life, during his espy speech.
Is Student Housing a Good Investment? What You Need to Know Before Buying in a C
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (1 reads)
[disclaimer: we are not accountants, lawyers or financial advisors, so please consult your own team of professionals about the topics covered in this article.]
when i first started investing in real estate back in 2001, one of my early deals was in oxford, mississippi—home to the university of mississippi (ole miss).
why oxford? It was where my close friend had gone to college. We had decided to partner on a real estate deal, and because he knew the area well, oxford felt like a comfortable and familiar place to get started.
at the time, i didn’t think much about the fact that it was a college town. The numbers penciled out, the property seemed like a solid rental, and we felt good about the decision. Over time, though, i started to see just how different student housing is compared to other types of real estate—and how much your strategy needs to adjust when a university is the main driver of the local market.
what is student housing?
student housing refers to rental properties—often single-family homes or small multifamily buildings—located near colleges or universities and rented to students. Demand for these properties is closely tied to the academic calendar, and leases are often structured around the school year.
there’s also purpose-built student housing, which consists of larger apartment complexes designed specifically for students. In this article, i’m focusing on the type of student housing most individual investors consider—properties you own and operate yourself.
why so many investors consider student rentals
1. It feels familiar
for many in our community, student housing feels like a natural entry point into real estate investing—because we’ve lived it.
most of us spent years renting as students ourselves—through college, med school, residency, or fellowship—so we know what student rentals look and feel like. That familiarity can make the idea of owning a student rental less intimidating. We understand what students want, what neighborhoods are desirable, and how the housing process works.
it was the same for me and my friend with the oxford house. He had gone to school at ole miss and knew the area well, so it felt like a comfortable place to start.
2. Seemingly steady demand
colleges and universities bring a built-in tenant base. As long as enrollment is stable or growing, there’s usually consistent demand for off-campus housing—especially for upperclassmen, graduate students, and medical trainees who aren’t required to live on campus.
compared to other types of rentals where demand is tied to job growth or population trends, student housing demand tends to be more predictable—at least while school is in session.
3. Higher cash flow potential
student rentals can often generate more gross rent than a traditional long-term rental—especially when the layout is designed to accommodate multiple unrelated tenants.
that’s what we did with our oxford property. To make it more attractive to students, we made sure each bedroom had its own bathroom so tenants didn’t have to share. Over time, this turned out to be a great move. It helped with leasing, reduced roommate issues, and made the property more competitive in the student rental market.
4. Helping kids with housing while building equity
another reason some investors choose student housing is to support their own children while they’re in school. We’ve heard from many in our community who’ve purchased a rental near their child’s college or university. Their son or daughter lives in one bedroom and finds roommates to cover the rest of the rent.
it’s a way to reduce out-of-pocket housing costs during school, while building equity in a property. And once their child graduates, they’ve already got a rental in place that can continue generating income.
the challenges (and what we learned the hard way)
1. Cyclical leasing and vacancy risk
one of the biggest lessons i learned from the oxford property was how unforgiving the leasing cycle can be. If you don’t secure tenants before the fall semester starts—usually august or early september—you risk long vacancies.
once classes begin, most students have already signed leases. In towns like oxford, there often isn’t a large enough non-student renter pool to fill vacancies mid-semester, which can mean sitting empty for months.
2. Risk of investing in a one-employer town
in many college towns, the university isn’t just the largest employer—it’s the only major economic driver. That kind of market concentration can be risky. If enrollment drops, state funding is cut, or the university builds more on-campus housing, it can directly impact your tenant pool, property values, and rental income.
a few years ago, leti and i looked at a large multifamily property in nacogdoches, texas—home to stephen f. Austin state university. The property itself looked like a solid deal. But as we dug deeper, we realized how dependent the local economy was on the university. There just weren’t many other employers or industries in the area.
that lack of diversification gave us pause. If anything changed with the university, there wouldn’t be much of a fallback in terms of tenant demand or property values. We ultimately passed on the deal because the market felt too fragile—too dependent on a single institution.
3. Management is more hands-on
renting to students often means dealing with tenants who are living on their own for the first time. That can lead to more wear and tear, more maintenance calls, and more communication with parents or co-signers.
without strong systems or an experienced property manager, student housing can require significantly more time and involvement than a traditional long-term rental.
4. Financing and insurance can be more challenging
some lenders and insurance providers view student housing as higher risk. Depending on the percentage of student tenants, you may need higher reserves, a larger down payment, or specialized insurance coverage.
5. Limited exit strategies
in smaller college towns, resale options can be limited. Properties may appeal primarily to other investors rather than owner-occupants, which can reduce your buyer pool and make your exit more dependent on market conditions at the time of sale.
when student housing can work
student housing can work well—but you have to know what you’re getting into and choose your market carefully.
there’s a big difference between investing in a small college town—where the university is the main employer and housing demand is highly cyclical—versus a larger metro or regional hub that happens to have a university but also has a broader economy, other types of tenants, and more year-round rental demand.
in the second type of market, student housing can be a reliable strategy—especially if you’re near campus, the school has strong enrollment, and there’s a shortage of on-campus housing. But in smaller towns where the university is the only game in town, you’re taking on more risk—both in terms of vacancies and long-term property value.
student housing might make sense if:
- the university has stable or growing enrollment
- there’s limited on-campus housing
- your property is close to campus
- the town has other employers and a diverse tenant base
- you understand the leasing cycle and have systems to pre-lease
- you’re comfortable with more active property management
questions to ask before you buy in a college town
before investing in student housing, ask yourself:
- is the university the primary economic driver in town?
- are there other industries or major employers nearby?
- how seasonal is the rental market?
- what happens if you miss the main leasing window?
- could the property be rented to non-students if needed?
- is there demand beyond just undergraduates (e.G., Grad students, med students)?
these questions can help you avoid overestimating demand and underestimating risk.
final thoughts: is student housing right for you?
student housing can work—but only if you know what you’re doing, and you choose the right kind of market.
my early experience in oxford showed me how dependent these markets are on the university’s calendar. Later, evaluating the nacogdoches deal reinforced the importance of investing in markets with a diverse economy and a broad tenant base. Just because a property looks good on paper doesn’t mean it’s the right fit. You can’t evaluate the property in isolation—you need to understand the local market, the leasing cycle, and who your tenants will be.
if you’re considering student housing, take your time to study the town, the university, and the surrounding economy. It can be a profitable niche—but only if you choose wisely and understand the dynamics of the market you’re entering.
want to learn how to choose the right market for real estate investing?
if you’re serious about learning how to identify strong real estate markets—and avoid risky ones like single-employer towns or highly seasonal rental markets—we can help.
join the waitlist for our signature course, zero to freedom, where we teach doctors and other high-income professionals how to find, analyze, and buy cash-flowing investment properties that support long-term financial independence.
Nesbitt: Whitmers tenure ends with too few kids reading
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
Nesbitt: whitmers tenure ends with too few kids reading
this year will be term-limited gov. Gretchen whitmer’s final one, and i don’t expect history to be kind when looking back on her tenure. She will leave behind broken promises, appalling scandals and failed policies. It’s more difficult for hardworking families to make it in michigan than when she first took office.
if the granholm administration is remembered as michigan’s “lost decade,” whitmer’s reign is sure to go down as a “decade of disaster.” Our economy is among the worst in the nation, our roads are still terrible, and our kids are learning dei instead of their abcs.
michigan ranks among the bottom 10 states in almost every meaningful metric, and the damage caused to our children’s education will take years to overcome.
the numbers are hard to fathom for a state that was once a national model for public education.
a vast majority of students — 63% of fourth graders and 76% of eighth graders — are not proficient in math, and nearly 30% of students are chronically absent.
but the most troubling downward spiral under whitmer’s watch is michigan’s reading scores. Reading is the foundation for educational success, yet three out of every five third- and fourth-graders in our state cannot read proficiently.
studies confirm that two out of every three students who cannot read proficiently by the end of fourth grade are likely to end up in jail or on social welfare. This paints a very bleak picture for michigan’s future.
now, years after locking students out of michigan schools, whitmer has said she wants to tackle this crisis. But time will tell whether this is more meaningless lip service from a governor who has a bad habit of saying the right thing and doing the wrong thing.
students in states like mississippi, arkansas and alabama are lapping our own because their governors and legislatures embraced accountability for teachers and students and transparency throughout their education systems.
meanwhile, whitmer has spent the last seven years dismantling these kinds of measures.
she gutted michigan’s “read by grade three” law — the same law mississippi credits with improving its reading scores from near the bottom nationally to the top 10 — and rolled back requirements that student progress be the key metric for teacher evaluations.
she vetoed funding for reading scholarships that would have assisted parents — especially low-income families — with tutoring or other reading support, and she ended the simple, transparent a-f grading scale that allowed parents to understand how their child’s school was performing and compare it to others.
senate republicans and i are ready to take charge. We have already introduced legislation to restore michigan’s “read by grade three” law, along with other measures to undo the damage whitmer and lansing democrats have caused.
growing up on my small family farm and attending hillsdale college, i learned to appreciate conservative values and the beauty of the american dream — the freedom to work hard, make an honest living, own your home and raise your family.
michigan students deserve a fair shot at the american dream, and we know that being able to read by the fourth grade sets them up for success.
it starts in our elementary schools, where we need to get back to teaching basics — reading, writing and math — and support teachers who are trained to make it happen with proven methods like phonics. If kids are struggling to read, they deserve opportunities for tutoring and support.
at the foundation of it all is trusting parents. Michigan must join president donald trump’s school choice program and affirm that families are not obligated to co-parent with the government.
let’s get to work, restore accountability in our schools, replace wokeness with real learning, and put parents back in charge. I will not stop fighting to give our kids a fair shot at the american dream and the opportunity to read, grow up and make it in michigan.
state sen. Aric nesbitt, r-porter township, serves as the senate republican leader and represents michigan’s 20th senate district.
Posted on Monday, January 26 @ 00:01:01 PST (0 reads)
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most schools go remote on monday
penn state greater allegheny, serra catholic closed
by staff reports
the tube city almanac
january 25, 2026
posted in: mckeesport and region news
most local school districts will be open on monday with remote, internet-based instruction in the wake of the weekend’s snowstorm — but one mckeesport school is taking an old-fashioned snow day.
in a message sent sunday, serra catholic high school principal robert childs told students, “go sled riding, build a snowman, help your parents or an elderly neighbor shovel their driveway or sidewalk. If you don’t want to go out, sit by the furnace or fire and read a good book or binge a good show.”
childs urged students to embrace the spirit of the 1986 movie, “ferris bueller’s day off.”
whatever you decide to do, enjoy being a kid for the day, because ‘life moves pretty fast, if you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it,’” childs wrote. “Be in awe of nature and god’s wonders and put your worries aside, knowing that he loves you and is watching over you at all times.”
students at other local high schools won’t be so lucky. Mckeesport area school district, east allegheny school district and south allegheny school district all announced they will move to remote learning for monday.
in addition, a girls’ varsity basketball game scheduled for monday at south allegheny has been moved to wednesday, and the district said it plans to operate on a two-hour delay tuesday, although it “could shift to a full cancellation if conditions don’t improve.”
mckeesport area superintendent donald macfann said the district would deliver live classroom sessions on monday through google classroom and all students are expected to participate. Students will have three school days to complete any remote learning day lessons.
in a message to parents, twin rivers elementary principal sade johnson said live virtual instruction for pupils in grades two, three, four and five will follow a two-hour delay schedule, with virtual homeroom at 10:15 a.M. Instruction will begin at 10:55 and students will have a 30-minute lunch break during the day.
kindergarten and first-grade students should complete the paper packet that was previously sent home, macfann said.
an east allegheny spokesperson said all students would be receiving emails with instructions from their teachers and that all afterschool and extracurricular activities for monday are cancelled.
penn state greater allegheny announced that the campus will be closed and all classes and activities at the mckeesport campus are canceled for monday.
only essential employees are to report, the university said.
community college of allegheny county is also closed monday and all day and evening classes, services and activities are canceled.
the university of pittsburgh also announced that all activities were canceled for monday and that instructors were urged to switch to remote instruction.
originally published january 25, 2026.
in other news:
snow big deal: storm … ||
