The Rant has to attend to a personal matter before we begin: Hey old man with the knee brace jogging across the street. Those shorts are wildly inappropriate; obscene even. We’ve seen less skin from a Vegas chorus girl. And your legs are whiter than the opening day of deer season. Doesn’t The Rant have enough to deal with just to get through the day? Now we have that image stuck in our mind.

That’s better. The Rant has many people to wave farewell to, so let’s get crackin’.

We’re pretty excited about the new AAF becoming a real football league and training ground for the NFL. We might even get season tickets . . . oh, never mind. See you AAF. What we love most about these football leagues is the utter sincerity and confidence they exude as owners proclaim that this time they have figured out the code to stay alive. These enterprises always stock enough has-been coaches and execs to make you believe there’s some fire to go with the smoke. The Rant asks, if Bill Polian still had the chops to be an NFL general manager, don’t you think Bill Polian would still be an NFL general manager? Instead of cranky football grandpa on ESPN?

The supposed villain in the story is Tom Dundon, one of the owners that put up $250 million to keep the league afloat and took control of the whole operation. After blowing through $70 million of that he gave up. Grandpa Polian was not happy; sort of like your kids complaining when you cut them off from college after a stellar run of three failed semesters. We can still turn around this league/GPA with a few more millions! Running a sports franchise and paying tuition have become roughly equal in expense. One of those systems is broken. The Rant wishes our kid had passed economics so we could find out which one.

Speaking of tuition and good-byes: farewell Aunt Becky. The eternally youthful Lori Laughlin of Full House apparently didn’t include getting her precious daughters into USC as part of her deal with the devil to never grow old. Instead her and hubby dropped around $500,000 to enhance test scores (that’s what we call cheating now) and pretend their daughters were prized recruits for the rowing team. The girls thought a coxswain was a birth control device. Poor things. Do remember to always row with coxswain, not without. That’s for loose crews.1 Turns out one of Lori’s kids just wanted to extend her brand; she signed lucrative deals to live-stream her glamorous USC life from her dorm room.2

Plenty of titans of entertainment and the yacht set got caught up in the sting. How gullible are you people? You can’t sit down the little darlings and tell them going to Cabo and St. Lucien does not a life plan make? The Rant is stoked for Last Chance U: Celebrity Kids Edition. Don’t fight it; you know it’s coming. Turns out Lori was wiring money to her fixer while they all frolicked in the Bahamas. How about a little ACT prep there Lori? The Rant will tutor both your kids for the rock-bottom price of $400,000. We’ll even wear some Gucci bling and live-stream. We pass the savings on to you.

Did Lori not know she could have built a new boathouse for the real rowing crew, slapped the family name on it and suddenly her kids would have been admitted on the always popular Legacy List? To quote Tony Stark, “That’s how Dad did it, that’s how America does it, and it’s worked out pretty well so far.” Tradition, Lori, always cling to tradition.

More people headed for the door? Magic Johnson learned he couldn’t be lovable and an effective basketball executive and chose lovable. We don’t blame him. Magic thought signing LeBron would cause a stampede of dunking unicorns and three-point fairies to arrive on the Lakers. Instead he has Lonzo Ball, who brought along the most nurturing father since the Great Santini but no jumper. At least now he doesn’t have to chuck coach Luke Walton over the side of the boat like Fredo and upset national treasure Bill Walton. There’s not enough weed and tie-dye in Bill’s closet for that heartache.

We’re even sorry to see DHS head Kristjean Nielsen go for not being cruel and inhuman enough, also the number one reason for termination in the SS. Because now we have the reign of Stephen Miller, a ball of hate so deplorable we’d rather watch old man white legs run a marathon.

  1. Rowing jokes! Is there nothing The Rant can’t pillory? You’re welcome three people that understood the last several sentences
  2. The Rant’s live-stream would have consisted of the preparation of Ramen noodles followed by us quietly weeping because apparently beautiful co-eds did not want to discuss the nuances of iambic pentameter

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